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Comment by ryan_j_naughton | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes it is necessary. Pest control is inherent. We cannot allow mice, rats, etc to live in urban environments unchecked.

Mice are sentient, does that mean we should only use no-kill traps and then release the mice somewhere far away? Many urban pests have population numbers that are 50-100X higher per square mile in the city than they could sustain in the countryside. So if we could even theoretically capture them and release them in the countryside, most would die due lack of sufficient food, which also seems unethical. And simply releasing a pest on the other side of the city so it isn't bothering your house clearly isn't solving the problem.

Killing animals, particularly pests, seems like an inherent part of urban living. Is this unethical? I don't think so.

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To make it simpler: consider the lobster. It's not a pest yet still isn't considered above being boiled alive for no reason other than "that's what paw deid".

Slipping the phrase "consider the lobster" into a place where it was germane to the conversation made me lol. Well done.

There is some thought backed neuroscience that lobsters can't feel pain in the human conception of it because of the lack of a neocortex. I don't know how well that can be tested, but it goes beyond justifying it because "that's what paw deid"

A lobster being boiled behaves the same way a cow or dog or human behaves when being boiled. Seems strange to make the cutoff for acceptable treatment based around a wishy-washy ill-defined notion of "Can this thing that is very different than me feel pain? I promise I am not biased by the fact that I have vertebrae."

How is being derived from current understanding of biology wishy-washy? Reaction to stimuli and pain are different phenomena. If you’re stance is “we just don’t know for certain so it’s better to be conservative” that’s fine, but that uncertainty shouldn’t be conflated with actual reason when it’s just based on wishy-washy anthropomorphism.

Your claim of lobsters not being able to feel pain is wishy-washy because it's a convenient assumption based off of an oversimplification. "Invertebrates don't feel pain because they lack the specific machinery mammals use to experience pain". If you just stop there then yes, it does seem silly to worry about a thing that doesn't exist. However, what I've seen of the models suggests that we are far away from being able to confidently say we have a complete model of a lobster's nervous system.

We can’t yet even define consciousness so of course we don’t have a “good” model. But using our current understanding of the “machinery” makes more sense to me than basing the decision on whatever it is you’re vaguely referring to, otherwise I don’t see what stops one from going to full Jainism. If our understanding of that machinery changes so will my opinion.

You haven't really given much rationale beyond "they seem to react to stimuli". At best, your position that they have consciousness or feel pain analogous to humans appears based on intuition; at worst, on dogma. Neither is a particularly reasoned stance.

It costs us nothing to admit what we don't know and reserve our judgments until we do. Are you arguing that we not?

No, I've already stated that is a completely reasonable position. It was the main reason behind my decision to become vegetarian. I don't think it's no cost to everybody though and some people's health deteriorates, particularly on vegan diets. However, being conservative in the face of uncertainty is a different stance than claiming they experiencing pain. It also doesn't address how you avoid the slippery-slope argument. For example, we haven't proved plants are not conscious so how do you reconcile a vegetarian/vegan diet with that? For me, that's why I rely on the biological argument that started this discussion. I have a feeling many people just resort to their intuition. Meaning it's just the same position of convenience you railed against masquerading as principled, reasoned stance.

My personal choices aside, there are also reasonable arguments against it that I don't think we should immediately dismiss with hand-wavy anthropomorphic arguments.

I assume lobsters are capable of suffering because that’s low cost for myself and has the potential to be correct, but “they respond to harm like a human would” is surprisingly weak evidence given my own reflexes will respond to pain well before the sensation reaches my brain, let alone passes through enough of my brain to reach the level of conscious awareness — if it was otherwise, I wouldn’t e.g. remove my hand from scalding water or stream fast enough to avoid injury.

The same way an ant does as well.

I do a lot of hunting, fishing, etc....there are a lot of misconceptions in this thread. The head of a snapping turtle will still try to bite things up to an hour after it is separated from its body. Its body will still grasp and wriggle and flinch and react to stimuli 30 minutes or longer even after it is decapitated. It reacts as if it was alive and I was to poke it or stab it or scald it.

Hopefully most people can agree that when the turtle is flinching 30 minutes after death, it is not actually "feeling pain", despite reacting the same way that a cow or a dog or does. The argument that "it behaves the same as a cow/dog/human" is flawed. Anybody who's butchered a chicken or a fish can tell you that they can react as if in pain even after they are reasonably considered to be dead.

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