23 ms·

Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature. Weirder how it can be said without a sympathetic or concern

• sodez117 5y ago
  Until scarcity is solved everything is a resource.
  • perfmode 5y ago
    this reads like a line out of a dystopic neal stephenson novel or some or douglas adams quote about a comically primitive species of alien doesn’t it have that sort of ring to it? is existence not more than sets of problems and solutions?
    • fartcannon 5y ago
      I think there was a highly advanced cow/pig thing at the restaurant end the universe who very much wanted people to eat him. Ford wouldn't have considered it wrong as he was pragmatic. And had some alien told Arthur he was a barbarian for eating meat, he would have quipped something back like, "look, it's all shandies and licorice until the locusts arrive and then it's a rather short trip to the butchery to find out whose aunt goes best with brown sauce.' Zaphod though.. he might have seen it your way, "That pig was a cool cat, man." Trillian was pragmatic like Ford. Marvin would definitely been sympathetic on the surface, but insufferably narcissistic underneath. " You think you've got it bad? A brain the size of a planet but they wouldnt eat me if I cooked and served myself with mint jelly. Life. Don't talk to me about life". ... sorry
• notyourwork 5y ago
  What do you propose is the solution?
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    Maybe some respect for the animals that are sacrificed for our sakes. Just seems fair. Not trying to be judgemental.
• stevenwoo 5y ago
  I know someone who worked with mice but switched fields, he explained he could no longer do it because even though they are heavily inbred for research, each one had a different personality when in his hands and killing all of them took too much of a mental toll after years of work.
  • Thorrez 5y ago
    Reminds me of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/monument-to-the-laboratory-mouse https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/monument-to-the-laborato...
• Hnrobert42 5y ago
  I think for things like this, being dispassionate is a coping mechanism. If you engage the sympathy part of your brain, you won’t be able to do it. If you don’t do it, then humans die instead.
  • goldenkey 5y ago
    John Wycliffe (1340 AD): "How should God approve that you rob Peter and give this robbery to Paul in the name of Christ?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_rob_Peter_to_pay_Paul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_rob_Peter_to_pay_Paul
    • Hnrobert42 5y ago
      Yeah, except we are not talking about two people. We are talking about killing a pig to save a human, potentially thousands of humans.
      • goldenkey 5y ago
        We are talking about torturing a pig, killing is really no big deal -- everything dies but not everything suffers.
        • hulitu 5y ago
          I think a pig being killed would dissagree.
        • kaba0 5y ago
          As for what constitutes torture is arguable. To me, doing surgery with anesthesia don’t automatically fall into that category (though of course it can — eg. the famous experiment of putting a second dog’s head to another one’s torso was torture in my opinion).
      • sytelus 5y ago
        Is this so much worse than killing pig and salivating its meat and devouring it? Think about it, you are killing a living animal for your one meal when you had all the options in the world. Many people are not even eating it fully and simpply just tossing it away literally in a trash. As usual, I am sure a lot of people will run to Bible to justify this.
• frozenport 5y ago
  I don't see them as intelligent
  • JCharante 5y ago
    Is intelligence really a good reason to discriminate though? Isn't that what *ists used to say about other groups of people? Do we experiment on people with learning disorders? (Well I think they used to but they stopped)
    • loeg 5y ago
      By that line of reasoning, you shouldn't eat plants, either.
      • csee 5y ago
        Plants probably can't suffer. Pigs probably can.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    They are, it’s a fact.
• theplumber 5y ago
  I find such a remark weird given that "you" are serving such "helpless" creatures at your favorite restaurant. I think it's the ultimate hypocrisy. Not to mention that we have a situation where helpless creatures are sacrificed for the science/common good of human beings and the other situation where they are murdered for the taste of their meat & bones.
  • JCharante 5y ago
    Well I'm vegan and I find it disheartening how they can talk about a Pig like they can talk about a cement brick.
    • theplumber 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure you've enjoyed meat before going vegan. Now you enjoy lecturing others. As far as the language used is concerned humans get the same "cement brick" treatment in scientific papers. How would it help using a compassionate language? It would be just a distraction from the subject.
      • Sporktacular 5y ago
        Okay, let's go with your human comparison, wouldn't it also be weird if a human was subjected to 30 experiments before being killed, all described without any reference to the state of the person's health or mentality? Would that not make you pause and reflect on how inhuman it is, or how so we can be? Humans can make informed choices when studied by science, and when they aren't society strongly disapproves - registering that disapproval by criticising the lack of compassion given - and expressed. But how exactly how did JCharante lecture anyone?
  • chii 5y ago
    Both food, or medical, is a use of a resource that is created by and for humans. The pig wouldn't have been born had their purpose for food, or medical use, not been there. it's not like humans are capturing wild pigs and using them. I would say that wild animals deserves the right to exist and not hunted (unless they're threatening human interests), but the same cannot be said for bred animals.
• pacomerh 5y ago
  my thoughts exactly, these animals are even smarter than dogs and according to some studies smarter than 3-year old children, which makes this even sadder. We have one as a pet in the family and they're so chill.
  • kortex 5y ago
    Sorry, "pigs are smarter than dogs" is gonna need a Citation Needed. I don't doubt some pigs are smarter than some dogs, and maybe they are comparable on average, but I'd put money on any of the working breed dogs over pigs. ("smarter" being general intelligence, reasoning, working memory, and inference. There might be some specific tasks pigs excel at, but that is different than measuring "smarts")
    • mdorazio 5y ago
      https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c#page-1 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c#page-1 Good summary of findings there. You can draw your own conclusions - it's probably case-dependent.
      • csee 5y ago
        Smarter isn't that morally relevant. Their capacity to suffer is. Maybe smart is a proxy for that, but I highly doubt it's a good one, given that our prefrontal cortex was a modular attachment to a system capable of suffering which evolved a long time ago.
• theonething 5y ago
  I assume you're vegan then.
  • foerbert 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you think that's relevant. (Note - I am not OP.) Being hypocritical is an indictment at the speaker, not of the speech. The most hypocritical person to ever live may well be completely right about their most hypocritical belief. It's just not relevant to the the validity of the idea. So why do people constantly try to use it as a counterargument? It seems especially prevalent in these sorts of discussions, and for some reason it's often used as you did here. You have no idea if they are vegan or not, but somehow the mere suggestion that a single person might not be is seen as some kind of refutation of the importance of animal rights in general.
    • foragerr 5y ago
      Textbook ad-hominem
    • theonething 5y ago
      GP is make a moral judgement on what I (and many others) believe and my lifestyle. The implication is my beliefs on medical animal testing and my lifestyle of eating animals is wrong. While it's perfectly fine for GP to make this judgement, I'm not fine with them applying this standard to others while excusing themselves. Why is it wrong for me to ensure they are being consistent when making moral judgements on others? > hypocritical belief. It's just not relevant to the the validity of the idea. I disagree with your premise. GP is not merely talking about the validity of an idea, but again, is making a moral claim about what is right and wrong. In which case, hypocrisy diminishes one's right to make their moral claim. > seen as some kind of refutation of the importance of animal rights in general. Quite a straw man there. So being in favor of medical animal testing means I don't think animals rights in general are important?
• thefourthchime 5y ago
  Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  It's not weird, humans have a lot of different perspectives on life (or our simulator). It is a bit weird to me also though.
• dexwiz 5y ago
  From what I heard, the pig lived a relativity good life. It was well cared for by the large animal veterinary school on campus. Had more space and better food than any factory raised pig. All experiments passed an ethics review. The pig was anesthetized before any procedure. The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. Modern medicine would not be possible without animal trials. Lab-on-a-chips may reduce the need in the future, but animals will still be required for device testing that needs an entire structure, not just a few cells. Different people may weigh the ethical dilemma differently, but when it's your loved dying due a heart defect I am willing to bet you will still choose a treatment tested on animals.
  • tcgv 5y ago
    Thanks for your clarification. It's good to read that the pig was well cared and experiments passed ethics reviews. To be fair your original comment was lacking this information, hence when I first read it felt (unintentionally as we can see now) a bit cold-hearted to me as well.
    • nsonha 5y ago
      lol that's it? If they said something like "how you feel about it is inconsequential" I would accept it as a pragmatic/stoic way to look at it. There is no way a life in a lab can be even remotely good, well cared or not, but it's hard to compare when a typical life of a pig ends with being slaughtered, only to end up expired pieces of meat most of the times.
      • cheese_goddess 5y ago
        How do you think a life of a pig would end if it wasn't being slaughtered? Most likely it would be half-eaten alive by a predator and the rest left to rot or be taken by scavengers. The same thing will happen now (the expired pieces of meat will mostly become food for insect larvae) except it's a human doing the slaughtering and the animal is killed before being eaten.
• tchanglington 5y ago
  Because it helps save humans
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    And? Ancient Egyptians thought slavery was good because it helped Ancient Egyptians - "of course its good, just ask any beneficiary".
• mise_en_place 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s weird at all. If a million people were to die of COVID tomorrow, I wouldn’t really care emotionally. They all had their own life narratives, emotions and intelligence. Yet it wouldn’t phase me one bit. Perhaps intellectually I would have some compassion for them, and would hope they didn’t suffer. On the other hand, if a close relative or friend dies, I would mourn them immensely. Similarly, if I had a pet pig I would mourn that individual pig a lot. But a lab pig that’s used for experiments not so much.
  • sailfast 5y ago
    A MILLION people? Not one bit? "Perhaps intellectually I would have some compassion for them?" I guess you're proving Stalin (paraphrasing Tucholsky?[0]) was right? "The death of one is a tragedy, but the death of millions, a statistic. [0]https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Political-misquotes-The-10-most-famous-things-never-actually-said/The-death-of-one-man-is-a-tragedy.-The-death-of-millions-is-a-statistic.-Josef-Stalin https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Political-m...
    • RalfWausE 5y ago
      Why should he? If he didn't knew anyone of the dead, i can totaly relate to this. I, for me personally speaking, would see it as factual BAD would a million people die tomorrow of Covid, but i wouldn't mourn anyone if i didn't know him personally. Perhaps i am a psychopath, but even an event like 9/11 left me just with the feeling of "oh, i think this is not good" instead of the shock or anything like my peers expressed...
    • csee 5y ago
      Isn't this normal? We didn't evolve to feel much compassion in the abstract for people outside of our group, especially not if there aren't visual or auditory cues that they're suffering.
• deltaonefour 5y ago
  It's not weird at all. Biologically speaking, we are designed to eat meat. Our bodies produce all of the enzymes, such as protease and lipase, necessary for the breakdown and absorption of meat. The weird thing is how we developed sympathy and concern for such things. Human civilizations' current abundance of resources allows us the luxury to develop moral "philosophies" and become "vegetarians" effectively masking our more savage nature. Make no mistake, You are biologically designed to kill and eat flesh. And if you can kill it and eat it, of course you can experiment on it.
  • codebolt 5y ago
    Human beings are also designed for aggression towards each other, yet we generally try to control those parts of our 'savage nature' in modern society. Torturing defenseless animals is not an inescapable facet of human nature. It's something we choose to do and be OK with.
    • deltaonefour 5y ago
      >Human beings are also designed for aggression towards each other, yet we generally try to control those parts of our 'savage nature' in modern society. No. There is no evolutionary benefit for raw aggression. Raw aggression appears during times of limited resources where aggression contributes to survival. Humans as all living things, are designed to survive and use any means to achieve it. Given minimal resources we all will revert to our primal natures. >Torturing defenseless animals is not an inescapable facet of human nature. It's something we choose to do and be OK with. Nothing is inescapable. You are designed by nature to live out a certain lifetime yet you can escape your nature by killing yourself. This does not change your fundamental nature. We are more prone to follow our nature then to ignore it.
      • robotresearcher 5y ago
        > There is no evolutionary benefit for raw aggression. Raw aggression appears during times of limited resources where aggression contributes to survival. Those sentences seem to contradict each other very directly.
• deltaonefour 5y ago
  Looking at this thread what I find strange is how we try to justify things to ourselves. How we come up with these frameworks to justify our behavior is the strange thing to me. On one hand we have the vegans who deny their very biological nature in order to fulfill the precept: "thou shall not kill." Vegans don't eat meat eat even though the human body is clearly a machine designed to eat meat. Why deny nature? On the other hand we have carnivores who try to justify the fact that they are clearly killing another living creature that has feelings, emotions and intelligence not too far away from humans. How can you justify the mass slaughter and experimentation on pigs but not on humans? Experiments on the Jews during the holocaust could very much save more lives than testing these things on pigs as pigs are but a crude model of the human body. Personally, I don't try to reconcile my morality. I know there's a moral part of my brain evolved to make sense of the prehistoric world where pigs didn't have feelings and the only people that mattered were those that were in my tribe. It's only in modern times that we now live in a global tribe where science and resources allow us to worry about the emotions of a pig. So what am I? I'm an evil motherfucker who eats the flesh of an innocent pig who didn't have to die... Either way we're just humans on a ball of dust encircling a tiny spark that's going to go super nova anyway. Who cares. Math is suppose to make sense. Morality is not.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    > Vegans don't eat meat eat even though the human body is clearly a machine designed to eat meat. Why deny nature? It was not designed, and neither did it evolve into a machine designed to eat meat. Those would be cats who are obligate carnivores. We are omnivores (as is pretty much everything — digesting meat is much much easier than digesting plants).
  • RankingMember 5y ago
    > Either way we're just humans on a ball of dust encircling a tiny spark that's going to go super nova anyway. Who cares. Math is suppose to make sense. Morality is not. You can justify just about anything with that perspective.
    • deltaonefour 5y ago
• tengbretson 5y ago
  If only this pig had had the opportunity to live in the wild where it could cannibalize it's young and destroy ecosystems.
• xupybd 5y ago
  We eat them. We're simply hard wired to use them as a resource.
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    Nope. Many cultures share the same hard wiring, but not the habit of eating animals.
    • xupybd 5y ago
      It's not unbreakable but it is a species wide bias.
      • Sporktacular 5y ago
        So it's hard wired, a bias or a bias that's hard wired? Or is simply maintaining convenient sources of protein a habit we have for food security and convenience? If so then we can achieve that without causing needless suffering. But hey, eat whatever you like. Let's just not lie to ourselves to avoid ending an unnecessary habit.
• Jesus_piece 5y ago
  Sadly I think if or when pig heart transplants are successful in humans, pigs will be commoditized even further, if that is even possible. Poor creatures :( Not a reason to stop this research in my opinion but I agree with the comment I’m responding to - wish people could care for the animals we treat as test subjects, seems somewhat cruel to not do so
• freetinker 5y ago
  Let’s just first take care of our own, shall we? Band together as humans caring for humans, and then perhaps the pigs?
  • bayesian_horse 5y ago
    If pigs are already entrusted to your care, you can't put caring for them off.
• radu_floricica 5y ago
  If this happens, I hope it happens decades after we switch to factory produced meat. There is a multiple orders of magnitude more benefit from using animals for medical research and medical care than from using them as food. I realize our psychology makes us empathize with whatever case we have in front of us right now, but when it comes to orders of magnitude difference and human lives, I'd much prefer we better control our empathy.
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    Pragmatically, sure but then every species using HN shares our bias. Doing right would mean trying to transcend it. But am not sure we have to suppress our empathy just because we're being pragmatic.
• the_other 5y ago
  Some of us need to learn to see one another as more than mere resource first.
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    How about both.
• scotty79 5y ago
  I deal with this same way I deal with not being vegetarian. I just accept that I am not a good man.
• carlsborg 5y ago
  "In 2020.. Total commercial hog slaughter was 131.563 million head" - US FDA Report. I appreciate your sentiment, but if you would like to direct effort toward this cause, perhaps the food industry would be a better starting point.
• teekert 5y ago
  I think it's good that you can have empathy for the animal but you could also sympathize with the people (inc children) that may someday have such a heart as their only option. Everybody wants to move beyond animals, a lot of research is being done on Organs on a Chip etc, but until then, we have animals. See them like the nuclear powerplants that we use instead of coal, until we can finally move to fully renewable energy. Sometime I ask myself, how many mice or pigs would I kill to save my child? And my answer is: As many as it takes.
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    Personally I'd probably be the same. But this scenario would probably demolish my objectivity so completely that I would no longer be remotely able to pick right from wrong. If my kid was abused I would probably want cruel and unusual punishment instituted, if my kid was groomed online I would probably want to abolish all encryption or privacy laws standing in the way of finding the person doing it, etc. That said, I still think it would be reasonable to want to know that they weren't in any agony. And there would probably be a point where I would think something is deeply wrong if a hundred intelligent creatures all suffered terribly just so that one person can live. But in the end I'd probably go along with it, think we have way too much power for one species and donate or do everything I could to try make it right, and fail.
• wanda 5y ago
  Are you... are you serious? The day that every statement of unfortunate fact has to be prefaced by an expression of emotional disapproval... that is the day I officially give up on our already laughable species. No one should have to explicitly state their disapproval of something unpleasant -- it can go without saying. And I, for one, prefer to get facts and information without a person's opinion on the matter -- nothing could be less important to me than a given individual's emotional perspective on a matter. It's of no interest to me how other people feel about something in forming my own judgements, and there's a high probability that their "feelings" will be poorly justified/based on misunderstanding/entirely insincere/etc. I care about the data, and I'll form my own opinion on it. The last thing I need to know about the subject of the pig used for many experiments... is that some random person online who shared the information with me... ...disapproves of the pig's unfortunate journey.
  • throw10920 5y ago
    I believe that the GP poster was intentionally using emotionally-charged language in order to try to push that position, or alternatively to make an excuse to bring it up in the thread without otherwise having a reason to do so. Not really in the spirit of HN, of course.
    • Sporktacular 5y ago
      Neither. Just my POV.
  • Sporktacular 5y ago
    It's not about appearances. Referring to the data of how many usable organs came out of a prisoner, without any mention of their emotional state or state of health would be weird. With the obvious knowledge that a pig is capable of experiencing fear, depression and pain, why is it any less weird to not give any consideration to a pig? An empty gesture of sympathy while feeling no concern wouldn't make that any less weird. It would just add dishonesty to the existing shitty state of affairs.
• csee 5y ago
  I hope so too, but let's start with the highest impact interventions like stopping the gassing of pigs with CO2 which causes immense pain at an extremely large scale. It's upsetting in an absolute sense that we experiment on pigs like this, but at least that was only 1 pig and the benefits of that would be much more than if it was just used for food.
• iyn 5y ago
  Thank you for saying that. I'm still shocked how deep such "mental illusions" can go. But it's also dangerous thing to say, because it triggers "internal contradiction" error in most people and you get to experience people's justifications and/or attacks as a form of defense. One of those things that are invisible now but will be shocking from historical perspective.
• andrepd 5y ago
  I assume the experiments were approved by some ethics board so that they weren't just for fun. Experiments on animals are justified if we think we can save human lives with that knowledge.
• OOPMan 5y ago
• huetius 5y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but you don’t have to attribute human characteristics to animals in order to make the case that this and much else of our contemporary relationship with nature is inhumane (meaning: against human nature).
• taneq 5y ago
  I've always found this particular schism really strange. People will be passionately protective of one type of animal while being perfectly happy for another as-far-as-I-can-see-equivalent animal to be factory farmed and fried for breakfast. There's a lot of interesting mental calisthenics that goes on in mammal brains to allow our social, empathic behaviours to coexist with predator behaviours.