Edit: TDLR - There are many affirmations, assumptions, and a lot of confidence in those in many of the responses here. And I seriously doubt most of them are supported by anything more than gut feelings and certainties of unknown origins.
---
> We know things about anaesthesia, blood clotting, soft tissue, [...]
Actually, most of us don't know much, if anything, about any of this. Heck, for all most of us know, it could actually be wizardry powered by small elves running in hamster wheels.
> and our physical actions are informed by an amassed body of knowledge and an ability to reason from that knowledge and apply it with a degree of sophiscation [...]
That really doesn't match most of human behaviors I can observe around me, online or in the street. Actually, it seems that implementing informed and vaguely rational decision-making is a great way to improve many things.
It often feels like we merely are pompous and arrogant monkeys who are lucky some of their ancestors built most of what's around us.
> This is so ridiculous that I'm wondering if I'm missing the point.
That's my fault. I'll try to make it clear.
- Intelligence is hard to measure.
- Our biases, as individuals and as a species, are huge.
- Our knowledge, as individuals, on other living things' perspectives, is laughable.
- Objectives and desired outcomes are relative.
- Outcomes' prerequisites are many, diverse, and often unknown.
Meaning:
-> We really don't know much,
--> Unless approaching the subject with a scientific method and an open mind, any opinion could only be founded on pre-conceived notions, gut feelings, limited personal experience, and unfounded "common sense" and "cultural knowledge.
Thus:
---> Having and expressing any personal opinion on this subject, based on anything else than scientific experience, is both pointless and presumptuous.
And now we can go into the credit we should give to science, the limits of the scientific methods, and probably many other things.