71–80 of 144 posts
Or you know, we could get rid of cigarettes. Oh wait but what will happen to all the crow jobs?!
Didn't work so well for alcohol, drugs, or prostitution unfortunately. But at least I guess it would stop people smoking in public.
I'm pretty sure it will work out once the surveillance methods are more advanced and ubiquitous. And no, I don't think it's a good thing.
This seems neat, but cigarette butts contain toxic chemicals. Training birds to perform an action, but at the same time possibly poison themselves, is ethically perverse. What if their population collapses because of the exposure to something in the butts? (and perhaps this effects other parts of the ecosystem dependent on the services of crows ... like, but not limited to, mitigating hygiene hazards via carcass remo…
Birds have already been observed to use cigarette butts for nest building, and no resultant population crash has happened for them. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2138655-birds-use-cigar... Maybe the food being given to the crows is more beneficial than any of the downsides of the exposure to the butts.
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The idea that there is a black/white side of convenience vs. survival is not reasonable. It is very much a gradient, and I’m afraid that there’s much more nuance to it. For instance, if I have a dog trained to fetch my fowl from a lake after shooting it, is that convenience or survival? Does it not depend on the circumstance? In the deep cold of winter it may spare me from a swift death, for the very same hunter in t…
I just don't think we can in good conscience domesticate any more animals. We are a thriving empowered species on our own, we are starting to make our own creatures (both robotically and genetically) and we shouldn't have to subjugate more of nature for our overconsumption and shortsighted behaviors.
And even if it did, I don't see how offering crows a good deal on food is less cruel than otherwise. Perhaps the crows will evolve to take the human economy into account and become something better at surviving as a result. I suppose my point is that, even if we can't in good conscience domesticate more animals, it was not by a consideration of good conscience that they became domesticated in the first place.
Back in college I did a paper on if this was ethical or not for my bioethics class, I warn people to really take a step back from the positive possibilities with something like this and understand that these are wild animals being trained to become slaves to benefit our human failings and appetites. I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for…
I feel like there would be bigger ethical problems over the proper amount to "pay" them than whether or not the act of paying them for a service is ethical
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Smoker in San Francisco here. I've thought about this quite a bit and here's my dilemma. 1. It is illegal to smoke indoors 2. San Francisco has made it illegal to have ash trays outdoors 3. Cigarettes set trash on fire so it's not acceptable to put them in the bin 4. Cigarettes have a tax on every pack earmarked to fund street clean-up I'd prefer to not throw my cigarettes on the ground, but I've been left with no re…
Put them out and put them in the garbage, your pocket, or a plastic bag. When people go out to a national park they don't just throw trash on the ground because "I paid an entry fee that should fund the clean up."
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The crows aren't punished for not exhibiting this behavior. Positive reinforcement training is distinctively different than negative reinforcement training. Slavery is the latter
Slavery is not 'negative reinforcement training'. Indeed, it is possible to be a slave and be rewarded for good work. Slavery is where you have no choice but to work. If the food reward is substantial enough to be worth a crow's while, then it confers a competitive advantage and crows that refrain from this behaviour will face pressure on their food sources from the offspring of the well-fed crows; essentially you've…
Kudos on your last point though. The overreaction on this thread needs to be brought back to that reality.
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Yeah... the callousness of smokers and their littering is unacceptable. I understand that throwing your cigarette in the trash can be a fire hazard sometimes, but put the cigarette out and throw it out. Some smokers just seem to love flicking that still-burning cigarette into the road like it's no big deal.
Smoker in San Francisco here. I've thought about this quite a bit and here's my dilemma. 1. It is illegal to smoke indoors 2. San Francisco has made it illegal to have ash trays outdoors 3. Cigarettes set trash on fire so it's not acceptable to put them in the bin 4. Cigarettes have a tax on every pack earmarked to fund street clean-up I'd prefer to not throw my cigarettes on the ground, but I've been left with no re…
Regarding your #4, that sounds nice and all, but that doesn't keep butts from ending up in streams and strewn all throughout the environment.
So often people will throw their butts on the sidewalk or in the street even when there's a cigarette-specific receptacle right nearby. There seems to be a cool factor there with the way people flick their butts away.
My technique is to rub out the burning part above the filter on the bottom of my shoe and then throw the filter in the next bin I see. That's just one idea; I'm sure there are many others.
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Yeah... the callousness of smokers and their littering is unacceptable. I understand that throwing your cigarette in the trash can be a fire hazard sometimes, but put the cigarette out and throw it out. Some smokers just seem to love flicking that still-burning cigarette into the road like it's no big deal.
In this case, you just smash the flasme in the floor and then throw in the trash. There is minimum hazard of the thing catch fire, specially if it has a cover. Many places have designated trash for butts. Where I work, thare is a company that collect these cans, and transform in paper. After 2 years they are now being proffiteble. But as a smoker, I fell terrible when there is a trash can in the place, but there are…
Which can still catch on fire.
Bonus points when the crows learn they can speed up the process by dive bombing a smoker, causing them to run away in terror, dropping their cigarette in the process.