4 ms·

As a Vegan, maybe I'm a little biased, but I often think about what the implications of a universal translator would be, if it did infact give us the ability to

As a Vegan, maybe I'm a little biased, but I often think about what the implications of a universal translator would be, if it did infact give us the ability to understand animals. What would that imply if you could drive by a slaughterhouse and be able to understand animals saying goodbye to their loved ones... assuming this is happening.. Would all slaughtering stop? Or would people be okay with that? Interesting times ahead if there is any possibility for ML to translate animal language.

stavros 2y ago
We don't slaughter animals because we think they don't mind dying, we slaughter them because we've outsourced the mass killings to people who don't mind doing it, and a steak looks enough unlike a cow that we don't think that it used to be alive. Basically, if we had to slaughter our own cows, I doubt we'd be eating as much meat.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  I can tell you've never lived in the Midwest, or maybe just not outside of a city. People have dedicated chest freezers for wild game that they keep full all year. Opening of hunting and fishing seasons are huge deals.
  - stavros 2y ago
    I've never lived in the Midwest, because I'm not American, but I grew up in a small village where we had to decapitate our own chickens. I never got over the discomfort at taking another life.
- milesrout 2y ago
  * People ate plenty of meat when they had to slaughter the animals themselves. * Hunting is quite popular. * Every adult that eats meat is quite aware of what goes on to bring it to his table. So I would disagree. We slaughter animals because that is what they are for, it is why they are farmed, and we want the resulting products. I like my leather shoes and jacket and belt. I like a steak. I like a chicken curry. It doesn't concern me at all that cows and chicken and lambs die to make that happen. They are knocked out first, so it is quite humane.
  - weard_beard 2y ago
    We haven’t had an evolutionarily relevant reason to stop. If sentient alien life looks like a chicken we’d stop eating chicken. If pigs get any smarter we’ll have to stop eating them. We’ve already mostly stopped eating cats and dogs in most western countries. For me, personally, I view it as a 3rd or 4th tier problem. We’re not solving world hunger for another 2 centuries so I put it out of my mind. If I’m going to solve a “food problem” it seems cruel and irresponsible to solve the food’s problem.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      "We’re not solving world hunger for another 2 centuries" Why two centuries? Deaths from famines have already dropped precipitously in the last three generations or so. Today, if there is a problem with food, it is usually a logistical problem, not a problem with food availability/cost in general, and half of the world has a problem of eating too much. Anyway, two centuries is a long time. Two centuries ago, electricity wasn't a thing yet.
      - weard_beard 2y ago
        I don't think solving hunger is a problem of quantity. It's a political and systemic inequality problem. I don't see those being adequately managed for at least 200 years if ever.
        inglor_cz 2y ago
        But then you should call the thing to be solved "problem of good governance" instead, and that is something that indeed may take centuries. Bad governance will manifest itself in a multitude of problems that have no intrinsic organic relationships amongst them, and I am not sure if it makes sense to split them into sub-categories. In the past, hunger was quite often a quantity problem. If a period of bad weather hit Medieval Europe, there wouldn't be any practical way how to import food for the entire continent from, say, India. In this sense, hunger is being solved.
  - 2y ago
- trentlott 2y ago
  People adapt very easily. If you were trapped on a mountain, you'd likely butcher a cow with the rest of your soccer team. Don't judge everything through the lens of plenty. If you're American, it might be an exercise that becomes useful soon.
  - stavros 2y ago
    If I were trapped on a mountain, I'd likely butcher my soccer team. That's kind of the entire point, that I don't need to be slaughtering cows.
schoen 2y ago
I'm also a vegan, but it doesn't seem likely to me that other species have languages similar to ours. I think people have already used ML to interpret cat and dog communications, and they got general emotions more than something like syntax. It's complicated by the fact that other species' throats and mouths physically can't form many human language phonemes*, but even the use or recognition of human language by other great apes (and parrots) is very controversial, and they probably have cognition and sociality most similar to ours. But it's not clear that they can do much of what human language does.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throw310822 2y ago
  Obligatory Gary Larson: https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/far-side-canine-decoder.jpg https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2...
immibis 2y ago
If we (on average) can see little children getting bombed on live TV and feel no need to call our senator and ask him what the fuck he thinks he's doing, then I don't think a slaughterhouse will be much of a problem either.
- TechDebtDevin 2y ago
  Unfortunately, you're probably right.

stavros 2y ago

We don't slaughter animals because we think they don't mind dying, we slaughter them because we've outsourced the mass killings to people who don't mind doing it, and a steak looks enough unlike a cow that we don't think that it used to be alive. Basically, if we had to slaughter our own cows, I doubt we'd be eating as much meat.

bongodongobob 2y ago
I can tell you've never lived in the Midwest, or maybe just not outside of a city. People have dedicated chest freezers for wild game that they keep full all year. Opening of hunting and fishing seasons are huge deals.
- stavros 2y ago
  I've never lived in the Midwest, because I'm not American, but I grew up in a small village where we had to decapitate our own chickens. I never got over the discomfort at taking another life.
milesrout 2y ago
* People ate plenty of meat when they had to slaughter the animals themselves. * Hunting is quite popular. * Every adult that eats meat is quite aware of what goes on to bring it to his table. So I would disagree. We slaughter animals because that is what they are for, it is why they are farmed, and we want the resulting products. I like my leather shoes and jacket and belt. I like a steak. I like a chicken curry. It doesn't concern me at all that cows and chicken and lambs die to make that happen. They are knocked out first, so it is quite humane.
- weard_beard 2y ago
  We haven’t had an evolutionarily relevant reason to stop. If sentient alien life looks like a chicken we’d stop eating chicken. If pigs get any smarter we’ll have to stop eating them. We’ve already mostly stopped eating cats and dogs in most western countries. For me, personally, I view it as a 3rd or 4th tier problem. We’re not solving world hunger for another 2 centuries so I put it out of my mind. If I’m going to solve a “food problem” it seems cruel and irresponsible to solve the food’s problem.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    "We’re not solving world hunger for another 2 centuries" Why two centuries? Deaths from famines have already dropped precipitously in the last three generations or so. Today, if there is a problem with food, it is usually a logistical problem, not a problem with food availability/cost in general, and half of the world has a problem of eating too much. Anyway, two centuries is a long time. Two centuries ago, electricity wasn't a thing yet.
    - weard_beard 2y ago
      I don't think solving hunger is a problem of quantity. It's a political and systemic inequality problem. I don't see those being adequately managed for at least 200 years if ever.
      - inglor_cz 2y ago
        But then you should call the thing to be solved "problem of good governance" instead, and that is something that indeed may take centuries. Bad governance will manifest itself in a multitude of problems that have no intrinsic organic relationships amongst them, and I am not sure if it makes sense to split them into sub-categories. In the past, hunger was quite often a quantity problem. If a period of bad weather hit Medieval Europe, there wouldn't be any practical way how to import food for the entire continent from, say, India. In this sense, hunger is being solved.
- 2y ago
trentlott 2y ago
People adapt very easily. If you were trapped on a mountain, you'd likely butcher a cow with the rest of your soccer team. Don't judge everything through the lens of plenty. If you're American, it might be an exercise that becomes useful soon.
- stavros 2y ago
  If I were trapped on a mountain, I'd likely butcher my soccer team. That's kind of the entire point, that I don't need to be slaughtering cows.

schoen 2y ago

I'm also a vegan, but it doesn't seem likely to me that other species have languages similar to ours. I think people have already used ML to interpret cat and dog communications, and they got general emotions more than something like syntax. It's complicated by the fact that other species' throats and mouths physically can't form many human language phonemes*, but even the use or recognition of human language by other great apes (and parrots) is very controversial, and they probably have cognition and sociality most similar to ours. But it's not clear that they can do much of what human language does.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throw310822 2y ago
Obligatory Gary Larson: https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/far-side-canine-decoder.jpg https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2...

immibis 2y ago

If we (on average) can see little children getting bombed on live TV and feel no need to call our senator and ask him what the fuck he thinks he's doing, then I don't think a slaughterhouse will be much of a problem either.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago
Unfortunately, you're probably right.