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

Do Insects Feel Pain?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 76 posts

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#61

Post by hyperjeff »

jncfhnb wrote: post #51
Jun8 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along the lines of “A man is worked on by what he works on.” or “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster.” If you start destroying things for pleasure, your psyche may/probably will change. A parallel question I’ve seen: are training bonsais cruel?

I don’t think people kill insects for the joy of killing though

I did when I was a kid. Used to spend hours torturing insects. And I did think they probably felt pain in some way. I ended up well-adjusted, but kids are little psychopaths. These days I escort bugs out of the house if they are being bothersome, and otherwise just let them be their bad ol’ self.

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#62

Post by brap »

ultrarunner wrote: post #53
brap wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think wanting to avoid inflicting pain on others is religious/spiritual

Is it merely preferential, then?

It’s a preference that’s somewhat hardcoded in our brain, kind of like preferring to seek friendships, achieve goals, etc.

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#63

Post by yencabulator »

jncfhnb wrote: post #41
Jun8 wrote: post #35

Peter Singer, mentioned in the article has a great (and influential) book published in 1979 called Practical Ethics , if you’re interested in this topic you should definitely check that out. If you’ve never listened to the Philosophy Bites podcast, here’s a relevant episode on the status of animals: https://philosophybites.libsyn.com/christine-korsgaard-on-th... Also here’s a thought: unnecessary harming of an entity…

Why is it bad for its effect on you?

Apparently, cruelty toward animals is a predictor for becoming a serial killer. That may be correlation not causality, but it would probably be wise to steer children away from such activity.

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#64

Post by colordrops »

b112 wrote: post #55
colordrops wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you misunderstand me. I do not act as if other animals are noble, I act as if humans are not special in comparison to other animals.

Well we agree then, but farm animals have run off cliffs, in a hysteria, to escape deer flies. I'm sure they'd want to exterminate such pests, all of them given a chance.

Ironic to use animals horded together near cliffs for human consumption and as an example of insect cruelty towards mammals, and furthermore imply this as some kind of common event.

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#65

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #12

http://www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ma... Consider the lobster The fact that even the most highly evolved nonhuman mammals can’t use language to communicate with us about their subjective mental experience is only the first layer of additional complication in trying to extend our reasoning about pain and morality to animals. And everything gets progressively more abstract and convolved as we mov…

I had tremendous difficulty navigating to read this. For whatever reason I could only visit page 1 and 10, so I wasn’t able to form any assessment of the article you posted.

So it is without that background or knowing exactly where you stand that I offer:

The lack of a commonly understood mechanism that can be used to communicate about pain with a lobster doesn’t mean that lobsters are incapable of feeling pain any more than it means that humans are incapable of feeling pain because we can’t talk to lobsters about it.

This applies to any other creature.

The lack of a common language doesn’t hold water as an argument that experiences can’t be shared.

It may be that you and I agree with this, or not, but it is difficult without having read the article.

Do you have a more accessible link by any chance?

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#66

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

hyperjeff wrote: post #61
jncfhnb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think people kill insects for the joy of killing though

I did when I was a kid. Used to spend hours torturing insects. And I did think they probably felt pain in some way. I ended up well-adjusted, but kids are little psychopaths. These days I escort bugs out of the house if they are being bothersome, and otherwise just let them be their bad ol’ self.

This is tough to read but I feel sympathetic about the honest way you shared this.

I have heard this from others too. One of my most traumatic memories from childhood was seeing someone do something to one of my favorite kinds of animals that I will spare readers here the horror of imagining. It haunts me to this day. That colors my perspective.

Children have incomplete brain formation. I’m not sure it’s an excuse, but it’s context to understand. On the flip side, a parent would need to be helicoptering to an absurd extent to detect a child messing with something as small as most common insects (at least in most US places).

Thanks for escorting them or leaving them alone!

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#67

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

jojobas wrote: post #33
kjellsbells wrote: post #29

Supposing that it was conclusively proven that they did not. Would it still be ethical to kill them? The Jain religion has quite a bit to say on this topic: https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/11/22/atten... Side note: the author also notes a very unusual consideration of electricity as consisting of a living force, that should therefore not be used needlessly.

It would be still ethical if it was conclusively proven they did. There's no shortage of ethical theories ranging from Jainism to Nietzsche and they basically follow the laws of natural selection.

Are you suggesting that the ultimate arbiter of whether something is ethical or not is whether it would be allowed by natural selection?

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#68

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

spants wrote: post #60
nemo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bird watcher, I go out a fair amount so I've seen a lot of predation, not just of insects but other birds and mammals. I still don't want to do needless harm to any animals, even insects. I'll still take out roaches, fire ants, flour moths, and other invasive/pest insects, but I actually feel some remorse when I kill the moths and others since I believe they do suffer by my hand even if I don't have another cho…

and you still eat animals?

This feels like a comment made in bad faith.

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#69

Post by jgwil2 »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #65
adamgordonbell wrote: post #12

http://www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ma... Consider the lobster The fact that even the most highly evolved nonhuman mammals can’t use language to communicate with us about their subjective mental experience is only the first layer of additional complication in trying to extend our reasoning about pain and morality to animals. And everything gets progressively more abstract and convolved as we mov…

I had tremendous difficulty navigating to read this. For whatever reason I could only visit page 1 and 10, so I wasn’t able to form any assessment of the article you posted. So it is without that background or knowing exactly where you stand that I offer: The lack of a commonly understood mechanism that can be used to communicate about pain with a lobster doesn’t mean that lobsters are incapable of feeling pain any m…

It's a pretty well known essay--you should be able to find out in PDF format pretty easily by googling. It's very much on the non-lobster-eating side and touches on both physiological and philosophical arguments.

Re: Do Insects Feel Pain?

#70

Post by [deleted] »

spants wrote: post #60
nemo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bird watcher, I go out a fair amount so I've seen a lot of predation, not just of insects but other birds and mammals. I still don't want to do needless harm to any animals, even insects. I'll still take out roaches, fire ants, flour moths, and other invasive/pest insects, but I actually feel some remorse when I kill the moths and others since I believe they do suffer by my hand even if I don't have another cho…

and you still eat animals?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN