Hacker News Reader

Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

Is it worse to kill something for food, or deny it from ever living? I think personally I think I would prefer to have lived and be killed than not lived at all. I also kind of believe that things have an essence, a soul of sorts. So eating any part of an animal is still repulsive on some level.

View on HN

I have no problem with killing wild animals for food. The problem is that it doesn't scale well for 7B humans. And who am I to tell the next human that they don't deserve a spot in the living world? To me, lab grown meat is a relatively attractive compromise.

Also, it's unclear what their process is, but it's possible that these are cells cultured from a handful of fish, not lab growth from new zygotes. I'm fine with it either way, though.

But you're setting up a false choice.

Our option here isn't "salmon exist and we kill them to eat them" or "no salmon exist."

Our option is "salmon exist and we kill them to eat them" or "salmon exist and live their lives in the wild unmolested, and we also get to eat salmon."

Widespread adoption of this technology would likely lead to more total salmon lives, as wild populations recover.

This seems non-obvious. How many salmon are farmed vs wild right now? Salmon is already protected and very expensive, so what's the potential for increase in wild population? 2x? 10x? And there would still be demand for "the real thing".

Farmed salmon incurs a heavy cost to the environment that surrounds said farms.

Demand for real salmon will still be around but it will be a rare delicacy, which is totally OK.

It wasn't a question about what's the best outcome for the environment. Parent poster claimed, "Widespread adoption of this technology would likely lead to more total salmon lives". Eliminating farmed salmon would be good for he environment, but it reduces the number of salmon lives.

Wild populations might not budge much as long as their historic spawning grounds up estuaries remain scarred by human development.

Is wildcaught salmon popular and available? I literally cannot find any - anywhere. Then again I'm in Denver, which is not well known for its seafood.

It is seasonally fished, and too early for it to show up. If your stores are sourcing it from California, it might show up in May, or early summer.

In 2020 fishing was allowed for wild King salmon on these dates:

May: 1-12, 18-31 June 1-6, 14-30 July 13-31 August 1-28

Sockeye salmon is all wild, so if your store carries those, there you go.

What is "it" from ever living. An stack of lumber does not make a table. The table doesn't exist until the wood is configured as such.

If this salmon meat is grown by replicating cells, then there was no "life" that was denied. Your statement would imply that it "existed" somehow before it came into some physical form.

Would you agree that you existed when you were just two cells? Would it be murder to travel back in time and kill the two cells that had the potential of becoming you. I think the current you would probably not want that to happen.

It would not be murder to travel back in time and kill two cells that had the potential of becoming "me". I don't believe in some meta-physical soul or essence, so there is no "me" in the two cells.

I exist today as a configuration of cells and experiences combined together.

If you crushed an acorn did you destroy a tree? Absolutely not... you simply crushed an acorn.

> If you crushed an acorn did you destroy a tree?

you destroyed something that had the potential of becoming a tree. Not really sure why you want to separate these out into two distinct entities. What would you consider an acron that sprouted a stem and a leaf? A tree or an acron? I think most people would see that an acron is still the same living being, just a different configuration of cells in a transitionary state to becoming a tree.

You are a distinct collection of cells. As opposed to your neighbour, who is also a distinct collection of cells, which is different from you. Every one of your cells is different than his cells, for one, because they all have different DNA than your cell's DNA.

Its fine to claim that you only exist in the present moment. But to deny that your past self also existed for you to exist now, seems a little discontinuous and meta physical.

Also at what time scale does your past self not exist. Since your perceptions are time delayed. You might stub your toe, but it will take a split second for your brain to notice.

> you destroyed something that had the potential of becoming a tree. Not really sure why you want to separate these out into two distinct entities

They are two distinct entities: the acorn in front of you actually exists as a collection of cells. The tree does not. The tree is an abstraction... a myth in your mind. It does not have any true physical properties.

Every egg is not a chicken. Every sperm is not a person. It has the potential, yes, but in the present moment an egg is simply an egg.

Typically these cultures come from biopsies of living animals. They aren't grown from fetal stem cells or eggs.

You would not be aware of your lack of life in the latter scenario.

Why don't plants fall into your "things that have an essence" category? They are alive. They communicate and work together.

I think plants do too. I wouldn't eat the last specimen of a super rare plant for example, and cause its demise forever. However, its a gradient of consciousness, and plants are below animals. Its not likely that they feel pain in any conventional way. Whereas an animal cell, was once part of a conscious being.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com