Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
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User ID: 102
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
3yr ago
What makes you think that the planet can support only 2 billion long term? "Carrying capacity" is just a function of available technology. We can support much more than few centuries ago already. Long term ecological strain, global warming and so on are likewise, merely problems of engineering.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
3yr ago
I think that makes sense, we could use it to raise activity, at least until this forum is more stable
This woke plague kind of ruined many themes and tropes, and by extension many pieces of media that perhaps didn't deserve it, at least for me. My inner critic is always on alert, looking out for wokeness, ready to dismiss anything that sets off enough alarms.
I might exaggerate a bit, but it's at least partly true for me. Maybe that's my flaw, but the general instinct to use heuristics like that for quick judgement is sound and useful. So there's an ironic dimension to it - overflow of wokeness and focus on quantity, instead of quality of woke propaganda likely keeps a lot of people from treating it seriously. Well, I guess it's better than the alternative.
First, we don't really know how consciousness works (nor do we know how to even begin to study it), so we must place some discount on animal lives all things being equal. Of course, it can also be applied to other humans, but to much lesser degree. Wouldn't it be a shame to go through so much trouble if it turns out that all or most animals we eat are good old cartesian machines?
Okay, this point is more of a funny food for thought than a serious argument; it's far more likely than not that some animals have subjective experience and can suffer. But if they do...so what?
As buddists figured out millenia ago, suffering is inextricable part of life. But what makes a life, even filled with suffering, worth living, worth preserving? It's quite tough to grap it precisely with language, but here's my take - it's the ability to choose your path, to ponder life's meaning, to appreciate the moment. You know, metacognition. Agency. All of the things animals lack.
Imagine that you died, and arrived at an audience to some kind of heavenly authority and it said - “Your mortal coil is over now, you could go to heaven, if you so desire. Though they say it's bit boring, would you be interested in reincarnation?” You nod.
“Alright. Let's see what positions are vacant right now…I know, there's one that would fit you very well. How about a cow? You will be born to a nice pack, in a lovely farm in rural France. A couple of years of chewing grass and shitting on it. I'm sure you will fit right in. Ready to embark?”
Good set up, good punchline, good joke, by all accounts. Don't know about you, but I would smile, maybe politely laugh a bit. But of course I would refuse. Because that's all that is - a joke. A life as a cow is self-evidently worthless to me.
Another angle - trolley dilemma. Is there a point at which you would sacrifice a human to save X number of cows? 100? 1000? even more zeros attached to the 1? For me, there's no such point.
All these bazillions of cows can go to hell as long as there are human lives at stake.
Resources are scarce. Time is precious. Why on earth would I spend it on improving well being of cattle?
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