Dolphins, and the right side of history | Hacker News Reader

Dolphins, and the right side of history

swombat.com

24 pointsdsirijus13 comments

Sad, but not surprising, to see this flagged off the front page and into oblivion. It took some time to find it, but it's now at rank 1181.

I am a vegetarian and agree with most of the article up until the very last sentence - "where would you have stood on the issue of slave labour" or words to that effect.

I feel like that confuses the issue and makes it easier to argue against - humans are very clearly different to dolphins and equating the two does noone any favours.

It used to be that people would say:

    "These savages are clearly different
     from civilised people"

and I can easily imagine them saying:

    "... and equating the two does no one any favours."

There's the point of the entire article: In the future, perhaps people will find it incomprehensible that we, today, considered humans different from dolphins in a significant aspect.

They didn't then try to eat the savages did they? It's comparing apples and oranges..

I don't believe it is comparing apples and oranges. It was once considered by some slave owners to be a mere trifling problem occasionally to beat one of them to death, or work them to death, or otherwise behave in ways that are now considered unacceptable.

In the same way, some people put dolphins in captivity, and consider it an inconvenient side-effect of tuna fishing that dolphins are regularly killed in large numbers. And yes, some people eat dolphins, and that supports an industry that kills them for profit, just as slave traders used to capture people and ferry them across oceans. For profit. Deaths of a percentage were considered acceptable losses.

It seems to me that the parallels are stronger than the differences, and I also wonder how people of the future will judge the actions of today, and silence of those who didn't speak up.

Humans are certainly different to dolphins, but I sure hope that some alien race doesn't land on Earth some day and say "It's ok to kill and enslave humans indiscriminately because even though they are sentient and intelligent, they are very different from us Xlarblargians."

This is very simply an extension of the Golden Rule to other sentient species beyond humans, starting with the ones that we know about and are closest to us.

And as Colin points out, the "equating X to humans does no one any favours" line has been used before in history.

Nature is cruel, animals are food, we are animals.

I don't see why any animal no matter how cute or intelligent deserves more rights than any other, but it's a messy philosophical argument.

Does an animal have the right not to be made extinct? The scientist in me says No, the naturalist says Yes.

"we are animals" && "I don't see why any animal ... deserves more rights than any other"

I think that's his point. We are not too different from dolphins.

You missed my point, sentience is a human concept, what happens when robots have indistinguishable sentient properties?

It's a messy philosophical argument, what about the vegetables they feel pain too! http://www.vegetablecruelty.com

We are animals. We are not robots or vegetables.

If a robot becomes sufficiently sentient, possesses emotions and needs, has empathy and reproductive capacity, and other such animal traits, then I see no reason not to extend similar rights to it too. If we develop the ability to create such a creature (for that is what it will be), and choose to create such a creature, then we must face the responsibilities that our actions bring and the rights that that creature will have.

It is unlikely carrots will evolve to a similar level any time soon, so we've a while to think about vegetable ethics. In the meantime, brussels sprout genocide is fine by me.

Haha..

I like your little reproductive capacity caveat.

But since it's a purely philosophical argument.. If you create a program with all the sentient properties, feels pain etc.. Does it not afford these magic rights you speak of? After all pain is just an electrical impulse expressed as a negative emotion..

If vegetables prove to create a chemical response to trauma, does that not mean they feel pain too?

If we create a program that has all of that, then yes.

Note that my criteria (individual items are of course up for discussion, but the point is a broad range of human/animal like criteria) go way beyond pain. Emotion, empathy, maybe other things like self-learning etc. are a long, long way off being implemented successfully in software. I think that maybe when we reach the point where they are, it may not seem such a daft idea to protect them in this way. "After all pain is just an electrical impulse expressed as a negative emotion" which helps to illustrate the close relation between us and the (currently) mythical software we are talking about.

The rights which we are talking about aren't "magic" as you quote. They actually serve a practical purpose and in my opinion are a positive evolutionary trait. When applied to humans, their purpose is obvious (protecting us from each other, promoting cooperation and ensuring our survival as a species). But we live in a world beyond just humans, and inter-species protection and co-operation is in both human and animal (and, one day perhaps, computer) interests.

On the subject of vegetables, I have never found cabbages to be particularly empathetic, so I happy to relegate them to the inferior classes for the time being.

Rights are a human concept. Not, incidentally, one I have any belief in. However this is not the place for a rights vs responsibility debate.

How do you ascribe 'Human' rights?

Currently it is humans vs everything else. To include dolphins is to rewrite it as "Anything which meets these intelligence or sentience criteria". Which is fine, until you deal with the human beings which do not meet either criteria. To treat them differently is to ignore the whole argument that we are not special. So rewrite the concept as "Anything where a single member meets the criteria" - and that is where you end up.

Personally I agree that we are not special, but that is where I diverge with the author.

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