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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25796 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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You're getting it!

You don't need to write so much to show that 2rafa's argument is risible, though I appreciate the rigorous formalization. I'd like to think the ridiculousness is apparent from my much briefer comments.

I think the biggest logical fallacy (or questionable ethical framework) in her stance is damnation-by-association. If a chimpanzee has never molested another chimp, nor eaten it, does it make it an individually honorable chimp? What proportion of individuals must not have committed grave sin for the whole to be condemned?

This suggests an end-state which is a surveillance state for both farmyard and wild animals. I chuckle to think of a world where "cruelty free" chicken is certified on the basis of their moral behavior before slaughter.

I do not think the majority of chimpanzees have eaten another chimp, though orangutans and bonobos seem much nicer chaps.

If a chicken is raised alone in a coop, and hasn't pecked other hens to death, am I not allowed to eat it? Or should we only eat the alpha chickens, the matriarchs who dominate the rest? Once they're eaten, the next chicken down becomes the dishonorable alpha, and is thus fair game.

I don't know dawg, and I don't care. I just had half of one in a Nandos, and it's not done digesting. I will meditate on this when I have blood supply to spare.

I think the biggest logical fallacy (or questionable ethical framework) in her stance is damnation-by-association. If a chimpanzee has never molested another chimp, nor eaten it, does it make it an individually honorable chimp? What proportion of individuals must not have committed grave sin for the whole to be condemned?

It would be individually honorable but not collectively so, because dishonorable behavior is common enough (by my own arbitrary standard and based on my own limited knowledge) among chimps to affect my perception of them as a species.

I consider octopuses highly intelligent and capable. But they do very regularly eat each other. I consider pigs very intelligent, deeply empathetic, rather soulful animals. But again, they eat each other all the time. When eating octopus or pork, I am, if anything assimilating to ‘their’ moral universe. If pigs in 2025 committed cannibalism at the same extremely low rate as humans in 2025 (and again, I care about the present when it comes to my own personal ethics) then I would feel worse about eating them.

A chicken is neither honorable nor dishonorable. It falls below the arbitrary threshold of intelligence beneath which I have determined the distinction is meaningless.

I will grant that you are being consistent. It is a very unusual moral framework, but then again, so is mine and I'm happy with it.

#NotAllDolphins

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