Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

I don't even eat meat but I find it difficult to be angry about this when at the same time at home we have millions (billions?) of farm animals live in absolutely terrible conditions. Reminds me a little of the outrage in CA about horse meat. There are plenty of people who think eating horse meat is morally wrong while at the same time they eat some salad with bacon on top. Why is a horse better than a pig? Certainly not because they are smarter.

The only difference I see is that whales are more in the open while the suffering of farm animals is neatly hidden away from most of us.

We should strive to treat animals much, much better but that should apply to all and not just to a few favored ones like whales while forgetting others.

I don't think this is a fair comparison because we breed these animals for farming, so technically we could breed as many as we need to sustain our habits.

On the other hand there is no way to breed whales. There is some finite number of them in the wild and we cannot actively endeavor to create more.

Commercial farming of farm animals will not cause the extinction of farm animals; commercial farming of whales will cause the extinction of whales.

" I don't think this is a fair comparison because we breed these animals for farming, so technically we could breed as many as we need to sustain our habits."

They still suffer greatly. Maybe a little extreme but by the same logic we could breed humans for slavery and say that it's OK because they got bred for it.

"commercial farming of whales will cause the extinction of whales. "

Not if done with proper quotas. It's not different from any other type of fishing.

Again, I don't even eat meat, but we should be a little more rational.

> Maybe a little extreme but by the same logic we could breed humans for slavery and say that it's OK because they got bred for it.

The day an animal can articulate that, I'll agree with you.

Until then such comparison bears no meaning.

That's wrong. What matters is the capacity to suffer. There are humans who do not have the mental capacity to articulate such a thing either. I'd highly recommend as it deals with such arguments in greater length. http://lockeanliberal.com/2014/11/02/what-a-conservative-col...

Suffering wasn't brought up. Just the comparison of being bred for food vs slavery.

So if I can't speak the language of my torturer, my suffering rightly has no meaning to them?

We also don't make everyone who can't speak our language suffer.

Historically, we do. However, we are able to communicate even if we don't know a specific language.

"The day an animal can articulate that, I'll agree with you."

They can if you keep your eyes open just a little.

So a retarded person would likely not be able to articulate that. Is it ok to murder them, then?

> Not if done with proper quotas.

And there lies the rub! People ignoring quotas are the whole reason this kind of fishing needs strong cooperative regulation.

> It's not different from any other type of fishing.

Actually, it is categorically different. You'd be hard pressed to hunt salmon to extinction even if you tried because they spawn hundreds of eggs per female each year. The same cannot be said for any species of whale.

So it’s only immoral if the number of the animals is really low? Seems like an arbitrary trait to determine whether animals deserve to live or not

Extinction is a problem. Culling isn’t.

The implication of your comment you're arguing that allowing a species to risk extinction is somehow equivalent to breeding animals for slaughter as a food source. That a person cannot both be at ease with such farming of animals an at the same time, without contradiction, see value in preserving some other species from risk of extinction.

This is a rather obtuse outlook on your part. It should not be difficult to see that these positions on killing animals are not logically equivalent, or logically exclusive of each other.

Even forgetting about any concept of morality or ethics for a moment, from a purely utilitarian viewpoint raising animals for food isn't mutually exclusive with wanting to preserve the balance in an ecosystem in which whales play a part, and whose disruption could have far-reaching implications.

How many cows, chickens etc do you think would survive if humans all of a sudden decided to stop breeding and exploiting them? It's not like those animals can survive in the wild (unless, of course, humans continue protecting them and killing their predators).

All other things being equal, killing an animal that is in danger of extinction is worse than killing one which is plentiful.

Agree. But generally irrelevant here, since the minke is not in danger of extinction.

> we breed these animals for farming, so technically we could breed as many as we need to sustain our habits.

I'm not sure this justification works. After all, if someone started breeding dogs or African Greys for human consumption in the U.S. in a way that was sustainable, people would still be outraged by it.

In fact they find SUCH a difference between "pet" animals and "farm" animals that we ban horse, dog, and cat meat for human consumption. Because you shouldn't eat cute things or something.

In my opinion, the people who constantly bring up the point you are responding to know full well. Read the rest of the comments here: It's repeated over and over. "Why do we care about whales if we don't care about cows?"

And then people like me and you respond with this same response: "Cows are not going extinct." They don't want to hear an answer, they want to shill veganism.

I've made the same reply a few times in this thread, and both times my comments were down-voted and flagged less than a minute after posting.

edit: Am I saying these people are coordinated? Yeah. Absolutely I am.

Reminds me a little of the outrage in CA about horse meat. There are plenty of people who think eating horse meat is morally wrong while at the same time they eat some salad with bacon on top

There was of course an extensive horse meat scandal in the UK as well, but I didn’t encounter anybody at that time describing the consumption of horse meat as “morally wrong”. Mislabelling of products, fraud, and food safety - those were the problems.

I've seen plenty people defending horses and dogs as "friends, not food".

The issues with that is that different cultures have different expectations of what is a 'friend' and what is a 'food'.

The U.K. is next door to France where eating horse is common. Many if not most British kids will have at least tried horse on a school trip to France. The French also eat frogs and snails.

It is not that easy to get horse in France in restaurants (easier in Belgium) while you can buy it in supermarkets for home cooking, I doubt that most British kids have had it.

1/3 of British kids will have eaten horse meat if they ate meat at all in 2013.

I don't think the most effective argument against whaling comes from concerns about their suffering. Same with horse meat.

That would be persuasive to some vegans and vegetarians, but they represent a small subset of the population.

A much larger group will respond well to concerns about their extinction. I want my son, and someday my son's kids (if he has any) and their kids to be able to go whale watching. I don't want them to go to school and learn about extinct species that my generation wantonly destroyed.

Unfortunately, this common desire runs afoul of other cultural activities that a few small minorities want to maintain: they want to follow their parents, and allow their kids to follow them, in hunting and eating whale.

A question for you: the banana tree is at risk of extinction, many historical variants have been pushed out of existence by massive cultivation of sterile farmed varieties. Blight, disease, and other issues put this large population of identical plants at risk.

The difference between the whaling problem and the banana problem is that bananas don't have the ability to experience suffering[citation needed]. Do you think it would be meritorious to advocate for the preservation, cultivation, and careful stewardship of bananas?

"Do you think it would be meritorious to advocate for the preservation, cultivation, and careful stewardship of bananas? "

It would be less meritorious than reducing the suffering of animals.

"I don't want them to go to school and learn about extinct species that my generation wantonly destroyed."

They will learn about that anyway, whales or not. We are destroying habitat of a lot of animals.

Whether or not you believe that, there's also the objection about conservation: whales are definitely dwindling and those fishing them are making no efforts to renew them, and people don't like eating them anyway, so why not focus that attention on animals we've domesticated?

It doesn't have to be about suffering or intelligence specifically to still be objectionable to hunt whales.

>Why is a horse better than a pig?

I never knew this before reading this article(1), but a pig was put on trial. It ate off a kid's face. Was tried and hanged.

They lived among humans, eating our garbage and feces, and the occasional human or corpse, earning them a bad reputation.

Still is no comparison to what humans have done to them, and continue to.

I personally try not to eat them, in paeticular.

1-https://www.wired.com/2015/05/pigs-may-eat-crap-shouldnt-tre...

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