641–650 of 704 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Venturing into the wild without good weapon is not a smartest thing to do. The problem I'd that weapons that can quickly and effortlessly kill the bear are often unavailable to general public.
...ordinary medium-to-large caliber hunting rifles are unavailable to the general public?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question here... but, are you sure that's a cruel method of killing lobsters? (I'm 100% with you on the pigs but here me out on the lobsters.) I think when you're evaluating killing methods based on how humane they are, one thing to keep in mind is that how something looks to the executioner is NOT a good metric. As an example: Consider the oft repeated anecdote about how being hanged is only "humane" if you…
This is a good question. I don't have an answer. I don't eat meat, never have, never killed anything in my life, other than mosquitoes. I assumed that boiling alive is a horrific way to die. As for pigs, I found the article https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-venti... That is from last year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>because they lack X they are not worthy of consideration. It’s okay if they suffer. This is precisely the same logic that was used to justify slavery, for example. Wowzers, this is the most strawmanny characterisation of this view I think I've seen outside of scifi villains in B movies. I don't think the most charitable view is that species "deserve to suffer." It's that they have different capacities for suffering,…
> ... we prioritize saving our children from a burning building in a way that we don't prioritize saving the mice living in the basement of that burning building The building isn't burning. We don't have to choose between our children and mice. You can live a full, healthy life while minimizing to as full extent as possible the suffering you directly or indirectly inflict on other sentient creatures. The argument you…
At least humans kill our food before we eat it. That is minimising suffering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting I should feel bad about squishing fruit flies?
You should maybe feel bad about how much time you are wasting squishing them, compared to using one of those electric tennis racket bug zappers. They clear a kitchen of fruit flies in minutes, while giving you a most satisfying sound as you send them to the great fruit fly beyond.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I honestly believe that at some point, the majority of humans will look at our system of factory farming and “harvesting” of wildlife in much the same way that today we view slavery, colonialism and other egregious examples of human disregard for other lives. I am not saying they are the same thing, but I do think that they are in the same category.' Do you believe that in our current world state we have some magica…
We apparently won’t be able to feed 10 billion in the near future. Because using 40% of the worlds landmass to grow plants to feed animals to feed humans is as inefficient as it gets. If we skipped the animals and ate the crops directly it would be far more efficient in every dimension (calories/area, protein/area, environmental impact)
And while it's trut that we can't feed 10 billion people on cows, that's also true for the fewer billions we have today: the most commonly consumed kinds of meat are chicken and pork, not beef. Beef is the most commonly consumed kind of meat in affluent western countries that are also home to the most vocal vegan and animal rights movements, which goes a long way to explain why many of the discussions about what we eat say "meat" when they mean "beef".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's done to pigs, chickens, and cows is a terribly low bar to clear. I suppose lighting an ant on fire with a magnifying glass isn't cruel because it happens quickly. Personally how quickly an innocent being capable of suffering and happiness is killed doesn't factor into whether I call it cruel. Morality might be subjective, but the alternative requires accepting that needless, preventable death and suffering is…
The vegan argument is definitely a legitimate one, and not something I was trying to refute. A lot of meat eaters have these strange ideas about what is and isn't cruel (the classic being "hunting is evil but eating farmed meat is totally OK"), ostensibly based on reducing unnecessary suffering but also completely devoid of hands-on understanding of what actually happens. I will disagree with you on this point, thoug…
So when people say they ind hunting "evil" but farming not, that's the general idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it really depends what the alternative is. If it's that vs living in the wilderness in a small family and no other support against the elements or vicious predators, that's not such as easy decision. Cows don't have a support system, society, government, or social welfare in their non-farm state. They just try to survive the elements and the environment.
> If it's that vs living in the wilderness That seems like a false dichotomy considering farmers aren't going out and rescuing cows from the wilderness and giving them the roof and food they didn't have on their own. An alternative is to not breed them in the first place.
More so, they protect those animals "from the wilderness" every single day. For example, in the farm I stay, we had some ten goats eaten by wild dogs in the last five years. The first time seven goats were attacked when they were alone in their enclosure. Now there's a guardian dog with them. The second time, a goat and her two kids were in another part of the farm, where the dog couldn't guard them and the wild dogs dug under the fence and killed them.
I say "killed", not "ate" because they didn't eat them. They savaged them and let them dying with their guts spilled all over the place.
Btw, what happens if we stop breeding farm animals? What's the plan at that point? Are we going to euthanise them all, release them into the wild to be eaten alive, keep them until they're all extinct? What does it mean to not breed them anymore, in practice?
I’m a bit surprised by the number of comments here basically saying if we can’t logically prove that X feels pain, then it’s fine to do whatever with it, or that if we don’t know exactly where the line should be drawn, then there’s no line to be drawn at all. Do you all always behave according to well-defined rules within a consistent logical system? I don’t think you can prove to me that you or your pets feel pain,…
People didn't think human babies could feel pain until the 1980s[1], and commonly did operations w/o anesthetic. [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/when-doctors-start-using-anesthesia...
One memory is that I hit my head on a rough rock when I was at the age of learning walking and little blood flowed through my forehead. In that time, I didn't feel any pain and was curious on why adults and old sister were so "nervous". In my view, they spoke loudly than usual and rushed to me. I didn't know what they were talking about but I could feel they feared for something.
Another memory is that I shot myself on breast by gas gun, and got bruise (I didn't notice that after I grew up and my parents told me). The age might be 2~4 years old. The same as first one, I did not feel any pain but the fear in adults.
ps: When I was 6~7 years old, I shot myself with air gun on arm again. This time I felt the pain. That was fucking hurt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was speaking against reductionism but while we are there, as your examples alude to, counting neurons to determine sentience is like counting GHz to determine computational power.
It's really not. Frequency is nearly meaningless as you can have as many computational elements as you like operating at a given frequency meaning it tells you nearly nothing. It's like counting transistors which actually DOES work even if imperfectly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If it's that vs living in the wilderness That seems like a false dichotomy considering farmers aren't going out and rescuing cows from the wilderness and giving them the roof and food they didn't have on their own. An alternative is to not breed them in the first place.
Yes, farmers do go out and rescue cows (and sheep, and goats, and pigs, and chickens) from the wilderness all the time. More so, they protect those animals "from the wilderness" every single day. For example, in the farm I stay, we had some ten goats eaten by wild dogs in the last five years. The first time seven goats were attacked when they were alone in their enclosure. Now there's a guardian dog with them. The se…
Really? How many of the 70 billion land animals per year slaughtered for food were rescued from the wilderness, as opposed to bred in captivity?
> Btw, what happens if we stop breeding farm animals? What's the plan at that point [for the ones alive]?
The ones currently alive will be eaten by omnivores. Because we're not going to all switch over to veganism over night. Ideally there would be less demand as people stop buying animal products, so fewer are bred over time and livestock numbers dwindle. All the farm animals currently alive are goners, unfortunately. I'm suggesting stopping the cycle for the future ones.
Btw I hear this argument all the time and it's really silly if you think about it honestly. "If we stop we'd have to euthanize all the farm animals. Better keep doing what we're doing, which is kill them anyway plus countless more each year forever."