Comment by Aromasin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aromasin | Hacker News Reader

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I wouldn't say lucky - I'd rather go through the rest of life suffering than die at this moment, as there is a joy to be found in that itself - but I understand your sentiments. Very few would choose not being born over life, as you can't predict how life will be, even for these chickens. The chickens that live in my neighbour's garden had a horrible 2 years of life in cages, followed by a great 10 or so.

Reducing pain and suffering is better than not doing anything at all, and it's childish to assume that we can do anything more than regulate our food habits, and perhaps a couple of those around us. I'm vegan; I'm not deluded enough to think that my eating habits are anywhere near mainstream. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight for animal agriculture, whatever my personal feelings may be about that, so the next best thing one can do is reduce suffering where possible, and in-ovo sexing in hatcheries works a small way towards that.

I under that factory farming is absolutely ugly and there is a lot of low hanging fruit in how to improve it. But I never understand the extremist philosophy that no one should eat chickens or raise them in their back yard for eggs. Chickens simply don’t exist in the wild and are very far removed from the jungle fowl from which they came so long ago. If we stopped eating and raising them, they would go extinct. Is it better for a species to live in often poor conditions or to not exist entirely?

How much suffering are you comfortable imposing upon others for your own aesthetic satisfaction?

If no one is willing to do something humanely, then no one deserves to have it. It's not a complicated analysis.

Is it better for a species to live in often poor conditions or to not exist entirely?

if those are the two choices, then i'd prefer the later.

but isn't there a third choice? to raise chicken in good conditions?

i suppose maybe that doing so would reduce the amount of chicken we can consume, and also raise the price, but i think that is preferable to letting them suffer.

> Chickens simply don’t exist in the wild

While I get your overall point, I'd just like to point out the island of Kauai (and the rest of the islands of Hawaii). They have a massive wild chicken population.

> Very few would choose not being born over life ... Err, Moksha, or something like it is pretty much the goal of a number of religions practised by a significant chunk of the planet.

That's quite different.

Not getting to be born again (which by the way no one actually knows what that means) is different from not being born at all in the first place.

Of course the original premise is impossible, because no one knows how be unborn either.

You might change your tune if you experienced extreme suffering.

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