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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

#511

Post by Eelongate »

Yizahi wrote: post #431
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still enough to feel being boiled alive.

Please define "feel". They experience structural damage - yes, same as every other living organism or plant if damaged. If I tear dandelion in half it will emit poisonous juice. Does it "feel" pain though? I think no. The "feel" part probably can happen only in the sufficiently large brain, and lobster most likely don't qualify.

"Feeling pain" has never been a particularly intellectual experience to me. Pain isn't some sort of abstract thought, it's a raw sensation that the harmed flesh itself seems to feel. When I step on a lego I feel it and flinch away from it before I even realize it. I guess that sort of reflex is what you're calling "experience structural damage" but I say it feels like pain.

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

#512

Post by bumby »

willis936 wrote: post #230
bumby wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is being derived from current understanding of biology wishy-washy? Reaction to stimuli and pain are different phenomena. If you’re stance is “we just don’t know for certain so it’s better to be conservative” that’s fine, but that uncertainty shouldn’t be conflated with actual reason when it’s just based on wishy-washy anthropomorphism.

Your claim of lobsters not being able to feel pain is wishy-washy because it's a convenient assumption based off of an oversimplification. "Invertebrates don't feel pain because they lack the specific machinery mammals use to experience pain". If you just stop there then yes, it does seem silly to worry about a thing that doesn't exist. However, what I've seen of the models suggests that we are far away from being ab…

We can’t yet even define consciousness so of course we don’t have a “good” model. But using our current understanding of the “machinery” makes more sense to me than basing the decision on whatever it is you’re vaguely referring to, otherwise I don’t see what stops one from going to full Jainism. If our understanding of that machinery changes so will my opinion.

You haven't really given much rationale beyond "they seem to react to stimuli". At best, your position that they have consciousness or feel pain analogous to humans appears based on intuition; at worst, on dogma. Neither is a particularly reasoned stance.

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

#513

Post by Eelongate »

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?

But the head and guts is the best part.

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

#514

Post by anhner »

akagusu wrote: post #509

while crabs and others will receive more welfare protections, people (as citizens, workers and consumers) are getting your protections slowly removed, one by one, bill after bill, staying at the mercy of corrupt politicians, ruthless employers and greedy corporations. How long to a human being is worth less than an animal?

It already is in the eyes of some extremist vegans.

(see the "never touch anything animal related for whatever reason" crowd but who then go on and drink gallons of cashew milk from farms of abused workers)

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

#515

Post by imgabe »

wander_homer wrote: post #488
imgabe wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. If five houses are on fire, and you decide to go organize your sock drawer... Hey, you're doing something . An organized sock drawer is surely better than a disorganized one. But you could still be rightly criticized for wasting time on something unimport…

> It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. By this logic we should for example stop most of the medical treatment in highly developed countries, where only a minority of humanity lives. For every dollar we spend there on helping a single cancer patient etc. we could probably safe dozens of peopl…

> By this logic we should for example stop most of the medical treatment in highly developed countries, where only a minority of humanity lives.

Let's think for a second about what would happen if we did this. Massive amounts of people start dying in the developed world because they get no medical treatment. Most of the productive capacity of the world in terms of creating modern goods is located there, so that plummets. Societies there collapse as people revolt at being denied medical care. The developing countries that were depending on this aid are even worse off than before. Hmm, does that sound like the best way to help the most people? I think not.

I'm sure there's an optimal split between keeping prosperous countries prosperous and advancing the current frontiers of human knowledge vs. sending aid to less prosperous countries. I doubt we are at the optimum. I'm also certain the optimum is not "loot absolutely everything from prosperous places and send it to less prosperous ones".

> So I wonder, what's the list of issues you think should be tackled exclusively to get the most out of our limited resources?

Oh you got me. I don't have a comprehensive list of all the important priorities. Whatever it is "lobster suffering" is way, way down on it.

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

#516

Post by SyzygistSix »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #311
hi41 wrote: post #92

The essay "Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace came to my mind. In that essay he describes how extraordinary the nervous system of a lobster is and how mindlessly and cruelly we boil them live. If David were still alive, he would definitely welcome this development. I really miss David. I am awestruck by his other essay "This is Water". I am amazed at his deep insights into human nature and how well he desc…

Thanks for posting this. Just read This is Water. Now I'm going to have to read all his other stuff.

Have fun reading Infinite Jest. I mean it seriously but it's a lot of book.

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

#517

Post by imgabe »

jacquesm wrote: post #490
imgabe wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a fallacy at all, it's a concept called opportunity cost. Resources are not infinite, so we should spend them where they can have the most and best impact. If five houses are on fire, and you decide to go organize your sock drawer... Hey, you're doing something . An organized sock drawer is surely better than a disorganized one. But you could still be rightly criticized for wasting time on something unimport…

Sure, but 'lobster or no lobster' and 'boiling the lobster alive or not' is an ethical question that stands on its own, there is no need to point out that there are bigger problems than that to be able to arrive at the right answer. Usually when people make the arguments that you make it is because they are trying to justify something in their lives, not because they are so busy to solve things that are more importan…

And if you're talking about an individual making a decision to eat a lobster or not, or to kill it by jabbing a knife in its brain instead of boiling it alive sure. The cost of doing one of the other is virtually nothing, so why not do the one that involves less suffering.

But when you're talking about directing government agencies to police an entire country and inspect places to make sure they aren't boiling lobsters alive and levying and collecting fines if they are, now maybe there's something better we could be doing with that effort.

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

#518

Post by patagonia »

Yizahi wrote: post #431
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still enough to feel being boiled alive.

Please define "feel". They experience structural damage - yes, same as every other living organism or plant if damaged. If I tear dandelion in half it will emit poisonous juice. Does it "feel" pain though? I think no. The "feel" part probably can happen only in the sufficiently large brain, and lobster most likely don't qualify.

If you wouldn’t be willing to “experience” the same set of experiences and pains via a similar subset of your sensory system and brain in exchange for the benefit of a meal that could have been cruelty free, then you shouldn’t. The burden of proof should not be on others to prove to you via rationalization/ intellectualization that it’s not a nightmare of an end to a sentient creature’s life experience.

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

#519

Post by SyzygistSix »

willis936 wrote: post #153
bumby wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some thought backed neuroscience that lobsters can't feel pain in the human conception of it because of the lack of a neocortex. I don't know how well that can be tested, but it goes beyond justifying it because "that's what paw deid"

A lobster being boiled behaves the same way a cow or dog or human behaves when being boiled. Seems strange to make the cutoff for acceptable treatment based around a wishy-washy ill-defined notion of "Can this thing that is very different than me feel pain? I promise I am not biased by the fact that I have vertebrae."

The same way an ant does as well.

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

#520

Post by LatteLazy »

akagusu wrote: post #509

while crabs and others will receive more welfare protections, people (as citizens, workers and consumers) are getting your protections slowly removed, one by one, bill after bill, staying at the mercy of corrupt politicians, ruthless employers and greedy corporations. How long to a human being is worth less than an animal?

The first cases for child abuse in the USA were prosecuted using animal welfare laws. I think the same thing is true in the UK.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/health/15abus.html

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