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Comment by rom-antics | Hacker News Reader

Why is a frog's life more bleak and meaningless than a human's life? We can't understand animals' thoughts, but that doesn't mean they don't have them.

A frog spends its time chilling in a pond and swimming all day. People pay good money for vacations where they can do exactly that. Sounds like a good life to me.

If I was a frog and you turned me into a homeless guy who has to go get a job at an Amazon warehouse to afford food, I'd use my newfound intellectual capacity to plot revenge on you and everyone you love.

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Ridiculous. A homeless guy is going to have a way easier and more comfortable life than a frog

He can just hang out in a makeshift shelter and eat whatever free food he finds. He'll be in way less danger at any given time than a frog would be, with a vastly longer and more fulfilling life ahead of him.

The issue is that he's not going to be comparing his current circumstances to a frog, but to other humans ofc, by which metric he's probably very badly off. I doubt our stereotypical homeless person is going to find their life very fulfilling even if it is longer than a frog's.

I mean, just think how you would react if you found yourself in dire straits and someone told you "hey don't worry, at least you are not at risk of being eaten by a bird" That would be a ridiculous argument no?

The "homeless guy" also experiences suffering, and experiences it more deeply than a frog.

Would you argue we have an obligation to turn every fruit fly into a human? What about every tardygrade? Bacteria?

When I visited Calcutta in the early 1980s, I saw limbless lepers strewn in the gutters like trash, covered in flies. I guess passersby did give them some free food or a couple of coins from time to time — but they were so despondent they barely raised their heads.

And getting eaten by birds. All life in nature (except of top predators like us) is harsh, brutal, and short.

Ah, but in that case would they mind it being harsh, brutal, and short? Given the configuration of their mind's hardware

On a side note, I get the impression most people just don't have a gut instinct for just how awful natural life is like for the most part

They mind it about as much as we do, judging by how hard they try to avoid it. It's silly to assume we're so different from animals that we're the only ones who don't like pain and death.

Bacteria also try really hard to avoid being harmed and killed, yet most people don't consider that sufficient for those living beings

I don't see how that's relevant to the question of whether frogs "mind" being skewered by birds, which is the question I read from your post.

It was a rebuttal against

>They mind it about as much as we do, judging by how hard they try to avoid it

If there's an example of something trying hard to avoid it that's clearly incapable of minding anything, then you cannot establish a certain link between the capacity of minding it and trying to avoid it

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