This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not lab grown or suffering. Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way.
The problem is that it costs slightly more and our society is more concerned with cost than animal suffering.
> Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way.
Breeding animals _specifically for killing them_, no matter how they are killed, is not what I'd consider humane. If we take 'humane' literally, it means to be treated as you would treat a human. I doubt we'd do this to humans. So the only way to be okay with this is adhering to a form of specieism.
Many farm animals aren't bred specifically for killing them. Think egg-laying hens and ducks, milk-producing cows and goats, etc.
Not too different from humans in that respect; humans are bred systematically (we have dedicated hormonal supplements, birth facilities, documented birthing procedures, standardized post-birth checklists of forms of vaccination regiments, standardized mass schooling, government-subsidized feeding programs, etc) and most are used machinistically by society exclusively for productive output, regardless of whether the society is corporatist, capitalist, socialist, communist, etc.
I think what GP meant is that when it involves money, suffering is nearly impossible to prevent. That's why you have puppy mills, for example. Most people don't know how the puppies are raised, they just see the cute puppy in the shop. The same way people see a pretty piece of meat in the supermarket and don't know its history.
Raising animals for meat is theoretically doable with no suffering (not sure about milk), but it's not happening in practice. With pets the situation is better - a lot of people adopt and some care about how their pet was raised if they buy it from a breeder.
I didn't intend to. I think that domesticated animals have long had a harmonious relationship with humans so I find it a bit difficult to believe that it's always an ethical dilemma. Pets are just the most obvious lens to identify that.
I also think we need to be careful with the idea that we should entirely avoid suffering because it's impossible to do.
That's exactly why lab grown meat is the best way to solve the issue.
Society is only concerned with cost, regulations are weak and rarely enforced and companies are operating in a capitalistic market where they can't compete unless they squeeze every last cent out of each animal. That's hard to change as lots of people have an interest in keeping the status quo and the citizens who vote don't have the time to read everything that comes their way. We can't expect that society will wake up, that people will start voting with more conscience or that everyone will go vegan.
Lab grown meat (or growing brainless animals or something similar) is a technological solution. When it becomes cheaper than normally-grown meat and similar in quality, the atrocities committed in the farms would cease to exist as the farms themselves would cease to exist. The same market forces that are responsible for what's happening to the animals now would prevent any future torture.
I'm skeptical of this claim because there's clearly a growing population that hates the idea of putting anything they don't understand in their bodies. Genetically modified vegetables, food dyes, vaccines, etc.
I find it hard to believe you could convince a large portion of Americans to eat lab grown meat just to save a buck.
I think that population is shrinking, not growing. They're surely vocal, though.
But if lab grown meat is cheaper, some part of the population would buy it. The farms would lose part of their business so economy of scale would help lab grown meat and hurt the farms. I think it would lead to a feedback loop where lab grown meat will get even cheaper and farm meat would get more expensive.
With lab grown meat you also have the option not only for a perfect piece of meat, but for different kinds of tastes, textures and compositions that haven't existed before. Just like people eat processed meat (think ham or nuggets or deep fried pieces), they would love to try the new tastes. I know I would.
Not to be glib, but the shelves of most American grocery stores do a pretty good job demonstrating that that segment of the population isn't dominant yet. There's a glut of processed food full of ingredients much harder to pronounce than an ingredient list that would read "Ingredients: Beef (cultured)".
And to be glib, I'm not thrilled about the idea of catering to the bar set by "things they don't understand" from that group in particular.
Sure you could, just don't tell them. The fast food burgers are already part soy and no one is yelling. If they replaced that with lab meat people would probably like it better.
At least the thing with live animals is that they have to be kept within some kind of parameters to survive, with those parameters hopefully also leading to some level of food standards for us. I can’t even conceive of the kind of chemicals and processes that would be required to keep random meat-like cells alive without the rest of the body.
If you support this, visit one of the handful of restaurants selling it to show interest and support the companies. The salmon I had was ready for prime time in the right context, and if you didn't know, you probably wouldn't have noticed.
I'm surprised to hear that it works with fish in particular. I wouldn't have thought it could replicate the flakiness of real fish. That's great to hear honestly.
I'd assumed it would mostly be limited to cultured ground beef and chicken nuggets.
In nature, animals are routinely torn apart and devoured while still breathing.
In a proper rending facility, a captive bolt pneumatic/hydraulic pistol punctures their skull and sends a shockwave through their brains, killing them like Tony in the last scene of the Sopranos.
It's not even nice. People ate meat because fresh fruit and vegetables weren't available all year round or even at all. All good food has plants to make it taste nice. You can easily just skip the meat and go straight for the flavour.
Yeah, I hate being stuck with a luscious rare filet mignon basked in clarified butter, it's so flavorless that I have to chase it with celery, cucumbers, and lettuce just to stomach it... /s
Your comment makes no sense. If plants weren’t around for humans to eat then how did the animals humans eat survive?
Humans eat animals because they are a denser faster nutrition than plants. More bang for your buck. Trying to act like humans “only eat animals because” is ignoring reality.
> A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them.
This makes me really curious because that behavior seems very maladaptive for a species. That leads me to wonder if something else, ie. the environment or domestication, is leading to this behavior rather than pigs being really, really prone to wiping out their own species. Does anyone know why they do this in a farm environment?
Humanity is almost definitely going to wipe itself out in the not too distant future through an avoidable (if not for the selfish greed of many of us) climate change resource war Great Filter event.
This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.
> This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.
The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact. So getting comfortable that the whole system is damned and worth tossing is very convenient but too cavalier for me to find comfort in
> The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact.
I don't disagree with this at all, and on a personal level I do everything I can to reasonably leave things as good or better than I found them. I just no longer believe anything I do is going to pull humanity as a whole back from the edge.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is something like: "Imagine a button appears in front of you. Pressing it will snap all human beings painlessly out of existence. Do you push the button?"
Some people get caught in minutiae about downstream effects, I tell them it can go however they want (house pets are free or gone too, planes land harmlessly, etc)
In my circles, I've found it's about 50/50 button pushers to non-button pushers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, vegetarians are more likely to be button pushers.
That’s wild to me. I’d hazard a guess that 0% of my friends would push the button (okay, lizardman tax, I’m sure I could find someone I know who would say yes). I think they’d also feel a need to go find whoever made said button and lock them in a cell for safekeeping.
It's impossible to refute anecdotes purporting to represent populations based on what they might do in a hypothetical, and the people being described fade further out of tangible existence at every next layer of abstraction.
But Most Vegans I Know (tm) regard human life as valuabe, speak in terms of harm reduction, and tend not to fantasize about making Vault Tec real.
My first serious programming job was at a start up and the owner asked me this question. I was caught off guard, of course I wouldn’t! I couldn’t really explain why at the time, but it essentially revolved around the fact that I was young and optimistic. 25 years later, I’m not so sure. Now, said optimism has almost vanished and there are days pushing seems like the path to least suffering, but I also feel it’s unethical for one person to decide for everyone else.
I mean this sincerely, not as an insult: consider that the problem is with your mind or personal life, not with the world, and you should look for a way to address that if you haven't already.
I just think we are going to absolutely deserve the outcome as we collectively and metaphorically push that button... which we continue to do and are regressing on stopping ourselves from doing so a handful of super wealthy can watch gamified number go up.
God what an awful prospect. How about when you push the button it only removes the button pushers, so the rest of us are free to continue enjoying our existence.
The point is that continuing to enjoy your existence is inflicting a massive toll of suffering around the world, to both others humans as well as non-humans.
I’m not saying I’d be one to push the button, but I think it’s worth trying to understand the mindset of someone who would. It’s very arguable that pushing it would be the ethical thing to do.
"Someone who would" is a terminally online loser who's confused the symptoms of their mental illness for philosophical insights.
Speaking as a lifelong atheist, I cannot stand this genre of nihilistic post-Christianity, all questionable moral baggage with none of the guidance. Here's a tip for you: humanity did not introduce evil to the world. If you don't understand this, find a church, it'll be better for us all.
Here's a tip for you: describe what you find questionable and why, otherwise reader will understand: "I don't like that, you're [loser / mentally hill / nihilist]".
I you don't like the conversation you're also free to ignore it.
It is, because you can't have pleasure without suffering but I think these conversations should focus on the amount (maybe as a percentage) of suffering that someone/something experiences.
If you were locked in a room and being tortured, would you think it'd be appropriate for me to go: "they feed you at the end of each torture session, isn't it worth it to keep going for that?"
Because that line of "enjoying your existence" making no mention of the monumental harm we cause to every biome on the planet is exactly the kind of selfishness that the button pushers would like to eradicate.
Causing harm to biomes is not the same thing as causing net harm to animals inside biomes. The base rate of harm done to animals inside biomes is immense and horrific.
Well, some people do choose suicide but I have a feeling that you'd be uncomfortable discussing assisted suicide. These conversations around humanity and suffering typically end in thought terminating takes such as yours. Why even respond if you're effectively throwing your hands up in the air and ignoring nuance?
I don't think it's explicit, that's why I put the quip in there about assisted suicide. This thread is showing me that perhaps a lot of people would be okay with the "complainers" offing themselves but I'm not sure... my gut feeling is that a lot of optimists hold conflicting beliefs around this.
We live in a sandbox. Unless we decide to work together to escape it, then there is no point in humanity to exist. All we essentially do is produce rubbish, poo and suffering.
the suffering is mainly because of extreme wealth hoarding and profoundly selfish use of resources; overcrowding could be easily solved for all people if we as a species decided it was important
If the billionaires in power thought that they could grow their wealth 1% more by forcing the rest of us humans into gestation crates, they would do it in a heartbeat.
Anyone who's ever looked after and cared for pigs knows that this is very-very cruel. I would do the same with those humans(?) who wants this. Greed over everything. Disgusting
Farming practices are already absolutely terrible.
And for reasons of arbitrary weight increase, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine is used in the USA. Doesnt degrade when cooked, so humans also get fat from it amongst other bad side effects. Banned in most countries, but not the USA. This is also why pork export is banned in most countries.
I know 1 person who is "allergic to pork". But European pork is fine. Even Canadian pork is fine. But what's different with US pork? Ractopamine.
To me, this is yet another reason why capitalism initially was great at making an economy, but profit-seeking behavior gets legally and ethically worse and one trades ethics for money.
> I know 1 person who is "allergic to pork". But European pork is fine. Even Canadian pork is fine. But what's different with US pork? Ractopamine.
Ractopamine is used in Canada.
This sounds like a possible case of the nocebo effect: Someone experiences symptoms based on a belief that an ingredient is bad for them. When they consume the same thing without the belief that the ingredient is present, the effects are absent even though the ingredient is present.
This happens with people who believe they have WiFi sensitivity disorders, too. If you put them next to a WiFi router with blinking lights they will experience the pain of their condition. If you turn off the lights on the router but leave the WiFi transmitting, they stop feeling the effects.
This is fascinating to me. I am allergic to pork (or I would say intolerant, when I eat it I get a headache and/or stomach ache). But I did try a piece of wild boar once, and was fine after that. I will have to look into this!
I find it odd we need legislation to prevent this.
There are not enough consumers to care? Or maybe with legislation we get better outcomes due to scaling effects?
If we are willing to use legislation, could we tax such gestation crates, and use that tax revenue to breed unconscious pigs? Or find a way to disable consciousness in their brain? Or fund lab meat? I'm sure small labs are doing this, but if we are at the point of legislation, I imagine there is enough willpower to solve this problem rather than bandaids.
Consumers probably don't know all of the conditions involved in making any of the products they buy. That information is generally not on the label, and even environmental and conditions based labels are often vague and hard to interpret.
Also in an economy of rising costs, people are going to choose affordable options even if they might be vaguely aware of worse conditions happening somewhere else, far away from the grocery store aisle where they are making that choice for their family.
> If we are willing to use legislation, could we tax such gestation crates, and use that tax revenue to breed unconscious pigs? Or find a way to disable consciousness in their brain? Or fund lab meat?
This is the kind of "big government libertarian" thinking that you only find on HN. It's like virtue signalling but the virtue is contrarianism. What you've suggested is more complicated, less ethical, less effective, and likely to be opposed by just about everyone across the political spectrum.
Does anyone else ever find it odd that in posts like this the person posts a sad picture of a pig instead of a screenshot of the page of the bill they're talking about?
I think "a provision that would condemn millions of pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates" is in fact horrific, however, outrage is the currency on places like X.
Posting a page number sounds specific, but then why not post the page (or quote it)? Particularly in any even remotely political environment where the default is "vote for (or oppose) this bill or you want [insert cute animal, baby, person, minority group] to die."
Just a tiny bit of source referencing could go a long way to help people better understand what you want them to support (or oppose).
fwiw, i found it helpful, i had no idea what a gestation crate is. i don’t think the photo is sad or manipulative, the sad part is what is being done to the pigs! and seeing a photo of what is done to the pigs is all i needed to make up my mind. it’s like the difference between posting a document that references “enhanced interrogation techniques” vs seeing a photo of what was actually done, it has a very different impact. i agree some kind of a citation would be nice though, so i don’t have to go digging about what to say when i contact my representative about.
Yeah, why would someone trying to drum up opposition to the measure show the real-world impacts of it instead of the (easily Googlable) dry legalese? Real thinker, there.
The sooner we get to true lab grown meat the better
Meat is nice but would be better if we can skip the whole suffering thing
This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not lab grown or suffering. Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way.
The problem is that it costs slightly more and our society is more concerned with cost than animal suffering.
> Farmed animals could live happy, healthy lives and then be culled in a humane way.
Breeding animals _specifically for killing them_, no matter how they are killed, is not what I'd consider humane. If we take 'humane' literally, it means to be treated as you would treat a human. I doubt we'd do this to humans. So the only way to be okay with this is adhering to a form of specieism.
Many farm animals aren't bred specifically for killing them. Think egg-laying hens and ducks, milk-producing cows and goats, etc.
Not too different from humans in that respect; humans are bred systematically (we have dedicated hormonal supplements, birth facilities, documented birthing procedures, standardized post-birth checklists of forms of vaccination regiments, standardized mass schooling, government-subsidized feeding programs, etc) and most are used machinistically by society exclusively for productive output, regardless of whether the society is corporatist, capitalist, socialist, communist, etc.
I think you misinterpreted GP's emphasis.
But still, egg and dairy animals are culled when productivity drops. The human equivalent would be killing all male babies, and females after age ~40.
I can't think of a reasonable argument that this is more "humane" than killing all human offspring at age ~15.
Any kind of domination of one species over another raises serious ethical questions. Avoiding suffering on the dominated side is nearly impossible.
Are all pets suffering?
I think what GP meant is that when it involves money, suffering is nearly impossible to prevent. That's why you have puppy mills, for example. Most people don't know how the puppies are raised, they just see the cute puppy in the shop. The same way people see a pretty piece of meat in the supermarket and don't know its history.
Raising animals for meat is theoretically doable with no suffering (not sure about milk), but it's not happening in practice. With pets the situation is better - a lot of people adopt and some care about how their pet was raised if they buy it from a breeder.
Don't strawman other people's comments.
I didn't intend to. I think that domesticated animals have long had a harmonious relationship with humans so I find it a bit difficult to believe that it's always an ethical dilemma. Pets are just the most obvious lens to identify that.
I also think we need to be careful with the idea that we should entirely avoid suffering because it's impossible to do.
nah.
That's exactly why lab grown meat is the best way to solve the issue.
Society is only concerned with cost, regulations are weak and rarely enforced and companies are operating in a capitalistic market where they can't compete unless they squeeze every last cent out of each animal. That's hard to change as lots of people have an interest in keeping the status quo and the citizens who vote don't have the time to read everything that comes their way. We can't expect that society will wake up, that people will start voting with more conscience or that everyone will go vegan.
Lab grown meat (or growing brainless animals or something similar) is a technological solution. When it becomes cheaper than normally-grown meat and similar in quality, the atrocities committed in the farms would cease to exist as the farms themselves would cease to exist. The same market forces that are responsible for what's happening to the animals now would prevent any future torture.
I'm skeptical of this claim because there's clearly a growing population that hates the idea of putting anything they don't understand in their bodies. Genetically modified vegetables, food dyes, vaccines, etc.
I find it hard to believe you could convince a large portion of Americans to eat lab grown meat just to save a buck.
I think that population is shrinking, not growing. They're surely vocal, though.
But if lab grown meat is cheaper, some part of the population would buy it. The farms would lose part of their business so economy of scale would help lab grown meat and hurt the farms. I think it would lead to a feedback loop where lab grown meat will get even cheaper and farm meat would get more expensive.
With lab grown meat you also have the option not only for a perfect piece of meat, but for different kinds of tastes, textures and compositions that haven't existed before. Just like people eat processed meat (think ham or nuggets or deep fried pieces), they would love to try the new tastes. I know I would.
Not to be glib, but the shelves of most American grocery stores do a pretty good job demonstrating that that segment of the population isn't dominant yet. There's a glut of processed food full of ingredients much harder to pronounce than an ingredient list that would read "Ingredients: Beef (cultured)".
And to be glib, I'm not thrilled about the idea of catering to the bar set by "things they don't understand" from that group in particular.
Sure you could, just don't tell them. The fast food burgers are already part soy and no one is yelling. If they replaced that with lab meat people would probably like it better.
At least the thing with live animals is that they have to be kept within some kind of parameters to survive, with those parameters hopefully also leading to some level of food standards for us. I can’t even conceive of the kind of chemicals and processes that would be required to keep random meat-like cells alive without the rest of the body.
I actually had some this weekend.
If you support this, visit one of the handful of restaurants selling it to show interest and support the companies. The salmon I had was ready for prime time in the right context, and if you didn't know, you probably wouldn't have noticed.
I'm surprised to hear that it works with fish in particular. I wouldn't have thought it could replicate the flakiness of real fish. That's great to hear honestly.
I'd assumed it would mostly be limited to cultured ground beef and chicken nuggets.
Lab grown mean doesn't work.
But debrained animals are certainly more plausible.
You just need a miminum interface to keep their bodies running. Cruelty free meat.
Oysters don't have a central nervous system.
I understand that at least chicken works.
also, you misspelled "meat" as "mean"
In nature, animals are routinely torn apart and devoured while still breathing.
In a proper rending facility, a captive bolt pneumatic/hydraulic pistol punctures their skull and sends a shockwave through their brains, killing them like Tony in the last scene of the Sopranos.
What a weird compromise.
I'll be pleased to let you eat that for me.
I mean if it’s functionally identical then I would.
Not super interested in pink slime style concoctions either
what a disgusting idea.
It's not even nice. People ate meat because fresh fruit and vegetables weren't available all year round or even at all. All good food has plants to make it taste nice. You can easily just skip the meat and go straight for the flavour.
The Alaskan word for "vegetables" is literally "boring food"
In Swedish, it's "green things."
Do you live in Alaska?
Yeah, I hate being stuck with a luscious rare filet mignon basked in clarified butter, it's so flavorless that I have to chase it with celery, cucumbers, and lettuce just to stomach it... /s
Your comment makes no sense. If plants weren’t around for humans to eat then how did the animals humans eat survive?
Humans eat animals because they are a denser faster nutrition than plants. More bang for your buck. Trying to act like humans “only eat animals because” is ignoring reality.
Here's a link to the bill if you are interested in who sponsored and cosponsored it. It's a total of 24 people, so it had a fair bit of support.
If you live in the district of one of these people you might consider contacting them to let them know your opinion.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4673...
The "R-" after their names means they're all Republicans, right?
Yes, [R-IA-4] means Republican from Iowa's 4th Congressional District.
Gestation crates are up there among the most immoral things created by man.
In their current implementation, yeah, they’re pretty bad.
There is a need for something like it, though. A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them.
> A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them.
This makes me really curious because that behavior seems very maladaptive for a species. That leads me to wonder if something else, ie. the environment or domestication, is leading to this behavior rather than pigs being really, really prone to wiping out their own species. Does anyone know why they do this in a farm environment?
Humanity is almost definitely going to wipe itself out in the not too distant future through an avoidable (if not for the selfish greed of many of us) climate change resource war Great Filter event.
This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.
> This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.
The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact. So getting comfortable that the whole system is damned and worth tossing is very convenient but too cavalier for me to find comfort in
> The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact.
I don't disagree with this at all, and on a personal level I do everything I can to reasonably leave things as good or better than I found them. I just no longer believe anything I do is going to pull humanity as a whole back from the edge.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is something like: "Imagine a button appears in front of you. Pressing it will snap all human beings painlessly out of existence. Do you push the button?"
Some people get caught in minutiae about downstream effects, I tell them it can go however they want (house pets are free or gone too, planes land harmlessly, etc)
In my circles, I've found it's about 50/50 button pushers to non-button pushers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, vegetarians are more likely to be button pushers.
That’s wild to me. I’d hazard a guess that 0% of my friends would push the button (okay, lizardman tax, I’m sure I could find someone I know who would say yes). I think they’d also feel a need to go find whoever made said button and lock them in a cell for safekeeping.
It's impossible to refute anecdotes purporting to represent populations based on what they might do in a hypothetical, and the people being described fade further out of tangible existence at every next layer of abstraction.
But Most Vegans I Know (tm) regard human life as valuabe, speak in terms of harm reduction, and tend not to fantasize about making Vault Tec real.
If human life is net harmful, then harm reduction means targeting 0 humans.
My first serious programming job was at a start up and the owner asked me this question. I was caught off guard, of course I wouldn’t! I couldn’t really explain why at the time, but it essentially revolved around the fact that I was young and optimistic. 25 years later, I’m not so sure. Now, said optimism has almost vanished and there are days pushing seems like the path to least suffering, but I also feel it’s unethical for one person to decide for everyone else.
I mean this sincerely, not as an insult: consider that the problem is with your mind or personal life, not with the world, and you should look for a way to address that if you haven't already.
We have examples of how that actually plays out (in a limited form).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
FWIW I wouldn't push the button.
I just think we are going to absolutely deserve the outcome as we collectively and metaphorically push that button... which we continue to do and are regressing on stopping ourselves from doing so a handful of super wealthy can watch gamified number go up.
What makes you think that we we collectively and metaphorically are pushing the painless button?
Well you're right, the real world isn't so simple and the button we are pushing certainly isn't going to be painless.
If I were to implement such a button, I'd make it so that only the people who said "yes" would disappear.
Life is a gift. A painless life has no value. In fact, if you are genetically immune to pain, your lifetime survival rate is something like the teens.
Ehhh no they wouldn't.
Are you in silicon valley by any chance?
God what an awful prospect. How about when you push the button it only removes the button pushers, so the rest of us are free to continue enjoying our existence.
The point is that continuing to enjoy your existence is inflicting a massive toll of suffering around the world, to both others humans as well as non-humans.
I’m not saying I’d be one to push the button, but I think it’s worth trying to understand the mindset of someone who would. It’s very arguable that pushing it would be the ethical thing to do.
Not entirely convinced that outside the torment nexuses used in industrial meat farming, natural suffering is any lesser sans humanity.
Estimated scale of the torment nexuses: https://considerveganism.com/counter/
"Someone who would" is a terminally online loser who's confused the symptoms of their mental illness for philosophical insights.
Speaking as a lifelong atheist, I cannot stand this genre of nihilistic post-Christianity, all questionable moral baggage with none of the guidance. Here's a tip for you: humanity did not introduce evil to the world. If you don't understand this, find a church, it'll be better for us all.
Here's a tip for you: describe what you find questionable and why, otherwise reader will understand: "I don't like that, you're [loser / mentally hill / nihilist]".
I you don't like the conversation you're also free to ignore it.
Humanity did not introduce evil, but we have absolutely industrialized and massively scaled it.
What if the suffering is the point?
It is, because you can't have pleasure without suffering but I think these conversations should focus on the amount (maybe as a percentage) of suffering that someone/something experiences.
If you were locked in a room and being tortured, would you think it'd be appropriate for me to go: "they feed you at the end of each torture session, isn't it worth it to keep going for that?"
You should definitely watch the Black Mirror episode about the robot bees!
Because that line of "enjoying your existence" making no mention of the monumental harm we cause to every biome on the planet is exactly the kind of selfishness that the button pushers would like to eradicate.
Biomes are not moral subjects and don't deserve consideration. (Pigs are).
Biome is just a fancy term that encompasses a set of moral subjects.
> Biomes are not moral subjects and don't deserve consideration. (Pigs are).
Where do you think animals live?
Causing harm to biomes is not the same thing as causing net harm to animals inside biomes. The base rate of harm done to animals inside biomes is immense and horrific.
And I’d call entertaining thought experiments such as this “having such an open mind your brain falls out of the back of your head”.
Well, some people do choose suicide but I have a feeling that you'd be uncomfortable discussing assisted suicide. These conversations around humanity and suffering typically end in thought terminating takes such as yours. Why even respond if you're effectively throwing your hands up in the air and ignoring nuance?
The person you're responding to is explicitly saying they would be fine with suicide.
> is explicitly saying
I don't think it's explicit, that's why I put the quip in there about assisted suicide. This thread is showing me that perhaps a lot of people would be okay with the "complainers" offing themselves but I'm not sure... my gut feeling is that a lot of optimists hold conflicting beliefs around this.
Unlikely. See some expert analysis here: https://forecastingresearch.org/xpt
We live in a sandbox. Unless we decide to work together to escape it, then there is no point in humanity to exist. All we essentially do is produce rubbish, poo and suffering.
> there is no point in humanity to exist
Did any one ever state that there was? Religious types will argue, but my counter is just humanity came up with religion as a stop gap in knowledge.
The suffering is mainly because of overcrowding
the suffering is mainly because of extreme wealth hoarding and profoundly selfish use of resources; overcrowding could be easily solved for all people if we as a species decided it was important
Well, social stratification isn’t helping anything.
If you can’t find anything worthwhile here what makes you think you’ll find it out there?
It’s a meaningless question, there is no “out there”.
Not saying it is not worthwhile. As nature equipped us with feelings to make existence more pleasant. Enjoy the brief blip of consciousness.
I am thanks.
Pigs outnumber the humans 7-to-1 in Iowa, but they don't vote so here we are.
As an Iowan, it is obligatory to show love for Herbert Hoover and our pig population when called upon.
https://xcancel.com/Lewis_Bollard/status/2030985704902099335...
If the billionaires in power thought that they could grow their wealth 1% more by forcing the rest of us humans into gestation crates, they would do it in a heartbeat.
Anyone who's ever looked after and cared for pigs knows that this is very-very cruel. I would do the same with those humans(?) who wants this. Greed over everything. Disgusting
Ashley Hinson, sponsor of Save Our Bacon Act, endorses bombing people thought to be dangerous. Pig-torturers are dangerous.
https://www.kcrg.com/2026/03/06/rep-hinson-speaks-iran-confl...
crates are wastefull , gestation tubes, amputate there irrelevant legs, and keep them in nice cozy tubes.
Farming practices are already absolutely terrible.
And for reasons of arbitrary weight increase, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine is used in the USA. Doesnt degrade when cooked, so humans also get fat from it amongst other bad side effects. Banned in most countries, but not the USA. This is also why pork export is banned in most countries.
I know 1 person who is "allergic to pork". But European pork is fine. Even Canadian pork is fine. But what's different with US pork? Ractopamine.
To me, this is yet another reason why capitalism initially was great at making an economy, but profit-seeking behavior gets legally and ethically worse and one trades ethics for money.
> I know 1 person who is "allergic to pork". But European pork is fine. Even Canadian pork is fine. But what's different with US pork? Ractopamine.
Ractopamine is used in Canada.
This sounds like a possible case of the nocebo effect: Someone experiences symptoms based on a belief that an ingredient is bad for them. When they consume the same thing without the belief that the ingredient is present, the effects are absent even though the ingredient is present.
This happens with people who believe they have WiFi sensitivity disorders, too. If you put them next to a WiFi router with blinking lights they will experience the pain of their condition. If you turn off the lights on the router but leave the WiFi transmitting, they stop feeling the effects.
Ractopamine is authorized in Canada per the article you linked.
Let's not let that pesky detail get in the way of the USA bad narrative he has going.
Still banned China, Russia and the EU...
Looking at the stuff China puts in their food (like the actual instant noodles), definitely a red flag if even they ban it.
Generally I look at EU for what's good/bad to consume though. It's scary how much stuff is banned there that's in everyday US products.
This is fascinating to me. I am allergic to pork (or I would say intolerant, when I eat it I get a headache and/or stomach ache). But I did try a piece of wild boar once, and was fine after that. I will have to look into this!
> To me, this is yet another reason why capitalism initially was great at making an economy,
Initially it wasn't that great either if you were a slave or worked 14 hours a day .
Capitalism precludes slavery.
I find it odd we need legislation to prevent this.
There are not enough consumers to care? Or maybe with legislation we get better outcomes due to scaling effects?
If we are willing to use legislation, could we tax such gestation crates, and use that tax revenue to breed unconscious pigs? Or find a way to disable consciousness in their brain? Or fund lab meat? I'm sure small labs are doing this, but if we are at the point of legislation, I imagine there is enough willpower to solve this problem rather than bandaids.
Consumers probably don't know all of the conditions involved in making any of the products they buy. That information is generally not on the label, and even environmental and conditions based labels are often vague and hard to interpret.
Also in an economy of rising costs, people are going to choose affordable options even if they might be vaguely aware of worse conditions happening somewhere else, far away from the grocery store aisle where they are making that choice for their family.
Everything you suggested are bandaids
> If we are willing to use legislation, could we tax such gestation crates, and use that tax revenue to breed unconscious pigs? Or find a way to disable consciousness in their brain? Or fund lab meat?
This is the kind of "big government libertarian" thinking that you only find on HN. It's like virtue signalling but the virtue is contrarianism. What you've suggested is more complicated, less ethical, less effective, and likely to be opposed by just about everyone across the political spectrum.
Does anyone else ever find it odd that in posts like this the person posts a sad picture of a pig instead of a screenshot of the page of the bill they're talking about?
I think "a provision that would condemn millions of pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates" is in fact horrific, however, outrage is the currency on places like X.
Posting a page number sounds specific, but then why not post the page (or quote it)? Particularly in any even remotely political environment where the default is "vote for (or oppose) this bill or you want [insert cute animal, baby, person, minority group] to die."
Just a tiny bit of source referencing could go a long way to help people better understand what you want them to support (or oppose).
fwiw, i found it helpful, i had no idea what a gestation crate is. i don’t think the photo is sad or manipulative, the sad part is what is being done to the pigs! and seeing a photo of what is done to the pigs is all i needed to make up my mind. it’s like the difference between posting a document that references “enhanced interrogation techniques” vs seeing a photo of what was actually done, it has a very different impact. i agree some kind of a citation would be nice though, so i don’t have to go digging about what to say when i contact my representative about.
Yeah, why would someone trying to drum up opposition to the measure show the real-world impacts of it instead of the (easily Googlable) dry legalese? Real thinker, there.
Whoa there - can’t shape public sentiment if you let people go read it for themselves.
2 seconds on Google leads you the sponsor of the bill bragging about doing what the OP is complaining about: : https://hinson.house.gov/media/press-releases/hinson-introdu...
The insane language in the sponsor's own press release tells me all I need to know about who the evil side on this bill is.
California prop 12: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/fd/mb-fdp-03-2022-a.asp