Comment by dorfsmay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dorfsmay | Hacker News Reader

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Which animal we morally can eat is a huge and difficult concept...

In some cultures eating horse meat is normal, in others vegetarianism is the honourable goal. Have you ever asked yourself why you eat or why you don't eat some animals? It is typically a product of the culture we grew up in, rarely the product of an intentional thought process.

Would you eat another human? What about another ape? An elephant? A monkey? A cat? A rabbit? A cow? Where do you draw the line?

I once decided that the "mirror test"[1] was my litmus test for eating or not an animal. But then as I looked more into it I realised that that test isn't as straight forward as I thought, lots of false positive, methodology issues (eg: some animal start passing the test after being exposed to mirrors for a long time). And the final blow was that most humans under 6 months fail the test and I decided not to use this test rather than starting to eat human infants.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

>Which animal we morally can eat is a huge and difficult concept...

I'd say it's rather simple, the issue is most people are unwilling to make the sacrifices required to live morally.

Given their clear intelligence and ability to suffer the ease with which people deny that animals are moral beings is disgusting.

Plants release pheromones when being collected, cut etc...[1] which some people argue is a way to express suffering and has lead some people to "eat only fallen fruit" [2]. The whole debate of vegetarianism vs vegan, is exploiting animal for food (milk, eggs) ethical? Some people argue that a pure vegetarian lifestyle is unhealthy...

This is why I am saying that one needs to draw a line, and that it isn't necessarily easy. It sounds like you made your choice and that it was easy for you, but that isn't the case for everybody.

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2013/12/secret-language-of-plants/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism

I fail to see how the possibility of further debate in the finer details makes the answer to your original question, what animals are moral to consume, less obvious.

Would you accept a plantation owner claiming slavery's immorality was not obvious because there were arguments to be had about the ethics of "wage slavery" etc?

>but that isn't the case for everybody.

This is a moral failing.

Where does the implication that other animals are moral come from? Is a wolf that eats pigs moral? If so, then why is a human eating pigs immoral or even 'disgusting' as you put it?

By moral being I do not mean they act morally but that they deserve moral consideration.

If this were not true why are we repulsed by the beating of an animal? Why do we invent such paradoxical concepts as the "humane" slaughterhouse?

Our moral intuition leads us to the answer but cultural norms and casuistry let us avoid it.

In my opinion it's quite simple. I eat what I would be willing to personally kill and butcher myself. I think trying to justify why 'A' and not 'B' to ourselves is somewhat unproductive. Two people watch a movie, one person likes it - the other dislikes it. Both can give their reasons for such, but neither is right or wrong.

Attempting to quantify subjective matters is arguably one of the big reasons so many of the social sciences are facing replication crises. There are so many factors in play that the quantifications, or justifications, we provide to explain social phenomena like this are not very meaningful even if we think they are! The most important thing is to be aware of the facts, so much as possible, but beyond that simply to take your opinion as what it is - a subjective view based on a complex series of mental interactions that even you are not fully privy to.

We all, all living beings, are eaten. Such is life. If might be sacrophitic fungi, earthworms, and bacteria, it might be a wolf, it might be a housecat, it might be a vulture. It will likely be a combination of them. But our big brains doesnt escape us from nature, we are every bit a part of the grand life experience that all life shares in. Our desire for a softer gentler life while noble, doesnt check us out in any way shape or form. It just seems nicer. The one invariant on this earth, is you will be consumed. If that concept is obscene, then so is all of life.

So if your neighbour is willing to kill and butcher a human being, you're OK with that?

What about another ape or an elephant?

I'm not really sure by what you mean "OK with that." I'm perfectly fine with people having views I find detestable. Going further there, I suspect if we were all 100% honest then any two people could find at least some reason to find the other detestable.

Is justifying the wrongness of slavery unproductive?

Was it just a subjective discussion with no right or wrong answer?

This is interesting as slavery is something that ostensibly has no room for shades of gray. So let's try it. Can you justify to me why you believe slavery is wrong? And to be clear, I am not suggesting that it is not - but rather I think you'll find that creating completely coherent arguments for why it is - without exception, is not as easy as you would think.

Widely eaten animals are those easy to farm. This limits them mostly to land herbivores, like cows, and water herbi/omnivores, like shrimp or tilapia.

The level of intelligence plays little role, as long as the animals don't use it to actively try to fight back or escape. E.g. pigs are no less smart than dogs.

I'll argue it is more complicated. Horse meat for example is eaten in continental Europe and Asia but taboo in the UK and U.S.

And on your point about pig vs dogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat

Indeed!

I just think thad dog meat can't be anything but an expensive delicacy, because to produce one unit of dog meat you already need many more units of other meat, to feed the dog.

This helps dogs and cats stay pets, largely protected from eating by human emotional attachment, while cows or pigs get pushed to the cattle sector, emotionally detached for food purposes.

Why not draw the line at consciousness? don't eat animals that science has proven to have IQ that approaches human 1-3 year old IQ, like parrots, crows, dolphins, etc. all other animals are fair game.

So we can eat humans that also do not have that IQ, right?

Thing about consciousness, in the philosophical sense that you clearly mean it, is that it is completely unempirical and therefore does not exist within the scientific model. I know I have consciousness because I experience it, I assume you have consciousness because you are very like me, you assume these low IQ animals don't have consciousness because they are not like you. There exists no objective measurement of consciousness.

yeah, but there exist objective measurements of ability. As in my parakeet objectively cannot be taught to read and understand a book, for example.

no, we wouldn't eat humans who do not have IQ of 1-3 year old, because we would recognize that they are human and don't have that IQ from disease or misfortune, not because of their inherent incapability of having it.

Why should that matter? Your philosophy assigns a lower worth to beings that have lower IQ, the fact that they are biologically human is irrelevant.

it's relevant. My philosophy assigns a lower worth to beings, who are not human, who have low IQ. I assign low worth to individuals who belong to low IQ species, not to low IQ individuals.

And I'm saying, why? What does it matter what species they are?

Your original claim implied that you believe this is because lower IQ equates to a lack of consciousness, which as I've already described cannot be objectively determined and is therefore a poor metric. If I understand you correctly, you are now saying that it's really the species that determines consciousness, which is equally invalid.

Either you are taking it on pure faith that certain species have consciousness and others do not, in which case there is little point in further discussion, or you are trying to claim that certain species are worth more than others because they seem to have a greater aptitude in certain categories. For some reason, this does not apply on an individual basis. How convenient for you, then, that these categories align perfectly with all the areas your species has great aptitude!

I invite you to consider this possibility: Your belief is not based on rational reasoning, you are just rationalizing your behavior.

you are engaging in semantics and sophistry. It can be objectively determined that cows are significantly less intelligent than humans, or even african grey parrots, or dolphins. I do not want to eat species that, as a species, exhibit intelligence level that is similar to human intelligence. The reason i wouldn't eat a dumb human is because I don't want to perform an intelligence test on every parrot or every human. Aggregate knowledge about the species is enough knowledge. You may say this is arbitrary, but to tell me I shouldn't eat a cow is even more arbitrary. Also, discussing whether or not I would eat a human is silly because I can't go to the supermarket and buy human flesh. So, let's keep this discussion away from meaningless hypotheticals.

If it is ok to eat less intelligent things then if you know for certain that a particular human doesn't meet the criteria (infants, for instance), why are they exempt? No testing need be performed. We know that the category of "infant humans" is going to have an IQ under your stated limit.

You are not making rational logical arguments. You have started with your preferred conclusion and are employing rationalization to justify it. Every time I show you that your philosophy allows for things you find uncomfortable, you move the goalposts.

Case in point:

>Also, discussing whether or not I would eat a human is silly because I can't go to the supermarket and buy human flesh. So, let's keep this discussion away from meaningless hypotheticals.

This is a copout that means "I am afraid of what my philosophy actually means, so let's just ignore it". You could easily acquire and consume an infant if you wanted. There'd be severe consequences for doing so, of course, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. People do do it. None of that is relevant to the question of whether or not it is morally permissible to do so, now is it?

But you, you're not interested in making sense. You're uncomfortable, so you rationalize. Oh, it's not ok to eat infants even though they're well below my IQ threshold, even though it's completely possible, because they aren't sold in the grocery store!

Please.

Infants are exempt because they are not less intelligent. They are humans with human potential. For example, it could be the next Einstein we are talking about or Elon Musk. It is yoi who is not making sense. You are doing exactly what you accuse me of doing. I don't want to eat other humans for the same rational reason I don't want to mass murder humans - I enjoy being part of a functioning human society. To equate this with eating a cow just makes no sense at all.

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