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It makes humans deeply uncomfortable to face the fact that the animals we eat and use might be more like us than we want to imagine. It’s clear to me watching m
by stbenjam 2y ago
It makes humans deeply uncomfortable to face the fact that the animals we eat and use might be more like us than we want to imagine. It’s clear to me watching my parents chickens play that there’s lights on in there. It might not be like my experience but they are conscious. I can’t and won’t eat animals.
- apsurd 2y agoI have a hard time too. But specifically about chickens, I happened to run into the opposite sentiment on TV from a farmer. On the idea of eating animals she talked about how she debates it herself but with chickens - she eats chickens - because if you've ever raised chickens you know pretty clearly they are dumb AF.
- protastus 2y agoThis argument is however not on solid ground. It's not OK to cause pain and suffering to a creature capable of intelligence and emotions just because it's less intelligent than an arbitrary, conveniently chosen threshold.
- NewJazz 2y agoYep. One might consider how it only takes an evolutionary moment for the veil of ignorance to be lifted slightly higher.
- apsurd 2y agoa hard truth I agree with. but so very easy to out-of-sight-out-of-mind x_X ugh
- adolph 2y agoReduction of suffering is part of Temple Grandin's work: Grandin also developed an objective, numerical scoring system for assessing animal welfare at slaughtering plants. The use of this scoring system resulted in significant improvements in animal stunning and handling during slaughter. This work is described in "Objective scoring of animal handling and stunning practices in slaughter plants" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
- TehShrike 2y agoWe raised chickens when I was a kid. They had a pretty good life, plenty of room to roam plus I fed them every day. When their time came, we gave them a quick painless death. No regrets
- timeon 2y ago> When their time came Were they mature?
- TehShrike 2y agoYeah, they were mostly for eggs and pest control, most of them lived 2+ years. They didn't make the best meat to be honest
- 000ooo000 2y agoThere's always one of these in these discussions. "We thought we were nice to them so bringing them into existence simply to consume them feels ok"
- bamboozled 2y agoWhat is the issue with it? If they lead fairy nice long lives, I don't get it? You must fundamentally have a problem with existence because nearly any creature that lives in the wild is going to have a very gruesome, painful lonely death. If the worst thing that can happen is a chicken is protected, fed, given medicine when sick, have offspring and then eventually slaughtered in a rather human way after adulthood, I don't really see how it's so terrible.
- anonzzzies 2y agoBut where does that stop: I can replace chicken here with your kids; still ok? What’s the difference? Dogs? Chimpansees? Dolphins? Why chickens ok and the rest not in the same example?
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- felipeerias 2y agoWhether it is OK or not is in itself an arbitrary decision. I don’t necessarily disagree with you, merely pointing out that ultimately every moral system rests on non-observable abstract principles. Metaphysics, in other words.
- luqtas 2y agoempathy isn't abstract, it's in our brain as a mechanism that promoted survival... now if you are telling me that modern people (knowing that modern nutrition already stablished that in 99,9% of the cases, it's perfectly possible to live off a plant based diet, with B12 [livestock is also supplemented ]) don't feel empathy for animals in the ballpark of birds/mammalian is pretty naive... considering that people are actually aware of what takes to kill an animal & what's the state of stuff like "battery cages" when raising eggs at commercial scale; i think either you are one of those rare meat heads that can kill stuff, butcher and eat or you aren't aware (go watch Dominion or whatever)... because most city people buying fancy fatty meat or cheap burguers, would feel nausea/sorrow by killing anything & probably would stop if they need to kill to eat meat
- felipeerias 2y agoThe basic mechanisms of empathy are probably biological, but everything else is cultural. Consider that different civilisations in the past even engaged in systematic cannibalism. I grew up in a farm. In my experience, the people less likely to feel empathy for animals were those who actually worked with them every day. This does not mean that they were cruel, at all, but rather that they understood rising and killing animals as fundamental for their livelihood. This reality is very remote for many urban dwellers, for whom animal products come into existence in the supermarket aisle, and who mostly only see live animals as pets.
- WalterSear 2y ago>This does not mean that they were cruel, at all, but rather that they understood rising and killing animals as fundamental for their livelihood. The banality of evil. Enron executives' behaviour was also fundamental to their livelihood.
- VS1999 2y ago[flagged]
- tacocataco 2y agoChop me up and feed me to the chickens when I die.
- anonzzzies 2y agoIt’s a shame this is not allowed in most/all countries. So much meat wasted by cremation and burial and solid boxes. Feed me to the pigs after harvesting my organs.
- DEADMINCE 2y agoThe threshold should be self-awareness - nothing arbitrary about it.
- shrimp_emoji 2y agoThe threshold isn't actually intelligence; it's reciprocation. Chimps have superhuman short-term memory, but they're not granted personhood. A tree can be infinitely intelligent. If it doesn't do anything with that intelligence and can't communicate, and we couldn't profit from that intelligence in any way, we wouldn't care about it -- even if we somehow noticed it. If the tree can benefit us if we don't harm it, we suddenly care. If it can hurt us if we hurt it, we care. If other entities which can help us will do so as long as we don't hurt the tree -- or if they will hurt us if we hurt the tree, we care. (For example, this can be other humans with respect to their pets.) If it exhibits the specific kinds of intelligence that we care about, like talking, or if it simply moves us emotionally, we'll care. These are all reciprocations of social contracts we're forced, by our biology and by game theory, to respond to. That's the threshold. Power grows from the barrel of a gun, not an abstract notion of intelligence or consciousness (which, spoiler: is a religious nonsense concept) or whatever.
- qbit 2y agoA chicken once beat a friend of mine at tic-tac-toe at a state fair.
- voisin 2y ago> clearly they are dumb AF Man, it’s wild you think this. It’s like that old story about how a fish would be considered dumb for not being able to climb a tree, and a monkey dumb for not being able to swim under water. Are chickens dumb AF on the things we use to rate human intelligence? Sure. But they are massively in tune with their environment and adapt to changing light and temperatures in ways that are highly intelligent and beyond human capacity. Same with how attuned they are to predators and how they respond. They’re also smart enough to clearly behave in ways different enough and consistent enough as to form personalities. I’ve got a flock of around 35 and wouldn’t label them dumb at all.
- theendisney 2y agoIf food is served every day without the need to earn it there is no need to use your brain. I have a lot of cats, i toss snacks in the back yard. They are about interested enough to find 80% meanwhile the birds sitting on the roof 40 meters away study the situation carefully and wait for the right configuration of cats before they fly in and snatch the remaining snacks. They see all of them, they never mis one. Im sure they think my cats are dumb but cats in general are not. I use to have a stray cat with a gaze powerful enough to win any stairing contest. He pulled tricks that took me years to figure out - seriously.
- jvanderbot 2y agoWell, to be fair, that is precisely what birds evolved to do. It's like complementing a tree for being tall.
- theendisney 2y agoIf they have plenty of food they wouldnt need to steal from animals that evolved specifically to kill them. If the cats were hungry enough often enough they would find 100% of the snacks. After fasting for 3-5 days I have crazy focus, I see and hear everything. I also have aggresive tendencies that are totally alien to my normal personality. Punching an annoying coworker all of a sudden seemed like a perfectly normal response. He is always like that, it takes no effort to ignore it.
- adrian_b 2y agoWhen I was a very small child, I used to go in vacations to my grandparents. They raised various animals, including many chickens. I liked to play with the chickens and I succeeded to train some of them to execute some simple commands (by giving them generous recompenses of maize grains). My grandparents and all their neighbors were amazed by this feat, because they believed that chickens are too dumb to be trained like a dog, despite having decades of experience in raising chickens. So I believe that when you do not look for evidence of intelligence, you do not find it.
- tiltowait 2y agoI just got the keys to my new house yesterday, and it came with chickens. I already see they’re much smarter than I ever gave them credit for, and that they may even have different personalities. I expect I’ll eat a lot less chicken in the future.
- garof 2y agoThey definitely have different personalities, in my experience. Personalities that will suggest names, even.
- quesera 2y agoYou're about to observe the obvious etymology of several common English terms and phrases. :)
- rqtwteye 2y agoChickens totally have different personalities. Some are shy, some are friendly, some are adventurous, some are timid. And it can change. They aren’t machines.
- DEADMINCE 2y agoThey are not complex enough to have personalities. Being shy or bold are not personalities, but just lowlevel behaviors dictated by the presence or lack of particular genes.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoWhat do you think the minimum complexity would be before an animal can show a personality?
- getwiththeprog 2y agoSomewhere between mosquito and lizard.
- DEADMINCE 2y ago
- cybercephas 2y ago[flagged]
- kazinator 2y agoWhen a dog rescues a baby from harm, of course it's because it's consciously acting, like a human rescuing a baby from harm. It also shows concept of self. "There is a situation unfolding. I'm an observer to the situation, and a distinct actor; it is possible for me to intervene, with a plan intended to produce a desired outcome, which I will execute." The dog has similar gray matter in its skull, just of lower complexity. The dog also loses consciousness in the form of sleeping, like a person, and shows signs of having dreams; e.g. moving its paws as if running. If a dog were not conscious, there would be no point in distinguishing a sleeping dog from a wakeful dog; the two would have to be the same.
- catlifeonmars 2y ago> If a dog were not conscious, there would be no point in distinguishing a sleeping dog from a wakeful dog; the two would have to be the same. While I don’t disagree with your conclusion, your argument is flawed because you switch the meaning of the word “conscious” from “having thoughts and self-awareness” to “transitioning between a dormant and active state”.
- scotty79 2y agoWhat indicates capacity for consciousness for me is the ability to dream. Dreams are a mangled replay of conscious perception of the world.
- scotty79 2y agoThere was a case of a dog that rescued a kid from the river once. He was praised and rewarded. Then he rescued another kid, then another. Observations shown that the dog learned to push kids into the river to rescue them for reward. Also a very human and conscious behavior.
- rqtwteye 2y agoTotally agree. Just watch a dog trying to solve a problem. They try something, take a break to think about it and then try something else. They have emotions. Maybe not exactly the same emotions humans have but they can be happy, depressed and many other states.
- lolcust 2y ago[flagged]
- bamboozled 2y agoNo, factory farming and ecological destruction makes me uncomfortable. We do this because we don't think animals are important, or we should care about them. Animals eat other animals, they don't roam around being upset about it. When I hunt, I don't feel upset about it either. What I am upset about is the the lack of respect we've shown other animals by ruining their whole ecosystem via ecological destruction and locking them in factory farms. Little chickens born never get to see their parents, they're just thrown into a grinder, like what the fuck? I spearfish mostly, and I've seen a mother fish proudly cruising around with 3 of her juveniles, do I take that fish? No, I respect her, and her time she is spending with the young ones. By the same time, I've seen fish have their face gnawed off by a squid, this is the reality for most wild animals, a gruesome death. Living a semi-long life and being taken by a skilled hunter is probably the most human way an animal can die. Being thrown into a grinder at 2 days old because you're a rooster and can't lay eggs? Disgusting. Drowning in a trawling net? Horrific.
- onehair 2y agoWell put
- smokeydoe 2y agoI agree with you but I live around chickens. They feel like the worst example. I might be wrong but they seem dumb as hell to me lol. Almost like they are driven fully by instinct from thing to thing.
- joegibbs 2y agoIf you have a mole on your foot they will peck at it because they think it's a bug. The fact that it isn't doesn't seem to stop them next time. If we're talking about intelligence of farm animals, they have to be down the bottom.
- stbenjam 2y agoI was thinking it’s one of the better examples because even if they’re really dumb and brains the size of peas they have personalities and there is something (even if it’s not much) going on up there. Basically it feels like something to be a chicken, there’s a subjective chicken conscious experience.
- DEADMINCE 2y agoThey don't really have lights on though. If they do they are very dim. What matters is self-awareness, not mere awareness and instinct. Repeated tests and research don't show chickens to have self-awareness or any traits really worth valuing IMO. It's easy to anthropomorphize, but the research doesn't lie.
- srid 2y agoLiving beings eat one another to thrive and survive. This is a fact of life. Humans are omnivores, and animal foods are an important source of bioavailable nutrients. To deprive oneself (or others) of such nutrients is a form of harm done to humans.
- epgui 2y agoYes, but that seems completely irrelevant with respect to the parent comment.
- mrweiner 2y agoHumans have the capacity to reason, and the ability to obtain all essential nutrients on an entirely plant-based diet if they simply make the decision to do so. If one is in a survival situation where one must eat meat to survive, then that’s one thing. But by and large, people do not need to eat meat. They choose to. To assert otherwise is dishonest.
- majkinetor 2y agoTo assert that plant is not a consciousness life for sure, is dishonest.
- mrweiner 2y agoI don’t believe I made an assertion regarding plant consciousness?
- majkinetor 2y agoYou said, "But by and large, people do not need to eat meat" so I must conclude that plants are just dummy food put in nature by God for humans to eat (divine intervention) When you say vegan stuff like that, you should be more precise: people do not need to eat meat to survive. Survival and good health are on the opposite end of the spectrum.
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