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Comment by meyum33 | Hacker News Reader

At this point wouldn’t it be easier to artificially select for traits that make the chicken mind more tolerant of poor conditions? Like if we can have consciousless chicken then it wouldn’t matter the condition they grow under?

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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has you covered here, with sentient cows engineered to be ecstatic about the thought of being killed for meat.

This seems problematic in a different way.

It sounds way easier, to continue to pretend, that animals don't have feelings. And in general not know too much of the meat factories. Which is why many people choose this approach.

Also like the sibling comment said, not really possible with our tech and knowledge. Lab grown meat would be the way to go to achieve it.

Like this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

That is one heck of a story. Salient to discussion about consciousness: to what extent does the ability to act like awareness, count as awareness for the purposes of outside observers?

This guy is way ahead of you: https://www.wired.com/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

I imagine the meat would be pretty tasteless though.

You would need a clearer working model of consciousnes to be able to know whether your efforts were succeeding. But this is the idea behind lab-grown meat, just don't grow the brain at all and you don't have to worry as much.

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