4 ms·

I don't I always find it crazy that society has drawn these weird lines where if you want some chicken tenders you can slaughter a billion and treat them terrib

I don't I always find it crazy that society has drawn these weird lines where if you want some chicken tenders you can slaughter a billion and treat them terrible but if you want to push the limits of human knowledge you need 6 levels of oversight.

hombre_fatal 3y ago
It's a phenomenal demonstration of the human brain when a video of a guy being mean to a dog will win the outrage of Twitter while 23,000,000+ land animals are slaughtered per day for food in the US. What we seem to care about as a civilization is like a narrowly focused laser: we can only wrap our heads around the things small enough to fit in the tiny spotlight. Anything bigger and we just kinda take it for granted.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  It's not that weird. We bred dogs for millennia to read and express human-recognizable emotional responses. They are sympathetic by design. In contrast, We bred most everything else to be delicious. A more fun one is to look at people's responses to guinea pigs, which were bred for eating but now are seen as pets.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    That may be a satisfying explanation at first pass, but it breaks down quickly under scrutiny, I think. We can recognize the emotional state of pigs and cows, probably more than even we can with cats. Certainly more than we can with rodents and other pets. I also think most people wouldn't accept a video of someone abusing a cow, pig, or even a chicken. Let's just replace dog with piglet in my comment if that helps track the point. I'd wager most people wouldn't find footage inside a slaughterhouse or factory farm very palatable. But this happens by the hundreds of millions daily.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      Cats may not emote in human terms as well as dogs, but they are unusually good among the animal kingdom at reading human emotional expression.

4 ms·

I don't I always find it crazy that society has drawn these weird lines where if you want some chicken tenders you can slaughter a billion and treat them terrib

by JamesBarney 3y ago

hombre_fatal 3y ago
It's a phenomenal demonstration of the human brain when a video of a guy being mean to a dog will win the outrage of Twitter while 23,000,000+ land animals are slaughtered per day for food in the US. What we seem to care about as a civilization is like a narrowly focused laser: we can only wrap our heads around the things small enough to fit in the tiny spotlight. Anything bigger and we just kinda take it for granted.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  It's not that weird. We bred dogs for millennia to read and express human-recognizable emotional responses. They are sympathetic by design. In contrast, We bred most everything else to be delicious. A more fun one is to look at people's responses to guinea pigs, which were bred for eating but now are seen as pets.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    That may be a satisfying explanation at first pass, but it breaks down quickly under scrutiny, I think. We can recognize the emotional state of pigs and cows, probably more than even we can with cats. Certainly more than we can with rodents and other pets. I also think most people wouldn't accept a video of someone abusing a cow, pig, or even a chicken. Let's just replace dog with piglet in my comment if that helps track the point. I'd wager most people wouldn't find footage inside a slaughterhouse or factory farm very palatable. But this happens by the hundreds of millions daily.
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      Cats may not emote in human terms as well as dogs, but they are unusually good among the animal kingdom at reading human emotional expression.