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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

#221

Post by virmundi »

tluyben2 wrote: post #178
mitchtbaum wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can slaughtering [animals] for food be considered ethical? Life begets life. Death is part of life. Where necessary, living requires killing. Where people cultivate The Golden Rule, life will get better and death will get fewer.

It is not required anymore. You can live fine without. So no.

All food is killing. That mushroom that you pick dies earlier. Same for the lettuce, cabbage and carrots. Apparently there is a line somewhere near locomotion that says where to stop killing?

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#222

Post by Falling3 »

alanwatts wrote: post #216
mitchtbaum wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely believe humans can live very well without killing. Mushrooms, cannabis seed pomace, spirulina, beans with grains, etc provide great nutrient sources. Still, some people depend on hunting and farm animals now, and it will take a challenging cultural shift and some resources to bootstrap an economically advantageous and (here, commonly viewed) ethical lifestyle change. For myself, I eventually want to sust…

Plants are living things too. You are killing them by eating them.

Sentience is where we draw the line. You're not replying to anyone who said "killing" is wrong. We're talking specifically about the slaughter of animals. Reducing it all down to just "life" is fallacious.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#223

Post by Falling3 »

virmundi wrote: post #221
tluyben2 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not required anymore. You can live fine without. So no.

All food is killing. That mushroom that you pick dies earlier. Same for the lettuce, cabbage and carrots. Apparently there is a line somewhere near locomotion that says where to stop killing?

Sentience is the line. Plucking a carrot out of the ground and slitting the throat of a cow can't be reasonably equated.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#224

Post by csorrell »

ann12345 wrote: post #134
Falling3 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that if someone was forced to have a pet pig for a while they'd probably stop eating pork Unfortunately, this is often not the case in my own experience. It certainly does for some people, but that course is by no means universal. And when the well-being of other thinking, feeling individuals is at stake, I'd rather not rely on this kind of approach.

This really worked in my experience. In my family we often used to eat chicken and while eating them the only thing on mind was how it tasted and how it was cooked etc. Then my parents started rearing some chickens in their backyard. That changed everything. There were about 7 or 8 of them. As the chicks grew up, they could identify each of them and know about individual treats. They would call some of them by names…

To offer a different perspective... I keep a handful dual purpose laying hens, primarily for eggs but after a few years when their egg production slows down I use them for soup. My kids come up with names for all of them and we enjoy interacting with them in different ways, but at the end of the day we all understand that the reason we keep them is for food. I don't get attached to them because I know that some day I'm going to be the one putting them down. I like knowing where my food comes from and being involved in the harvest. It would feel wasteful to me if I didn't eat the chickens.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#225

Post by roganp »

fghrthtb wrote: post #208
cat-dev-null wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rational conjecture that hunters tend to strive to continue winning the intelligence arms race over prey, and that technology tends (but not always) is an emergent property from this set of species.

It's also possibly to do with their lack of shell. While other molluscs have a shell to protect them Cephalopod do not, perhaps this forced the evolution of a more capable brain.

This. The cuttlefish (a relative) changes the color of it's skin and texture to hide from hunters/prey. If you have not seen this video, prepare to be amazed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmDTtkZlMwM

Also, the cuttlefish: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/camo/anat-nf.html

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#226

Post by virmundi »

Falling3 wrote: post #223
virmundi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All food is killing. That mushroom that you pick dies earlier. Same for the lettuce, cabbage and carrots. Apparently there is a line somewhere near locomotion that says where to stop killing?

Sentience is the line. Plucking a carrot out of the ground and slitting the throat of a cow can't be reasonably equated.

Let's assume a purely materialistic view of reality. In such a system all truths will be defined from nature.

1) Animals in nature kill each other all the time for food and sport. 2) All eating after a certain cell count for a creature requires death in some way. 3) Death is inevitable; life is not. 4) Force is the determinate factor for making something happen. 5) The universe does not care for life or death. It is merely a thing. It too will die taking all life within it with it.

Construct a moral set from those points (add more if necessary). I contend that you can't seat any ethics on it except might makes right. Anything other than that is merely a personal preference with no justification outside of the amount of force one can apply.

As a result I see no distinction between what is food and what is friend. It is merely personal preference. Sentience does not provide any actual force. It might cause your force to act, but it does not, in and of itself, mean anything.

To get out a head of it since it's been bandied about: cannibalism is impractical because it leads to the destruction of society when applied to the general population. I did not say it's wrong, for it is only death, which as we've seen is just part of nature. I say it makes commerce and society difficult if applied internally as well as outwardly. We, as a society, have a preference for this stability. We, as a group of actors, have the ability to force this view by our combined strength such as police and other law enforcement institutions.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#227

Post by foobarbecue »

SpaceX_Tech wrote: post #211
userbinator wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

remarkably short lived. I suppose that also means they reproduce very quickly, which is a good thing in light of the other discussion here about sustainability of consuming them as food.

I believe in most, if not all, species of octopus the male dies after mating and the female dies shortly after the eggs in her care hatch. Also depending on the species, anywhere from 20,000-200,000 eggs will hatch and I've read that only around 1% will make it to adulthood. In captivity octopuses are considered relatively difficult to keep due to their sensitivity to water quality. They have a fairly narrow band of…

> I’m unsure what the potential is for large scale changes in oceanic chemistry

We are down from pre-industrial 8.25 pH to 8.08, and no sign of slowing. Major changes are certain. I don't know if this means the water will dissolve more metals like Cu, but it seems possible.

Source: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/file/Hawaii+Carbon+Dioxide+Time...

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#228

Post by Falling3 »

virmundi wrote: post #226
Falling3 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentience is the line. Plucking a carrot out of the ground and slitting the throat of a cow can't be reasonably equated.

Let's assume a purely materialistic view of reality. In such a system all truths will be defined from nature. 1) Animals in nature kill each other all the time for food and sport. 2) All eating after a certain cell count for a creature requires death in some way. 3) Death is inevitable; life is not. 4) Force is the determinate factor for making something happen. 5) The universe does not care for life or death. It is…

Of course, you have a valid point. But what you're ultimately arguing against is any form of moral reasoning.

While I find the theoretical discussion of morality interesting, I'm far more driven by the practical discussions. People generally accept a moral axiom, explicitly or implicitly, something along the lines of "Harming other individuals unnecessarily is wrong". If that is the case, I'm going to argue for the consistent application of that principle, which is also where sentience enters the conversation. If they don't hold a similar moral axiom (which I've found is fairly rare), then I don't really have any ground to stand on in this debate. I'm certainly not equipped, if it's even possible, to make a moral argument from first principles.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#229

Post by chris_wot »

_yosefk wrote: post #212
chris_wot wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's more ethical for lions to eat other creatures alive than it is for people to eat other creatures alive. Got it!

I believe that people are not animals (and that computers are not people), both may be controversial beliefs for some but are rather widely shared. In particular, nothing constitutes an ethical problem for animals, computers, plants, and other non-human entities, while some things are unethical for people.

So people are inherently more moral and far superior than animals then. What is your ethical basis for not eating them? Genuinely curious.
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