Bug-a-Salt (2013)

was surprising to me that this got downvoted, but looks like that trend has reversed. I can only add that I would much rather use this to kill flies and mosquitos in my house than a chemical spray. It sort of works on wasps, but mainly just knocks them down and disorients them. This can be enough sometimes to get a shoe or something else to crush them. The fact that its a 'gun' can add some sport to it, but at the end of the day I use this thing when there is a pest in my house/porch that I dont want. I dont see anything wrong with that.

Because it doesn't require multiple Kubernetes clusters spun up on 5 different geographical regions for fault tolerance with 3 different vendors to run.

It works too well so people would rather downvote the advice for which kind of salt to use.

Why is the post about the morality of killing for fun getting up-voted? This community, at this instance in time seems to be against it.

A funny story from when I was younger ... there was a candidate running for County Commissioner who lived in my neighborhood and had a local auto-parts store. County Commissioners are paper pusher yet for some reason, as if his position mattered, someone asked whether he was for or against the death penalty. His answer was "regular or extra crispy". This was when the electric chair was still in use ... and there was one about 10 miles from where I'm sitting. I already knew he was a little "out-there" but this statement alone kept him from being elected. While we'd had three horrible commissioners, this statement made him seem "more horrible".

It's interesting in thinking about it that I've found this story more and more disturbing as I've gotten older. Being an introvert and being raised as a stoic german (by descent at least) meant that I've had to grow my ability to empathize through experience. My son was opposed to the death penalty before I was. I might even still have caveats.

I guess the assumption is you sweep up/vacuum afterwards. That is the way I handle it. It’s not a giant quantity of salt involved.

I prefer to use the idea that I am seasoning my home.

If, however, one is beset by insects and doesn't have many child visitors, the safety can be disabled by moving the switch to the unsafe position and putting a screw into the plastic next to it so it can't re-engage.

Isn't spraying salt over your organic farm counter-productive?

Maybe somthing like skycam[0]? That could have some gripper to just move snails into some container.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycam

`brew upgrade morality`

Everyone that is fully against killing insects has likely never lived anywhere that has insects.

I think also the flyswatter works because it does not displace air the same way that your hand does when you're trying to smack a fly with it. Flies can tell when something is headed their way because they feel the air move.

Not OP, but I share his / her perspective. My reasoning is that the act of killing is a serious and irreversible decision that should not in any way be trivialized. Furthermore, a full evaluation of the consequences of killing should not be deflected, distorted, or colored by something like amusement. Since killing is a necessary part of life (others mentioned vaccines, food production, and gardening below) it seems important to foster a sober and cautious attitude toward the act so as to prevent unnecessary loss of life; the "gamification" of death, even in trivial cases such as with the salt gun, does not appear to promote a sober attitude toward killing.

Essentially, my stance is that there is a difference between accepting an action as necessary and engaging with it as needed and making said action fun / associating it with enjoyment. I don't count video games as part of the issue for the moment since, at least currently, it does not seem like the characters and units that populate video games are in any sense alive. This may change, however, and if it does then I expect radical consequences will unfold.

My own answer is through rational empathy. You might not think much of small annoying insect, but it is still orders of magnitude more complex than anything humanity has ever built. Destroying such marvelous system just for target practice feels like being a dick, and I refrain from it.

It is a hard ethical dilemma and any line you draw will be arbitrary. Some people hunt rhinos, some catch fish or shoot birds as past-time, while others get sense of satisfaction from gunning down insects. I still condone pest control, but I draw the line at reasons like "for fun", or "because I'm bored", or "to feel more powerful". The intention/reason is important, because it affects the future. If you do it for fun, you have no reason to ever stop or to consider alternatives once they are made possible.

To answer another post, I think killing in video games is completely OK and something I often enjoy doing.

I'm also enjoying the tone you've set for discussion and I'd like to hear your personal views.

> studies seem to indicate that insects are not capable of feeling pain and suffering

All of the articles (e.g. [0]) I found in a quick search in response to this citation-free assertion suggested that the answer is more nuanced that that. I'd also observe that higher primates (e.g. chimps) that have pain mechanisms that are biologically very similar to ours can have a very different response to us. If you watch film of social interactions of chimps, e.g. [1], it's a fairly routine occurrence for an individual to apparently ignore injuries that would have a human screaming (e.g. a finger partially severed in a fight with a rival), especially if it would affect their hierarchical status to run away. So I wouldn't read too much into observed behaviour as an indicator of what is actually going on, at least for primates.

[0] https://reducing-suffering.org/do-bugs-feel-pain/

[1] https://monkeyworld.org/monkey-life/

Do you think that augmenting human brain to not feel pain would permit killing?

It kills. Roaches might take two or three shots depending on their size and your aim, but it kills.

I disposed of 63 wasps over a period of about 3 weeks with it. Can confirm that it kills at a range of 6 inches by blowing the body apart. So, usually it was two shots, one to immobilize and another to kill. Vastly prefer this to spraying chemicals around or having a dirty fly swat hanging around.

Also dangerous to inhale, so maybe not the best idea to be launching it into the air in one's living space.