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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Peter Singer, mentioned in the article has a great (and influential) book published in 1979 called Practical Ethics, if you’re interested in this topic you should definitely check that out.

If you’ve never listened to the Philosophy Bites podcast, here’s a relevant episode on the status of animals:https://philosophybites.libsyn.com/christine-korsgaard-on-th...

Also here’s a thought: unnecessary harming of an entity is bad for its effect on you, ie one should refrain from killing an insect even if it did not feel pain. Same holds for a nice rock formation.

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Why is it bad for its effect on you?

Along the lines of “A man is worked on by what he works on.” or “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster.”

If you start destroying things for pleasure, your psyche may/probably will change.

A parallel question I’ve seen: are training bonsais cruel?

I don’t think people kill insects for the joy of killing though

Might still beget carelessness/lack of empathy or a feeling of being superior.

I did when I was a kid. Used to spend hours torturing insects. And I did think they probably felt pain in some way. I ended up well-adjusted, but kids are little psychopaths. These days I escort bugs out of the house if they are being bothersome, and otherwise just let them be their bad ol’ self.

This is tough to read but I feel sympathetic about the honest way you shared this.

I have heard this from others too. One of my most traumatic memories from childhood was seeing someone do something to one of my favorite kinds of animals that I will spare readers here the horror of imagining. It haunts me to this day. That colors my perspective.

Children have incomplete brain formation. I’m not sure it’s an excuse, but it’s context to understand. On the flip side, a parent would need to be helicoptering to an absurd extent to detect a child messing with something as small as most common insects (at least in most US places).

Thanks for escorting them or leaving them alone!

Apparently, cruelty toward animals is a predictor for becoming a serial killer. That may be correlation not causality, but it would probably be wise to steer children away from such activity.

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