Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chickens in Trees

suziepetryk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 156 posts

Re: Chickens in Trees

#71

Post by alt227 »

globular-toast wrote: post #48
margor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to break your bubble, but this is how people normally live on countrysides / small villages, at least in my country. Killing livestock animals is everyday thing and no one bats an eye. Hell, even killing new born kittens / puppies is considered by some normal thing, if they breed uncontrolled (even if they could just... castrate / neuter them [not sure which is the right word for it, I'm not native]). After all…

I've been in such communities and they do bat an eye actually. If people enjoyed it then rich western people would be doing it for fun. Funny that I don't see the "kill your own goat" experience being sold in tourist packages.

Have you seen the 'Kill a cow with a grenade launcher' packages which are popular with stag parties in Eastern Europe?

Re: Chickens in Trees

#72

Post by globular-toast »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #62
globular-toast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in such communities and they do bat an eye actually. If people enjoyed it then rich western people would be doing it for fun. Funny that I don't see the "kill your own goat" experience being sold in tourist packages.

Hobby farming tourism is definitely a thing. Many well earning organizations host immersive events that include butchering classes. Joel Salatin. Farmstead Meatsmith. Justin Rhodes. Etc. I guess it depends on your definition of fun but rarely are people learning as an immediate need for survival.

Butchery != slaughter. And not many of those tourists can handle pig face, for example (I'm sure some of them force themselves to go through with it).

Re: Chickens in Trees

#73

Post by b112 »

revert_to_test wrote: post #67
b112 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was not. It was common to spank your children, out of care and love, when they did things dangerous to themselves or others, and sometimes a strap or switch when something truly horrific was done. We now view this as wrong, but that wasn't beating them. Yes, some idiots did beat their children, or hit their children out of anger. That doesn't mean it was common .

From what I observe, although spanking is described as basically harmless, not everyone who lived through it see it as something that improved their lives. Even if it was administered by well-meaning, loving parents.

To be clear, as this is often required on HN, I was speaking of a subset of spanking:

out of care and love, when they did things dangerous to themselves or others, and sometimes a strap or switch when something truly horrific was done.

In other words, never because fed up / angry. Never because of minor situations, and so on. For example, swearing isn't "dangerous to themselves or others". Spanking employed when the life of the child or others is involved, is a short-cut to locking an intense memory into long-term recall.

This sort of event is rare.

And to be frank? "Improved their lives" isn't necessarily important. Note how I state "dangerous to themselves or others"? Siblings and other children have to be taken into account.

Lastly, and take this from someone with grey hair, it wasn't until my 30s that I started to appreciate some of the discipline I disagreed with as a child. Disagreeing, doesn't mean it was wrong.

Re: Chickens in Trees

#74

Post by globular-toast »

alt227 wrote: post #71
globular-toast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in such communities and they do bat an eye actually. If people enjoyed it then rich western people would be doing it for fun. Funny that I don't see the "kill your own goat" experience being sold in tourist packages.

Have you seen the 'Kill a cow with a grenade launcher' packages which are popular with stag parties in Eastern Europe?

No, but I'm well aware disgusting people exist. People abuse other people, but we generally agree this isn't a good thing. Also, pulling a trigger from afar isn't the same thing. I also wonder how many of those "real men" lose sleep after the experience. Emperor's new clothes comes to mind.

Re: Chickens in Trees

#75

Post by globular-toast »

margor wrote: post #68
actionfromafar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any of that refute "a lot more would be vegetarian"?

Because killing farm animals is considered a norm in almost all places who had done that since generations. If you would be surrounded by chickens, livestock and other farm animals and watching them getting butchered was your daily bread as a child, why would you reconsider when you would grow up? It literally put food on your table, and besides home grown farm animals taste A LOT better (speaking from experience, bu…

People keep saying it's normal etc but then you'll notice everywhere it's always the poor people who end up doing the slaughtering while rich people get to pretend it doesn't happen.

I'm not sure that being desensitised is a good argument. People can become desensitised to a lot of things, like slavery or other abuse. That doesn't make it ok.

The difference is factory farming really. I don't think eating meat is wrong, per se. (But I do think a lot of people wouldn't miss meat if they tried it, especially the only eats chicken breast type). But factory farming is disgusting.

Re: Chickens in Trees

#76

Post by globular-toast »

thinkingemote wrote: post #50
globular-toast wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot more people would be veggie if they had to kill the animals themselves. You just wouldn't do it unless you were really hungry, which I doubt anyone on this forum has experienced even once.

The sibling comments to this are truthful, we wouldn't be vegetarians but I think we would be eating more vegetables. When I was vegetarian in my youth I visited my grandparents in the country and asked them about killing animals themselves. They did have relationships with their animals and didn't enjoy doing it but its what they did. I think if you ask modern animal farmers today they would say they do not enjoy ki…

I think you are closer to the mark. People don't seem to realise they didn't eat meat as much back then. Like not even 10% what people eat now. To sustain the amount of meat consumption today they would have been killing every single day! In fact, it was common for families to have one pig which they'd kill around Christmas time. The pig was fed waste food (leftovers, vegetable peelings etc). They ate the entire pig, including the blood. Not a scrap would be wasted.

But I think you are also forgetting that agriculture has improved since and people aren't hungry any more. We don't need to keep a pig and feed it swill. There's so much to go around that many people are fat. It's 100% a choice to eat meat today and if that choice involved doing the killing I don't think many would make it.

Re: Chickens in Trees

#77

Post by Lutger »

ndr wrote: post #46
throwup238 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some animals evolved to be prey, and that is why they have an excessive number of offspring. Fowls are among those species. They lay eggs sometimes once a day so their numbers can increase incredibly rapidly. That is an adaptation to high predation. In the absence of that predation, they can overwhelm ecosystems. Red junglefowl, the ancestors to domesticated chickens, only lay a few clutches annually for a total of…

One could argue that is natural adaptation. Modern chickens are likely going to be more successful at propagating their genes into the future.

I see the case for it, but what wouldn't be natural once you allow this? Gene editing? Why not?

A consequence is that 'natural' will lose all meaning. If everything is natural, then nothing is, really.

Re: Chickens in Trees

#78

Post by dredmorbius »

I'm extraordinarily disappointed that Doug Zongker's seminal work in the field was not mentioned or cited:

https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf>

Previously on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35745880>

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830497>

And a dang compilation from 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35746402>

Video: http://yewtu.be/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk>

Re: Chickens in Trees

#79

Post by lukan »

b112 wrote: post #57
adrianN wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three generations ago it was also common to beat your children. I’m not sure that we should base moral arguments on what was common in the past.

No, it was not. It was common to spank your children, out of care and love, when they did things dangerous to themselves or others, and sometimes a strap or switch when something truly horrific was done. We now view this as wrong, but that wasn't beating them. Yes, some idiots did beat their children, or hit their children out of anger. That doesn't mean it was common .

"Yes, some idiots did beat their children, or hit their children out of anger. That doesn't mean it was common."

In the areas that still do beat their children, they commonly do beat more, when they are angry.

Re: Chickens in Trees

#80

Post by Lutger »

najra wrote: post #59
adrianN wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three generations ago it was also common to beat your children. I’m not sure that we should base moral arguments on what was common in the past.

I read parent's comments more as a counter argument to the suggestion more people would be vegetarian if they had to kill their own animals for food, not a moral justification based on "people used to do it".

I read it as both, especially given the "I'm a hunter and hunting is great" bit. It is moral psychology. There is an implicit notion of what it means to be a human, and what is ethically sound is tied up with it, because it is universal, beyond time and place, and thus normal and good.

In this particular ethical issue it is an eternal tug-of-war between humans as essentially vegans by nature, corrupted by cloaking animal suffering in neat, pre-slaughtered packages (if we would only see...), and the other side presenting humans as one of the animals eating other animals. We are made out to be part of a natural order as hunter and butcher, which is both normal and good. Modern sensibilities around animal suffering is seen as a whimsy aberration of normality, artificial and unnatural. It is both descriptive and normative, and the what-is functions as a tool for the what-should.

This does lead to pretty bad 'science' (on both sides, really) and conversations that are very loaded around basic facts. I would agree if you would say the what-is does not depend on the what-should-be and vice versa, free will and all, but this is often not how ethical conversations (and rhetoric) works.

Post reply on HN