Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 250 posts

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#231

Post by Vaskivo »

chris_wot wrote: post #136
btilly wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it is the actual wish of the people involved? What if a person whose fantasy was to kill and cook another person met a person who fantasy was to be killed and cooked? Then this happened. What penalty should ensue for the (well-fed) survivor? And lest you think this is some weird hypothetical, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes may enlighten you otherwise.

In this case it's a mental disorder or illness and I'd consider it manslaughter.

What about euthanasia?

Person A kills person B and B wants to be dead/killed.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#232

Post by alanwatts »

Falling3 wrote: post #222
alanwatts wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Define sentience?

The word originates from the Latin verb sentire, "to feel". Plants feel their environment. The Venus Fly Trap feels when an insect is on it, for example.

>Plants are sessile, highly sensitive organisms that actively compete for environmental resources both above and below the ground. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realise the optimum variant. They take measures to control certain environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’. They process and evaluate information and then modify their behaviour accordingly.

[1]Biocommunication of Plants, http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783642235238

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology...

A more valid argument is that the sound or sight of killing an animal is more off-putting than killing a plant, which is of course a purely subjective sentiment, hence the deeming of "right vs wrong" which is itself a purely subjective sentiment.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#233

Post by chris_wot »

Vaskivo wrote: post #231
chris_wot wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case it's a mental disorder or illness and I'd consider it manslaughter.

What about euthanasia? Person A kills person B and B wants to be dead/killed.

Well, I'm controversial with some - it's still against the law in many jurisdictions so it's murder. But I consider euthanasia to be hugely unethical, so I'd consider it manslaughter.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#234

Post by mitchtbaum »

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?

I see eating those as more akin to part of its sexual reproduction and continuation of life, like a bee taking nectar from a flower. As far as I understand it, Natural order works where a "food" matures, falls, and an "animal" eats it and passes its seeds through its digestive system. This process deposits the seeds in a fertilized position to grow its next generation. In a more poetic form, you can hear this in the Mahamrityunjaya Mantra[0,1] (Great Death-conquering Mantra), ~"...like a good gardener releases the cucumber from captivity (of its stem), free me from death but not from immortality."

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahamrityunjaya_Mantra#Literal...

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1uj3_rW7Uc

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#235

Post by mitchtbaum »

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.

Also, that cow's ancestors made our lives possible. Someone had to sow those amber waves of grain, and they needed help. If a human would look at a life giving animal and immediately a knife or a meat grinder comes to mind, then both need help. Perhaps some animals could step up to it, hopefully of the human kind.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#236

Post by kpil »

alanwatts wrote: post #232
Falling3 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Define sentience? The word originates from the Latin verb sentire, "to feel". Plants feel their environment. The Venus Fly Trap feels when an insect is on it, for example. >Plants are sessile, highly sensitive organisms that actively compete for environmental resources both above and below the ground. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realise the optimum…

Neuron count is fine for me.

Lobsters an wasps are having about the same neuron count, slightly more than mosquitos.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#237

Post by mitchtbaum »

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…

> Let's assume a purely materialistic view of reality.

Why? What benefit does metaphysical materialism have to living a good life?

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#238

Post by koube »

richardthered wrote: post #217

Why is this news story everywhere?! Hacker News, Google News, newspapers, facebook feeds, ... it's like it's following me everywhere I go! Is there some secret octopus cabal out there that's advancing the secret octopus news agenda?

I'm noticing a lot of Reddit posts showing up here that don't seem all too related to tech. Perhaps Hacker News is just growing to that size where it starts to get off topic sometimes.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#239

Post by Amezarak »

mitchtbaum wrote: post #234
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?

I see eating those as more akin to part of its sexual reproduction and continuation of life, like a bee taking nectar from a flower. As far as I understand it, Natural order works where a "food" matures, falls, and an "animal" eats it and passes its seeds through its digestive system. This process deposits the seeds in a fertilized position to grow its next generation. In a more poetic form, you can hear this in the…

That's true for fruits (in the botanical sense), not roots (carrots), fungi (mushrooms), or cabbage and lettuce. You're killing or injuring the organism and not helping perpetuate it in any way.

Re: Inky the octopus breaks out of New Zealand aquarium

#240

Post by mitchtbaum »

Amezarak wrote: post #239
mitchtbaum wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see eating those as more akin to part of its sexual reproduction and continuation of life, like a bee taking nectar from a flower. As far as I understand it, Natural order works where a "food" matures, falls, and an "animal" eats it and passes its seeds through its digestive system. This process deposits the seeds in a fertilized position to grow its next generation. In a more poetic form, you can hear this in the…

That's true for fruits (in the botanical sense), not roots (carrots), fungi (mushrooms), or cabbage and lettuce. You're killing or injuring the organism and not helping perpetuate it in any way.

When a human harvests those organisms and replants their seeds among compost, it seems awfully similar to me. (Yes, I understand they each have some level of awareness similar to a mammal and bird. Here, we seem to focus on the meaning of killing. Perhaps our frame of reference which would call one yes and one no limits our ability to understand what happens in these processes.)

Tangent hidden in Mahamrityunjaya: If your unit of analysis of Life consists of one body of directly wired cells, then death for it would seem to occur when it stops nourishing itself or starts nourishing another body of directly wired cells. If on the other hand your unit of analysis for Life is Life, then replanting its seed is its continuation, afaict. This opens a paradox... If eating a head of lettuce seems fine while a new crop grows, then why not a head of cow while its calves grow too?

People can get trapped in their heads by paradoxes, so I like to go by my gut and my heart (don't worry, they're connected to my brain and they have a lot of neurons, see peripheral nervous system[0]) and econophysics[1](?linked document seems to have changed a lot). So, basically cold, hard calculation in a warm, soft body. If I can run my home on cow meat and feel good about it then bravo, but I can't for two reasons: 1) I love Life and want to maximize and respect it 2) eating cows is horrendously inefficient, for example you can get 6x as much meat from the same exact inputs of feed and water from meat rabbits.

Meat rabbit production seem like a very good investment right now and a potential focal point for planning my near-term food sources. They can also eat the grain stalks and inedible carrot leaves etc, and their poop works extremely well for compost. I want simply to figure out how to make the most of my available inputs, so if I can turn those green leaves into mushroom food instead and still grow enough grain while I use those stalks for construction projects etc, then great. We're talking about living here, so it's a matter of costs and benefits, right?.. what's Life worth?

(0): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system

(1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics

Post reply on HN