6 ms·

That’s kind of beside the point. I’m sure the process of being killed and eaten by a lion nevertheless causes “pain, distress, and harm”. These things are a par

by imgabe 5y ago

That’s kind of beside the point. I’m sure the process of being killed and eaten by a lion nevertheless causes “pain, distress, and harm”. These things are a part of life.

jacquesm 5y ago
Yes, but Lions lack - for want of a better term - options, whereas we humans have plenty of options. We decide to boil living creatures alive, their feelings be damned because we like their taste better that way. But that's a very conscious choice to inflict harm. In the court of ethics the Lion was just eating, the human being was inflicting unnecessary pain.
- imgabe 5y ago
  Who decides what's necessary? It's not really "necessary" to eat a lobster at all. Maybe we should just live in mud huts, eating the bare minimum amount of soybeans and rice to keep us just alive. That would inflict the minimal amount of "unnecessary" suffering. But then, why is it even necessary that we should be alive? All living things suffer at one point or another, whether it was necessary or not. There is no grand cosmic register that tallies up all the suffering and is going to cause something bad to happen if it gets too high. Suffering, in and of itself, is just a subjective experience that exists solely in a mind.
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
    We don't need to live in mud huts, I'm pretty sure houses can be vegan. Also it doesn't need to be all or nothing, we can simply reduce suffering. I don't understand the logic of "we can't eliminate suffering, so might as well maximize suffering by boiling animals to death."
    - imgabe 5y ago
      If someone actually cared about reducing suffering, there are far more egregious sources of it in the world that could be addressed. Worrying about lobsters suffering in boiling water for 2 seconds before they die is the plastic straw ban of reducing suffering. If you don't want to boil lobsters, then don't boil lobsters. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that introducing a ban on it is some kind of great victory for reducing suffering in the world.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        This is a fallacy of thinking that many people suffer from: because you are taking care of one bad thing doesn't mean you are immediately responsible for taking all bad things, conversely, that you are not able to take care of all bad things does not mean that you can ignore the one bad thing that you can take care of. I'm surprised this is so persistent, it seems pretty obvious. If five houses are on fire and you decide to take care of one of them that's fine, even if one or two of the others are bigger and a couple are smaller. At least you're doing something rather than nothing.
        imgabe 5y ago
        It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. If five houses are on fire, and you decide to go organize your sock drawer... Hey, you're doing something. An organized sock drawer is surely better than a disorganized one. But you could still be rightly criticized for wasting time on something unimportant when there are bigger problems you could be attending to.
        wander_homer 5y ago
        > It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. By this logic we should for example stop most of the medical treatment in highly developed countries, where only a minority of humanity lives. For every dollar we spend there on helping a single cancer patient etc. we could probably safe dozens of people elsewhere from dying or suffering due to lack of clean water, food, shelter, drugs, ... So I wonder, what's the list of issues you think should be tackled exclusively to get the most out of our limited resources?
        imgabe 5y ago
        > By this logic we should for example stop most of the medical treatment in highly developed countries, where only a minority of humanity lives. Let's think for a second about what would happen if we did this. Massive amounts of people start dying in the developed world because they get no medical treatment. Most of the productive capacity of the world in terms of creating modern goods is located there, so that plummets. Societies there collapse as people revolt at being denied medical care. The developing countries that were depending on this aid are even worse off than before. Hmm, does that sound like the best way to help the most people? I think not. I'm sure there's an optimal split between keeping prosperous countries prosperous and advancing the current frontiers of human knowledge vs. sending aid to less prosperous countries. I doubt we are at the optimum. I'm also certain the optimum is not "loot absolutely everything from prosperous places and send it to less prosperous ones". > So I wonder, what's the list of issues you think should be tackled exclusively to get the most out of our limited resources? Oh you got me. I don't have a comprehensive list of all the important priorities. Whatever it is "lobster suffering" is way, way down on it.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Empathy is that thing which makes suffering exist in your mind when it exists in others. And even among the non-sentient animals, it can extend to other species. The reason why we have to take it further than they do is because we have the mental capacity to construct a self-consistent system of ethics out of it.
    - imgabe 5y ago
      We have to? Why? Who or what requires this of us and by what mechanism do they enforce this requirement? How much further do we have to take it? What determines this limit? You might not find this as self-consistent as you think.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        We have to take it as far as emphathy combined with reason (which extends our ability to empathize) will take us, precisely because this is the only self-consistent approach other than sociopathy. If you're advocating the latter, then I'll admit that it is also fully self-consistent, and rejecting it is really just an ethical axiom that I subscribe to.

by imgabe 5y ago

That’s kind of beside the point. I’m sure the process of being killed and eaten by a lion nevertheless causes “pain, distress, and harm”. These things are a part of life.

jacquesm 5y ago

Yes, but Lions lack - for want of a better term - options, whereas we humans have plenty of options. We decide to boil living creatures alive, their feelings be damned because we like their taste better that way. But that's a very conscious choice to inflict harm. In the court of ethics the Lion was just eating, the human being was inflicting unnecessary pain.

imgabe 5y ago
Who decides what's necessary? It's not really "necessary" to eat a lobster at all. Maybe we should just live in mud huts, eating the bare minimum amount of soybeans and rice to keep us just alive. That would inflict the minimal amount of "unnecessary" suffering. But then, why is it even necessary that we should be alive? All living things suffer at one point or another, whether it was necessary or not. There is no grand cosmic register that tallies up all the suffering and is going to cause something bad to happen if it gets too high. Suffering, in and of itself, is just a subjective experience that exists solely in a mind.
- jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
  We don't need to live in mud huts, I'm pretty sure houses can be vegan. Also it doesn't need to be all or nothing, we can simply reduce suffering. I don't understand the logic of "we can't eliminate suffering, so might as well maximize suffering by boiling animals to death."
  - imgabe 5y ago
    If someone actually cared about reducing suffering, there are far more egregious sources of it in the world that could be addressed. Worrying about lobsters suffering in boiling water for 2 seconds before they die is the plastic straw ban of reducing suffering. If you don't want to boil lobsters, then don't boil lobsters. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that introducing a ban on it is some kind of great victory for reducing suffering in the world.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      This is a fallacy of thinking that many people suffer from: because you are taking care of one bad thing doesn't mean you are immediately responsible for taking all bad things, conversely, that you are not able to take care of all bad things does not mean that you can ignore the one bad thing that you can take care of. I'm surprised this is so persistent, it seems pretty obvious. If five houses are on fire and you decide to take care of one of them that's fine, even if one or two of the others are bigger and a couple are smaller. At least you're doing something rather than nothing.
      - imgabe 5y ago
        It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. If five houses are on fire, and you decide to go organize your sock drawer... Hey, you're doing something. An organized sock drawer is surely better than a disorganized one. But you could still be rightly criticized for wasting time on something unimportant when there are bigger problems you could be attending to.
        wander_homer 5y ago
        > It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. By this logic we should for example stop most of the medical treatment in highly developed countries, where only a minority of humanity lives. For every dollar we spend there on helping a single cancer patient etc. we could probably safe dozens of people elsewhere from dying or suffering due to lack of clean water, food, shelter, drugs, ... So I wonder, what's the list of issues you think should be tackled exclusively to get the most out of our limited resources?
        imgabe 5y ago
        > By this logic we should for example stop most of the medical treatment in highly developed countries, where only a minority of humanity lives. Let's think for a second about what would happen if we did this. Massive amounts of people start dying in the developed world because they get no medical treatment. Most of the productive capacity of the world in terms of creating modern goods is located there, so that plummets. Societies there collapse as people revolt at being denied medical care. The developing countries that were depending on this aid are even worse off than before. Hmm, does that sound like the best way to help the most people? I think not. I'm sure there's an optimal split between keeping prosperous countries prosperous and advancing the current frontiers of human knowledge vs. sending aid to less prosperous countries. I doubt we are at the optimum. I'm also certain the optimum is not "loot absolutely everything from prosperous places and send it to less prosperous ones". > So I wonder, what's the list of issues you think should be tackled exclusively to get the most out of our limited resources? Oh you got me. I don't have a comprehensive list of all the important priorities. Whatever it is "lobster suffering" is way, way down on it.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Empathy is that thing which makes suffering exist in your mind when it exists in others. And even among the non-sentient animals, it can extend to other species. The reason why we have to take it further than they do is because we have the mental capacity to construct a self-consistent system of ethics out of it.
  - imgabe 5y ago
    We have to? Why? Who or what requires this of us and by what mechanism do they enforce this requirement? How much further do we have to take it? What determines this limit? You might not find this as self-consistent as you think.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      We have to take it as far as emphathy combined with reason (which extends our ability to empathize) will take us, precisely because this is the only self-consistent approach other than sociopathy. If you're advocating the latter, then I'll admit that it is also fully self-consistent, and rejecting it is really just an ethical axiom that I subscribe to.