I think this is the same ethical questions of veganism and our use/abuse of biological systems. This is an excerpt from "The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini
> After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But now he was able to eat meat with a clear conscience.
> The sausages and bacon had come from a pig called Priscilla he had met the week before. The pig had been genetically engineered to be able to speak and, more importantly, to want to be eaten. Ending up on a human’s table was Priscilla’s lifetime ambition and she woke up on the day of her slaughter with a keen sense of anticipation. She had told all this to Max just before rushing off to the comfortable and humane slaughterhouse. Having heard her story, Max thought it would be disrespectful not to eat her.
> The chicken had come from a genetically modified bird which had been ‘decerebrated’. In other words, it lived the life of a vegetable, with no awareness of self, environment, pain or pleasure. Killing it was therefore no more barbarous than uprooting a carrot.
> Yet as the plate was placed before him, Max felt a twinge of nausea. Was this just a reflex reaction, caused by a lifetime of vegetarianism? Or was it the physical sign of a justifiable psychic distress? Collecting himself, he picked up his knife and fork . . .
> Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (Pan Books, 1980)
What is the source line at the end representing there? I've read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and while it definitely contains (and I see it as a major cultural anchor for) animals bred to desire being eaten and be able to say so, it doesn't contain that particular scene (at least in the version I read). Is that line Baggini noting that his scene was inspired by the Adams book?
Baggini is the source of the quote he just references the concept was from Adams at the end. I copy/pasted this from the book.
This is the third time in the same week I observed an HHGG quote going whoosh in an age where reading books is long dead as the tech industry twitches to dying anytime soon from the moment Jeff sold godelescherbach online
Ironically, it seems you may not have read past the first sentence of your GP comment.
Did Priscilla also want to be living in absolute misery every single day of her life? The way animals are treated while they are alive is my main objection to our farming practices and the reason why i don’t eat meat.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. It is bringing up the question of what defines self will. It is unrelated to veganism in all but text.
An easy example is dogs. We have bred dogs for centuries to love doing work for us. If they hated doing the work, it would be easy to call it cruel. If they loved it by nature, it would be easy to call it kind. But since we created them into a thing that loves the work we need them for, where do the ethics fall?
Should we prevent them from doing what brings them joy? Should we make use of this win-win situation? If it is the latter, we are quickly approaching the ability to morph every species into something that gets joy from doing our work.
Dogs we changed by accident. The next one will not be an accident. Is it still a beings free will if the game was rigged from the start?
This is why I also like cats. The only reason they don't eat me is that I am 10 times bigger than they are. Other than that, they still seem to be running Lion software on miniature hardware.
If you die and they run out of food, guess what they'll eat?
OK but If I'm dead I won't care
> Dogs we changed by accident
(I know your point wasn't about dogs either, it just reminded me of something).
I love Neil de Grasse Tyson's line in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey:
"This wolf has discovered what a branch of its ancestors figured out some 15.000 years ago... an excellent survival strategy: the domestication of humans."
There's also another animal/dog documentary that I've watched recently that puts a finer point on this realization. The secret to survival and evolution is cooperation. For instance, not all dogs evolved the same way in this documentary. Some were more nuturing, some were more problem solving. For the focus of the documentary the challenge was to match the dog with a human that had a need they could address.
I think somewhat egotistically humans underappreciate how we have also been goaded by our "pets" into our own evolutionary journey. Most of the subjects of that documentary would not be alive if it were not for those dogs.
It's much like how many plants have accidentally found that a great means of propagation is to produce a compound that is both a great chemical warfare agent against other plants and microbes and also tastes interesting to humans or makes them feel funny.
An amusing quip, but since you brought Neil up- his takes on veganism are generally disappointing and facile.
As are his takes on almost everything.
That's a very broad claim. Can you elaborate?
Depends on the dog tbh. Keshonds are bred to yell at anyone getting on your barge. A lot of humans would probably like that job if it paid enough. Just chilling out and yelling at anyone you dont recognise.
Organic farming, at least over here, has also wellbeing criteria besides just controlling the food. For example a lot more space per animal, ability to go out and so on. Organic meat is a bit more expensive, but not hugely. So it shows it can be done.
We can easily blast pure pleasure every second of every day of her life with direct brain stimulation. She would be so deliriously happy our lives will be inhumane by comparison.
Just thing about, whats better, being treated the way some of the animals treated or being locked up in a server room all your life, seeing only doom dungeons and run to not get killed ingame? I would be happy to be the animal when I need to choose between Priscilla and the brain tissue in a biological computer.
I was almost too sure I had never heard of Julian Baggini and I almost celebrated the first in history when neither the Onion nor the Simpsons nor Idiocracy predicted the future by assumed funniness of assumed impossibility of unfathomable human stupidity AND that it still was kinda funny instead of depressing discovery of frontier Authentic Idiocy (TM) I believe this is one of many scenes in HHGG where I super shy in public tried to suppress convolutions of my soul and contortions of face and bone only to fail audibly and visibly
is this from Baggini or Adams?
Baggini is the source of the quote he just references the concept was from Adams at the end. I copy/pasted this from the book.
as an unintentional and perhaps unethical vegetarian of many years who hasn't read this book: eating dead things gives me the creeps because it makes me consider my own death and consumption which is unappetizing
So you only eat living things?
only eat live pikmin
How do feel about the live pikmin dying as it reaches your stomach? I'm assuming you swallow them whole rather than killing them with your teeth.
None of their natural predators seem to have teeth for chewing. So, yes, I think swallowing them whole is the most natural thing to do.
plants have cells and they are alive!
and genetically related to us
As a fellow ‘unethical’ vegetarian, eating dead animals just seems yucky. I imagine it’s a similar feeling to what most non-vegetarians feel when contemplating eating dog or cat meat.
At the end of the day vegans play the same game as meat eaters where some line is drawn. For meat eaters it is with livestock meats and for pescatarians that is no go, but fish are alright. And for vegans that is all off limits. Except of course the life we deem base enough to not care it is being eaten alive. Slaughter all the lettuce you want. There are no lettuce advocates.
All this to say the moral arguments are sort of silly and illogical. Unfortunately for us all, we exist where we do in the food chain, having to consume life to live, unable to secure our resources from the sun and inorganic resources which would be more morally righteous by all measures. Things could be better but they also could be worse. At least much of our prey receives veterinary care and is killed via airgun vs having to rough it and be eaten alive.
This is not a good argument.
Vegans base their line on a very easily defensible ability on behalf of the victim - sentience.
If there’s no sentience, there’s nobody within to experience the pain and fear, and there is no victim.
That said, even if you granted that every blade of grass and kernel of corn was fully as sentient as a human being, that would only strengthen the argument for veganism many times over as animals act as inefficient intermediaries for those plant calories, burning most of them and leaving only a small fraction in their meat. You’d kill far fewer plants by eating the plants directly.
Finally, to your other point, many humans die horrible deaths - whether in global poverty, war or of various types of disease, cancer and dementia in the wealthier countries. That of course does not justify serial killer cannibals who put a bullet in the back of their victims’ heads on the basis that they’re giving them a “humane” end and likely saving them a large amount of future suffering.
> play the same game .. where some line is drawn
> Things could be better but they also could be worse
> the moral arguments are sort of silly and illogical
You can use these to justify literally anything
> Slaughter all the lettuce you want
Yeah because we don't have compelling evidence that lettuce experiences anything comparable to conscious suffering, and the only alternative to not eating plants is dying
Your mental hoops being on full display doesn't make them true. Nothing new or profound in these arguments and analogies, and stating them with this pretend wise tone just sounds childish.
AFAIK vegans base their argument on the degree of consciousness a living being had and compromise on the least evil.
Most meat eaters base it on closeness to said living thing.
It'll be interesting to see if the veganism movement survives lab grown meat that is ethically produced.
It wouldn't continue in any real form. Maybe cholesterol conscious and devout buddhists will still try to adhere, but beyond that I don't see what the point would be.
It would be like how Ozempic lead to a mysterious quieting of Body Positivity/Health at Every Size advocates. They were a vocal minority, there was much "debate" and cri de couer from many sides and now its all evaporated without a farewell or explicit winding down.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]