661–670 of 731 posts
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This line of argument also supports the extermination of all living beings because it prevents all future suffering. Think about that before you use it.
Morality doesn’t exist. It arises from the emotional responses of those with the power to prevent actions they disagree with or perpetuate ones they do agree with. Social contract theory.
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Wait, what? Are you saying that replacing a valve in your heart is "a fairly straightforward minimally invasive procedure"?
Yes, you can probably be in and out same day or maybe the next day.
I, for one, would be really really nervous about having a major operation on a critical-for-my-life organ and then going home. I would definitely want some close observation even if it's 'just' for 12-24 hours.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but what's so sad about this situation versus the past? In the past, he would have just died, but "what things have come to" is that medical technology has advanced to the point where he has a shot of making it another few years.
I think perhaps the wording might have confused you (and now reading again I can see why.) I was merely expressing sadness at the situation, that the man found himself left with no other possibilities. Particularly the quote: "It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice." By "things have come to" I didn't mean in society, I meant in his life.
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Wishing you had never been born is one thing, wishing someone/something else had never been born is not a response of empathy but rather personal guilt.
Empathy does not result in anyone trying to end suffering of another being but the own personal suffering they have through the empathetic connection, and thus they seek to end the suffering of others only because it causes them to suffer.
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I see it a bit different. Using your own sentence structure: "The line of argument supports the prevention of the existence of an undefined number of living beings to max. the quality of life of other existing living beings." The argument doesn't seem to me as simple as you are portraying it and I don't see where you got the extermination part from.
> the life of such pig would not even begin, which is a good thing The comment I was responding to said nothing about increasing the quality of life of any living beings. It only asserted that non-existence is a good thing. I made the assumption that they came to that conclusion based on the reasoning that a pig that does not exist cannot suffer. I made the extension that you can also prevent suffering by immediately…
this phrasing is really disingenuous. What I said was non-existence in case of farm pigs is a good thing. Try to make less sweeping over-generalized statements, especially when responding to people who aren't doing that
> I made the extension that you can also prevent suffering by immediately ending a life
oh cool thought, did you just bring that up to argue with yourself? Because no one said anything like that prior.
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Yes, you can probably be in and out same day or maybe the next day.
Reading between the lines, https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcatheter-ao... says you'll probably be there overnight. I, for one, would be really really nervous about having a major operation on a critical-for-my-life organ and then going home. I would definitely want some close observation even if it's 'just' for 12-24 hours.
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Yep, I've seen a few people chucking around phrases like "designed by nature" which are both wrong and confusing. "Design" implies intent before the fact, which is not the case. We, as a species, are not "finished" in any way or "more evolved" than other species. There is no destination evolution as such. We have plenty of traits that are not useful but also not a hindrance and so they remain. On the subject of coope…
>Yep, I've seen a few people chucking around phrases like "designed by nature" which are both wrong and confusing. That's me chucking that phrase and I am telling you there's good reasoning for it. Think about it. How do I differentiate between the human hand and a rock? Do I say: The human hand is a low entropy configuration of atoms that is very efficient at grasping things while the rock is a high entropy configur…
It’s came from the use of the word “design”, which is a loaded term in the context of evolution.
I take it to imply either a designer or a direction to evolution. Two things I personally don’t consider to be true.
I hope that doesn’t sound pedantic for the sake of it, that’s not my intention and I don’t intend any offence by it.
Without actually knowing you though I only have your choice of words to go on as to what you really mean.
In your gasoline example I would personally just swap the word “designed” for “evolved” unless designed is what you actually mean.
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It seems you are getting too focused on "to eat meat": in precise terms, GP never said "to eat meat exclusively" or "to eat only meat".
>GP never said "to eat meat exclusively" or "to eat only meat". I never said that either. It seems you are artificially injecting extra words into my statements. My phrase "to eat meat" effectively addresses all your technicalities. That is my intent and my meaning.
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> A lion could not domesticate a flock of sheep. It would just fall on the sheep and slaughter them, on the first day. What a simplistic view of lions. I agree that lions don't really have the capacity to domesticate a flock of sheep, but to suggest that they're mindless killing machines that would meaninglessly mass slaughter sheep the first chance they got is weird. They're complicated creatures with rich emotional…
Lions among other large cats regularly engage in surplus killing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing A local rancher lost a number of sheep to a mountain lion that apparently enjoyed surplus killing. After the first spree, the cat was captured, collared, and relocated but it came back and took out 11 more sheep plus an alpaca, after which it was culled by the state. Big cats are certainly interesting creat…
The Wikipedia page also has weak evidence for lions being involved in surplus killing. It has two footnotes. http://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/mbe.2018031 is a simulation, and the abstract (article is paywalled) of https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... only mentions “foxes, spotted hyenas and other carnivores”, and hints it may only happen when prey is easily available (as with a fox in a hen house, I suppose)
I think neither article claims it happens regularly.
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Pigs are really common in biomedical testing. They are physically a similar size and weight to humans. They also reach maturity in about 6 months. Much cheaper to raise than primates, and more likely to get approval for testing. My friends in biomed grad school named one of theirs cyber pig because it has about 30 different experiments ran on it before it was killed, and afterwards it was portioned out for further te…
Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature. Weirder how it can be said without a sympathetic or concerned response. I hope we can someday move beyond seeing animals as a mere resource.