World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

I think it's interesting that there are comments even here that say something along the lines of "once I learned that the octopus is capable of thinking I stopped eating them (even though I eat other animals much higher up the evolutionary ladder)".

What it says to me is that some people stopped eating them because it was surprising that octopuses have a complex sensory response system, because they never thought about it. But it's not surprising that a cow does so they keep eating them.

In a way, it applies to dogs too. I have the privilege of giving my dog a way out of pain: I can put them down. That decision rests with me, and ultimately, one day, I will have to make it. I may choose every day to feed my dog the best diet I can afford, I'll give her massages, I'll snuggle her, care for her when she's sick, but ultimately, one day, I know I will have the choice to spare her the pain of dying a painful death. In some ways, I'm jealous of that choice, as a man who has faced his own mortality before.

I'm definitely open to discussing the possibility when it's with someone arguing in good faith. It seems like that's where you're coming from, so thank you.

I won't bury the lede further. Plants can't experience pain, at least insofar as we conceive of it, because they don't have nociceptors that signal pain. Therefore, if they do have any sort of phenomenological experience, whether it would be recognizable to us or not, there is no sense in describing anything they experience as "pain".

There may be simple damage-avoidance reflexes, but comparing that with what it feels like to break a bone would be like saying that pedestrians and vehicles should share the road. The difference in quality is so significant that it makes better sense to categorize those reflexes as not pain at all although in service of the same tissue-protecting goal. My legs are not a vehicle I don't think.

A final point on the deficit of nociception, is that the experience of pain is so central to our lived experience that it's difficult to conceive of what that would be like. It's like the alpha channel in rgba... Without that signal for opacity, there's no color at all.

If the above is not enough to convince, there's some recent research that sought to systematize the analysis of sentience. Here's the 8 points used:

  1) possession of nociceptors;
  2) possession of integrative brain regions;
  3) connections between nociceptors and integrative brain regions;
  4) responses affected by potential local anaesthetics or analgesics;
  5) motivational trade-offs that show a balancing of threat against opportunity for reward;
  6) flexible self-protective behaviours in response to injury and threat;
  7) associative learning that goes beyond habituation and sensitisation;
  8) behaviour that shows the animal values local anaesthetics or analgesics when injured

As you can see, plants are immediately out of the running on the most fundamental point. As you continue down, it becomes more and more absurd to say that plants feel. There's no mechanism by which that would be possible.

I hope that helps!

Meet more people?

The gross statistics back it up. The average American eats about as much seafood as the average Russian, which is surprising considering one has ample fisheries and coastal areas and the other doesn't. Both countries are about mid-line per capita globally at something like 20-30 lbs (9-13 kg) per person per year (vs 60-80 pounds (27-36 kg) for countries like Korea, Japan, etc.)

More detail, if you look by locale in the U.S. the average Midwesterner eats something like under 1/4th the seafood of their coastal countrymates. That's not 1/4, that's again less than 1/4th so we're talking from zero to 7.5 pounds per capita.

Since population distribution in the U.S. is heavily skewed towards the coasts, you can estimate that for example, the average of 20lbs per person per year is representative of the average coastal person. This means that the average Midwesterner eats less than 5 pounds of all types of seafood per person per year or about something like less than 1 small shrimp per day.

The thing is, modern logistics make it possible to eat fresh Sushi in the middle of Kansas. Being away from the coasts isn't really an excuse as the availability is or can be approximately the same.

*sources: something something forgot to copy paste use the google or DDG it's like 2 minutes of searching plus some math

> once I learned that the octopus is capable of thinking I stopped eating them (even though I eat other animals much higher up the evolutionary ladder)"

Yes and this is exactly the issue here, that people in the world are increasingly incapable of being grounded in principle, its whatever in that moment is trendy to believe, do etc., through group thinking. Social media does a great job of trust in large numbers.

And going back to the original parent comment, this is largely cultural is it not? We are simply using the ideas that arise from one culture to impose it on the other only to be disappointed.

> What it says to me is that some people stopped eating them because it was surprising that octopuses have a complex sensory response system, because they never thought about it. But it's not surprising that a cow does so they keep eating them.

It is insane to me that the people arguing octopus lives matter essentially, are not seeing the irony of their reaction, that they would continue to tolerate the farming of foods that they regularly consume (beef, chicken) but not under the same amount of vigor and without the same level of virtue signaling attached with such dangerous thought exercise.

The craziest take away is that literally people will stop doing a behavior that is inconsistent with their own values, as long as they are made to FEEL informed. If the documentary was mostly powerpoint slides it is NOT possible to FEEL because it does not try to pander or manipulate the emotions of the audience.

The sad matter of the fact is that being informed with facts that you have to weigh yourself and reach your own conclusion is too difficult, (boring even!) that the individual living in the so called "First World" CANNOT/MUST NOT be burdened with because they are too busy with whatever ephemeral activities they are engaged in at any given time.

Remember! Original Parent noted eating octopus NEVER bothered him UNTIL he saw a Netflix documentary. Or one can reduce this to an outsider: Individuals in the West are increasingly growing dependent on for-profit motivated organizations to think and judge for them. The more obfuscated and difficult it is to follow the cui bono chain, the increasingly emotional and tribal they become. ex) If YC startup selling imitation crustacean meat was behind the Octopus Lives Matter, one would immediately deduce there are biases and conflict of interest and such narrative would lose credibility. However, if the distance between whoever benefits and the narrative is wide and uncertain (multiple beneficiaries) it becomes increasingly credible (must be of good non-profit social cause) and resilient against Truths that challenge it. Often explanations that deviate from the narrative are labelled with hostility and written off as conspiracy...

and on HN, such contrary views are quickly downvoted and censored outright.