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Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

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Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite literally wild. There is nothing quite like watching David Attenborough walking us through the absolute ruthlessness of the animal kingdom in his plummy staccato voicing. There is no doubt that had cows evolved differently they would be as torturous to their prey as any other animal. I think we can definitely do better, but I think it's equally clear that mother nature is not very opinionated on the topic.

This is an appeal to nature fallacy.[1] Every horrifying thing beyond imagination has happened in nature, including all sorts of rape, torture, murder, and infanticide, much of this by humans as a part of that nature. Does this justify humans in engaging in rape, torture, murder, and infanticide? This is a discussion of ethics, not what nature allows (which is everything possible within the laws of physics). [1] http…

I don't think it is an appeal to nature fallacy because I have no implicit axiom that "what is natural is good." The statement I made seems, to me, closer to "what is natural is." without a strong opinion on it's level of good.

Your argument is that we should re-write the the laws governing our reality, something we have only recently become able to accomplish, and something we can't necessarily predict the consequences of.

In a discussion of ethics (and physics) our bodies desire amino acids that exist in animal flesh and will provide us with reproductive advantage for acquiring them, something we (up until recently) must have killed animals to acquire. If you want to have an ethical discussion (I do because they're interesting) the physics of the matter must be spoken to or accounted for.

Pain is a physical concept. Social relationships are a physical concept (there are physical forces governing these relationships in our brains). There's research that plants can communicate damage or danger, is that a pain analogue? Is the fundemental ethical issue suffereing, suffering of those left behind (in social creatures), "theft" of future?

Then there's the equally (to me) compelling question that an animal would eat me if it could, from an ethical point of view, I think that gives me a right to eat it. Why does that fail under your reasoning system?

So far it seems like your axioms are that:

  We have power
  That power makes us responsibile
I am not clear on what you think we are responsible for

If we are responsible to minimize total suffering in a pragmatic way, why is it then not our responisbility to wipe out other creatures that cause torturous deaths?

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#232
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. The billions who subsist on seafood will now have to eat eggs, pork, beef. This will cause supply issues of those things. If you're a vegetarian you might be safe, though those too will be in higher demand maybe. There's also water shortages, see the drought that's drying up the Mississippi river. Without water we'll have less and less crop yields. We slowly had changes happen over 3 decades, then all o…

> "billions who subsist on seafood will now have to eat eggs, pork, beef" There is another possible outcome... :/

Yeah, no one "subsists" on eggs, pork, and beef. Subsistence diets are rice and beans. Anyone eating beef on a regular basis is living well. Like, kings of history well.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#233

I mean is there any mystery here? It's China. China doesn't care about anything except for themselves. Hundreds of Chinese fishing boats set up just outside of international waters in South America and fished everything in the area and brought it back to China. It's like a sick game of Age of Empires but millions of people are affected.

The fleet is big enough to be seen from space. Neat animation of some activity here [0] and AP story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB6-bAF9B8A

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which will likely involve not raising animals for slaughter at all, but rather things like Impossible/Beyond meats.

These have flopped. Most people who like meat want real meat. Most people who don't like meat don't want fake meat. The remainder is the market for fake meats, and it has proven small.

I actually like Impossible Burger. It doesn't take like a burger exactly, but it tastes good. And if you screw up an Impossible burger, it doesn't taste nearly as bad as a screwed up beef burger, which gets as dry as leather.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#235
post #3

Wow, those are some crazy numbers. Shocking it could happen that fast... what's next?

I'm eating as much delicious sushi grade tuna I can before it's gone.

Illegal fishing is an industry: https://globalfishingwatch.org/map

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#236

I mean is there any mystery here? It's China. China doesn't care about anything except for themselves. Hundreds of Chinese fishing boats set up just outside of international waters in South America and fished everything in the area and brought it back to China. It's like a sick game of Age of Empires but millions of people are affected.

The fleet is big enough to be seen from space. Neat animation of some activity here [0] and AP story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB6-bAF9B8A

As far as I'm concerned the countries impacted by those fishing cities should quietly torpedo them. It's a crime against humanity and if China can't support their own population with food they create themselves, they should cull their own population, not selfishly create famine for other countries by overfishing everything they can get their hands on.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... compared to other animals, of which some don't even kill you, before they start eating you... we're still better than a lot of "nature".

The thing is, there are a lot of horrible ways that people die. Cancer, alzheimer's, violence, crippling injuries, chronic pain and depression leading to suicide, war, etc. etc. Does this justify us enslaving people and torturing them (debatedly) less in a factory farm and slaughtering them at a young age?

You can get rid of factory farming without going vegan.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#238
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you assuming that the poster is hinting at China when his comment didn't mention the country?

How many states are there with access to pacific waters that could potentially have thousands of unregistered fishing vessels and whom a poster would be uncomfortable naming explicitly for fear of backlash?

Japan engages in illegal fishing all over the Pacific.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#239
post #158
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Veganism is the (only logical) future.

Or meat and fish from bio reactors.

Bio reactors would be nice, if they were already here. But they are not and for the near future might not be. We may lose the ability to repair the damage already done before they come.

But you know ... plants are already here. We could stop damaging the planet now if we'd manage to switch to plant-based diets.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the ethical problem? What kind of solution would there be? How would that philosophical thinking apply to other apex predators, such as spiders who poison and wrap their prey while they hopeless wriggle to death for minutes or snakes who suffocate their prey to death sometimes breaking major bones, or a cat killing a rodent for fun? Do we have a responsibility to intervene against other torturous predators, w…

The ethical problem is in causing unnecessary harm to others. The philosophical thinking would apply to those who are capable of entertaining and acting upon it. The spiders are obligate carnivores, so have no choice in the matter, and likely no concept of the issue. That said, I think your point about responsibility to intervene is actually interesting. There's a whole ethical matter concerned with this question.[1]…

> The ethical problem is in causing unnecessary harm to others.

What is a strong definition or test for necessity?

> My personal take on it is that we have a responsibility insofar as we have power over the matter.

Our ability to have power and therefore responsibility is a result of incredible amounts of time undergoing evolution that resulted in us being the beings we are today. Our interventions could rob other creatures from achieving similar levels of power, responsibility, or understanding. How does that fit in with your ethics beliefs? What if we created interventions to accelerate other animals abilities to "think empathetically." Do we have a responsibility to do that? What if it requires a natural process (applying natural selection to animals that do not display empathy/do not have empathy genes).

> If hypothetically we did have a way to end all suffering on Earth without fucking it all up, I don't see how we couldn't feel an ethical responsibility to do so.

What about the flip side, what if we could cause pleasure. Do we have a responsibility to cause pleasure?

What if we started taking animals and hooking electrodes up to the pleasure centers of their brains, and turned the machine on for the rest of their natural lives, while feeding them ethical nutrients via IV. Is that a philosophically good thing to do?

If there are no beings, there is no suffering. That's an easy answer. If we had a theoretical hyper-heroin that would function against all animals, we could drug every creature into a happy ending. Is that a philosophically satisfying intervention?

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