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Comment by Eelongate | Hacker News Reader

"Feeling pain" has never been a particularly intellectual experience to me. Pain isn't some sort of abstract thought, it's a raw sensation that the harmed flesh itself seems to feel. When I step on a lego I feel it and flinch away from it before I even realize it. I guess that sort of reflex is what you're calling "experience structural damage" but I say it feels like pain.

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Except we can suppress those nerves higher up and you'll never actually feel the pain. And you can trigger similar flinching reflexes with a focused tap to the right spot, which is clearly painless in every way.

It's complicated.

It's not very complicated when you remember that seafood kitchens don't hire anesthesiologists to drug up crabs.

Listen, I'm no vegan, I eat meat and I don't condemn others who do the same. But "X animal can't actually feel pain" is blatant cope and I don't go for that. If you can't stomach the reality of animals feeling pain, then stop eating them.

> It's not very complicated when you remember that seafood kitchens don't hire anesthesiologists to drug up crabs.

Look, I'm just saying that a flinch isn't proof of pain. I'm not saying they don't feel pain, but if you want to prove it then you need better evidence than a flinch.

> "X animal can't actually feel pain" is blatant cope and I don't go for that. If you can't stomach the reality of animals feeling pain, then stop eating them.

My policy is to go for a quick maximally-humane kill if you're not sure. But that doesn't mean every single animal definitely feels pain.

So again, it's complicated. For example, naked mole rats famously don't feel many kinds of pain, and those are mammals!

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