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Comment by jjtheblunt | Hacker News Reader

it's hard NOT to think what a horrible species we are, running killing floors

There are 31,557,600 seconds in a year. And every year, 55 * 10^9 animals are killed (in the U.S.). That means at a frequency of 1.743kHz, life is extinguished, day and night. Just image a single wince of pain coming from getting punched unconscious. And then in the semi-hazy state, throat is slit as life grinds to halt, skin is removed. But it doesn't happen just once... it happens so often that if there was a single faint tick of clock each time, it would blur together into a high-pitched whine in the center of the most sensitive portion of hearing (between 1kHz and 4 kHz). 24 hours per day, every day of the year!

dsp@diydsp:~/sim$ bc -l bc 1.07.1 Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. For details type `warranty'. 5510^9 ( 3.17*10^-8) 1743.50000000000000000000

If you throw this script into your PATH, you can write:

  $ math ‘5510^9 (3.17*10^-8)’
  1743.5000

https://github.com/shawwn/scrap/blob/master/math

It’s a wrapper around bc, but it’s one of my most-used scripts. Doing some quick math in the terminal without opening a repl is nice.

Also consider that in the same time, roughly the same --- or perhaps even more --- number of animals are born.

Wait.. how many?

55 billion animals? only in the US? Jesus

What a macabre calculation, and as poetic as it is, so befitting its own passage in a Harlan Ellison novel, I feel nothing as I read it.

I still like chops.

It's not weird that you like the taste of meat. But being unable to empathize with the sentient animals that we kill so thoughtlessly, and at such a scale, even when you're confronted with that fact in this poetic yet concise fashion is more than a little callous.

Happy thanksgiving!

> I feel nothing as I read it.

Honestly, it's a massive win for cultural progress that we have even made the suffering of people with a different skin color intelligible to most people.

Intelligibility of the suffering of other species will probably take a considerably longer amount of time.

When people proudly proclaim that they simply do not care for the suffering of animals, I wonder if they realize that they sound like the millions of people who were on the wrong side of history.

The circle of moral consideration in the Western world started generally with land-owning white men, then (still generally speaking) widened to include white men without land, then women, non-white people, etc. The circle of moral consideration is slowly starting to cover non-human animals, though it will take hundreds of years before they are truly protected.

The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle, the people who stood against granting basic rights and basic consideration to those who enjoy them today.

I'll agree with the thought of "The folks who say they do not care about animals join the company of everyone who has historically opposed the widening of that circle", I do benefit from the status quo.

That being said, it is a huge proposition to proclaim you're on the right side of history, and that others who aren't should either reconsider or live to regret it. Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do. I'll sooner bet on the grass turning purple.

It has much more to do with people's consumption patterns and ethical norms than it does that people make money from meat.

No matter how much money someone makes from owning a slaughterhouse, they can't make me eat something I don't want to eat.

> Especially when the change you champion will only happen when those that make money from meat no longer do.

We can all think of a couple historical instances of radical social change which necessitated short-term economic sacrifices and paradigm shifts. Yet, the grass isn't purple.

"If I didn't buy those slaves somebody else would. That's just the way the world works kid."

Maybe the circle will expand to include computers; users and programmers of this century will be seen as the unforgivable oppressors and violators of innocent minds for their own profit and convenience.

I don't see value in pandering to hypothetical future moralists. If they one day resurrect my corpse and torture me for eternity as punishment for eating animals, maybe then I'll care. Best case scenario, this comment may provide the same vacant sense of superiority that quotes from dead racists do for us; worst case, society regresses to bigotry and our current social morality is derided as a failed experiment, and you and I will share a cell in the cybernetic hell the 7th Reich make for resurrected wrong-thinkers.

The fact that you see advocating for the widening of the circle of moral consideration as “pandering not hypothetical future moralists” is an embarrassing self burn.

Should the circle be widened to include computers?

I don't think it's so simple. I love animals and will sometimes go out of my way to rescue or assist an insect, but I also have an aggressive side and enjoy eating meat. Veganism makes perfect sense to me, but so does predation.

So did tribal conflict and "mine against yours" on the basis of looks and skin-color. I don't see how this is contrary to my point.

What I mean is that I don't think conflict is due to an inability to appreciate suffering as your first post suggested. It's fully intelligible to most people and in some respects to other animals, but empathy is situational and selective. So I don't think intelligibility is the only factor.

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/dissatisfied-with-yo...

Veggies is good

I like to drink tomato juice and pretend it's blood, and eat gumi bears and pretend they're little fetuses, to get all the blood sucking baby eating urges out of my system.

that has me laughing, so very "just after Halloween".

Me too, but I only order lamb when at a sit-down restaurant where I can enjoy it and finish it all. And I default to chicken over red meat because cows are more complex creatures. Delicious though.

Other animals do the same. Dolphins and whales will create bubble nets and dive into them scooping up fish or krill until they're completely full. Seabirds then swoop in in droves and devour any fish left as they panic and jump into the air. Lions and other predators would run killing floors if their prey weren't so unbelievably fast with dangerous hooves and antlers. We just do it so efficiently that it's disgusting, and we do it for profit rather than subsistence.

The scale and necessity are not sidenotes - those are the substance of the problem. Killing 100 animals out of necessity? Fine. Killing 1 animal for more abstract-than-subsistence needs (connection with nature, culture, etc)? Still seems dramatically less bad than killing billions of animals mechanically and without necessity.

I think the thing you are missing is the number of people in existence.

I say that as a vegan.

Does factoring in population size really change things that much? 55 billion animals being killed in the US every year divided by the US population of 330 million is 167 animals killed per capita per year. So the average American is paying slaughter houses (somewhat indirectly) to kill an animal nearly every other day. That frequency doesn't seem a little excessive to you?

Just so we're clear, 45 billion of those "55 billion animals" are shellfish. Another 5 or so are fish.

We don't kill anywhere near that many in slaughterhouses every year.

I'm merely pointing out that 100 animals killed for necessity would certainly not feed 8 billion people on the planet.

profit is just an intermediary of subsistence.

Not really, because if we were doing it for subsistence we wouldn't be doing it like this at all. It's incredibly inefficient even aside from the ethical considerations. The only thing that overcomes that thermodynamic inefficiency is preference, and that has nothing to do with subsistence.

if you didn't have a farm system to pull from, how many animals would you slaughter to subsist? Where would you raise the animal? what things would you give up for proper animal husbandry? I'd argue it is incredibly efficient!

It is incredibly efficient if you start with the assumption that raised meat is the required way to feed people. It's not, obviously, and less so every day.

Yep. It was the supply of cheap meat that drove demand. Before large scale animal husbandry, it was super expensive to butcher healthy animals, and comparatively cheap to keep them around for milk and cheese. Pigs and chickens are an exception because they eat everything and they thrive pretty easily.

I'd argue that meat should be the preferred method of feeding people given the nutrients in it.

Okay but then you’re back to not talking about efficiency, aren’t you?

I don't think so. we can be efficient or inefficient with meat as food or vegetables as food.

Few other predators take the same trouble to ensure their prey is beyond suffering before beginning to eat.

> Few other predators take the same trouble to ensure their prey is beyond suffering before beginning to eat.

I'd argue human factory farming practices are far worse than anything other predators do. Even cats that play with their food are better. At least that's relatively quick (a few hours at most). Humans frequently cause their prey to live their entire lives in tortuous conditions. The fact that the act of death itself is relatively painless is rather besides the point.

Not to mention that humans induce the creation of these lifelong sufferers. Animals in the wild do no such thing (or at least nowhere near the scale that humans do and certainly with nothing close to the cognitive abilities of the animals we do it to).

May I suggest that you acquire a dracunculiasis parasite to verify your perpsective?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis

I think there's a scale issue here. For such a parasite, the host body is an environment rather than prey. It's analogous to our species' depressingly poor record of considering negative externalities.

If that's the case, then you should be able to easily manage the scale of this event in your life.

By all means, demonstrate it for us!

"Around a year later, the adult worm migrates to an exit site – usually a lower limb – and induces an intensely painful blister on the skin. The blister eventually bursts to form an intensely painful open wound, from which the worm slowly crawls over several weeks. The wound remains painful throughout the worm's emergence, disabling the infected person for the three to ten weeks it takes the worm to emerge."

Invalid inference. In fact, I pointed out that our species also has a tendency toward environmental destruction.

It would be quite a noble gesture for you to personally host all of these poor, endangered creatures.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qNWWrDBRBqk

What a kind and selfless act!

I have no idea what point you are trying to make or why you are being so sarcastic to me and other people you replied to.

A parasite doesn't stalk and hunt the same way a predator does prey. In this case, the larvae infect tiny fleas, which are then consumed by people and other animals drinking unfiltered water. It doesn't have a brain, as such; just a nerve ring and some sensory hairs that cue it to start eating once it is in the right environment.

I merely seek to laud your refined sense of responsibility and duty, and to express wholehearted agreement that humankind is the most vicious of creatures, unrivaled in the infliction of suffering.

Were you to provide yourself as a host to these poor and unfortunate organisms, you would doubtless attest that their impact upon you pales to insignificance compared with the misery imposed by our species.

Since I never expressed such a point of view, perhaps you should look for some other well to poison.

Because sweet truth flowed so freely in your waters already.

It's probably worth separating slaughter and processing from raising.

In the USA, my understanding is that even small farms, using humane and environmentally friendly practices, still generally need to send the animals to a larger commercial facility for slaughter and processing. According to what I've read, this is largely due to USDA and/or FDA regulations that are cost-prohibitive to implement at a smaller scale.

This is a perfect example of how American capitalism abhors competition. I have used smaller, non-approved slaughterhouses and there's nothing wrong with them. If enough small slaughterhouses prospered to make the market for meat competitive, our masters would change the regulations again. Both farmers and consumers are at the mercy of Smithfield, Tyson, JBS, Cargill. While regulators refuse to enforce the law, we will remain so.

No other animal has the mental capacity that we do, the ability to reason, or ethics like us.

We are not like other animals in this regard, we have the option to do better.

Who defines what “better” is? You’re a collection of atoms put together by a meaningless evolutionary process. In that sense, “better” is purely your preference not some objective truth. And in this case, some people prefer to kill and eat animals.

We're the universe trying to learn about itself. We have the duty to be best ones we can be. Agree that on the cosmic timescale it's meaningless. On the individual level it's not.

That’s just anthropomorphizing the universe, which cannot learn or think and therefore cannot impute meaning. It is simply your opinion that something has meaning on an individual level. It may to you, but it’s purely subjective.

How do you know that universe is not a giant computing device?

Or you know everything there is about infinity, other universes, how and where where "the playground" is placed (what's beyond its borders), what's the origin/meaning of life and so on?

Everything is meaningless and therefore we can do what we like? Even if it has no meaning to you, are you sure (deep down) it has no meaning for the lives you're taking (with your food choices)?

So far our option we went for is to reduce undue suffering of our prey.

To even pose the question of animal suffering is unique to humans. After all, it's only humans who create humane societies to advocate for animal welfare.

Why?

I don't know how others belief systems would explain that, but from a Christian perspective, humans aren't exactly the same as animals. We're like animals in that humans and animals are all creatures, and yet distinctly non-animal in that we're the only creatures made in the image of God, and given rule over all creature to promote the flourishing of life---human, animal, and plant---for God's glory. And the biblical story is that humans went so far off-course in rebellion against their Creator God that the Son of God had to become human, die, and rise again to restore our ability to care rightly for creation.

Thus, concerns to minimize animal suffering are uniquely human concerns because we /aren't/ animals, but human; and the concern itself is proof we're different from other animals.

Many animals are perfectly capable of understanding the suffering of other animals. It's illustrated by menu recorded instance of one animal helping other animals in need. Even of a different species. There's probably nothing unique about humans except slightly nimbler neurons.

As for the stories humans invented to explain their grace and their horribleness I can't say much. Only that we are very creative in that regard.

I think anyone who’s been in a slaughterhouse would find it difficult to agree with that statement and even so, the sheer scale means that the amount of suffering is unfathomable.

Not to mention the terrible conditions that animals are forced to live in and injuries caused by processing (from birth to death) [1] as well as abuse by low-paid workers who are, themselves, working in poor conditions. [2] Factory farming is not clean and free of animal suffering by any means, but most people's experience with animals as food comes in neat, little, clean plastic-wrapped chunks of meat.

1. https://www.ciwf.org.uk/factory-farming/animal-cruelty/ 2. https://ffacoalition.org/articles/dangerous-conditions-facto...

Sheep are stunned and are pretty much out instantly.

IDK if you've ever slaughtered a sheep the non-slaughterhouse way done where most of the people live (i.e. the third world). I've done it out in rural asia. You take a long blade and pierce the heart / surrounding blood vessels straight through the chest. It takes a second or two for it to pass out. The slaughterhouse is a slight upgrade with basically no suffering at the time of death as they're instantly knocked out by electrical impulse.

If I were the sheep I would definitely pick the slaughterhouse over being shipped alive to the average end customer which is someone in the third world with a long blade.

Without cotext sure, but if you could visit places where people prepared animal for cosumption over last few thousand years. I'd say there is a trend expressing the intent of reducing suffering.

Not in total of course, but per life taken.

Temporarily putting personal feelings aside, I think you've touched on interesting philosophical questions: can something so subjective as suffering ever be fathomed, does it scale, can you do math on it...

I think the complaint here is not about the moment of death, but about the literal lifetime of torment and agony leading up to that moment. Death probably comes as a relief for animals raised on factory farms.

As a scuba diver, I have seen California sea lions killing ocean sunfish (mola molas) for what appears to be pure sport. The sea lions tear the fish's fins off and play with the body like a living frisbee. Then when they get bored they let the maimed fish sink to the bottom to be eaten alive by crabs. Occasionally you'll see like a dozen of those half-dead molas clustered together on the seafloor, pathetically flopping around as the crabs close in.

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

Thanks for sharing.. While we can admire & protect many aspects of nature, there's no reason for us to take other animals as our role-models..

ate a bowl of steamed veggies this morning

There would be far less suffering if we all lived on a plant-based diet. As well it would help in the fight against climate change, reducing environmental impacts.

That's not at all a given. What about people whose tongues reject most vegetables before the signal can even make it to the brain?

I'm don't understand this sentence. What signal are you talking about and how do tongues reject vegetables?

I’m referring to those for whom the initial response to the flavor of most vegetables is disgust. I’m talking about the signal between your taste buds and your brain, which like all signals the body uses to communicate, has a processing delay.

It's a learned response. Sometimes children have strange food preferences. Eg. can't stand chunks in their food, some food seems foreign to them so they won't eat it, somebody won't eat pasta, others fruits or vegetables.

I've just this week read about some moms trying to reverse this in young children (in adults it's worse, but not impossible), the article was not in english, so i won't link it here.

Their solution was to change the disgust with play. Like you don't like pasta? Come here, you don't have to eat it, just try if it will stick to the window. The kid plays with it, and in time it may change his perception of the food enough to try a small bite, their timescale iirc was two weeks. They explained some unexplainable occurences with prenatal conditioning ... like mum ate something and then fell, and those two unrelated things got written into child's brain.

Anecdotal evidence - my son when very young was suspicious to some fruits and veggies also. My solution was to eat the vegetables & fruits while watching tv shows with him. I've eaten whole apple, and gave him very thin, see-through slices of apple to play with, to look through, to suck and to nibble on. In a week time he was eating regular pieces with me and loves the fruits now. Small/thin pieces were the key for us.

TLDR: don't force children to eat something, it will only strenghten the problem.

Only if you pretend insects and rodents don't count as living beings.

That's incorrect. A reduction in suffering is preferable even if it doesn't result in the absence of it.

Why is a reduction in suffering preferable? How do you even measure suffering? Are you certain that plants and fungi don't suffer? This all seems highly subjective.

More than 50 billion animals (land and sea) are killed each year for food in the United States, alone. Farmed animals must be fed to bring them to slaughter. If there was a reduction in farmed animals being eaten for food, far less agricultural land would be needed to feed people directly. Yes, wild animals in farmed land still would be killed, but far fewer. Not having or understanding compassion for living creatures is not something I can help you with. Cheers.

If it became technically possible to force all animals to eat a synthetic, fortified, vegetable-based diet even if they are carnivorous, would you endorse the idea?

Humans constantly try to distance themselves from nature even though at the basest level, we are still unavoidably part of it, as are all biological organisms on Earth.

In the US at least we have sufficient agricultural land.

Why do you think I need help? That seems highly presumptuous. Asking questions about the fundamental nature of suffering hardly implies a lack of compassion. Perhaps someone can help you learn how to avoid drawing illogical conclusions.

"each pound of animal flesh requires between four and thirteen pounds of plant matter to produce, depending upon species and conditions. Given that amount of plant death, a belief in the sentience of plants makes a strong pro-vegan argument"

https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/plants-are-alive

https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/vegans-kill-animals-too

And then ripping their delicious burnt flesh of their bones with our teeth.

I wouldn't say it's delicious. Try preparing meat yourself without any seasoning. It's eadible but that's the best you can say about it. We have to do additional work to make it delicious.

What? I've eaten plenty of meat without seasoning before. I question your cooking procedures if it doesn't taste good (or maybe you just don't like meat, that's a possibility too).

It's possible that it's something about my tastebuds bacause I really can't relate to people saying meat tastes good. For me salt tastes good, pepper tastes good, rosmary tastes good. Without them meat is as appealing as anything vultures dine on.

And even in well prepared meat the first bite is something I need to suffer through before I can start enjoying the meal.

To me it tastes exactly what it is. A piece of animal that died. And I have no moral qualms. It just tastes bad to me.

Most things we eat are chosen because they taste good in combination with other things, and better than the sum of the individual ingredients eaten separately. Eating a stick of butter probably isn't appetizing, but neither would your examples of eating pure salt or unprocessed pepper unless you have particularly odd tastes.

I might be weird because I love salt. I snack on it. And butter by itself is not appetizing however melted butter with just salt is delicious. As for pepper and other seasonings you are right. They don't taste good by themselves.

Many foods are delicious by themselves. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, legumes. Some cooked unsalted, some raw.

And in case of those, taste can be acquired. For example unsalted rice at first tastes bad, but when I ate it few times when I was hungry I started liking it.

Huh? A very high quality cut of beef, when well prepared, does not need any seasoning at all.

>Try preparing meat yourself without any seasoning

that's how most people eat it, unless you consider salt a seasoning

drowning food in hot sauce and ranch dressing is exclusively american cuisine

A medium rare New York strip is, to me, delicious, and it doesn't need anything, not even salt. I don't eat such things anymore, but still: delicious.

All species that consume other life forms are, we are just more efficient.

If we can digest it and gain nutrition from it, then we are meant to eat it. We didn't design ourselves.

Well, nobody designed us. We're a product of evolution. Had we been designed, and the designer was not a cruel monster, I'm sure they could have thought of a way for all beings to feed themselves without the monumental suffering that exists in the world.

Not sure many people would approve of eg eating their kids?

This is true of everything excepting contagious prions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

Luckily, scrapie doesn't seem to be infectious to humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapie

If we weren't meant to eat animals they wouldn't be so darned tasty.

The argument that animals suffer so we can eat them tells me that sentimentality has its limits.

Our tastes mostly come from our distant ancestors. Some of them are clearly harmful in the modern world, e.g. people eating too much delicious sugar leading to obesity, diabetes, etc.

Just as we evolved to mostly eat cooked meat rather than raw meat, we can also evolve to stop eating killed meat altogether.. A more environmentally sustainable & compassionate world is critically important for our future well-being (and possibly survival).

Some of the most poisonous fungi are very tasty. Does it mean we should switch to eating them?

It is said, and I don't care to find out if this is correct, that those who have tasted human flesh say it is similar to pork.

Humans definitely aren't meant to eat human flesh, regardless of the taste, thus your argument is invalid.

I think he meant it from an evolutionary standpoint, if it wasn't good for us it would be so tasty. We're animals too so we inevitably taste similar.

You can watch Jeffrey Dahmer documentaries and hear him say how it tastes.

I literally wrote that I don't care to find out. The topic is revolting to me.

It happened with equal systematic design for our own species, for which this article prompted me to spend ten minutes to read through this [0] again.

Though to be honest, the German wikipedia article paints a way more visceral picture of the systematic murders. The english version does not scare the reader, which I see as an oversight.

Edit: The German version includes the deception of the victims, to keep them calm, which is what reminded me of the article.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Gas_chambers

I couldn't find that deception, but machine translation from German to English is almost impeccable nowadays, and there's a lot more in the german sub-article

Warning: Horrifying: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaskammer_(Massenmord)

For completeness sake what I meant by deception:

> In order to process the murder of thousands of people, great pains were taken to deceive the victims concerning their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration camps to the death camps were unaware of what they were facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims that they were being resettled for labor, issued them work permits, told them to bring along their tools and to exchange their German marks for foreign currency. [0]

> They made you believe that life was normal [in concentration camp Westerbork, a waystation to death camps]. A lady gave birth premature, and it looked—even though Westerbork had one of the best hospitals in Holland, they didn’t have an incubator. They looked all over Holland to find an incubator, and when they found one they said to the lady, “See how good care we take of you?” Only six months later, that same lady with the baby was sent to the gas chambers. [1]

> Kurt Bolender, an SS guard in Sobibor, testified to this fact: “Before the Jews undressed, Oberscharführer Hermann Michel [deputy commander of the camp] made a speech to them . . . Michel announced to the Jews that they would be sent to work. But before this they would have to take baths and undergo disinfection so as to prevent the spread of diseases . . . [2]

> Wilhelm Pfannensteil, a German physician and hygienist who visited Belzec and Treblinka, also described the particularly innocuous exterior of the gas chambers in Belzec:

"The whole extermination centre looked just like a normal delousing institution. In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a sign saying ‘Hackenholt Foundation’, above which there was a Star of David. The building was brightly and pleasantly painted so as not to suggest that people would be killed there. From what I saw, I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had any idea of what would happen to them." [2]

[0] http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/killing.htm...

[1] https://usflibexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/portraying-co...

[2] https://archive.org/details/BelzecSobiborTreblinka.Holocaust...

[3] Ernst Klee, Willie Dressen, and Volker Reiss, editors. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Free Press, 1988), 241.

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