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Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

lse.ac.uk

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Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#491

Post by Chris2048 »

jojobas wrote: post #231
lanevorockz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still a gradation, “as complex” is obviously a stretch. The whole argument is silly, soon turning off my Deep Learning algorithms because they are more complex than lobster.

500 years ago the argument that black people should have rights was just as silly. We'll live to see some sort of AI rights protection laws.

No it wasn't, the argument was as silly as it is now, for a non-subjective definition of "silly".

500 years ago science was less mature, and unable to determine what was objectively silly, and what wasn't.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#492

Post by mdorazio »

Chris2048 wrote: post #487
ArchD wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobsters & crabs are risky to eat unless they are very fresh (i.e. they have not been dead for too long). If you buy a dead lobster and then cook it, you have much less assurance about when it died hence the freshness than with a live lobster. If you buy a live lobster, how are you going to practically kill it before boiling it? Try to penetrate the hard shell to impale the brain using a layperson's skills and equipm…

I would have though chopping off the head would do it?

Have you tried to chop off a lobster’s head yourself? It’s a lot harder than you seem to think.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#493

Post by spuz »

wruza wrote: post #464
mypastself wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, intelligence entails understanding that suffering can take forms other than the immediately obvious ones, and taking steps to minimize it if possible.

I’m aware that it may feel pain either just like I do, or in a different way. My question is why should I be agitated by this thought, iow what is the reason to reduce it. I don’t relate its suffering to my “soul” or a mental state. Not talking about morals here, I wouldn’t boil a live crab in a presence of people who would react negatively. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117

I think the answer is most people will suffer negative mental effects if they believe they have caused more suffering to an animal than is necessary to achieve the same outcome (i.e. feeding oneself) and also that they believe that boiling an animal could cause it more suffering than to kill it by an alternative method.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#494

Post by Chris2048 »

xvilka wrote: post #290
lanevorockz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boiling is supposed to be painless and it’s meaning behind “boiling a frog alive”.

My small experience with being burned by hot or acidic liquid tells me exactly the opposite.

The anecdote is specific to frogs (and animals with similar sensory systems), and specific to boiling by increasing the temperature in small increments.

It's also a myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Interesting that early experiments involved removing the frogs brain as well.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#495

Post by 7ewis »

shakna wrote: post #337
tsimionescu wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the bar for sentience is actually so low I am quite sure bacteria and even individual cells in multi-cellular organisms pass it - almost every living cell detects aspects of and reacts to its environment.

It is indeed incredibly low. Slime molds [0] can pass it. There is a memory component, which would prevent single cells from passing it, but it's not a metric that is all that useful in determining the intelligence of a species. [0] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.15891.43041

Plastic has memory doesn't it?

Sounds like the sentience tests need to be rewritten

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#496

Post by jhbadger »

plorkyeran wrote: post #279
sillysaurusx wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Star Trek handled the question much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY Intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness seem like three reasonable requirements. I don't really buy the "consciousness" requirement, but it's a stab at what most people associate with sentience. Calling trees sentient is just nonsense. And I mean that literally. I try not to dismiss people's work out of hand, b…

It is very common for Science Fiction to use "sentient" where "sapient" is the correct word. Star Trek is no exception. Calling trees sentient isn't nonsense; your understanding of what the word means is simply incorrect.

Traditionally, "sentience" includes consciousness, though. The OED defines it as "The condition or quality of being sentient, consciousness, susceptibility to sensation". It's actually science fiction that invented the concept of "sapient" in the sense you mean it -- the OED just refers to it as an old word for "wise" like Milton writing of "a sapient prince"

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#497

Post by johnisgood »

dan12ha wrote: post #353
philipov wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the teaching of Buddhism that one should learn to let go of attachments such as love, because they will bring you pain?

My interpretation of the teaching is let love exist along with fear etc but don’t cling to love for fear it will pass and don’t cling to fear for fear it will not pass. He wasn’t telling people not to love but to allow it to exist without superimposing your neuroses on top of it.

That is exactly what stoicism is about.

I definitely recommend https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic-ebook/d....

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#498

Post by akudha »

Yizahi wrote: post #446
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "feel" part probably can happen only in the sufficiently large brain, and lobster most likely don't qualify. This seems pretty arbitrary. As a vegan I draw the line at plants vs animals and while it is hard to live in industrialized society without harming animals, it’s easy for me to see how dropping a lobster in a pot will cause the animal to suffer. I’m doing just fine simply not eating them. Why do mental g…

The thing is - lobsters are an easy problem. We can (theoretically) collectively decide that lobsters shouldn't be touched at all and nobody will be hurt (some fishers maybe?). But the same logic about "feeling" pain is applicable to practically anything as is demonstrated in the comments below. And then it becomes a humanity problem - can we kill living organisms for ANY reason? There is no easy, or even hard answer…

Killing is one thing, Killing by boiling alive is on a whole another level of cruelty, like unit 731 level, nazi level cruelty. I don’t eat meat, so I don’t know why only lobsters are boiled alive and not other sea food. Whatever the reason, it is hard to justify.

If we are going to kill something, the least we could do is kill it painlessly. At the beginning of COVID-19, some farm in the Midwest killed hundreds of pigs by steaming. Could you imagine the suffering?

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#499

Post by mypastself »

wruza wrote: post #464
mypastself wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, intelligence entails understanding that suffering can take forms other than the immediately obvious ones, and taking steps to minimize it if possible.

I’m aware that it may feel pain either just like I do, or in a different way. My question is why should I be agitated by this thought, iow what is the reason to reduce it. I don’t relate its suffering to my “soul” or a mental state. Not talking about morals here, I wouldn’t boil a live crab in a presence of people who would react negatively. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117

Most people don’t wish to cause undue harm to others, human or animal, because it causes them anguish. We are capable of abstract thought and understand persistence of objects.

I think those two facts are sufficient to understand why intelligent beings are agitated even by indirect expressions of suffering.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#500

Post by karolist »

rich_sasha wrote: post #457
GordonS wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to eat crab and lobster, but I never understood how anyone could boil one of them alive - even if it hasn't (or hadn't) been 100% proven they can feel pain, it seems such a horrible, horrible thing to do! I'm not any kind of animal rights activist, but it makes me feel upset just thinking about it :shudder:

The theory I hear from people who do it is that the animals die instantly in thermal shock. Would be great if someone in the know could comment; I'm certainly not endorsing this view!

I was around as a kid when my aunt boiled some crayfish alive. The way they run in the pot and the sound they make still haunts me to this day whenever I see these little animals. I don't need science to tell me if something feels pain or not when being boiled alive...
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