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Comment by arthurwinter | Hacker News Reader

I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans.

Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans can really think, or we just pretend to.

I stopped eating animals this year, after I finally realized how cruel the entire food industry is, AND how damaging it is to the environment.

If humans pretend to be more intelligent than animals, the minimum thing they can do is looking forward preserving and taking care of fellow animals that were not "gifted" more abilities.

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> If humans pretend to be more intelligent than animals

Sorry, what?

Humans are only capable of conceiving of religion and destroying the planet because they are more intelligent than other animals. I'm not a religious person, but it's a bit offensive to imply humans that believe in religion are less intelligent than canines, don't you think? And animals don't destroy the planet because, for the most part, they're incapable of it - many species frequently do things that destroy their ecosystem, they are simply limited in their ability to do it rapidly. It's not as though lions have a righteous crusade against depleting all the gazelle, or beavers against destroying forests to build dens. If they could amplify their activity by leveraging the intelligence we have they would oversaturate their environments too.

Your definition of intelligence seems to be moralistic, not empirical. Moreover it's inconsistent - I'm inferring that you don't eat animals now because you believe they're intelligent, and it's cruel. What's your opinion on animals consuming other animals if they're so intelligent?

Circling back to your opening claim: dogs do not think "better" than humans for any definition of "think" that primarily involves executive reasoning skills. Our prefrontal cortex development directly contributes to our superlative intellectual ability.

Cruelty depends on knowing what is moral and choosing to do something immoral. In this case, humans are cruel for knowing animals are sentient yet still subjecting them to horrible conditions and painful lives just to satisfy our pallette. The lion is not cruel for eating the zebra because it is necessary for its survival.

The cattle on farms wouldn't be off roaming the countryside if we didn't eat them. They just simply wouldn't exist at all.

Is unpleasant existence always better than nonexistence?

Put another way, would you make the same argument if the creatures in question were people?

Might it be moral to destroy all life on Earth, thus ending all pain?

This is always what I assumed a genie would do if you wished for world peace.

Yeah, that's the plan. Animals aren't ours, and we should not interfere with their natural selection.

Humans are the animal that have the best shot at getting off this rock and spreading the DNA we all share to other rocks.

Two counterarguments:

1) self-sustaining space travel is more likely to be achieved by AI/robots, DNA or biological beings in general aren't well suited to space travel

2) Humans are the animal that have the highest risk of making the Earth uninhabitable before anything that can be self-sustaining leaves this planet

... and chicken. We'll need lots of chicken.

Takes courage to make such statements on HN. Kudos to you for that.

Humans are biased to view themselves as the most evolved, sophisticated and important species. A glance at the history of science shows this.

Slowly, we become aware of our bias and notice how damn lucky we are to survive to this day.

Ages ago, nature almost killed us off:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Geneti...

And in modern times, we almost wiped out our civilization many times:

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

We are lucky to be here. Gotta make the most of it. IMO a good place to start: to value the other surviving animals on this planet. You could travel 10,000 light years but you will find them only on Earth.

> You could travel 10,000 light years but you will find them only on Earth.

(sorry for the Reddit'ism, but:) This. That sentence is subtly and unexpectedly profound.

Imagine having developed interstellar or even intergalactic travel, and after having colonized multiple solar systems, we find that life isn't so rare after all, but the specific lifeforms on Earth were.

What if we find that each life-bearing planet has its own unique creatures, not to be found anywhere else in the infinity of the Universe, and we may never again see the creatures we wiped out here on Earth?

I agree with your overall sentiment. But just because there aren't animals on your plate, doesn't mean they weren't killed in bringing food to your plate. For example, published studies show that at least 25 times more sentient animals are killed per kilogram of useable protein when producing industrial wheat and other grain [1].

Not eating animals isn't enough. You have to find ethically sourced food. So ironically, eating meat from animals raised on pasture causes less animal cruelty than eating industrial wheat / grain-based food.

[1]: https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-the...

I think explicitly or implicitly, vegetarians try to not eat sentient beings, but the story is more complicated because there is a scale for that, with plants being at the bottom of the scale, and mice further up the scale, and then cows, and finally humans.

So in this perspective, does the article you linked to really make sense?

So sentientism is a thing now? Just because one species thinks a little less than another it makes it okay to eat them?

(I am joking. Mostly.)

Why compare one macronutrient like protein? That seems like a way to spin the data to reach the authors prejudices. A better metric would be calories, because that's a better indicator of how much is needed to feed a person. Also it's a little unfair to equate a mouse killed in the field to a cow tortured since birth and then slaughtered and possibly skinned and gutted alive.

Animals aren't "eco-friendly" because they're intelligent; if they're eco-friendly at all, it's because they're too dumb to do otherwise. Many animals (cf invasive species) are extremly destructive.

Many animals exhibit a much greater degree of tribalism than humans. Consider wild canid species like wolves. Tribalism in humans isn't "made up" either, it makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective even if it's possibly not as useful today.

While I agree with some parts, the overall message sounds like a pseudoscience.

Only because you have negative feelings toward some people and some actions - you cannot compare this to the whole society. The problem is with the system that allows bad people to be in power. Not with the society in general.

While the world is not in the best shape, it is not a disaster as well. Show me any other invasive species that will on purpose creating areas, where animals, with no use to us, are protected and can live freely.

Your message literally categorizes all people, even the good ones. Apocalyptic thinking like that can do only bad, not good. I would suggest for you to look at the good things that we do as well. Center your position a bit and hear both sides of the story.

As of not eating meat. There are ways to eat meat that is not from the "cruel industry". Supporting small, local farmers can help the local community and allow you to eat healthily and animals that have roamed freely and enjoyed their lives. But this requires doing some research, driving and time, which people do not want to sacrifice.

Such meat you mention toward the end makes up such a small fraction of a percent of all meat production that its almost not worth considering. Not to mention that such meat production is not scalable and would never be able to satisfy the current western pallette for meat.

While I partly agree I do not suppose all of sudden 50% of society will turn in to food like this.

This is a solution to all the people that have a problem with the evil food industry. There is enough for everyone. What I am saying, there are more than two options. Also, if more people would eat such a products and prices would rise a bit, I bet a lot of people would start using their unused farm land for such a purpose.

Also, I think it would lead to new "Amazon for farmer products" start-up arising.

What I meant to say is that it's infeasible to grow all meat free-range from an environmental perspective. Factory farmed meat has a smaller impact on the environment.

And my answer to this is the same as above.

First an anecdote. I was laying on the floor in my bedroom and my dog wanted to come in. I told her not to, she stood with her front paws at the entrance for half a second, did a 180 degree turn, body inside the room and started to walk in backwards. I'll never forget that.

I agree with what you say but have yet managed to stop eating them. They taste good. Hopefully one day I'll manage to grow some more backbone.

Whether they communicate or not, of course they do. At a different level, obviously. Who's fault is it for not being able to understand? Theirs because "we" are smarter? That's arrogant. Heck, we have trouble communicating with each other properly.

And... I can't remember what the other comment below was talking about and I'm going to have lunch.

To end, can't remember exactly how to search for it. It went something along the lines of "2014 Cambridge [something]". Where several scientists and other fellow people smarter than myself signed a treaty stating animals are conscious. If I remember correctly.

Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness#Cambridge...

> Hopefully one day I'll manage to grow some more backbone.

No pressure, but personally I spent a few hours watching documentaries on Netflix and I completely flipped from "logically plants are more efficient" to "I will avoid animal products as much as possible/practical". You may have a different experience, but it's extraordinary how much effort is put into keeping consumers unaware of where these products come from.

> if animals can think

Well, it is not an easy question to answer. First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways. This is important. Humans, for example, think mostly in terms of the language (words, phrases) - the way they would talk to other people (or post on Facebook, for that matter). Other animals do not do that. From that perspective, computers are closer to humans than animals. Again, this is an important difference that cannot be ignored. It would help if we had different words for these different levels of "thinking", but we don't.

Can you point to some to research on the subject? I would think it's not at all clear in which manner animals think, be it in terms of a language or not. Even for humans language may just be a layer on top of thought, and in fact there are those who claim not to think in any specific language.

This is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis if you want to do more reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I have a pet theory (hypothesis?) that infant amnesia is due to acquisition of language. When you gain language and start thinking in it, you lose the ability to meaningfully access memories made beforehand.

This theory is likely at least partially correct, mostly because of what we figured out from kids born deaf. I can't remember where I read this stuff, though:

It used to be society thought a deaf person also meant you had low IQ. The signs were everywhere. It winds up that sign language was the key to not having a low IQ. It is almost like you need to learn the language of your brain.

> First off, everyone would agree that humans, apes, dogs, squirrels, spiders - all "think" in essentially different ways.

I wouldn't, and a lot of the other comments on this story imply that they wouldn't, either. As an example, when I think, it's not usually in the form of words until I try to map my thoughts and feelings into a more concrete form. I'm particularly conscious of this because I frequently wrack my mind looking for the word that closest matches the thought that I'm trying to convey. The thought itself starts in a wordless form.

I can force my thoughts into an "audible" internal monologue, and I do when I'm reading, writing, or conversing, but it's a relatively forced way of thinking for me.

An insect's "thinking" consists mostly of following instincts and some acquired reflexes. There's (much, much) more to the human thinking than that, and there are a few levels of consciousness in between.

If you'd stuck to that in the original post, I would've upvoted and moved down the thread. I was replying to the stronger claims that things like other advanced mammals "all think in essentially different ways", and your characterization of the nature of human thought.

> and in most cases they think much better than humans.

>Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth,

>If humans pretend to be more intelligent than animals,

My brain knows this is just someone being snarky on the internet. But I keep running into this line of bizarre reasoning and I can't resist talking about it. I'm becoming more and more paranoid that someone actually says this non-ironically.

Obviously Charles Manson is more intelligent than a hamster. That's just a plain fact. Bad/good, warm/cold, bland/savory, smart/dumb - these are different spectra...

People are smarter than animals. This enables thermonuclear annihilation and so on.

A lot of people confuse their ability to engage in metacognition with some kind of global intelligence, and ability to fully control themselves in a non-animalistic way.

Needless to say, they're wrong, proven wrong for the reasons you've described.

While I appreciate your sentiment, perhaps we should limit our discussion to the cognitive abilities of animals, and not get side tracked into a debate about their sentience and the morality of killing them for nutritional needs.

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