The study didn't actually ask people to save dogs or people; it only asked people to SAY which they would save. In real life a person might save their pet over a stranger but might not say so in a study.
Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
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Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously if you feel this way about your pet you should find someone to adopt it from you.
>Seriously if you feel this way about your pet you should find someone to adopt it from you. You would let a person die to save your pet?
Why do you continue to keep the pet? Out of some sense of duty or shame of giving it up?
If someone told me they don't love their child but consider it cute I'd also wonder if they should remain the child's guardian.
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, but the question is "is valuing all lives regardless of species ethically immature?"
Note that 'notRobot's "valuing all lives" is not saying "valuing all lives precisely equally" but rather opposing "humans are far more morally important" as per the abstract.
Indeed, great point!
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, but the question is "is valuing all lives regardless of species ethically immature?"
No, that's not really the question - the question is whether kids can reason morally, which they can't. And it's not that they value all lives equally, it's that they value dogs over humans.
Children can reason morally and do, they just didn't learn a lot of morals to reason with yet. Morals, i.e. what is good and what is bad, is something people never stop learning. Obviously learning moral values from cartoons isn't helping in situations with real people.
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm going to go for the kitten, but I'm aware that I'm probably in the minority. I don't think I would be able to live with myself if I chose to save an inanimate object over a living creature. And there's the matter that I am of the firm opinion that art being damaged doesn't stop it from being art. It just adds to the story behind the piece. Also, I fucking love cats.
I thought this was a trick question, wouldn't anyone with empathy save the kitten?
To take this example to an extreme, would you allow the Pyramids to be destroyed in order to save one goat? A crab?
It seems entirely reasonable to me that some people would value an important cultural artifact over a kitten. However, I wouldn't expect ordinary people to choose the Mona Lisa over a human child.
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#86> Although they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized 10 pigs over one human Children are so clueless and innocent.
Perhaps children in our culture are "clueless" because usually they grow up far removed from the animals they eat. I wonder if children who grow up with farm animals, or in a culture dependent on hunting would feel differently.
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#87This is why we don't give a trolley license to 6-year-olds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
Lets not be too hasty on this. There are over seven (over eight?) billion (with a B) humans. There are fewer than a billion dogs. Pretty sure the answer is clear: prefer saving dog lives over human lives. Now, if it was chicken vs humans, of course, save human lives.
Now take this to another extreme, would you rather save the life of ONE giant panda or one hundred humans? I think all reasonable people will press the button to save the live of one giant panda and kill one hundred humans before you can finish the question.
Edit: Google says there are only 1,864 pandas in the wild with an additional four hundred in captivity. https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+giant+pandas+are+th...
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#88I got a puppy when the pandemic hit, since I live alone and figured it'd help me cope with the isolation. This is the first pet I've ever owned. I thought that I would be able to "love" it the way other people seem to. But I can't, and until seeing this article I almost felt like that meant I was sociopathic or something. Sure it's cute, but I would also have no hesitation whatsoever in killing it to save the life of…
Similarly my dog is about to turn 8 months old in a couple of days. Not the first pet I've owned but the one I've had the strongest bond with by a long, long shot. But it's anything but the cuddly type, on the contrary - largely indifferent towards people or other dogs but he will go into full murder mode if he senses a thread(not so much for himself but for me). I'm not sure what that says about me but I wouldn't trade it's life for a stranger's.
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#89This sorta lends weight to my hunch from watching hours of YouTube videos that mammalian toddlers have to learn to differentiate by species. Cross-species friendships between mammals from toddler to adult happen all the time in human-controlled environments, only in the wild is this more or less prohibited owing to adult animal intervention. Perhaps we can learn something about the reproduction of racial prejudice fr…
Wow. Your idea really inspired a few new thoughts in me. Is there any good books that talk in-depth about cross-species mammalian friendships? Any idea about mammalian->other kingdoms?
> Is there any good books that talk in-depth about cross-species mammalian friendships?
Looks like there might be some. You tell us when you've read a few ; )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interspecies_friendship#Refere...
Re: Children choose to save dogs over humans, adults chose 1 human over 100 dogs
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't buy this either. No-kill shelters wouldn't exist if that were true.
Maybe. Perhaps some killing is ethical. PETA (people for the ethical treatment of animals) has shelters and I hear they have very high kill rates, like >95%.
I would consider other organizations like Operation Kindness that have actual no-kill shelters. Personally, I do not like PETA, and would never have even thought their name in this discussion had they not been mentioned by someone like yourself. I get how other people might be enitced to believe in them as you pointed out Ethical is in their name. However, I don't put any more weight in that than MacBookPro is a professional device with its Prosumer specs (as I type this out on my maxed at 32GB RAM MBP).