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Comment by nineteen999 | Hacker News Reader

This is great news for Animal Liberation groups, society and the world as a whole. It finally provides the justification needed to outlaw the consumption of animals for good forever.

We'll start with humans of course, but we can then outlaw lions eating gazelles, sharks eating humans, and birds eating insects.

Just imagine how wonderful everything will be when we finally are able to snip into the circle of life and turn it into a flat line.

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yes those are obviously the same, after all lions are known for running industrial-scale farms where they force millions of gazelles to procreate and then keep them in tiny cages for the entirety of their short lives so that other lions can conveniently buy prepackaged gazelle meat in a supermarket not even having to ever associate the pack of meat with a once living gazelle

IMO, the parent comment points out that having consciousness is not a sufficient basis for ethics, and certainly not for law.

I disagree, it seems to deride a certain flavor of ethics. Almost an "appeal to nature" regarding whether humans should treat animals a bit nicer knowing they experience things.

Honestly I don't have much faith that as a species we can treat our animals much more humanely, considering how we treat each other.

My apologies if you took offense personally, it wasn't intended.

They probably would if they could.

Let’s not forget the other kingdoms. We’ll have to be pretty convincing with convince the fungi to stop eating everything they can get their tentacles on

Lions, sharks and birds, even if they have consciousness, do not have intelligence. They cannot choose whether to cause harm/pain/death to anyone or not. Humans do have that capability, and to get food could have figured out something better than imprisoning other animals in boxes all their lives.

Perhaps. Homo sapiens ancient history is about 300,000 years though, so if we are just getting to this concept in the last 200 years, you might be a little over optimistic about the chances of your argument is going to have to override instincts developed through millions of years of evolution in the near future.

(also lions and sharks - ^^ this guy just called you dumb)

Would you say buying pre-packaged meat is an instinct? I haven't had a hard time overriding that instinct in my lifetime.

In my country we're not allowed to roam the countryside with a rifle or a bow and arrow to hunt our own, and if we were I wouldn't enjoy it. So yeah if I want to eat meat I guess it is.

I applaud your conviction, but I've grown up eating meat, and I'm not in a minority.

There is no arguing here against eating stuff that has meat-like properties (nutritional content and perhaps even taste). The issue is whether we have to torture billions of mammals and birds for that. I don't think it matters for your instinct if the stuff you eat comes from a killed animal or not, as long as it tastes and supplies the same.

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