Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smarter then dogs. The criteria for edibility is mainly ugliness vs. Cuteness. Octopuses are recently getting more media attention with that movie about the diver that made friends with one so they are getting cuter. Try farm raising and eating baby penguins you'll get the same reaction even though penguins are dumb AF. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
> Smarter then dogs. Certainly not. I'm not sure why this myth keeps propagating.
A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
151–160 of 212 posts
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#152Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#153The older I get, the less I want anything sentient on my plate.
The older I get, the more I have the sense (both intuitively and through evidence) that I'm far more like the animals I've eaten than I am unlike them. That sense has become more and more attuned, and it has gotten to the point that I don't see animals as food anymore. They're just a different kind of people trying to survive. Since I don't actually need to eat them to survive, it seems akin to murder to consume them…
Dogs or pigs are just different people.
It is the order of Nature that things eat each other in order to survive, but you don't need to eat animals, so you don't do that.
I like this!
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#154The whole too smart thing seems so arbitrary to me. Like this animal can solve a puzzle thus it can't be farmed. The other animal can't. But if we scare/hurt them they both react in fear/pain. IQs are we talking here? Suduko? Puzzle? Open a door? Use a tool? Care for its youngs? Stand under roof when it rains? I can wrap my head around both stances (eat animals freely or full veg only)...bit this arbirary line in san…
People arguing that would be happy if no animals were farmed at all. The opposite argument is equally dumb, you wouldn't legalize crack because beer is a drug and beer is legal
> you wouldn't legalize crack because beer is a drug and beer is legal
Off-topic, but why not? I would actually legalize every substance; enforce safety measures (e.g. no driving while high) and services like NA.
Let people do what they want.
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#155I wouldn't discard the alternative possibility that we should choose to ignore "activists". After all, people may have a hidden agenda, conflicts of interest, or be simply a bunch of uneducated morons craving for attention. Why to choose them as figure of authority at the same level of researchers that proven real effort searching for truth and spent ten years acquiring real knowledge? Oh, Is for the promises of viol…
What makes you dismiss the years of effort put in by researchers who are quoted supporting the activists?
1) To start the science that they use is normally of subpar quality. Sometimes even fake.
I can't see why two decades of sociology articles about how playing violin to octopuses make them more lively, should count more than two decades of biology articles looking for cures again each octopus disease known and found by farmers. One of this approaches helped greatly to reduce pain in octopuses, the other just wasted our time.
2) They cherry-pick facts relentlessly.
Evidence that goes against their agenda are systematically ignored and the authors mocked. They have a tunnel vision about the themes or interpret the facts as is better for them. See point 1.
3) They pick random facts to push random taboos on some organisms, but declare other similar organisms moral to eat
Just because they rank lower in their personal preferences or cultures. Cricket pie anyone?
4) They attribute malice or incompetence to their targets by default
People trying to domesticate octopuses "moved by greed". Maybe they want to help alleviate famine? We don't speak about this. Only our acts are pure, they say, while keep asking for money.
5) As their science is weak, they are unable to foresee the holes in their plan, or the collateral damages of their acts.
6) Even worse, they know but choose to ignore the consequences
After researchers spend their time informing them again and again of the collateral effects that their actions will have, they proclaim that is for a bigger cause and couldnn't care less about the consequences. They act by a sort of pseudo-religious ideology with random dogmas that can't be changed a Milimeter, even after proven false. Check the history of grey squirrel in Italy, or racoons on Japan.
7) They never, ever, will offer help to fix their own ecological disasters
After they cause economical damages of millions of dollars and waste the time of everybody, then shrug and just change their target.
8) They are prone to be deceived and manipulated from outer agents with their own agendas, that treat them as disposable.
People "against oil", are happy to be economically supported by oil companies. Are we sure that this activists aren't funded by to boycott ? or by somebody aiming to gain time to build their own farms?. I wouldn't bet my money against this.
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#156Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
My only rationale for why it's OK for me to eat pigs is that the pigs would definitely eat me if the opportunity arose, and in this respect they are different from say, cows, or indeed octopuses, which show no inclination to consume human meat. If you (as sometimes happens to farmers) drop dead in a pig sty after not long the pigs will eat you because you're food and they're hungry.
This argument has appeared multiple times in this thread, and I'm genuinely curious: if pigs' behavior demonstrates to you that their status is low enough to warrant their treatment, why does adopting that behavior seem like a reasonable reaction? Or would you find a pig killing and eating a human to be a morally neutral incident that, while maybe not preferable, has no ultimate weight to consider?
Not low enough, high enough, the pigs, are much closer to me than to say a tree. Of course a pig killing and eating a human is morally neutral, I'd put it in the same bucket as a human falling off a step ladder, I have no reason to believe that the pig thinks humans are moral actors it should consider in a system of ethics.
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#158They're probably smart enough that we could train them to farm each other . Split them into two groups, give them limited food, and make them duke it out in underwater coliseums. Winners get to raise the next generation, losers become sushi :( Hell, attach some livestreaming, raise some money, sic a few LLMs on them... we can probably learn to talk to them in a decade, teach them to ride dolphins, then invite them on…
> Winners get to raise the next generation, losers become sushi :( If I'm not mistaken, in Spain some bullfighting events that involve matadors killing bulls for entertainment also end up supplying the dead bulls to local restaurants to serve them to tourists. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/01/746659693/th...
"It's a tough meat," says Anta. "We cut the meat ourselves, then cook it with red wine overnight, and then it's stewed for four hours before we can serve it."
Interesting, but I bet it’s no bull when they say el toro is tough. I don’t know the average age of the toro but generally you don’t want the animal to be full of adrenaline and flight/fight hormones as it makes the meat taste weird and tough. At least that’s what it says in our homestead books.
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
South pole. Penguins life in Antarctica and regions thereabouts while polar bears live in the Arctic.
It's like Himalayan sea salt. It's just marketing jargon.
Buffalo wings, white chocolate, spotted dick, monkey bread, impossible meat, and the worst: Kraft Parmesan (it’s actually saw dust, partly).
Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
My only rationale for why it's OK for me to eat pigs is that the pigs would definitely eat me if the opportunity arose, and in this respect they are different from say, cows, or indeed octopuses, which show no inclination to consume human meat. If you (as sometimes happens to farmers) drop dead in a pig sty after not long the pigs will eat you because you're food and they're hungry.
This argument has appeared multiple times in this thread, and I'm genuinely curious: if pigs' behavior demonstrates to you that their status is low enough to warrant their treatment, why does adopting that behavior seem like a reasonable reaction? Or would you find a pig killing and eating a human to be a morally neutral incident that, while maybe not preferable, has no ultimate weight to consider?
I guess this argument also makes mushrooms ok to eat. Perfect.
In fact, there is/was even a mushroom burial death suit. https://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bod...