I agree with everything you're saying, but these are different issues - not symptoms of excess intellect. Just post-hoc rationalization of poor choices.
238 karma · joined May 25, 2024
You should work on that, I guess?
Your logic is inconsistent on multiple levels. You won't eat fish because "it was alive" but accept eggs from an industry that kills hundreds of millions of male chicks. You claim honey and milk are fine as "byproducts," but this ignores how dairy cows must be forcibly impregnated, separated from their calves, and killed when production drops, while honey is literally the bees' food that we take, often killing many in the process. These aren't benign side effects - they're fundamental to how these industries operate.
You claim to only support "ethical" animal products while acknowledging industrial meat production is inhumane, yet fail to recognize that "ethical" animal agriculture is simply not scalable to feed the global population. These distinctions you're making (McD's vs butcher, etc.) are arbitrary moral lines that serve more to make you feel better about your choices than to address the fundamental ethical issues. After sharing your perspective on these broader ethical concerns, falling back to "it works for me and my family" isn't a meaningful response to systemic issues affecting billions of beings.
I am skeptical that a 2024 LLM could possess more than a fleeting spark of awareness at this point, but that's because we're missing persistence and feedback loops. I say all bets are off the moment we let these things think for real. And I think I've come to terms with it - if this is an evolution of evolution, I feel incredibly lucky to have been here for the beginning. It may not end up being good for the current iteration of humanity, but who can't get behind a little misanthropism these days?
> each to their own
So while I generally agree with this, is it fair to say it when it doesn't apply equally for all sentient life—or is it just convenient?
> There are people who classify honey as an animal product and there are people who disagree.
This really isn't subjective.
As someone who has actively tried to minimize my contribution for more than 25 years, I feel quite strongly that vegetarianism is a net negative in terms of progress on this cause.
> kill
This is the part everyone seems to get incensed over, but for me this is actually the highlight. I guess it's difficult for people to accept that their grocery shopping habits contribute to what is essentially billions of individual lives not worth living.
This feels like a distraction from the real suffering we see in industrial farming. While the culling of male chicks gets a lot of attention because they're babies and that triggers an emotional response, there are much bigger issues in terms of actual suffering endured - like the prolonged confinement of laying hens and other factory farming practices.
The new embryo identification technology is an improvement, but I'm concerned that framing it as a 'humane solution' will just serve as moral licensing for consumers to feel better about continuing to support an inherently unethical system.
While existence can be meaningful and valuable, it may not be so for everyone - for any number of reasons - and that's perfectly valid. Though it may be painful to consider that our loved ones might decide they've had enough, any opinion we hold on their choice is inherently self-serving.
We need to fucking grow up about this shit. It is especially exhausting to see ostensibly intelligent people with such narrow-minded views recklessly imposing their sanctimony on people they've never met or attempted to know.
Your comment is arrogant, dismissive, and condescending. You lack perspective.