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Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

nytimes.com

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Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#91

Post by Ygg2 »

Falling3 wrote: post #45
MichaelBurge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a way to chemically destroy part of their brain at birth, while using their body to grow meat tissue? Some ethicist should come up with an electronic controller that keeps the chickens or whatever alive by stimulating neurons like the brain would, but which clearly has no consciousness attached. Actually, this entire business of needing a whole chicken to make chicken meat seems inefficient. I wonder if…

In-vitro meat is looking like a more viable option by the day. And it has the obvious moral ground.

Forget moral high ground. It's energy efficient. You don't have to feed whole animal and then cut away stuff you don't like or can't eat. Just grow the thing you need.

Plus you only need a couple of animals for breeding/cell harvest.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#93

Post by mjevans »

nxzero wrote: post #44
Spivak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current bar is just anything not in the genus Homo and would likely extend to any 'humanoid' species. A wolf doesn't really care about the relative intelligence of the rabbits it kills, but has a natural kinship between other wolves or wolf-like creatures which more-or-less extends to, "I wont kill you for food unless I'm starving."

Wolves are extremely opportunistic carnivores, and will, given the opportunity, eat another wolf. That aside, unclear how wolves relate to the topic. Generally speaking, most life on Earth doesn't even eat other living organisms, but the naturally left remains of living organisms.

We all know what you meant to say, but plants are living organisms.

This is why using selective terms for the type of dietary intake is scientifically useful. Carnivores that eat other carnivores (on a preferential basis) are rare. Typically herbivores are eaten by omnivores or carnivores. The only real moralities involved in these distinctions relate to energy efficiency and likelihood of diseases being a concern. Of course self awareness (sentience) is an additional layer of consideration on top of the evolutionary pressures.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#94

Post by nommm-nommm »

Falling3 wrote: post #45
MichaelBurge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a way to chemically destroy part of their brain at birth, while using their body to grow meat tissue? Some ethicist should come up with an electronic controller that keeps the chickens or whatever alive by stimulating neurons like the brain would, but which clearly has no consciousness attached. Actually, this entire business of needing a whole chicken to make chicken meat seems inefficient. I wonder if…

In-vitro meat is looking like a more viable option by the day. And it has the obvious moral ground.

In-vitro meat has a huge environmental advantage as well.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#95

Post by mjevans »

wnevets wrote: post #51
icebraining wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why?

The higher an animal's intelligence the easier it is for us to emphasize with. Most humans don't like the idea of being eaten alive. Expanding this idea to machines is very easy. It is ok to treat a machine like a slave that is only capable of moving an object from point a to point b? How about a machine that has a self-aware AI?

I believe the moral fault there would be in the creation of a machine with a self-aware AI but a 'body' that is not worthy of that intelligence.

To put that another way; a limited body should have a limited intelligence by design.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#96

Post by whitegrape »

Falling3 wrote: post #84
kristopolous wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although not the OP, I have a fairly strong opinion on this. In order of importance everyone should * Make their own decisions on what to eat. * Understand the externalities, exogenous, and endogenous process and consequences of their decisions. * Take full personal, civic, and environmental responsibility for those decisions. Essentially, as long as people are forthright, honest, and accountable about what they eat,…

Is this really how you feel taken to its logical extremes? Do you think humans should be allowed to eat other humans? Other live humans? Eating is clearly a very personal thing, but it's silly to pretend that morality suddenly ceases applying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party These people were not evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Naked probably is evil but at least he's trying to repent.

If we're going to try to come up with a system, mine is simply (borrowed[1]): I like beef and broccoli, mind your business. I readily admit this doesn't cover every corner case, but I don't think there can be a satisfactory system that does. Many things have to be determined by context and taste, and usually aren't even worth thinking about if you're not in a position of power and responsibility over the lives of others.

[1] http://genius.com/Immortal-technique-beef-and-broccoli-lyric...

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#97

Post by dpcan »

Kind-of off topic I guess, but we were just visiting an aquarium in Seaside OR a couple weeks ago, and they famously have an octopus in the tank, with no top on it that you can stand next to and watch it swim around.

While we were there, it was dancing for us, speeding across the tank like I'd never seen. He really looked like he'd love to be free. So the question had to be asked, "What if he wants to get out?"

The aquarium attendant told us something in the vein of, if he gets out, he gets out. If he wants to be free, he will get free.

I thought that was an interesting answer, though I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I can tell you that if it tried to get free while I was there, I'd probably get the heck out of the aquarium. It resembled an alien, and I'm afraid of most giant things from the sea.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#98

Post by Splines »

mrfusion wrote: post #60
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Octopi aren't more intelligent than humans, because intelligence in humans is partly external. We're fairly dumb as feral individuals, but give us a herd memory for science and math and we can fly to the moon. Octopi not only don't live very long, they're also aggressively solitary. So they have the usual smart-animal problem of starting life as a blank slate with a few baked-in instincts and no way to learn from pre…

What if we shared all of our knowledge with them to fix the blank slate problem? But you're right. A single human with no knowledge is not very intelligent. It's disconcerting if you think about it.

Sometimes I feel we are precariously positioned at the tip of human achievement. I think we're lucky that the earth is abundant in resources to make up for our mistakes.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#99

Post by Xcelerate »

sarreph wrote: post #7

It upsets me to no end that we find evidence such as this piece that cephalopods are actually (relatively speaking) remarkably more intelligent than common wisdom pertains[0], and yet the culinary abuse and harm (i.e. 'live sushi/sashimi') of these creatures continues. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_intelligence

If I started thinking about it too much, I'd probably become a vegetarian. So I refrain from thinking about the topic, which probably isn't a great idea, because then I remember all of the moral atrocities committed in the 1800s under the name of "not thinking about it too much" or "that's just the way it is".

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#100

Post by blakeyrat »

pera wrote: post #30
Cpoll wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten minutes of animal cruelty involved in eating a live octopus doesn't phase me compared to the life-long animal cruelty most farm animals suffer. The only reason it's more outrageous is because it's 'obvious,' I imagine. In the West, we like our animal cruelty to be kept strictly behind closed doors.

I believe in the West most people don't even want to think about it.

Compared to whom? China? Where they kill endangered pangolins so they can grind-up their scales and sprinkle it on their dicks because some moron centuries ago said it was an aphrodisiac?

Get real.

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