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World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

reuters.com

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Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#111

Post by sweetheart »

adolph wrote: post #107
jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not clear that cows experience distress? And we farm and eat those. Or is this conclusion that octopuses experience distress and other animals are p-zombies which only react in a way that looks like distress but might be emotionally neutral inside?

Yes, Temple Grandin’s work to reduce animal distress is very important. Grandin also developed an objective, numerical scoring system for assessing animal welfare at slaughtering plants. The use of this scoring system resulted in significant improvements in animal stunning and handling during slaughter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin Edit for quote format

That is some absolutely twisted shit.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#112

Post by nefitty »

deutschewelle wrote: post #58
rectang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One perspective: The universe is indifferent to your ethics and whether they are self-consistent or inconsistent. Choices "matter" insofar as they have observable effects that somebody cares about, but ultimately all morality is constructed. And so, why not a draw a line here, or over there, or instead way out there?

It's similar to a lot of the ideological absurdities being unleashed by the political establishment in the West. Some of which are supported wholeheartedly by companies supported by YC so rather than risk getting banned for holding "dangerous" ideologies that run counter to that side of the spectrum, I will just chalk this under ephemeral arguments that will go nowhere edit: as suspected it seems I am no longer able…

It's not a novel idea. Isn't it just a fatalistic coloring of ethical relativism? I personally subscribe to the idea that moral truths can be discovered from principals we can derive on inspecting our own preferences and experiences. We can than radiate that practice out to uncover more, and it historically happens by dint of physical/genetic proximity, eg prioritizing the wellbeing of family and friends and so on.

An interesting aspect of the internet is that it makes the determinant lines fuzzier and clearly arbitrary. Objectively, why would the life of a child in one country matter more or less than one from the other side of the planet? It's completely arbitrary, but the entrenched human social structures have been built around physical proximity and so we end up donating money to feed a relatively healthy child instead of donating to the distant one on the verge of dying from malnutrition.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#113

Post by sweetheart »

croes wrote: post #32
karpierz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, we can't stop eating every animal Why? There are plenty of people who do.

It is not always possible to get all the nutrients you need without animal products, either because they are not available or because the price is too high.

Okay, then if that point is ceded, would you agree then that we ought to only eat the fewest animal products necessary to get those nutrients in safe levels?

People always argue against veganism by saying “Ah well, can’t get all my B12 from plants so I guess eating this McDonalds quarter pounder is justified!”. Why not remove everything else that is an animal product lacking the nutrients you need, and only eat what animal products you absolutely need?

For the record, it’s the consensus of every major nutrition and dietetic institute globally that a plant based diet is suffix for all stages of life, so even granting the point that veganism disallows access to a full nutritional profile is generous.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#114

Post by rectang »

challenger-derp wrote: post #102
rectang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One perspective: The universe is indifferent to your ethics and whether they are self-consistent or inconsistent. Choices "matter" insofar as they have observable effects that somebody cares about, but ultimately all morality is constructed. And so, why not a draw a line here, or over there, or instead way out there?

Another perspective: people are not indifferent to the set of ethics their community subscribes to. Ethics help form a common understanding about what it means to be a part of a community. Sure, morality is constructed and observable choices matter more. But morality is an aspect that separates humans from "beasts". Ditch morality and some get that much closer to considering atrocities -- e.g. enslavement of weaker g…

> But morality is an aspect that separates humans from "beasts".

Over the course of human history, claims of moral superiority habitually accompany great atrocities. Give me a humble ethics which seeks to change that which can be observed, while not claiming absolute righteousness.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#115

Post by Tomis02 »

alliao wrote: post #8
nefitty wrote: post #5

> Last year, researchers at the London School of Economics concluded from a review of 300 scientific studies that octopus were sentient beings capable of experiencing distress and happiness, and that high-welfare farming would be impossible. I don't understand how someone can decide to ignore that in an effort to make money. I fear that if we don't more quickly move the Overton window on the suffering of sentient cre…

the same would apply to pretty much all animals no? and dare I say plants too?

Your comment is a series of logical mistakes.

1. Plants don't have a central nervous system. They're not sentient and don't feel pain.

2. The fact that something "applies to all animals" doesn't somehow make an action morally justifiable. You're suggesting inaction because perfection can't be achieved.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#116

Post by AngryData »

To me the most important questions are, does living a farm style life cause them undue distress and harm, and will they realize they are on a farm instead of just some weird octopus community.

For example, the cows I own I can keep on my land and they are perfectly content to munch grass around the different pastures throughout the year as they are rotated, and have free clean shelter in the barn and free hay in the winter. The only thing containing them is a thin strand of wire which they can (and have) easily walked through at any point in time without even trying, usually to reach an especially tall clump of weeds on the other side. For most of their life they are under basically zero stress due to protections from the environment and predators and have no desire to leave or look for more. They don't feel trapped and keeping them contained is more of a suggestion that they don't wander off and get lost. While at the end it sucks they will be distressed when loaded up in a trailer and taken down the road to the slaughterhouse, but they aren't thinking "Oh my god they are going to kill and eat me!",they are just bewildered by the wild experience of being driven down a road in a trailer, then let out in a new place with maybe some other cows around, and are instantly KOed when they are to be slaughtered.

I would have very different feelings about it if they lived in shitty life trapped in a little cage always hoping and trying to find a way out, feared humans as they came around stealing their friends away from them at random times assuming they were being eaten. And I do feel that way about, and don't buy, a lot of factory meat for the contained caged lives they experience when there are known better, healthier, more sustainable, and more ethical ways of caring for farm animals that goes back thousands of years.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#117

Post by rectang »

Tomis02 wrote: post #105
rectang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One perspective: The universe is indifferent to your ethics and whether they are self-consistent or inconsistent. Choices "matter" insofar as they have observable effects that somebody cares about, but ultimately all morality is constructed. And so, why not a draw a line here, or over there, or instead way out there?

This type of moral relativism is what leads to world wars, at which point people come back to their senses and proceed to behave, until the next generation comes along to repeat the same mistakes.

I hold the opposite perspective: world wars are brought about by those who are convinced that there is only one correct moral system — theirs — and who therefore have no compunction about inflicting it on others.

The belief that the no moral system is objectively correct, and yet choices matter because they have tangible effects, inoculates against dehumanizing those who do not share your ethics.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#118

Post by wintermutestwin »

croes wrote: post #32
karpierz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, we can't stop eating every animal Why? There are plenty of people who do.

It is not always possible to get all the nutrients you need without animal products, either because they are not available or because the price is too high.

Ignoring the price issue.

If I were to consume my daily protein via plant sources, it would come with an INSANE amount of carbs.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#119

Post by bane »

deutschewelle wrote: post #56
vmception wrote: post #33

It was always possible for me to perceive sentience, feelings and emotions from a variety of beings, I don't understand why grown adults are just reaching a cognitive maturity to notice that and making that a line in the sand on whether they will farm/consume a being based on that. These seem to be two separate things to me? Can someone shed light on both: a) why these are related concepts b) your journey to cognitiv…

In case it wasn't obvious the studies and this article is being written by people in the West who do not consume octopus. These articles almost always seem to derive to us-vs-them narrative, the idea that the West is somehow the forefront of moral novelty and the rest of the world is behind. When the irony is that the same random argument applied towards Octopus can be done on just about any sentient beings like cow…

Octopus is a pretty great cooked food, not as a sashimi. In Korean cuisine, at least, you find it stir fried, with noodles, in rice bowls, in soups...all sorts of things. There's several different kinds commonly eaten, from very small bite-sized to ones where a tentacle has to be cut into several bite sized pieces. It's often kept live until cooked, a practice that ensures both freshness and offended Western sensibilities at the same time.

All that being said, Octopus is also often found cuisines of Western countries that are coastal and some of the best I've ever had was in Greece and Mexico. I've also had it in Japan on a stick as a street food, fried in the Bahamas, grilled over a campfire in Italy, and a few other places.

In the U.S. I've only ever encountered it either at ethnic Asian or Greek places, or at high-end western dining experiences where the palettes are assumed to be more "adventurous". It's almost complete unknown as a food to most people and considered quite exotic and scary. But Americans are largely people who consider seafood to start and stop at canned tuna so...

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#120

Post by nefitty »

hashimotonomora wrote: post #50
handmodel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I don't quite get. Perhaps eating octopi seems gratuitous since they are expensive and not integrated into everyday customs/life. But hard to imagine an octopus is on a higher status than a pig or a cow which are fairly close to us evolutionarily.

Cows (actually their genes) have been evolutionarily successful by paradoxically allowing themselves to be slaughtered and eaten by humans.

"Allow" implies some sort of consent. I understand that you mean in an evolutionary sense, but it's clear that most living beings are averse to dying, even when possessing the most biologically primitive nervous systems. I prefer to head off any arguments in bad faith, "well, why don't all the cows just run away?" Some people are very comfortable resorting to satirical absurdity when discussing suffering, as evidenced by ridiculous arguments like "plants feel pain, why do you eat plants?"
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