5 ms·

Yes ,don't cook lobsters alive I would say. Most animals can definitely feel pain, maybe even insects. Don't cause them unnecessary pain. It's pretty said th

by yawaworht1978 5y ago

Yes ,don't cook lobsters alive I would say. Most animals can definitely feel pain, maybe even insects. Don't cause them unnecessary pain. It's pretty said that the so called most intelligent animal species needs laws to understand that.

wruza 5y ago
How not causing pain to animals when cooking them relates to intelligence? I suspect that my comment can sound blunt to you, so let me explain. When a human wants to eat something, their goal is not only to eat, but to do that without harming their emotional state. E.g. if I (or anyone) wanted to eat badly and catched an animal, I wouldn’t boil it alive, because it would scream of pain and hurt my mental state. But if it doesn’t show any signs of it under the lid, like a crab or a lobster, then what’s the deal? Why go to lengths cutting specific nerves behind a hard carapace, if it does zero harm to me? I see that it may do harm to you, but animals suffer all the time, everywhere in the nature. I don’t understand how to think this way and not burst in tears every minute of my life. Isn’t it more intelligent to accept the fact that the nature sucks and you can’t do much to it? I’m not writing it to bother you, I genuinely don’t understand the logic of said relation.
- scoutt 5y ago
  I suppose we are intelligent enough to understand that our actions may provoke pain, and that we are also intelligent enough to know that someone/something might feel pain even if it's not evident. You don't have to burst in tears, it's enough to be aware of some facts and deal with them. You deal with them by "not seeing, not hearing" (or not wanting to). It's fine.
- mypastself 5y ago
  Presumably, intelligence entails understanding that suffering can take forms other than the immediately obvious ones, and taking steps to minimize it if possible.
  - wruza 5y ago
    I’m aware that it may feel pain either just like I do, or in a different way. My question is why should I be agitated by this thought, iow what is the reason to reduce it. I don’t relate its suffering to my “soul” or a mental state. Not talking about morals here, I wouldn’t boil a live crab in a presence of people who would react negatively. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117
    - spuz 5y ago
      I think the answer is most people will suffer negative mental effects if they believe they have caused more suffering to an animal than is necessary to achieve the same outcome (i.e. feeding oneself) and also that they believe that boiling an animal could cause it more suffering than to kill it by an alternative method.
    - mypastself 5y ago
      Most people don’t wish to cause undue harm to others, human or animal, because it causes them anguish. We are capable of abstract thought and understand persistence of objects. I think those two facts are sufficient to understand why intelligent beings are agitated even by indirect expressions of suffering.
    - dTal 5y ago
      Your line of questioning gives me the shivers, because it applies equally to humans. You might be intellectually aware that you're causing someone to suffer, but - unless someone else is watching - why should you care? You say you're "not talking about morals" - what, then, are morals?
      - harpersealtako 5y ago
        (I'm not the person you were replying to but I am very interested in this conversation) There's a specific carnal aspect to eating meat that I imagine is lost on a lot of people, especially when they don't have firsthand experience butchering animals. For me, it was when I was gutting the first deer I killed. There's this weird thing where you become incredibly conscious of the movement of your internal organs when you are holding another animal's warm entrails. It's almost entirely physical rather than mental, like what it feels like when you meditate on your breathing, except instead of breathing it's the pressure of food sludge sliding down your intestines. I realized that me and the deer are both just slightly differently-arranged sacks of meat. I always thought I'd have some revelation about the sanctity of life when I killed a deer, but instead I felt an immediate detachment from it, like how I'm just part of an uncaring physical system ("nature") and that system doesn't care about my "morals" or lack thereof. Sorry for the weird pretentious rambling. My response is that humans are part of nature, not apart from it, that nature has no morals or good or bad. Morals are just this weird thing human brains do to cooperate as individual members of a species to increase our fitness and individually to feel better or worse. I care about other humans because I care about them. I don't care about crabs because I don't care about them. They are two separate, non-intersecting roads in my brain. I don't mind if you think I'm a heartless psycho for articulating it this way, in fact the main drawback of this way of mental mapping is literally the social stigma of being considered heartless and cruel, which is why I am less likely to phrase it this way in IRL conversation. But I feel nothing when I crush a house fly (rather, I feel great satisfaction at getting rid of such a nuisance, and I think most others would feel the same), and feel nothing when I boil a crab alive except the pleasant anticipation of a delicious meal.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
But they taste good with garlic butter. That is both true and an incredibly lame argument when I write it out. I have strong feelings about octopuseses and the people who eat them for entertainment. I wish we knew how sentient and pain-aware lobsters are.
- Frondo 5y ago
  Parent said "don't cook them alive," not "don't cook them." It's not hard to kill a lobster before you drop it in the pot - slip a knife into its neck above its carapace. This was a test on one of those Gordon Ramsay shows, so if he can kill them first and still make tasty food, I think we all can. But really, if there were an animal that I could only eat by inflicting pain on it first (i.e. causing pain and not striving to minimize its suffering), I wouldn't eat it.

wruza 5y ago

How not causing pain to animals when cooking them relates to intelligence? I suspect that my comment can sound blunt to you, so let me explain. When a human wants to eat something, their goal is not only to eat, but to do that without harming their emotional state. E.g. if I (or anyone) wanted to eat badly and catched an animal, I wouldn’t boil it alive, because it would scream of pain and hurt my mental state. But if it doesn’t show any signs of it under the lid, like a crab or a lobster, then what’s the deal? Why go to lengths cutting specific nerves behind a hard carapace, if it does zero harm to me? I see that it may do harm to you, but animals suffer all the time, everywhere in the nature. I don’t understand how to think this way and not burst in tears every minute of my life. Isn’t it more intelligent to accept the fact that the nature sucks and you can’t do much to it? I’m not writing it to bother you, I genuinely don’t understand the logic of said relation.

scoutt 5y ago
I suppose we are intelligent enough to understand that our actions may provoke pain, and that we are also intelligent enough to know that someone/something might feel pain even if it's not evident. You don't have to burst in tears, it's enough to be aware of some facts and deal with them. You deal with them by "not seeing, not hearing" (or not wanting to). It's fine.
mypastself 5y ago
Presumably, intelligence entails understanding that suffering can take forms other than the immediately obvious ones, and taking steps to minimize it if possible.
- wruza 5y ago
  I’m aware that it may feel pain either just like I do, or in a different way. My question is why should I be agitated by this thought, iow what is the reason to reduce it. I don’t relate its suffering to my “soul” or a mental state. Not talking about morals here, I wouldn’t boil a live crab in a presence of people who would react negatively. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117
  - spuz 5y ago
    I think the answer is most people will suffer negative mental effects if they believe they have caused more suffering to an animal than is necessary to achieve the same outcome (i.e. feeding oneself) and also that they believe that boiling an animal could cause it more suffering than to kill it by an alternative method.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    Most people don’t wish to cause undue harm to others, human or animal, because it causes them anguish. We are capable of abstract thought and understand persistence of objects. I think those two facts are sufficient to understand why intelligent beings are agitated even by indirect expressions of suffering.
  - dTal 5y ago
    Your line of questioning gives me the shivers, because it applies equally to humans. You might be intellectually aware that you're causing someone to suffer, but - unless someone else is watching - why should you care? You say you're "not talking about morals" - what, then, are morals?
    - harpersealtako 5y ago
      (I'm not the person you were replying to but I am very interested in this conversation) There's a specific carnal aspect to eating meat that I imagine is lost on a lot of people, especially when they don't have firsthand experience butchering animals. For me, it was when I was gutting the first deer I killed. There's this weird thing where you become incredibly conscious of the movement of your internal organs when you are holding another animal's warm entrails. It's almost entirely physical rather than mental, like what it feels like when you meditate on your breathing, except instead of breathing it's the pressure of food sludge sliding down your intestines. I realized that me and the deer are both just slightly differently-arranged sacks of meat. I always thought I'd have some revelation about the sanctity of life when I killed a deer, but instead I felt an immediate detachment from it, like how I'm just part of an uncaring physical system ("nature") and that system doesn't care about my "morals" or lack thereof. Sorry for the weird pretentious rambling. My response is that humans are part of nature, not apart from it, that nature has no morals or good or bad. Morals are just this weird thing human brains do to cooperate as individual members of a species to increase our fitness and individually to feel better or worse. I care about other humans because I care about them. I don't care about crabs because I don't care about them. They are two separate, non-intersecting roads in my brain. I don't mind if you think I'm a heartless psycho for articulating it this way, in fact the main drawback of this way of mental mapping is literally the social stigma of being considered heartless and cruel, which is why I am less likely to phrase it this way in IRL conversation. But I feel nothing when I crush a house fly (rather, I feel great satisfaction at getting rid of such a nuisance, and I think most others would feel the same), and feel nothing when I boil a crab alive except the pleasant anticipation of a delicious meal.

SyzygistSix 5y ago

But they taste good with garlic butter. That is both true and an incredibly lame argument when I write it out. I have strong feelings about octopuseses and the people who eat them for entertainment. I wish we knew how sentient and pain-aware lobsters are.

Frondo 5y ago
Parent said "don't cook them alive," not "don't cook them." It's not hard to kill a lobster before you drop it in the pot - slip a knife into its neck above its carapace. This was a test on one of those Gordon Ramsay shows, so if he can kill them first and still make tasty food, I think we all can. But really, if there were an animal that I could only eat by inflicting pain on it first (i.e. causing pain and not striving to minimize its suffering), I wouldn't eat it.