Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brownbat | Hacker News Reader

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Great reference.

I will note that he seems to shrug, especially in footnote 19, as if to confess that whether lobsters feel pain or merely express reflexes is basically unknowable, not for any lack of humans trying to figure it out.

He seems genuinely conflicted, rather than firmly opinionated, certain only that people should take these questions more seriously. Or maybe he's being coy, to avoid alienating the gourmand.

I'm curious if he hesitates to kill spiders since writing this article. Spiders are similar to lobsters. Spiders exhibit preferences. Maybe we should all hesitate to kill them. Or maybe that's just crazy. I don't know.

Incidentally, if you want to feel incredibly confused about how you balance empathy towards human and nonhuman things, including arthropods, (and robots, and sociopaths, ...) you should read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It's a short novella, it's culturally relevant, it isn't really captured by the films, and it artfully messes with your head.

DFW on lobsters: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf

(The PKD is pretty easy to find, no link.)

As a practical matter, you should hesitate to kill spiders (unless you live somewhere they are poisonous)

Households spiders eat all manner of pests! I leave mine alive, and almost never have insect trouble.

> Households spiders eat all manner of pests!

Fair, but that's a very different rubric than contemplated by the article.

If your take is strongly influenced by utility, you might not necessarily object to eating lobsters in the first place.

And maybe that's fine, just two distinct approaches to this question.

In fact, if you're concerned, like DFW is, about minimizing suffering for all things that "exhibit preferences," then maybe that's too broad. Maybe then you don't want spiders slaughtering a bunch of other insects, because they exhibit preferences in turn. And then... you become pro-killing spiders?

On the other hand, maybe other insects don't pass the sentience/sapience test, only spiders do, and everything's fine, and it just leads to Jainism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

But if you use the "insects are dumb" out, you eventually hit a more general carnivore problem. If you believe you have a moral obligation to avoid causing the suffering of animals for food, then what obligation do you have to protect animals from natural predation? Does the fact it happens in the natural world make the suffering less meaningful? If one believes the death of rabbits for food is a grave tragedy, does that imply a preference for coyotes to go extinct?

This isn't preaching, I'm not really sure what the answer is to any of this. Honestly I think your rubric is simpler in some ways.

>I'm curious if he hesitates to kill spiders since writing this article.

DFW committed suicide many years ago.

Why would you kill spiders? I wondered after reading your comment. I never had the urge or need to kill one; do other people and why?

I kill dangerous spiders in my home if I can't easily extract them. Harmless spiders are left to their own devices.

When I was three my family lived in Hawaii where “Banana Spiders” (large tarantula looking things) used to get into our beds at night. They don’t just crawl, they kind of hop about (or so three year old me remembers). So, to answer your question I have a standing agreement with the arachnids that inhabit my abode: I know you’re here and that you eat bugs, which I appreciate, however if I see you, game over.

You probably don't live in a tropical country. If you left spiders in your house alone, then within a week the place is filled with cobwebs littered with dead insects. Also, many spiders give you rashes even if they don't bite you. And spiders tend to attract each other.

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