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In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

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Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#111

Post by TomMarius »

chr1 wrote: post #88
Sharlin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? You mean most people would volunteer to be tortured horribly as long as any damage is 100% reversed the next day? Uh, I’m not sure whether your model of people is entirely accurate.

Not volunteer for it alone, but try it as a part of a bigger package. Kind of like a more realistic version of a horror movie/game. Do you think i am entirely wrong, and suffering is worse than death? Do you think it is better to die, instead of enduring suffering and then getting to live some more?

I think you severely underestimate how much painful torture is.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#112

Post by theoh »

firethief wrote: post #69
theoh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the meaning of your second paragraph, but in theory, animals bred for human consumption could live happy lives up to the point of a painless, instant death. The issue becomes whether they would be missed by other animals. Some would consider this a dangerous way of thinking, but someone like Temple Grandin would agree, I think, that the correct thing to worry about is suffering, not 'harm' in some abst…

Considering suffering alone seems like it could justify some counterintuitive conclusions. Would it be wrong to have a child, raise it happily to adolescence, and then give it a painless, instant death? If so, why?

I didn't mean that happiness wouldn't be considered, just that that appropriate thing to worry about is suffering (can we call it negative happiness?).

There is obviously not going to be a simple happiness score at each moment of life—it should at least be a vector of scores. Would make sense to integrate over time, but then there's the spectre of a "happiness maximizer" (like a paperclip maximizer) that might produce undesirable outcomes, whether it's average or aggregate happiness you consider. Ethics is difficult to formalize.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#113

Post by shrimp_emoji »

tantivy wrote: post #70
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree because they're not smart enough to enjoy their short and simple lives, so the enjoyment our lives get via eating them takes precedence. This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe…

Circular reasoning. What kind of evidence can you have for some being "not smart enough" for any arbitrary experience? Nice essay though

I have no evidence that a lobster has consciousness, and it's consciousness (particularly intelligent consciousness, like yours and mine) that, to my very crude ethics, grants "personhood". With personhood comes the right to live and my thinking that it's immoral or some great loss to the Universe to kill you. That is why I think I can eat (and cause untold suffering) to lobsters with impunity for my benefit. :o (Not, to massage your image of me, that I would enjoy harming lobsters; I'd sooner keep one as a pet or release it if it materialized in my kitchen. I don't even like killing spiders or cockroaches, and I don't even eat those! BUT. If other people kill lobsters, I don't consider it immoral, and I'd gladly eat them served to me. But not the cockroaches or spiders.) Pain is bad, but it's bad to conscious beings. A computer can be programmed to react to keystrokes much the same as a creature "with no lights on" can be programmed to react to damaging stimuli, but that reaction brooks no rational response from me. It brooks emotional responses, but acting on reasonless emotion is silly.

Even if you accept my position, you could argue that maybe lobsters do have consciousness. Maybe they're even way more intelligent than we think they are. That'd be a problem. But, being scientific, you have to operate on what you have evidence for, not on what you don't. For the same reason, I don't think abortion is human murder (unless it's late term, after the brain's been thoroughly developed).

Another problem, of course, is where you draw the line. Lobsters aren't intelligent enough for personhood. What about dogs? What about chimps? What about severely mentally handicapped humans? Do you draw the line at doing calculus? (Because then you exclude a lot of normal humans!) That's the problem with fascism. :B I need to rethink my ways. But it's too difficult, and meat is calorically-dense and tasty!

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#114

Post by zzz95 »

nezzle wrote: post #83
miles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…

We clearly eat far more meat than we need and produce/harvest meat in ways that create unnecessary damage and suffering. However, not everyone is like you. Some people develop deficiencies when they exclude meat from their diet. I have witnessed an ex-vegan health/nutritional professional advise a vegetarian to start eating some meat due to chronic health issues and lab-tested nutritional deficiencies. It was an hard…

40% of India is vegetarian. Approx. half a billion people. It is very hard to believe that they suffer from deficiencies. However, the 'vegetarian' food in the west is mostly salad and potatoes, a far cry from the variety of veggies found in tropical countries.

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-datadelve/article...

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#115

Post by hutzlibu »

miles wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to do with the fact that lobsters (according to Wallace) have decentralized nervous systems consisting of ganglia wired in series, so that slicing through one of them might not disable the creature's nociception upon being immersed in boiling water. You might just be keeping it from flailing around, paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything. Dave Arnold, another favorite writ…

> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…

"man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food"

Most studies I read found that vegetarians were more healthy and lived longer than heavy meat eaters, but the once-in-a-while meat eaters were healthier. One of the reasons I stick with the last group.

Selfish?

Yes. But not only for appetite.

Besides, without predators, you probably would not have much forests ... and much more dessert.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#116

Post by mod »

chr1 wrote: post #110
mod wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely, 100% would not volunteer to go through a "horrible torture." I certainly wouldn't do it for "a game." I don't think I would do it for any amount of money or other benefit, either. What you're proposing is (seemingly) no benefit beyond the experience of being tortured--which coincidentally you are going you erase when you delete the mental illness. Anyway, you're wrong, nobody would sign up for that. Peo…

> I absolutely, 100% would not volunteer to go through a "horrible torture." Even if it was to unlock a new level in a game, or to remove a tooth? :) More seriously though seems like i didn't manage to express what i wanted to say in my comment. My point was that people are afraid of torture, and many other things (like roller coasters) because there's a large chance to die in the end. And without that chance the who…

> Your point about needing to erase all memory of the experience to not get mental illness is very interesting.

I actually didn't express that very well. I kind of meant that if you were to erase the mental illness, you've effectively erased the whole experience. Horrible torture isn't something you just leave behind you the day after. The influence it has is almost necessarily mental illness in some form or fashion.

If anyone did go through horrible torture voluntarily, I would expect they would do it to know what it was like. And mental illness is part of what it's like.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#117

Post by blattimwind »

miles wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to do with the fact that lobsters (according to Wallace) have decentralized nervous systems consisting of ganglia wired in series, so that slicing through one of them might not disable the creature's nociception upon being immersed in boiling water. You might just be keeping it from flailing around, paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything. Dave Arnold, another favorite writ…

> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…

I always find claims of morality interesting, especially if they are of the non-norm-derivative kind, and presented without any ethical argument whatsoever. Very convincing indeed.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#118

Post by blattimwind »

chr1 wrote: post #88
Sharlin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? You mean most people would volunteer to be tortured horribly as long as any damage is 100% reversed the next day? Uh, I’m not sure whether your model of people is entirely accurate.

Not volunteer for it alone, but try it as a part of a bigger package. Kind of like a more realistic version of a horror movie/game. Do you think i am entirely wrong, and suffering is worse than death? Do you think it is better to die, instead of enduring suffering and then getting to live some more?

My gut feeling is that you do very little work with your hands, because your pain-o-meter seems to have drifted in a very unrealistic direction.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#119

Post by shrimp_emoji »

nefitty wrote: post #76
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree because they're not smart enough to enjoy their short and simple lives, so the enjoyment our lives get via eating them takes precedence. This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe…

If we could genetically engineer animals to be intelligent enough to have conscious desires, and also have an overwhelming desire to be killed and eaten, would it still be morally wrong to eat them? (This dilemma assumes that you share my belief that the demand for meat products causes a net increase in suffering.)

That would be hilarious.

Taken to an extreme, we could have those animals be humans that are somehow born masochists, desperate to get consumed by cannibals.

Hmm. I think it's morally dubious to make them in the first place. Past that, we're talking about fulfilling their desires. If someone wants to die (say they're suffering from some slow, terminal illness or maybe incurable depression), is it ethical to keep them alive and deny them euthanasia? That seems like the same scenario. I say no; you should have the right to die if you want to in the most painless way possible. I think the Universe suffers a loss with the loss of your consciousness because it's an amazing thing, but your subjective suffering is more salient. I make that call on absolutely no rational ground; it's just my silly emotions. Silly emotions from a silly consciousness. :3 And it's that element of silliness that makes my position on this itself, or anyone else's, PERHAPS EVEN ALL THOSE MEAT ANIMALS' SUFFERING, seem sickeningly irrelevant in the grand, inscrutable, uncaring scheme of things. But that's morality for you.

We've gotta be careful here.

I'm so close to bringing up how maybe the self is a lie and how moral relativism justifies the worst levels of suffering imaginable.

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