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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

Are you suggesting we cull dairy cows to eliminate the tainted breed?

This is a funny line that I hear a lot as a vegan and it’s based on a misunderstanding. Veganism is actually quite pragmatic, veganism is not driven by saving lives it is driven by harm reduction. If I thought that the greatest harm reduction outcome for dairy cows could be achieved by a mass cull, I would support it.

Not OP but I'm suggesting we never breed them into existence in the first place

Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock how can you say this? By using this metric for a species's survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live. If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still alive, and will be for most of the meal.

>Given human survival often relied upon farmed livestock how can you say this? By using this metric for a species' survival nearly nothing should be allowed to live.

When considering an ethical question, typically one must have the "ability to have acted differently." To be grotesque: I may be justified in eating a dead relative to survive in some nightmare scenario, however its permissibility here doesn't allow me the opportunity to desecrate human corpses for pleasurable eating. Is it possible there was a point at which humans were required to perform otherwise unethical acts to survive? Yes, absolutely. Does that permit the same behavior when its necessity no longer exists? I wouldn't think so.

>If you think farming animals is bad wait until you see a Hyena eating the guts out of an animal that is still alive, and will be for most of the meal.

Hyena's aren't moral agents, they cannot consider the ethical content of their decisions. Even if they were, the bad behavior of one moral agent usually isn't a justification for another's unethical behavior.

hyenas or old human populations dont have the ability or opportunity to reduce harm

we do

farming animals is bad no matter what hyenas do, that's such a weird counterargument

I think the argument is that we have derived massive benefits from farming as a species that outweigh the amount of suffering we’ve caused in the process. I’m not sure I agree, but then I do eat meat.

Well, their argument is surely either "we benefited from X then, thus we should continue doing X now despite having other options" or it's "animals already do bad things in nature, so why care when we do it despite having other options?"

Neither of which is a very compelling position.

You obviously didn't even read the comment I was responding to or are misinterpreting my point so you can attack a straw man.

What moral questions are you comfortable using the actions of hyenas to justify?

How could this possibly pertain to the conversation you are responding to? Or do you just ask randos this question to make friends?

Oh I see you were the original commenter as well. Are you disputing the idea that you tried to use the actions of a specific wild animal to justify our treatment of animals? I mean, I get it. It's a really common tactic. I'm just confused by your surprise.

Why would you think I was the start of this thread, can't you see the usernames? A person said we should never have domesticated animals in the first place because it is cruel. I said that if being cruel to animals to ensure your species survival is wrong, nearly nothing deserves to live. You then took that out of context and made some bizarre assumptions about ethics and hyenas. You were wrong, and I get your confusion. Following these threads is hard. But it's okay.

It pertains pretty specifically to the comment I replied to. I'm not sure how that's not clear?

Since you don't seem to get the point, I'll turn it around. How many humans are comfortable causing the deaths of if you could go back in time and make sure no animals were ever domesticated for livestock?

Are you comfortable killing a million people? A hundred million? Do you have a maximum?

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