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Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

I'm not exactly sure why, but this makes me feel sadder than capturing and butchering meat in the modern not very humane way.

Just seeing these crabs with a history stretching back into ancient times, strapped in and needles inserted into them looks so awful. I don't want to believe it's considered acceptable practice in the modern era to do such things, regardless of its medical benefits.

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Yeah, seeing them lined up being drained is just nightmarish and barbaric. I thinks it's a good visual demonstration of how humans view the world: if we can derive benefit or profit from it, we'll exploit it.

I agree with you. Just as bad is what's known as Bile Bears. Humanity has a ways to go with treatment of sentient creatures. Intelligence or species is not the predicate with which we should dole out misery. Ability to feel pain is the only thing that matters. And far too many of the creatures we put through screaming existences are too close to our own hearts...conscious feelers. That's all we really are beneath it all. Do onto others as you desire onto yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear

I don't think it's even close ethically to torturing a bear. You know people boil crabs alive all the time, right?

I don't think this is a particularly good point to make. You're saying that since X happened and since X is worse than Y, we shouldn't care about Y.

There's been school shootings so single murders don't matter?

There were so many more deaths in world war two than in world war one, so WWI doesn't matter?

And this is ignoring the fact that your "worse" claim was based on your own personal ethics which is, at best, subjective.

People have a finite amount of time and energy. How do you choose what to prioritize if not by saying that some things are worse than others? They didn't say that some things don't matter, just that it doesn't come close ethically.

It's not quite the same thing, horseshoe blood actually has a real medical purpose.

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