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Comment by tessierashpool9 | Hacker News Reader

just because something is intelligent is no reason not to eat it imho

Eating a carcass isn't a problem, throwing it into boiling water while it's still alive or clubbing it to death is the objectionable thing.

Let me ask a similar question as another user asked: what attribute do animals lack that, if a human also lacked, would justify eating a human?

This is an honest question, I'm not making a joke.

Why shouldn't we eat _you_ then?

while i do keep in shape and i'd certainly make for a juicy steak or filet, i doubt this culinary experience is worth ten years to life in prison.

Ok, one step up then, why should it be illegal?

i find your questions a little funny as i had this sort of conversation already dozens of times and i know where this is coming from and where it's going. i mean i've been a vegetarian myself for more than a decade (am not anymore) and i took pleasure in leading people who initiated discussions around it ad absurdum.

in germany there was a case of cannibalism many years ago where a guy known by the name Armin Meiwes slaughtered and ate another guy called Bernd-Jürgen Armando Brandes. never got the panic around it given that the whole deal was consensual. other than that you know yourself that society comes up with rules to ensure its stability and survival. eating each other wouldn't fly well from that perspective.

You could restate the golden rule as "treat others sufficiently like myself the way I'd like to be treated", not so long ago this wasn't applied to other humans who didn't look the same, but now it just seems reasonable to expand who the golden rule applies to beyond just species into... beings within a certain threshold of human intelligence. It is somewhat of a fundamental of morality, beings which are sufficiently intelligence deserve the same rights as I want for myself.

If you remove intelligence (or something quite similar) as the criteria, what do you have instead?

so, you can eat mentally handicapped / retarded humans then?

<check-mate/>

It is not. It's illegal to kill the OP though.

The main reason for humans not eating one another is in-species nepotism, I believe. It's not very principled, but probably closest to the truth.

There is also don't mess with the effectively most powerful species on the planet whose members have collectively decided that (for somewhat principled reasons) none of them should be eaten.

Disease is actually the main reason.

Any parasite, bacteria, virus, and especially prions spread much much more easily the closer the food is to your own biology.

Cannibalistic tribes have had issues with this in even the recent past.

Good point. This needs an update though now we know more about zoonotic spillover. Pigs, monkeys, bats, etc. should be off the list asap.

prion disease shudders

Cannibalism is rare even among animals. That's probably why people don't eat other people. Otherwise, saying we can't eat animals because they are smart is dangerous. Some humans are not smart...

Things will eat me, if I let them.

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