Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I urge everyone to resist the all-or-nothing approach There is no other moral stance where someone could reasonably say this. Veganism is a moral stance the same way as "racism is bad" and "abusing my spouse is bad" is a moral stance. No one would ever say "I'm trying to limit kicking dogs to just Tuesday-Sunday". > vegan straight edge kids on Instagram who sneak a chicken nugget when no one's looking. You're proje…
I understand where you're coming from. I assume you believe one bad thing is preferable to two bad things. It's the trap I was warning against. Degrees instead of absolutes. Personally, I am vegetarian due to ethical concerns, not dietary or nutritional ones. In my decade+ of being vegetarian, I have discerned the pattern that moral proselytizing is generally offensive to people. I think most intelligent non-vegetari…
World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
241–250 of 420 posts
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve heard this called the “one bad day” approach. The animals have a good life with only one bad day. In my opinion it’s probably the most ethical way to keep animals if the intent is to slaughter them at some point.
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 pain…
In just about every way possible that death is a world apart from what we do to most animals we eat. What we have deemed "humane" slaughter is really nothing else than an attempt to make the word humane devoid of all meaning. I stopped eating meat after seeing how a cow and some pigs from the local organic farm (held as a poster child by the meat industry in my country) were slaughtered.
They were afraid from the first second. The pigs lost consciousness while grasping for air in panic in a co2 gas chamber.
It was awful and nothing short of a disgrace.
New laws and policies promoted by the meat industry has now made inquisitions like mine impossible. All of this happens behind closed doors. I will never trust the industry to fix this. They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into treating animals with respect.
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#244Honestly we need to quit pretending that we, as humans, are something special as compared to other omnivorous or carnivorous mammals. OK we have more gray matter comparatively but really that means nothing. Some cultures eat octopus, some eat dogs, some eat cats, some eat cows, and of course some eat humans. And some eat vegetation. Do you honestly think those cultures sit back and question what they are doing and if…
Indeed it was a spark, but it vanished in an instant.
> Who really fucking cares.
I care, and if you don't, good riddance.
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gonna go out on a limb (hah) and guess that his winning strategy 9/10 times was "squeeze through thing you didn't think he could squeeze through."
That's part of it but he had an ability to break locks and dismantle constructs with ease. I realized after a while he paid immense attention to how we installed every new addition to his habitat and then would seemingly aim to deconstruct our creations using the knowledge he picked up from our installation work. I truly am in awe of these creatures, especially after one of the long time Shedd workers told me that th…
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#246Earlier 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.
Processed food weather it is vegan or carnist is always more expensive but fruit, vegetables, lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, grains etc are all actually very very cheap compared to meat and diary in a western diet.
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#247I've had several people in my life tell me after more intense studies of octopi they refuse to eat them. While I've seen a couple of documentaries on the subject, I won't profess to know as much, but the essential argument has been that they're extremely intelligent, emotional animals. It's akin to eating a dog or cat (which might be acceptable in some parts of the world, but pretty shunned in the west). It's convinc…
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#248I've had several people in my life tell me after more intense studies of octopi they refuse to eat them. While I've seen a couple of documentaries on the subject, I won't profess to know as much, but the essential argument has been that they're extremely intelligent, emotional animals. It's akin to eating a dog or cat (which might be acceptable in some parts of the world, but pretty shunned in the west). It's convinc…
Even cows are extremely intelligent and emotional animals. Did you stop eating them?
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are definitely people in situations where the burden of a vegan or vegetarian diet would cause much more harm to them personally than the harm an omnivore diet would cause. I don't blame people for the uncontrollable, and I don't know that anyone who holds a well-thought out position on animal suffering would either. Suffering is the superset of all suffering. My ethical heuristic is to make choices with an eye…
Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some stage my son was wilfully damaging plants. As part of the discipline to make him stop I showed him videos of plants sped up. It becomes a bit harder to deny that they aren’t the inanimate objects we perceive them to be because they are slow when you see them react to stimuli and they show what seems to be intent. Although it certainly isn’t a consensus opinion there is a real possibility that (given that the…
This is a lot of very commonly repeated speculative talking point soup when people are trying to rile up vegans. I'm not a vegan, and I'm not saying you're being disingenuous here, but if you use these lines to try and engage vegans at some point and don't get the level of engagement you're looking for, it's because this kind of both-sides moral equivalence between meat eating and plant eating is pretty common in the…