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The argument against animal testing is not necessarily that we should find an alternative, but that maybe the experiments themselves aren't worth it to begin wi

The argument against animal testing is not necessarily that we should find an alternative, but that maybe the experiments themselves aren't worth it to begin with. That maybe the moral cost of the knowledge we gain from them is too high. You don't have to be an absolutist on the matter in either direction, but surely each instance deserves this discussion, right? Because there has to be a difference between using animals to develop life-saving drugs, and whatever the hell Neuralink is doing to those poor monkeys.

pdntspa 3y ago
While I agree that not every experiment may be worth it, my point is that there aren't good alternatives for a lot of things. But, like, nature is a cruel mistress. At every level of survival comes the suffering of other animals, whether for food, luck, or experimentation. We're not going to get to a point of harmony without somehow transcending this and completely rebuilding civilization, which is something most of us don't want. And even then, a gazelle somewhere is going to be gored and eaten alive by a pack of wild hyenas. There's still going to be that tree with the glue-like sap that dooms any bird that perches on it to die of starvation. And so on...
- danShumway 3y ago
  > But, like, nature is a cruel mistress. Two objections: A) The inability to completely remove suffering from the world does not absolve us from wantonly contributing to it without cause. We do still need to ask whether the results of each particular experiment justify the suffering we inflict, even with the knowledge that suffering is a part of life. Death and pain are parts of life that we will never eliminate, but we've still tried to cut down on infant mortality and we still invented anesthesia. B) I don't think it's a controversial take for me to say that human beings should have higher moral standards than hyenas do? ---- I would argue that the majority of human achievement from medicine and surgery, to cooperative political structures that reduce war, to sanitation that allows human beings to group together on a level that other animals can't, to agriculture and domestication is the result of humans looking at natural processes and saying, "wow, those suck, we could do way better than that." The experiment in question is about the health effects of zero-gravity on the body. There is nothing natural about that, human bodies are not evolved to survive in space. So it just feels weird to me to be turning around and saying "but what about the lions who eat gazelles, why are people trying to defy nature?" We're defying nature by building a rocketship and putting it into orbit; what we do or don't do to the mice on board the rocketship isn't going to change that. So while some experiments are going to be worth the cost of inflicting suffering on animals, we have to ask that question about each experiment because we're not completely bound by nature and we've advanced as a species to the point where we can ask that question. We aren't lions or hyenas, we have evolved to the point where we can ask moral questions about our actions and we can take steps to minimize suffering even if we can't completely remove it. The cruelty of nature is not an excuse for us anymore to ignore that moral responsibility. And to be kind of blunt, I don't think that most people believe the "nature is cruel" argument anyway. I think it gets brought up specifically in topics around animal welfare that make people uncomfortable because it provides an excuse to reframe animal suffering as something to be admired rather than mitigated; it's a way of saying that we don't have to feel bad about this because this is how the world is supposed to work -- animals are supposed to suffer. But nobody argues that "nature is cruel" when it comes time to put a baby in an oxygen tank, or when they're getting anesthesia before a dental operation, or when we're setting up mosquito nets to stop the spread of malaria. Nobody asks, "why build mosquito nets, even if you completely eradicate malaria people will still die, it's unavoidable." We are very selective about where we use the argument that suffering is an inherent part of nature. Everywhere else, we understand that suffering is something to mitigate when possible and to avoid inflicting without good reason.

pdntspa 3y ago

While I agree that not every experiment may be worth it, my point is that there aren't good alternatives for a lot of things. But, like, nature is a cruel mistress. At every level of survival comes the suffering of other animals, whether for food, luck, or experimentation. We're not going to get to a point of harmony without somehow transcending this and completely rebuilding civilization, which is something most of us don't want. And even then, a gazelle somewhere is going to be gored and eaten alive by a pack of wild hyenas. There's still going to be that tree with the glue-like sap that dooms any bird that perches on it to die of starvation. And so on...

danShumway 3y ago
> But, like, nature is a cruel mistress. Two objections: A) The inability to completely remove suffering from the world does not absolve us from wantonly contributing to it without cause. We do still need to ask whether the results of each particular experiment justify the suffering we inflict, even with the knowledge that suffering is a part of life. Death and pain are parts of life that we will never eliminate, but we've still tried to cut down on infant mortality and we still invented anesthesia. B) I don't think it's a controversial take for me to say that human beings should have higher moral standards than hyenas do? ---- I would argue that the majority of human achievement from medicine and surgery, to cooperative political structures that reduce war, to sanitation that allows human beings to group together on a level that other animals can't, to agriculture and domestication is the result of humans looking at natural processes and saying, "wow, those suck, we could do way better than that." The experiment in question is about the health effects of zero-gravity on the body. There is nothing natural about that, human bodies are not evolved to survive in space. So it just feels weird to me to be turning around and saying "but what about the lions who eat gazelles, why are people trying to defy nature?" We're defying nature by building a rocketship and putting it into orbit; what we do or don't do to the mice on board the rocketship isn't going to change that. So while some experiments are going to be worth the cost of inflicting suffering on animals, we have to ask that question about each experiment because we're not completely bound by nature and we've advanced as a species to the point where we can ask that question. We aren't lions or hyenas, we have evolved to the point where we can ask moral questions about our actions and we can take steps to minimize suffering even if we can't completely remove it. The cruelty of nature is not an excuse for us anymore to ignore that moral responsibility. And to be kind of blunt, I don't think that most people believe the "nature is cruel" argument anyway. I think it gets brought up specifically in topics around animal welfare that make people uncomfortable because it provides an excuse to reframe animal suffering as something to be admired rather than mitigated; it's a way of saying that we don't have to feel bad about this because this is how the world is supposed to work -- animals are supposed to suffer. But nobody argues that "nature is cruel" when it comes time to put a baby in an oxygen tank, or when they're getting anesthesia before a dental operation, or when we're setting up mosquito nets to stop the spread of malaria. Nobody asks, "why build mosquito nets, even if you completely eradicate malaria people will still die, it's unavoidable." We are very selective about where we use the argument that suffering is an inherent part of nature. Everywhere else, we understand that suffering is something to mitigate when possible and to avoid inflicting without good reason.