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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

> If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans.

If there’s a larger “food chain” on the interstellar scale where some intelligent species mass-consume others, would it be “good enough” for some aliens to farm humans like we do animals?

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It's all good and well to argue about it while we're at the top of the food chain. No guarantee that'll always be the case, though.

Sure. Though we'd probably mount an armed resistance to the idea, successful or not.

The animals on the farm are welcome to do the same if they don't like being farmed.

So you think you only deserve the right to live if you can resist me murdering you? What if you become crippled? You cannot resist me, armed or not. Therefore you are an old-time farm animal, mine to kill whenever I want.

I think that's an unhealthy stance to take towards life.

Yes. I've seen this alien argument used a lot by non-meat-eaters, as if it's some "gotcha". It is not. One can construct a sound and valid viewpoint that is consistent simply by saying that sure, I can eat animals that are lower in some quality than I am, such as sapience, but then if an eldritch alien with more sapience than me comes about, they are free to eat me.

The fact that animals cannot mount a resistance makes our practices even more grim and morbid, not better.

Might makes right is a poor foundation for any moral framework, imo.

This is satire?

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