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Comment by marliechiller | Hacker News Reader

One could, but with that argument it equates all life as being equal. If that is the case, why is it wrong to murder?

Personally, I can very clearly see that a cow or a dog is concious whereas a plant (if concious at all) is very much further towards unconcious than a human understanding of conciousness. Therefore I opt to reduce the suffering as much as possible.

I would hope if an alien species that was much more concious than we could comprehend were to stumble across earth, they would not cause us suffering and eat us merely because we are not as intelligent as they are.

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Your argument also hinges upon the lack of specificity in "thou shalt not kill" in extending it from humans to animals. Why is it wrong to murder conscious things but not unconscious ones?

> Therefore I opt to reduce the suffering as much as possible.

Isn't suffering an unavoidable part of life itself? If this is the aim, then we must immediately kill everything that is alive. That will end suffering the fastest.

> Why is it wrong to murder conscious things but not unconscious ones?

This is a bit pedantic isnt it? I would hope you can come to a conclusion which isnt borderline psychopathic

Yes, suffering is an unavoidable part of life which most organisms seek to reduce as much as possible. Given we all have existence bias and presumably dont want to end our lives prematurely, why would you knowingly want to increase it for others? I should have taken the hint from your initial response of "why is killing animals bad" that this would have been a pointless discussion. Why is killing anything bad?

>This is a bit pedantic isn't it?

This is an ad hominem fallacy. Mentioning it doesn't serve to invalidate the argument.

Anyhow, I think the point trying to be made here, is that you're arbitrarily drawing the line on what should be allowed to be killed based upon your own personal moral philosophy. What makes you the righteous one to get to dictate where to draw the line? Nothing but pure opinion (and that goes for anyone else too).

> This is a bit pedantic isnt it? I would hope you can come to a conclusion which isnt borderline psychopathic

If we want to find the truth, we must be brave and see what conclusions our line of reasoning result in. If our investigation leads somewhere too unpalatable, then no doubt one of the assumptions leading down the path is at fault.

> Yes, suffering is an unavoidable part of life which most organisms seek to reduce as much as possible. Given we all have existence bias and presumably dont want to end our lives prematurely, why would you knowingly want to increase it for others? Why is killing anything bad?

Couldn't this be from ignorance? The same way many people fear and avoid the dentist for a long time even though it brings them far greater suffering than the dentist would, couldn't avoiding death too be running away from something that is ultimately good?

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