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Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

Ah, but the question is "is valuing all lives regardless of species ethically immature?"

Note that 'notRobot's "valuing all lives" is not saying "valuing all lives precisely equally" but rather opposing "humans are far more morally important" as per the abstract.

Indeed, great point!

The answer is yes.

Your comment is the opposite of what HN is supposed to be. You've taken up a stance, please explain your reasoning instead of stating it as fact.

Lots of reasonable points could be made to counter that opinion.

The question is inane, anybody who doesn't earnestly value the life of a human more than the life of a dog is morally bankrupt. And frankly, I think most who claim otherwise earnestly do not feel that way when put on the spot. Given the choice of dying young or receiving a porcine heart valve transplant, I am quite sure what damn near everybody except a handful of nutjobs would chose.

Repetition is no substitute for argument.

If only more people would be immature. There would be no COVID-19 and we would have much more time to tackle climate change.

Regardless of maturity, it's certainly computationally untenable. I wonder how many millions of bacteria I've genocided in the last few seconds...

No, that's not really the question - the question is whether kids can reason morally, which they can't.

And it's not that they value all lives equally, it's that they value dogs over humans.

It's more likely that the bulk of adults have stopped reasoning morally and instead go with socially prescribed conclusions. I mean, how else would you explain the killing if trillions of land animals each year?

Morality doesn't exist outside of "socially prescribed conclusions", it's actually a pure social thing, it has no other function, but to help individuals make socially acceptable choices.

That is a pretty bold proclamation. Still, the thought of killing and torturing an animal for your pleasure seems to violate ethics centered around reciprocity. You know, the old "do unto others...". Even if that rule is not based on something objective it still seems more axiomatic than, "Mmmm, they taste good therefore I have dominion."

kids can absolutely reason morally, they just don’t have all the scaffolding to support doing so well or coming to reasonable conclusions. kids even reason about the nature of the terms themselves (especially around christmas: “why do i have to be good? what does being good mean?”).

but the same five year old who is picking the 10 dogs over the 1 human is also grabbing their toy from their little sister and bopping her on the head with it and making her cry, so i am not trying to defend some notion of a developed sense of toddler morality.

Children can reason morally and do, they just didn't learn a lot of morals to reason with yet. Morals, i.e. what is good and what is bad, is something people never stop learning. Obviously learning moral values from cartoons isn't helping in situations with real people.

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