Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#271

Post by rleigh » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

knight17 wrote: post #191

pmarreck wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait... Descartes disemboweled live dogs?!?!

It appears so. What a filthy guy. Don't read if you don't have the stomach for it https://blog.timesunion.com/animalrights/descartes-and-anima... Gary Francione (Introduction to Animal Rights): “Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manne…

Horrific. That wouldn't pass any ethics review board today.

I worked for a short time in an animal facility nearly two decades back as part of an immunology undergraduate research project. I did all the ethical and vetinary training and exams. Some scientists do take Descartes' line, that animals don't feel like human beings do. I don't. I think it's a convenient philosophical position to take to avoid agonising over inflicting pain and suffering upon other organisms. It's a line of work I got out of at the earliest opportunity; I found it stressful and nauseating, even while working under strict ethical guidelines and practices which minimised pain and suffering to the highest possible extent, and had strict regulation of animal welfare.

While it's possible to debate the relative intelligence and sentience of different species, I strongly suspect that all higher mammals experience emotions similarly to ourselves, and I suspect that this may well extend to lower mammals and possibly other species such as amphibians and fish. Though this is obviously difficult to investigate and prove. It's dangerous to anthropomorphise human behaviour, feelings and emotions in other animals. However, I think it's equally, if not more, dangerous to assume that animals are incapable of none of the feelings and emotions that we do.

Dogs can clearly experience pain. The anguished yelp if I accidentally tread on my dogs paws wearing heavy boots is sufficient to tell me that! And arthritic pain in old age was less obvious, but they took clear steps to avoid actions which would hurt. They clearly experience fear. I've seen my dog's legs turn to jelly when faced with a herd of cattle, and I couldn't drag him past them because he dug all his paws into the ground and refused to take a step further. Another cried when they were too scared to walk across wobbly and loose rocks on a mountain, and I had to carry them over. The same applies to other animals as well, though the means they use to communicate pain or fear may differ.

I liked the direction taken by Emory university e.g. this recent research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571... which gets past interpreting behaviour and instead uses fMRI to see how dogs respond directly. Hopefully this will show the similarities in our reactions as well as some of the differences.

Research like that summarised in https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/24/smart-d... is also important. This shows that dogs can have sophisticated linguistic and reasoning capabilities. How many other species have such untapped potential, which we simply haven't noticed?

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#272

Post by mcv » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #40

vageli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here in Sweden someone had pigeons flying to their balcony all the time and they got reported for keeping them as a pet. The city dropped them off in another town but they flew back and were ordered to be put down because native species are not allowed to be kept as pets and they were unwilling to adapt to not living on the balcony. If the motivation of these laws is to protect the animals, I can't think of a more…

Unless the intention is to preserve wild behavior and prevent domestication, i.e. removing some individuals from the population to (in a way) preserve the species.

But they're pigeons. Balconies are their natural habitat. I don't think there's any species of bird that's more at home with humans.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#273

Post by agurk » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #242

int_19h wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What of it? If hunting is actually utilitarian (i.e. for food), there's no ethical issue here. How difficult it is only matters if hunting is a sport, but that's exactly the ethically dubious part of it. So even in that sense, using a bow is more "sadistic", since it amounts to causing suffering to a living being for the sake of more challenging entertainment for oneself. (And, of course, a bow would be a lot more pa…

it's not entertainment, it's about not overpowering, I used bow as an example, maybe it's still too strong (you can kill from afar) but compared to a gun, at least it requires skills to actually kill. Anybody can pull a trigger.

I spoke to an older hunter in New Zealand once who said he initially started with a view like yours. He was into rifle marksmanship, and didn't see the point in shooting at a live target.

He had a friend who said it was harder than he thought, and invited him to come along sometime and see if he found it easy. Of course he went out, and even when lead in the direction of the deer couldn't manage to get one.

After that he was hooked. He had a similar story about eating the offal from the deer, and now thinks it's among the best bits.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#274

Post by VBprogrammer » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

tapland wrote: post #53

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the intention is to preserve wild behavior and prevent domestication, i.e. removing some individuals from the population to (in a way) preserve the species.

Probably. Some cockatiels that proved very hard to catch this summer after they escaped were ordered to be put down by some hunters as well. They can survive our winters in urban areas and pose a risk to the native birds.

It's really weird around London to see flocks of parakeets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_parakeets_in_Great_Brita...

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#275

Post by gerbilly » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

rurp wrote: post #116

When I was a kid my family raised three young kestrels (small birds of prey that look like a hawk) who had lost their mother. They had an outdoor enclosure and we did not handle them much, but they understandably got attached. Once we released them, they stayed in the area and would often swoop out of the sky and land on my head. It gave visiting neighbors and friends quite a surprise! We gradually saw less of the bi…

We have wild chickadees and nuthatches which eat out of our hands in our backyard.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#276

Post by mcguire » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #38

tapland wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden someone had pigeons flying to their balcony all the time and they got reported for keeping them as a pet. The city dropped them off in another town but they flew back and were ordered to be put down because native species are not allowed to be kept as pets and they were unwilling to adapt to not living on the balcony.

> Here in Sweden someone had pigeons flying to their balcony all the time and they got reported for keeping them as a pet. The city dropped them off in another town but they flew back and were ordered to be put down because native species are not allowed to be kept as pets and they were unwilling to adapt to not living on the balcony. If the motivation of these laws is to protect the animals, I can't think of a more…

Likely the neighbors were complaining about the side effects.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#277

Post by deagle50 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

uhtred wrote: post #164

deagle50 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if someone else is doing the killing and I'm doing the eating? Not being facetious, I struggle with this and I don't fully buy into the "guilt by association" angle. If I stopped eating meat today, animals would still be killed at exactly the same scale as before. So what would have I accomplished besides depriving myself of nutrients? If we could all do it together I'd be on board. Maybe we can start with "meat…

If you stopped eating meat and replaced it with a balanced vegan diet you wouldn't be depriving yourself of anything other than heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes etc. You'd be the winner. Also, you'd be doing your part in reducing the demand for all those animals to be raised and slaughtered. If everyone had the opinion of "well what's the point unless everyone does it" no good change would ever happen.

But it is pointless unless everyone does it, at least until a large percentage of the population does it. You're ignoring opportunity cost, this isn't like recycling where I have nothing to lose by doing it. Until we reach critical mass, the early adopters would have essentially "subsidized" everyone else.

A few ounces of meat/fish a day aren't going to cause any of those diseases and are packed with nutrients that a vegan diet has a very hard time providing at a similar cost, especially in poor countries. The Gates foundation isn't betting on chicken on a whim. I still think moderation is the way to go. If everyone cut their intake by 50% we'd have a healthier population, animal slaughter would be cut in half, and we wouldn't have to reinvent meat.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#278

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #64

Memosyne wrote: post #50

When I was a child, a school teacher showed me this hoax video of flying penguins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4 . Unfortunately, for a brief period of my childhood, I was under the assumption that penguins could indeed fly. By the time I had uncovered my teacher's subterfuge, I had already made a fool of myself by publicly positing that such penguins existed. Admittedly, my teacher was only playing a p…

In French, "pingouin" is the name for a flying bird[0] though very few people know it and most mix up pingouins (auks) with manchots (penguins, literally "armless"). Saying that penguins can fly is technically correct but people will laugh at you unless you are prepared to spend a long time explaining it. I think it's a shame that a teacher would mislead a child the way yours did. Having worked with penguins (the fli…

[deleted]

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#279

Post by uhtred » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

deagle50 wrote: post #277

uhtred wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you stopped eating meat and replaced it with a balanced vegan diet you wouldn't be depriving yourself of anything other than heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes etc. You'd be the winner. Also, you'd be doing your part in reducing the demand for all those animals to be raised and slaughtered. If everyone had the opinion of "well what's the point unless everyone does it" no good change would ever happen.

But it is pointless unless everyone does it, at least until a large percentage of the population does it. You're ignoring opportunity cost, this isn't like recycling where I have nothing to lose by doing it. Until we reach critical mass, the early adopters would have essentially "subsidized" everyone else. A few ounces of meat/fish a day aren't going to cause any of those diseases and are packed with nutrients that a…

Apart from B12, what nutrients are in meat that I cannot get from a vegan diet? Why is it acceptable to be slaughtering hundreds of millions instead of billions of animals a year, if we don't need to? And we don't have to reinvent meat; most vegans don't eat fake meat products. We could move away from the concept of eating meat all together.

Re: Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)

#280

Post by deagle50 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

uhtred wrote: post #279

deagle50 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is pointless unless everyone does it, at least until a large percentage of the population does it. You're ignoring opportunity cost, this isn't like recycling where I have nothing to lose by doing it. Until we reach critical mass, the early adopters would have essentially "subsidized" everyone else. A few ounces of meat/fish a day aren't going to cause any of those diseases and are packed with nutrients that a…

Apart from B12, what nutrients are in meat that I cannot get from a vegan diet? Why is it acceptable to be slaughtering hundreds of millions instead of billions of animals a year, if we don't need to? And we don't have to reinvent meat; most vegans don't eat fake meat products. We could move away from the concept of eating meat all together.

Creatine, Carnosine, D3, DHA, Heme-iron, Taurine. But it's not just about the nutrients, it's about the supply and the cost. Most people don't have access to the balanced assortment of grains, vegetables, and legumes you seem to enjoy. Without meat and dairy they would risk malnourishment.

We probably could move away from meat, if everyone was well off (and took supplements). But that's not the case. And I never said 100s of millions were acceptable, merely that a 50% portion reduction is a LOT better than nothing, and probably a lot more than a morality strategy will achieve.