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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Although not the OP, I have a fairly strong opinion on this. In order of importance everyone should

* Make their own decisions on what to eat.

* Understand the externalities, exogenous, and endogenous process and consequences of their decisions.

* Take full personal, civic, and environmental responsibility for those decisions.

Essentially, as long as people are forthright, honest, and accountable about what they eat, where it comes from, and the ecological footprints their choices implicate, then have at it, eat whatever.

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Is this really how you feel taken to its logical extremes? Do you think humans should be allowed to eat other humans? Other live humans?

Eating is clearly a very personal thing, but it's silly to pretend that morality suddenly ceases applying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party These people were not evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Naked probably is evil but at least he's trying to repent.

If we're going to try to come up with a system, mine is simply (borrowed[1]): I like beef and broccoli, mind your business. I readily admit this doesn't cover every corner case, but I don't think there can be a satisfactory system that does. Many things have to be determined by context and taste, and usually aren't even worth thinking about if you're not in a position of power and responsibility over the lives of others.

[1] http://genius.com/Immortal-technique-beef-and-broccoli-lyric...

The third one, "full personal, civic, and environmental responsibility for those decisions" would include criminal charges and jail-time for the decision to eat a human as it would constitute murder.

If someone said "I'm comfortable with the legal consequences of cannibalism and murder along with the possibility that the person may actually kill me before I get to them" and they actually are held to those postulations, including say, life-imprisonment AND they still want to do it all just so they can eat human for supper, then sure, go for it!

In that case, your first and third statements certainly seem in conflict. You don't actually believe in any practical sense that people should be able to make their own (unhindered) decision on what to eat if you're going to punish them for it and prevent them from doing it again.

It's about understanding the costs of the decisions and accepting them.

If you say "Well nobody would be ok with industrial slaughterhouses or a number of other things" I say, "yes, that's kinda the point here."

Why would we care if someone accepts the costs or not? I find our justice system to be incredibly flawed, but ultimately we jail people because we (as a society) don't want the action they committed to take place. The mentality you seem to be espousing seems to ignore that for... reasons?

So if we're willing to say a specific action is worth jailing someone for the rest of their life, why shouldn't we say "This action is not okay and we're going to do our best to prevent it"?

This is a philosophical difference. I think adults should be at liberty to shoot themselves in the foot.

What you're describing is an extended version of the Problem of Evil. Also related is the moral and limitation of government itself (human chose to give up certain liberty for government).

Basically, free will (and the physical manifestation of it: liberty) is argued to be more important than the lack of evil. And you can't have realistic free will and liberty without accepting that bad things will happen.

No. I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of saying describing something as "okay" when it's anything but. The word has become meaningless in this conversation.

What about meat grown in a lab, so no being had to die for it.

...what about human meat grown in a lab...?

as someone who considers themselves an animal-rights moderate, I am 100% OK with lab meat. No sentient beings suffering = no problem!

That will happen. There will be two aspects to it.

Firstly, the wealthy (and then the middle classes) will have meat prepared that is genetically identical to themselves, and will serve it to dinner guests.

Secondly, one will be able to buy celebrity meat at the supermarket. The future equivalent of a Tom Cruise burger, or a Scarlett Johansson steak.

What if it is the actual wish of the people involved?

What if a person whose fantasy was to kill and cook another person met a person who fantasy was to be killed and cooked? Then this happened. What penalty should ensue for the (well-fed) survivor?

And lest you think this is some weird hypothetical, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes may enlighten you otherwise.

In this case it's a mental disorder or illness and I'd consider it manslaughter.

What about euthanasia?

Person A kills person B and B wants to be dead/killed.

Well, I'm controversial with some - it's still against the law in many jurisdictions so it's murder. But I consider euthanasia to be hugely unethical, so I'd consider it manslaughter.

I don't care if people understand the externalities as much as I want them to pay for the externalities.

I'm sorry, but this

>* Make their own decisions on what to eat.

is totally unacceptable when you're "making a decision" to enslave, torture, murder, and consume a sentient, feeling creature.

So eating human is OK? Killing humans in order to eat them is OK?

What some people are asking is if we should extend this to some other species, typically other apes (which share 90% of our genes etc...) and now animals with high intelligence (elephant, dolphin, octopus).

Our society has decided that there are a number of drastic consequences for cannibalism and murder. If someone honestly was ok with all of them including things like telling the persons' family and spending their life in jail for the cost of a meal, then that's fine.

Note that my conditions make people on the hook for everything - the treatment of the workers that prepared the food, the environmental impact of delivering it, the treatment of the animals constituting the food, the health effects of choosing what to eat ... all of that.

> If someone honestly was ok with all of them for the cost of a human feast, then that's fine.

Would you sing the same tune if you were the one that they wanted to eat?

I would be violently opposed to it of course. As I hypothesize is every other animal to their own demise. Maybe there's a moral necessity to veganism.

In what sense is it okay? What does "okay" mean? Responding to an action with a life prison sentence doesn't scream "okay".

Clearly. The point is nobody would do that.

I think that if someone was forced to have a pet pig for a while they'd probably stop eating pork or if they were forced to be a single mother living on minimum wage they'd probably fight on behalf of fast food workers.

My supposition is that people shouldn't voluntarily shroud themselves in ignorance for culinary delight but instead, should take full responsibility for all of their actions, at the dinner table and in all aspects of life.

>I think that if someone was forced to have a pet pig for a while they'd probably stop eating pork

Unfortunately, this is often not the case in my own experience. It certainly does for some people, but that course is by no means universal. And when the well-being of other thinking, feeling individuals is at stake, I'd rather not rely on this kind of approach.

This really worked in my experience.

In my family we often used to eat chicken and while eating them the only thing on mind was how it tasted and how it was cooked etc. Then my parents started rearing some chickens in their backyard. That changed everything. There were about 7 or 8 of them. As the chicks grew up, they could identify each of them and know about individual treats. They would call some of them by names and slowly their nature was becoming more evident. They still eat eggs but they eat chicken meat rarely at some social event. They cannot even think about killing one of the chickens that they have. Its just emotionally too painful for just food!

This really works i think. But you have to rear them in small numbers to get connected to animals and then observe the changes in your thinking. You may still have them for food but it would be a conscious decision which you would not take lightly, like considering it as some food lying around.

Small farm operations, including rearing a few animals for food, used to be the norm, and still is in some countries.

I definitely acknowledge it works sometimes. But it often does not. Even in your example, your family hasn't actually stopped eating chicken. So it really only proves my point. People continue to cling to their dissonance.

I actually have neighbors who treat their chickens like pets for several years then give them to someone to slaughter. They don't eat them but they're fine with other people eating them and they're fine with eating other chickens.

To offer a different perspective... I keep a handful dual purpose laying hens, primarily for eggs but after a few years when their egg production slows down I use them for soup. My kids come up with names for all of them and we enjoy interacting with them in different ways, but at the end of the day we all understand that the reason we keep them is for food. I don't get attached to them because I know that some day I'm going to be the one putting them down. I like knowing where my food comes from and being involved in the harvest. It would feel wasteful to me if I didn't eat the chickens.

I've worked in a slaughterhouse/processing facility, and I'm certainly not a vegetarian.

Yeah, I'm totally cool with that. Diversity is wonderful.

The thing I'm not ok with is people who pretend like they are the modern incarnation of St. Francis of Assisi while eating animals for every meal and having a bunch of leather goods.

Such people aren't saintly patrons of the animals and they should come to terms with it. It's really just about honesty.

This is a cop out...

Would you be ok with changing legislation so that it is ok to kill humans as long as it is to eat them.

This is what people are discussing here, should we legislate against killilling animals with "high intelligence" and those who share more genes with us than with any other animal, as long as it is for food?

No of course not.

The positions I outlined are my justification for my personal goals of radical sustainability and veganism.

I understand when people aren't like me so long as they are OK with the full duty cycle of their personal decisions

I am not trying to be snarky, and honestly don't know what you mean. Does "In order of importance" mean "from most to least important", or "from least to most important"? (Probably it's just my deficiency; I am so used to seeing 'increasing' or 'decreasing' that I don't know which one is implicitly meant.)

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