The Metamorphosis - What is it like to be an animal? | Hacker News Reader

The Metamorphosis - What is it like to be an animal?

newyorker.com

45 pointskawera16 comments

> Thwaites had finished his toaster three years before. Now he was beginning to worry about the future. He was semi-employed and living with his dad. Would he always be a scruffy man-child? How would he earn enough to start a family? Was the making of toasters—or other wry statements on the absurdity of modern life—a good use of his time on earth? Thwaites asked himself these questions and observed Noggin as commuters streamed past. He thought it must be wonderful to live in Noggin’s eternal present—to smell the grass, the wind, and the water without worrying about the future, the past, the meaning of life, or the inevitability of death. How much simpler to be an animal!

This piece rather idealizes life of nonhuman animals. Animals must learn to live on their own, independent of their parents. Animals are moved to accumulate resources needed for reproduction. Maybe domesticated animals have easier lives, but except for pets, they eventually get eaten. It's just that they're less aware of all that.

Though you have to admit, being a pet (especially a cat or dog) must be a great life, especially if you're got decent owners.

No work, everyone tends to like you by default, free food and housing for life and various toys to play with. Arguably even more so for cats, given that their life comes down to 'do what they want' pretty much all the time.

But yeah, it must be a lot harder for non pet animals, and horrible for a lot of ones used as food too (especially in some modern conditions).

> Arguably even more so for cats, given that their life comes down to 'do what they want' pretty much all the time.

Have you ever lived with a female Siamese in heat? Not fun. Not fun for the cat, either.

"We'll make great pets, we'll make great pets."

In times and places where eunuch servants have existed, there have been happy eunuch servants and unhappy eunuch servants

> It's just that they're less aware of all that.

That's the catch though. That's the difference between humans and other animals. It's less about the actual experience of, say, learning to live on your own, than it is the experience of reflecting on the fact that you're having to learn to live on your own. Or that you'll, one day, be eaten.

Right. So what he mostly seems to dislike is self-awareness.

Self awareness is present in many mammals. Not just humans.

I'm not really sure how we can think of giant leaps in cognition when evolution never works like that.

OK, he seems to want less of that. Drugs seem like a viable option. Or maybe the right spiritual/religious beliefs.

This changed my perception after reading. I was skepitcal this grant money was wasted, but we do need to fund things that help us understand ourselves better and also enjoy/entertain us. One funny thing though was his quote:

> Really, to want to become a goat us pretty standard, he concludes.

Haha, I mean, is it?

Search do pictures of goats on New Zealand farms. Looks like a good life to me. Checkout the grass.

Goat curry, yum :)

Bit of a nitpick about an otherwise compelling piece, but both Rothman and the protagonist of "Elizabeth Costello" somewhat misrepresent Nagel's wonderful "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" (http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf), an article that is not intended to discourage sympathy with other creatures, but rather is intended as a criticism of certain forms of materialism. It's certainly worth a read itself -- particularly if you're of the reductionist bent that so many of us who read HN are, in which case it's likely to, at the very least, present an interesting intellectual challenge.

If you go to the Daily Mail report on the story it has loads of photos of him trying to be a goat http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3612748/Why-decided-...

If you find this interesting, do a google image search of Man Plastic Surgery Dog.

Warning: Graphic and way worse than it sounds. That is, if it's real.

Nope. http://m.hoax-slayer.com/man-dog-face.shtml

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