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Comment by testfrequency | Hacker News Reader

I promise this isn’t a trap, it’s just my curiosity as a “flexitarian”. What (mostly) keeps me from eating animals is my mind wandering sometimes when making a protein choice about how they ended up there, wherever I am, not by choice.

Are you vegan?

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I am not a vegan, but many of my meals are vegan. Most of my meals are vegetarian, but I do eat meat. I do not eat pork, octopus or goat.

I also keep my dietary preferences very low key. In a social setting, if I accidentally eat something I try and avoid, I don't make a fuss.

We sound nearly identical, though I may consume more dairy and fish than you.

Thank you for responding also. I felt like you were someone who had similar values just through the subtext of your response and I was curious if we aligned.

Out of curiosity do you extend this to gelatin? My daughter has recently take a stance against pork. She doesn’t make a fuss, just doesn’t eat it or gelatin because of the prevalence of pork bones used to make it.

Goats are just as tasty if you raised them, IMO. Maybe even tastier.

By "tastier" do you mean more physically pleasurable because you could ensure the animal's good health, ethically preferable because you could ensure a (mostly) good life, emotionally enjoyable because you can fondly remember interacting with them, or something else?

I mean the goats I have today I only have because we bred them to be useful to us, and that being neurotic about the food we eat rarely helps any living thing.

Of course I treat my goats well, and I love them. But this doesn't factor much into the ethics of why we eat them in the first place. If I didn't eat them they wouldn't exist. The entire problem is close to nonsensical.

I'm still not sure how that makes them "maybe even tastier" when you raise them yourself?

> If I didn't eat them they wouldn't exist.

Does that mean that if I bring something into existence that anything I choose do to it is therefore ethical, or is eating special? (To be clear, I think there are a number of solid arguments for eating animals, I just don't think that's one of them.)

You can’t avoid the reality that’s your life depends on something else dying. Either plant insect or animal

How and why you draw the line on what is acceptable to kill is mostly arbitrary

I’d argue a mushroom or a bee are more “conscious” than most chickens

>>You can’t avoid the reality that’s your life depends on something else dying. Either plant insect or animal

There are more nuanced ways of thinking about this. A good example is Jainism's version of vegetarianism which requires paying attention to what one consumes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism

"Jains make considerable efforts not to injure plants in everyday life as far as possible. Jains accept such violence only in as much as it is indispensable for human survival, and there are special instructions for preventing unnecessary violence against plants."

Chickens are very intelligent, it just happens that most people ever see chickens in overcrowded small spaces where they behave idiotically. So would you if you would be in the same situation.

I kept chickens for 15 years (mostly free-roaming in my backyard, unless there was a fox lurking, so not in overcrowded small spaces) and I disagree. To me they seemed pretty stupid, and pretty mean to one another

We've had a small amount (just 3) with plenty of space and it was fun to observe them, all sort of interesting behaviors.

My favorite thing is them cooperating against a common enemy (a dog that was eating their food sometimes, which we've tried to mitigate but not being much successful).

Then once they had a discussion in the opposite corner about the problem and launched a stealth attack, covering themselves behind the trees while approaching the dog without the dog knowing it. Then once close enough they attacked from behind, the dog squeaked, more from the surprise than pain and since then the dog never touched their food again and avoided them.

I kept chickens for a while and it was very clear that they'd be more than happy to eat us if able to.

You think that a mushroom is more capable of intelligent thought and emotion driven decisions than a chicken?

lmao

Maybe you should learn about what a mushroom is

Three and four are both non-zero numbers. Zero constitutes the absence of value. Therefore, three and four are of the same value.

You see the problem here, right? I'm not saying that fungi have not be recorded as having potential intelligent thought. I am saying that in no world is their capability for intelligence remotely comparable to that of a creature with a fully functioning brain, especially a bird. Having the ability to react to your environment does not make you AS or more intelligent than other things that can also do that...

EDIT: I'm using intelligence and consciousness interchangeably here when I don't necessarily mean to, but my point stands.

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