435
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
435 points (96.4% liked)
News
23266 readers
3452 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
But some animals we eat are carnivores, like most wild-caught fish. In which case, killing them reduces the total amount of suffering. Same reasoning as the trolley problem.
Even that's a bit more complex, without predators many species massively overbreed, leading to mass starvation
That wouldn't apply to ecosystems where the predator is invasive, for example the lionfish in the Caribbean (which happens to be delicious).
Furthermore, if there is concern for a population explosion then one could also kill and eat the predator's prey, provided you eat fewer than the predator would have eaten.
We, as omnivores, have a choice. The carnivores do not. I'd rather not cause more suffering than I have to (since I have that choice) even if there was the potential that it could possibly decrease overall suffering.
I will not go into other problems with fish specifically since it's not on-topic.
Whereas I choose to cause suffering if I expect it will reduce greater suffering, including killing animals if necessary.
Everyone has their own approach to the trolley problem.
Do note that this whole thing is based on the hypothetical of plants being capable of experiencing pain. In reality, they do not possess a nervous system to enable that.
Of course I'd choose to kill an animal if the alternative was getting injured or killed (or starving in some extreme survival situation), but in day-to-day life, I do not see the need to do that.
If the only way to stop a school shooter were to kill them, I think most people would do so even if they were not personally threatened.
And many people, including myself, think it is moral to kill even an innocent person if necessary to prevent the death of a greater number of people. That's the trolley problem in a nutshell.
But if I'm willing to kill a person in order to prevent them from killing other people, then I should also be willing to kill a fish in order to prevent it from killing other fish.
Finally, the argument for nonhuman sentience does not turn on the presence or absence of neurons. That would just be a cellular version of speciesism, and it inexplicably eliminates the possibility of sentience in extraterrestrials or machines.
The argument in the OP is based on behaviors, like recognizing self vs nonself, avoiding noxious stimuli, creative problem-solving, etc. Plants do many of these things too, just on longer timescales.