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World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

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Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#401

Post by philipswood »

FiberBundle wrote: post #214
philipswood wrote: post #198

Earlier 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…

> Although it certainly isn’t a consensus opinion there is a real possibility that (given that the nervous system specialises what normal tissues can also do) plants are considerably more “conscious” than we give them credit for. Yes, that is a possibility, but it's also an entirely ridiculous argument to make to argue against veganism. If you want to argue that the nervous system is just a more specialized version o…

To be clear: I’m not arguing against veganism.

It’s a choice I respect even if I do not choose it myself.

It’s a ecologically sound choice and does clearly minimise “suffering” according to some measures (given the choices available today).

I’m personally not fully convinced that it is a healthy choice for humans over their whole lifespan, but I realise that this is something that can be debated.

I’m genuinely interested in the idea that we don’t “get” plants yet.

I’m curious as to the personal response of vegans if plants we’re to be shown more aware than we give them credit for.

I’ve also hounded my “moral” vegetarian friends (i.e. those who choose it as a moral stance) with questions about what they would do if vat-grown meat where to become viable.

People are fascinating: I know someone who is against eating “wild animals”. For some reason, to her, farmed crocodile and ostrich are still wild animals.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#402

Post by laumars »

janto wrote: post #349
laumars wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a vegetarian and I still really hate that “if I wasn’t farmed I wouldn’t exist at all” argument because it’s really just an excuse to be shitty to other life forms. The fact is if you didn’t exist then you wouldn’t care either way, so it’s a moot argument. The fact that you do exist changes that, not excuses it. Or in other words: we are not doing other species a favour by eating them. It’s also worth noting…

If farming result in the existence of happy animals then the process definitely favors them. If it results in their unhappy existence then it does not favor them. The argument around doing them the favor of providing them existence relies on them having a nice life, until the day we eat them. It sounds like you are opposed to them coming into existence because it means they exist in existential agony. Also that physi…

> It sounds like you are opposed to them coming into existence because it means they exist in existential agony.

No, I’m opposed to stupid arguments where you justify being a carnivore because you’re somehow doing these creatures a favour by farming them. You’re not. If you’re going to eat meat, and I have zero issues with being a carnivore, then you have to reconcile the fact that what you’re doing is immoral for the animals but you’re doing it for your own personal survival. At least call a spade a spade rather than creating these stupid mental paradoxes where you’re the hero for breeding docile animals and then cooking their flesh.

It’s all about taking responsibility for your actions and respecting the consequences they have.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#403

Post by philipswood »

WaxProlix wrote: post #203
philipswood wrote: post #198

Earlier 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…

I like the continuum idea.

Given that we cannot not kill something to live yet, the current local minimum would be to live by eating some kind of cultured microorganism?

Something like cultured algae or a genetically engineered organisms that expressed suitable proteins.

Fruit might be an acceptable minimal choice given that it’s “voluntarily given” to some point of views.

Strangely the thought of engineering an animal to make a meat fruit seems repugnant - imagine an animal modified to grow flesh that could be removed with little pain and no injury.

Vat grown meat is an interesting thought - if we can pull it off.

Ultimately only something like molecular nanotechnology could free us from killing to live.

Alternatively modified human beings.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#404

Post by nefitty »

mlspector wrote: post #355
nefitty wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm writing the arguments and questions below in good faith. I'm legitimately conflicted over this, and I admit that I haven't engaged in any research on this subject. From what I can tell, the moral argument that you're presenting seems to boils down to the fact that we arbitrarily value animal life more than other kinds of life. I'm not saying that this is somehow "wrong" -- I'm bothered by the fact that the it's o…

I see where you're coming from. It's a failure on my part that I didn't make it clear that one of my ideals is continual expansion of our moral intuitions. It's also partly a choice to leave it out because it can become so unintuitive that it affects the basis of the entire argument.

Since you expressed openness to this dialogue, I'll share. When I really, really stretch my moral imagination to the point it decouples from practical logic, I find myself feeling spiritually reverent for the things that the mental abstraction "complexity" points at. I arrive at this by synthesizing a particular metaphor from Alan Watts with Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi's ideas on complexity.

In the same way an apple tree apples, the universe peoples. It also dogs, and weathers and softwares and cows. Of it emerge these beautiful structures, including plants. If I was capable of surviving the endeavor, cherishing and protecting every single one of those things that the universe expresses would be my ultimate ethical goal. I don't know if there's farther expansive rings of morality. I imagine I might be able to peek at some with the help of deep, deep meditative practice or other tools.

The thing that re-embodies me is the Buddhist idea of bodhisattvas. They are beings who have reached enlightenment, but then rejected paradise in honor of the work still left to do on this plane of existence.

That's basically the outline of my metaphysical beliefs.

Finally, specifically regarding pain and plants, I agree that we bend our intuitions to the experiences that make sense to us. My argument is that the word "pain" and what we understand pain to be, is predicated on a specific biological structure, nociceptors. To speak of pain without nociception is like saying the water in my hand isn't wet. They're enmeshed, dependent properties. So, if plants do experience something that increments the universe's suffering counter, which I leave as a possibility, we would have to imagine some other form of communication. Language and thought extrudes from the human body. As a consequence of that fact, there are just some things it can't capture, and attempting to do so places us closer to the choice: bodhisattva or buddha.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#405

Post by mlspector »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #372
mlspector wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm writing the arguments and questions below in good faith. I'm legitimately conflicted over this, and I admit that I haven't engaged in any research on this subject. From what I can tell, the moral argument that you're presenting seems to boils down to the fact that we arbitrarily value animal life more than other kinds of life. I'm not saying that this is somehow "wrong" -- I'm bothered by the fact that the it's o…

(Not the OP). In summary I think you mean that animal rights activists anthropomorphize non-human animals and they want us to treat them like we treat humans. They don't anthropomorphize plants so they don't care what happens to plants. Is that right? If that's your point, I agree and I think that goes a long way to explain why there are very fewer objections to eating insects, or why many vegetarians are fine eating…

Yes, this captures the essence of what I'm saying.

I would just add for clarity that I don't think that it's "wrong" for us to elevate life that's more like us, and so I don't think it's "wrong" for animal rights activists to behave in the way that you're describing. I only take issue with justifying that behavior by pointing to specific biological features, when to me, it feels closer to the truth to say that we behave this way because it feels right, and it feels right because of something inherent to the human experience. I believe this is an important distinction because it helps us realize that human experience is context-dependent, and so our sense of morality will be, too. (E.g. one could argue that it's less moral to eat meat now than it was 500 years ago.)

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#406

Post by mlspector »

nefitty wrote: post #404
mlspector wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm writing the arguments and questions below in good faith. I'm legitimately conflicted over this, and I admit that I haven't engaged in any research on this subject. From what I can tell, the moral argument that you're presenting seems to boils down to the fact that we arbitrarily value animal life more than other kinds of life. I'm not saying that this is somehow "wrong" -- I'm bothered by the fact that the it's o…

I see where you're coming from. It's a failure on my part that I didn't make it clear that one of my ideals is continual expansion of our moral intuitions. It's also partly a choice to leave it out because it can become so unintuitive that it affects the basis of the entire argument. Since you expressed openness to this dialogue, I'll share. When I really, really stretch my moral imagination to the point it decouples…

You've understood me perfectly. No counter-arguments from me; what follows are just some thoughts that your comment inspired.

> In the same way an apple tree apples, the universe peoples. It also dogs, and weathers and softwares and cows. Of it emerge these beautiful structures, including plants.

I love this framing.

> If I was capable of surviving the endeavor, cherishing and protecting every single one of those things that the universe expresses would be my ultimate ethical goal.

Whenever this thought comes to my mind, I can't help but think about the Christian idea the human beings are inherently sinful (I may not be getting this exactly right -- I'm not a Christian). As you point out: we're forced to "destroy" expressions of the universe in order to survive. Maybe this is OK, and their destruction is part of that expression -- or maybe we're inherently sinful, and the best we can do is damage control.

> The thing that re-embodies me is the Buddhist idea of bodhisattvas. They are beings who have reached enlightenment, but then rejected paradise in honor of the work still left to do on this plane of existence.

This is fascinating. I'll be doing some reading on this.

> So, if plants do experience something that increments the universe's suffering counter, which I leave as a possibility, we would have to imagine some other form of communication. Language and thought extrudes from the human body.

Fully agreed. Something I was trying to express in my first comment is that I find this conclusion perfectly acceptable (i.e. that we exclude plants from our moral framework, because of their incomprehensibility), but that it's important to recognize that it's grounded in our own ability to comprehend the experience of others (as opposed to something inherent to the "other" itself).

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#407

Post by cheese_goddess »

Azek wrote: post #389
cheese_goddess wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We generally don't kill animals "unnecessarily". We kill them to eat them. If we could eat them without killing them, we wouldn't kill them. We also don't kill them "prematurely". We kill them when it's time to eat them, or else to relieve them of pain. Also, since we're onto wolves, wolves will kill animals and not eat them (see "surplus killing" article on wikipedia). Conversely, wolves will often eat animals witho…

Is eating them 'necessary' if we can sustain ourselves without killing them?

I don't know. Is it necessary to shower if you can sustain yourself without it?

I'm asking because your comment is about the meaning of the word "necessary" but the same meaning should apply to every other human activity, not just food. But the discussion about necessity crops up about food, in particular.

Also, I understand that the comparison to showers might sound irrelevant to the discussion about the ethics of eating meat, but it turns out it is anything but. I don't want to preempt your opinion, so I'll leave it at that, but I'm not just making a glib riposte to your comment. Despite appearances, this is an important question: how necessary is it to shower?

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#408

Post by cheese_goddess »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #394
cheese_goddess wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, thanks for explaining what you meant, I didn't understand you at first. To be honest, I don't know what NutritionFacts.org is, exactly. I agree that most Californians, like most Americans (North and South) would do well to cut down on their meat consumption a bit, because it certainly looks like they eat way too much. But I don't think that needs to mean going vegan. Traditional diets from places like the Mediter…

You’re right that the American diet has gone way too far to meat, and eating a more Mediterranean or South-East Asian diet would be a big health improvement. NutritionFacts.org is a non profit run by Dr. Michael Gregor, who runs a YouTube channel full of health advice. He looks at the latest scientific data and shares it on his channel. Based on his interpretation of the best available data a fully vegan diet seems t…

Thank you for pointing those out. I'll have a look when I can. I have to say, given that I grew up on a Mediterrannean diet and I still eat this way I don't have a strong motivation to cut down on the amount of animal products I consume. I think this may be a nuance that is ofetn lost in discussions about eating meat between people from different cultures.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#409

Post by albedoa »

deutschewelle wrote: post #196
friedturkey wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like some freshman "free thinker" stuff. Your thoughts aren't anything original. Everything you think is a result of the input you've accepted. One day you'll grow up and cringe about this goofy hill you've chosen to die on. Or you'll continue aging and mock people for being "stupid enough" to read books and not getting in touch with their chakras. Besides, why should I let my opinion be swayed by an inte…

> Besides, why should I let my opinion be swayed by an internet comment? Yikes, well I tried to avoid this type of emotionally charged ad hominem remarks, it seems you took great offence, as if my opinions caused you to perceive it as an attack on you personally and you were swayed by it Well that is quite some hill to die on, have at it!

This is so weird dude. The simple ask is that you write a sentence that is distinguishable from the freshman "free-thinker" type, and your response is "absolutely not" lol.

Re: World’s first octopus farm stirs ethical debate

#410

Post by aurizon »

willcipriano wrote: post #96
aurizon wrote: post #18

It is interesting that Octopi die after laying their eggs - a 1-1.5 year lifespan in most, a little more in the large ones. I makes me curious if octopi went through a period of overpopulation(for their niche) that lead to many starvation - abundance - starvation cycles until gene smarts capped their life span - else we be up to our gunwales with long lived octopi they breed very prolifically... a die young cycle.

You'd think being able to lay eggs twice would be a massive advantage for a individual set of genes.

Yes, octopi are smart as well as prolific, with multi seasonal reproduction they would suffer extinction through over population. Even 2 seasons is a lot of new larvae in the seas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#:~:text=Octopuses%20ha....

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