Great reference.

I will note that he seems to shrug, especially in footnote 19, as if to confess that whether lobsters feel pain or merely express reflexes is basically unknowable, not for any lack of humans trying to figure it out.

He seems genuinely conflicted, rather than firmly opinionated, certain only that people should take these questions more seriously. Or maybe he's being coy, to avoid alienating the gourmand.

I'm curious if he hesitates to kill spiders since writing this article. Spiders are similar to lobsters. Spiders exhibit preferences. Maybe we should all hesitate to kill them. Or maybe that's just crazy. I don't know.

Incidentally, if you want to feel incredibly confused about how you balance empathy towards human and nonhuman things, including arthropods, (and robots, and sociopaths, ...) you should read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It's a short novella, it's culturally relevant, it isn't really captured by the films, and it artfully messes with your head.

DFW on lobsters: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf

(The PKD is pretty easy to find, no link.)

As a practical matter, you should hesitate to kill spiders (unless you live somewhere they are poisonous)

Households spiders eat all manner of pests! I leave mine alive, and almost never have insect trouble.

> Households spiders eat all manner of pests!

Fair, but that's a very different rubric than contemplated by the article.

If your take is strongly influenced by utility, you might not necessarily object to eating lobsters in the first place.

And maybe that's fine, just two distinct approaches to this question.

In fact, if you're concerned, like DFW is, about minimizing suffering for all things that "exhibit preferences," then maybe that's too broad. Maybe then you don't want spiders slaughtering a bunch of other insects, because they exhibit preferences in turn. And then... you become pro-killing spiders?

On the other hand, maybe other insects don't pass the sentience/sapience test, only spiders do, and everything's fine, and it just leads to Jainism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

But if you use the "insects are dumb" out, you eventually hit a more general carnivore problem. If you believe you have a moral obligation to avoid causing the suffering of animals for food, then what obligation do you have to protect animals from natural predation? Does the fact it happens in the natural world make the suffering less meaningful? If one believes the death of rabbits for food is a grave tragedy, does that imply a preference for coyotes to go extinct?

This isn't preaching, I'm not really sure what the answer is to any of this. Honestly I think your rubric is simpler in some ways.

>I'm curious if he hesitates to kill spiders since writing this article.

DFW committed suicide many years ago.

I think the person you were responding to was saying that he does not hesitate, because he does not kill spiders, because he is dead. Not necessarily bait of any kind.

Thanks for the explanation. My misunderstanding.

Why would you kill spiders? I wondered after reading your comment. I never had the urge or need to kill one; do other people and why?

When I was three my family lived in Hawaii where “Banana Spiders” (large tarantula looking things) used to get into our beds at night. They don’t just crawl, they kind of hop about (or so three year old me remembers). So, to answer your question I have a standing agreement with the arachnids that inhabit my abode: I know you’re here and that you eat bugs, which I appreciate, however if I see you, game over.

You probably don't live in a tropical country. If you left spiders in your house alone, then within a week the place is filled with cobwebs littered with dead insects. Also, many spiders give you rashes even if they don't bite you. And spiders tend to attract each other.

I kill dangerous spiders in my home if I can't easily extract them. Harmless spiders are left to their own devices.

I'm desperately holding myself back from getting distracted from work with a deep dive through crustacean nervous system anatomy here, so I'll just ask: in what way are they different?

Having to do with the fact that lobsters (according to Wallace) have decentralized nervous systems consisting of ganglia wired in series, so that slicing through one of them might not disable the creature's nociception upon being immersed in boiling water. You might just be keeping it from flailing around, paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything.

Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil.

(Myself, I'm kind of grossed out by shellfish).

> paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything

Radiolab spin-off More Perfect recently discussed the “cosmetic” presence of a paralytic drug in lethal injection concoctions. I can’t help but see a parallel.

That's terrifying.

At least for the lobster, we're not really sure how they interpret pain. They don't have a brain in the same way the humans do. As a vegetarian, I personally would go back to meat if I just knew my meal had a good life and did not suffer needlessly in order for me to eat it. But for the prisoner, this seems like the worst combination: internalized suffering and externalized indifference... So minimize the the deturrence to crime while maximizing the suffering in society. Isn't this the opposite of how it should be?

The latest Hardcore History episode is called "Painfotainment", where Dan Carlin describes the history of executions and shows how they were not only a form of punishment but a large source of entertainment as well; from pre-history through very modern times. [0] It's not been a very easy episode to consume.

I've always been against the death-penalty because it is: permanent, subject to racial bias/applied un-evenly, performed by incompetent persons/botched, recommended by imperfect evidence, highly linked to religious sacrifice and does nothing to actually deter crime.

As for going back to meat, are you following the vat grown protein farmers?

[0: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-61-blitz-...]

> internalized suffering and externalized indifference

Didn't we just describe the entire aim of the US prison system?

Honest question: We don't treat dairy cows particularly well while they're alive (for example), so if you care about animal suffering why are you a vegetarian and not a vegan? I'm neither, for the record.

Because doing something is better than nothing.

What do you make of the recent science on plants ability to feel and sense?

> (Myself, I'm kind of grossed out by shellfish).

Ah, and I thought I was the only one. They look too damn similar to cockroaches!

There's a lot more similarity than just the looks. They're both arthropods.

And then there are crawfish, which are intermediate in size. Indeed, smaller than some southeastern cockroaches.

They're more closely related to spiders I think. If we had giant spiders they'd probably taste the same with drawn butter.

They are sea bugs.

They're arthropods, just like insects are, but true bugs are insects that belong to the order hemiptera.

Yep! Moreton Bay Bugs are delicious :) http://www.claringbolds.com.au/produce/morton-bay-bugs/

Why not just freeze them? Their metabolism is no mystery, and cold will slow them and eventually render them “asleep”.

Because most humans would never agree that "freezing to death" is a just death, although I am sure it would work out just fine as you described.

Humans would rapidly freeze to death in a lobster’s natural habitat. Humans are not lobsters, and we should be careful to remember that freezing to death is experienced differently by animals with different metabolisms. A good rule of thumb is that endotherms suffer horribly and experience pain in low temperatures, while cold-blooded animals experience torpor.

Most humans do not think like that, or hardly at all in the philosophical sense.

> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil.

Or, you know, don’t kill them.

Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary?

As Tolstoy wrote[1],

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=iucmAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA43

It’s fairly difficult not to kill them, you know, when you plan to eat them.

If your Tolstoy quote is accurate, it seems fairly sloppy reasoning to me. Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people. Calling sustenance “appetite” is a rhetorical flourish which undermines the argument.

I think what would be immoral is telling billions of people they can’t eat meat.

There are many ways one could prescribe humans should act to minimize their impact on the flora and fauna of our world. But at the same time, humans are entitled to a certain degree of leeway in this regard. Sustainably eating the plants and animals beneath us on the food chain is one of those areas.

> beneath us on the food chain

This sounds... tautological. We can morally eat whatever we can eat? Does that include gorilla meat? Weaker humans?

The OP provides no justification, so in his mind, yes. And when AI develops, or a new race of genetically engineered humans, they can eat us, too. But I'm sure the OP wasn't thinking about being boiled alive when he made his comment.

>humans are entitled to a certain degree of leeway in this regard. Sustainably eating the plants and animals beneath us on the food chain is one of those areas.

If we ever come into contact with extraterrestrial life, I hope that they don't share this view.

I hope they do, because we are going to eat them.

> Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people

It doesn't have to be; in fact, humans, animals, and the planet would be much better off in many ways were we to transition to plant-based diets:

Go vegan, save the planet https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/opinions/go-vegan-save-the-pl...

Five things would happen if everyone stopped eating meat http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/five-things-would-happen...

What would happen if everyone went vegan? https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-would-world-loo...

What the Health http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com

The Game Changers http://gamechangersmovie.com

Cowspiracy http://www.cowspiracy.com

If the extensively[1] debunked[2] "What the Health" makes your list, I'm skeptical of the standards to which you hold your sources.

Can you provide peer reviewed papers making claims comparable to the sources you provided?

[1] https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2017/7/2...

[2] http://time.com/4897133/vegan-netflix-what-the-health/

Thanks for the heads up on "What the Health". Sadly, I can no longer edit the submission.

For a meticulously documented presentation, see "How Not To Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXXXygDRyBU

I‘m not convinced that killing plants is creating less suffering than killing simple animals like shrimps or insects for example. Listen to the latest radiolab episode for example. Given their capabilities I find it reasonable to assume that the level of consciousness is about the same (which includes the very likely possibility of them being not conscious at all).

Point is, if you want to just reduce suffering while staying healthy (e.g. no iron / B12 deficiency) there may be better answers than just to restrict oneself to the one half of living creatures that happens to generate its own food from CO2.

I think you got the setup of that radio lab episode and not the later points. The points was that: a) plants are a lot cooler than you think b) looking at things from a non-standard position can lead to new insights even if that position might be wrong c) anthropomorphizing causes people to assign values to them that may or may not exist regardless of other evidence.

The turn was after hooking you on all of the feelings by anthropomorphizing the plants more to you, then went back to cold logical examination that there is no structure in the plant for pain or learning and literally pointed out the manipulation they did. Radiolab does this a lot, manipulates the listener to get you meta insight into yourself.

I think that in a century people will look back and consider us barbarians for eating meat whilst they chow down on their lab grown "ham"-burgers.

We surely can't be that far off of this now?

The Vegetarian Myth https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003PJ7JXY/

But lobsters are so much tastier than tofu. :-(

There are people who have averse reactions to almost every plant based food, and can largely only eat meat or suffer horrible mental and physical health problems.

Diet is not one-size-fits all, and we have basically no idea how complex diet is, or the specific long term effects of most dietary interventions on people. It is absolutely reprehensible to represent going vegan as an obvious way forward when it is unclear that it's even safe for a large majority of people.

Can you link to a description of that condition? It sounds fascinating.

Seems to be unstudied, but this person[0] reports has both severe mental and physical reactions currently to almost anything other than meat, though she was able to eat some vegetables safely before. Her father has similar reactions to many plant-based foods, and they both have had serious disorders activated seemingly by diet, especially severe depression.

In addition, many people are unable to eat yeast or yeast extracts, which are among the few commonly available non-flesh sources of the crucial vitamin B12.

[0]: http://mikhailapeterson.com/2017/12/18/zero-carb-carnivore-d...

While I still eat meat, etc, at times I do think about what kind of suffering animals, etc, go through. I often come to the conclusion that we should just let them be - their lives, much like ours, are short-lived, and they deserve their little piece happiness.

All this reminds me of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by Ernst F. Schumacher - a great read.

I disagree because they're not smart enough to enjoy their short and simple lives, so the enjoyment our lives get via eating them takes precedence.

This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe our own, to eat, just to see what we taste like. That's equivalent to consuming non-lab-grown but also unconscious human tissue, I think. BUT SCARIER, this same line of thinking might lead to much-vaster-than-human intelligences deciding we don't have rights and that it's okay to eat us!

Am I okay with being eaten by a hyperintelligent being to whom I have the status of a lobster or a cow? Maybe. Because I really admire a being like that. Maybe it could effortlessly convince me to surrendering to being eaten with arguments more creative and compelling than a million Shakespeares could pen up, effortlessly, like some Saruman-godthing[0], because that just goes with the territory of being that smart! But, short of that, I'd try to run away, and many people don't share my ambivalence...

Ethics is difficult. But chicken is tasty.

[0]: https://youtu.be/VHrTTgmB_3w?t=385

Circular reasoning. What kind of evidence can you have for some being "not smart enough" for any arbitrary experience? Nice essay though

I have no evidence that a lobster has consciousness, and it's consciousness (particularly intelligent consciousness, like yours and mine) that, to my very crude ethics, grants "personhood". With personhood comes the right to live and my thinking that it's immoral or some great loss to the Universe to kill you. That is why I think I can eat (and cause untold suffering) to lobsters with impunity for my benefit. :o (Not, to massage your image of me, that I would enjoy harming lobsters; I'd sooner keep one as a pet or release it if it materialized in my kitchen. I don't even like killing spiders or cockroaches, and I don't even eat those! BUT. If other people kill lobsters, I don't consider it immoral, and I'd gladly eat them served to me. But not the cockroaches or spiders.) Pain is bad, but it's bad to conscious beings. A computer can be programmed to react to keystrokes much the same as a creature "with no lights on" can be programmed to react to damaging stimuli, but that reaction brooks no rational response from me. It brooks emotional responses, but acting on reasonless emotion is silly.

Even if you accept my position, you could argue that maybe lobsters do have consciousness. Maybe they're even way more intelligent than we think they are. That'd be a problem. But, being scientific, you have to operate on what you have evidence for, not on what you don't. For the same reason, I don't think abortion is human murder (unless it's late term, after the brain's been thoroughly developed).

Another problem, of course, is where you draw the line. Lobsters aren't intelligent enough for personhood. What about dogs? What about chimps? What about severely mentally handicapped humans? Do you draw the line at doing calculus? (Because then you exclude a lot of normal humans!) That's the problem with fascism. :B I need to rethink my ways. But it's too difficult, and meat is calorically-dense and tasty!

If we could genetically engineer animals to be intelligent enough to have conscious desires, and also have an overwhelming desire to be killed and eaten, would it still be morally wrong to eat them? (This dilemma assumes that you share my belief that the demand for meat products causes a net increase in suffering.)

We're probably off-topic by now, but do you also believe that demand for meat products causes a net increase in joy/enjoyment (whatever you call the opposite of suffering)?

For instance, I keep chickens and let them free-pasture until the day I butcher them. I think they enjoy their time out there as much as any animal would. Depending who or what you believe, the end is very quick for them, so the suffering is minimal.

I realize this isn't the norm, though. I'm sure the "joy" experienced on many factory farms is some kind of dystopian thing, like being happy you got extra gruel last Tuesday.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Just something to think about.

That would be hilarious.

Taken to an extreme, we could have those animals be humans that are somehow born masochists, desperate to get consumed by cannibals.

Hmm. I think it's morally dubious to make them in the first place. Past that, we're talking about fulfilling their desires. If someone wants to die (say they're suffering from some slow, terminal illness or maybe incurable depression), is it ethical to keep them alive and deny them euthanasia? That seems like the same scenario. I say no; you should have the right to die if you want to in the most painless way possible. I think the Universe suffers a loss with the loss of your consciousness because it's an amazing thing, but your subjective suffering is more salient. I make that call on absolutely no rational ground; it's just my silly emotions. Silly emotions from a silly consciousness. :3 And it's that element of silliness that makes my position on this itself, or anyone else's, PERHAPS EVEN ALL THOSE MEAT ANIMALS' SUFFERING, seem sickeningly irrelevant in the grand, inscrutable, uncaring scheme of things. But that's morality for you.

We've gotta be careful here.

I'm so close to bringing up how maybe the self is a lie and how moral relativism justifies the worst levels of suffering imaginable.

The Hitchhiker book "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" explores this concept somewhat (as do some other books in the series IIRC).

The cow in question repeatedly assures the protagonist that the entire process is very humane and that it desires nothing more than to be eaten and enjoyed by others. It's actually quite offended when Arthur only orders a salad.

We clearly eat far more meat than we need and produce/harvest meat in ways that create unnecessary damage and suffering.

However, not everyone is like you. Some people develop deficiencies when they exclude meat from their diet. I have witnessed an ex-vegan health/nutritional professional advise a vegetarian to start eating some meat due to chronic health issues and lab-tested nutritional deficiencies.

It was an hard journey for both of them.

I'm glad it works for you right now while providing a sense of moral superiority, but not everyone is the same.

Ok, that person couldn't live and be healthy without meat, so the quote doesn't apply to them. Most people can.

> I'm glad it works for you right now while providing a sense of moral superiority, but not everyone is the same.

Come on.

> Most people can.

Any sources? Most of the professionals seem to think otherwise.

A source that most people can live and be healthy without eating meat? I don't. I looked for one and I can't find one. I seriously think that it's too self-evident to have warranted much study. There are hundreds of millions of vegetarians and they seem to be doing okay.

I'm not arguing that it's healthier or you can live longer, just that most people can be healthy and live.

Do you have a source that most professionals believe that most people can't live and be healthy on a vegetarian diet?

[Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704/)** * It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.

[Dietitians of Canada](https://www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Factsheets/Guidlines-for... * A healthy vegan diet can meet all your nutrient needs at any stage of life including when you are pregnant, breastfeeding or for older adults.

[The British National Health Service](http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Vegetarianhealth/Pages/Vegandiets... * With good planning and an understanding of what makes up a healthy, balanced vegan diet, you can get all the nutrients your body needs.

[The British Nutrition Foundation](http://www.nutrition.org.uk/publications/briefingpapers/vege... * A well-planned, balanced vegetarian or vegan diet can be nutritionally adequate ... Studies of UK vegetarian and vegan children have revealed that their growth and development are within the normal range.

[The Dietitians Association of Australia](https://daa.asn.au/smart-eating-for-you/smart-eating-fast-fa... * Vegan diets are a type of vegetarian diet, where only plant-based foods are eaten. With good planning, those following a vegan diet can cover all their nutrient bases, but there are some extra things to consider.

[The United States Department of Agriculture](http://www.choosemyplate.gov/tips-vegetarians)** * Vegetarian diets (see context) can meet all the recommendations for nutrients. The key is to consume a variety of foods and the right amount of foods to meet your calorie needs. Follow the food group recommendations for your age, sex, and activity level to get the right amount of food and the variety of foods needed for nutrient adequacy. Nutrients that vegetarians may need to focus on include protein, iron, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.

[The National Health and Medical Research Council](https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/file/publications/n55_... * Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle. Those following a strict vegetarian or vegan diet can meet nutrient requirements as long as energy needs are met and an appropriate variety of plant foods are eaten throughout the day

[The Mayo Clinic](http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healt... * A well-planned vegetarian diet (see context) can meet the needs of people of all ages, including children, teenagers, and pregnant or breast-feeding women. The key is to be aware of your nutritional needs so that you plan a diet that meets them.

[The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada](https://www.heartandstroke.ca/get-healthy/healthy-eating/spe... * Vegetarian diets (see context) can provide all the nutrients you need at any age, as well as some additional health benefits.

[Harvard Medical School](http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-veg... * Traditionally, research into vegetarianism focused mainly on potential nutritional deficiencies, but in recent years, the pendulum has swung the other way, and studies are confirming the health benefits of meat-free eating. Nowadays, plant-based eating is recognized as not only nutritionally sufficient but also as a way to reduce the risk for many chronic illnesses.

[British Dietetic Association](https://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/vegetarianfoodfacts.pdf)** * Well planned vegetarian diets (see context) can be nutritious and healthy. They are associated with lower risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers and lower cholesterol levels. This could be because such diets are lower in saturated fat, contain fewer calories and more fiber and phytonutrients/phytochemicals (these can have protective properties) than non-vegetarian diets. (...) Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of life and have many benefits.

Thank you!

40% of India is vegetarian. Approx. half a billion people. It is very hard to believe that they suffer from deficiencies. However, the 'vegetarian' food in the west is mostly salad and potatoes, a far cry from the variety of veggies found in tropical countries.

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blog-datadelve/article...

> Some people develop deficiencies when they exclude meat from their diet.

I'm one of those people.

Personally, I think refraining from consuming animals is the morally superior option—nothing to do with health. In the longer history of humankind I hope that's the direction we take. I'd happily take an artificial steak made of a complex of vegetable proteins, fast, etc that tastes like prime beef over slaughtering an animal if it contains all the similar nutrients that are absorbed the same way...

My sister-in-law and brother—both former/current athletes—are vegan and vegetarian, respectively, and make great work of the diet. She runs a vegan recipe blog, and he keeps in great physical shape as a provincial police officer while restricting his animal consumption to eggs and dairy.

I unfortunately inherited deficiencies in B12, Iron, and other deficiencies from my mother's side. She, in her old age, has to resort to transfusions once every few years to live. Wouldn't wish it upon anybody. I like to think I can fare much better.

It got to the point in my own restricted diet where my doctor explicitly instructed me to eat a lot more red meat. After some time I've reduced my intake there, and increased my sublingual B12, but still need to keep up enough other nutrients (forgive my omitting details) to keep up.

The difference that appropriate nutrition has isn't limited to the physical, either.

Nutrition is a very complex problem.

> Personally, I think refraining from consuming animals is the morally superior option—nothing to do with health.

Personally, I can see zero moral difference between killing an animal for food, and killing a plant for food. If one is unacceptable, then so should be the other.

It's pretty off topic for the general discussion, but ideas surrounding this really interest me and I'd be happy to discuss them outside of this venue if you'd like.

The only animals that don't generally die mostly from predation are those on top of whatever food chain they're a part of (bears, big cats, etc.) And we don't tend to eat those.

For the rest, if we aren't eating them, something else is going to eat them. It's not a question of "taking an animal life"—the animal's life is going to get taken, in a messy, bloody, terrifying way.

It is considered by some to be an increase in marginal global utility, when a human eats an animal that would otherwise have been eaten by something else. Because we cause less suffering in the process of (killing and) eating the animal, than anything else would have.

(I don't personally know how I feel about this argument, but I feel like I should put it out here, because it's not very well-known and usually causes more interesting discussion than the usual responses.)

---

Also, as a bonus argument: if you're a positive utilitarian, then we increase global utility by a lot simply by raising livestock to eat them that would otherwise have never existed at all. (If you're a negative utilitarian, then all the good humanity has ever done is probably wiped out by the suffering of the great number of chickens we keep.)

Either way, though, it's indisputable that the life of e.g. a sheep kept by a shepherd, has higher total QALY than the life of a wild sheep. For some species, we're giving them a virtual garden-of-Eden to live in until they just, one day, die at our hands.

There's actually a part of the Effective Altruism movement that wants to reduce wild animal suffering—i.e. interject ourselves into nature in order to make more animal lives like that of the tended sheep (with or without the eventual culling.) I think they hope to use synthetic meat to solve the "how do you keep both the fox and the hen happy" problem.

I don't understand how your argument exists alongside the fact that we farm the animals that we eat.

The chicken that you buy at the grocer isn't one we swiped away just as a wolf was about it eat it. The chicken was grown indoors in a factory, likely hadn't even seen the light of day. Even a wolf-eaten wild chicken gets that courtesy.

The argument I have is mostly applicable to fisheries (i.e. this discussion re: lobsters); it doesn't have much to say about farming.

Lobsters, like much of our seafood, are just plucked up out of the ocean. If we don't eat them, an otter or something does.

As it happens, adult American lobsters have few predators other than man. They're big, well-armored, have immensely powerful claws and live in deep burrows. Juvenile lobsters are vulnerable to ground fish, but an adult lobster is only likely to be eaten by brave seals and humans.

True enough, for now. It seems climate change has created a lobster population boom, though (they love the warmer water), so I would say it's only a matter of time before evolution takes notice of this "free lunch" and adapts some of the neighbouring predators to better get at them.

Whether they suffer more or less when caught vs killed naturally in the ocean, I don't know, but there are other issues with fishing in the ocean, mainly that it is unsustainable.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ocean-fish-number...

Lobsters are basically farmed, at this point.

You can be against factory farming and not be a vegan.

A wolf-eaten chicken also gets courtesy parasites.

The Philosophy around procreation is still much debated, but my understanding is that positive utilitarians generally do not believe that _creating_ more lives is necessarily morally good.

While death is often seen as vastly negative (or infinitely, depending on who you ask), positive utilitarians typically reject the idea that procreating more / having more children increases total utility.

Yeah, the simple act of creating the life doesn't have utility in any interpretation, I think; people just talk about the utility of procreation as a sort of Net Present Value on the projected utility that life will experience. Under positive utilitarianism, all lives either experience positive or zero utility, so it's never a net negative to have more of them.

Most positive utilitarians further posit that all [evolved, rather than maliciously-engineered-for-the-sake-of-cruelty] lives likely contain at least a little happiness/reward/satisfaction (positive utility), and since the unhappy moments just axiomatically have zero utility, rather than negative utility, all [evolved] lives should "sum up" to being worth creating from their own perspectives—though creating additional lives might make marginal global utility go down, for Malthusian reasons (ten starving wolves that each live for a year aren't don't have as much utility as one well-fed wolf that lives for ten years.)

Personally, I don't like positive utilitarianism very much—but it's important to understand, since it seems to be the intuitive stance a lot of (often religious, but not always) people have without realizing it.

> For the rest, if we aren't eating them, something else is going to eat them. It's not a question of "taking an animal life"—the animal's life is going to get taken, in a messy, bloody, terrifying way.

Not necessarily, the amount of ocean inhabitants people consume surely tops what would be taken naturally. I don't see how getting scooped from the ocean, hauled in trucks in small boxes, than kept alive in some aquarium beats living in ocean until any kind of death.

"man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food"

Most studies I read found that vegetarians were more healthy and lived longer than heavy meat eaters, but the once-in-a-while meat eaters were healthier. One of the reasons I stick with the last group.

Selfish?

Yes. But not only for appetite.

Besides, without predators, you probably would not have much forests ... and much more dessert.

It's my nature. Robbing me of my nature is like penning a fox indoors all day. Or robbing zoo cats of the freedom to hunt. Might call it inhumane. Just playing the other side. I love meat but I don't take a stance on the matter.

It's also in your nature to murder other humans, steal things, and participate in all sorts of mischief. If you're of a certain disposition it's in your nature to rape children, maybe hang cats, or try to destroy the lives of other people in other ways. I personally do not eat meat but I also don't shun those who do - my goal is only to do my best to reduce suffering as much as I can - but I think that to argue that it's in your nature to do something is a very poor argument. Being human means we can largely overcome our nature, or at least make rational choices about it.

Agriculture pretty much kills animals too. Pesticides kill animals, removing their habitats to replace them with farmed fields kills animals.

I don't think there currently is a sustainable way to live without killing animals. Humanity is not going to live off pure gathering.

Most farm animals in the US are fed by commercial agriculture. Eating meat multiplies the amount of plant agriculture required by a significant factor (dependent on the animal).

Often I see the concept you pointed out presented in a way that implies meat has separate and distinct negative externalities from plants, and that it's roughly equivalent whether you choose set of negatives A or set of negatives B. In reality one is a superset of the other.

Well, if Tolstoy says so, then there is no arguing...

I always find claims of morality interesting, especially if they are of the non-norm-derivative kind, and presented without any ethical argument whatsoever. Very convincing indeed.

Lots of things aren't necessary. Eating lots of meat, sex without intent to procreate, travel.

They sure are fun!

The gp is still pointing out that causing suffering to other creatures is a downside of eating meat. While all items you listed are not necessary, only one of them has that downside.

Unless one argues with the premise that the killing/pain of other creatures is harmful, we'll only be talking past one another.

Having sex without the intent to procreate can lead to having children whom you aren't prepared to take care of. Tourism fuels and is fueled by organizations that destroy ecosystems.

Everything humanity does destroys the planet and its inhabitants, including ourselves. A vegan thinks they're doing their small part, while texting up a storm on their iPhone, driving to work in their Camry, living in their downtown 1000 sqft apartment. Thinking your diet of all things makes the animals we share this place with feel any better is about as facetious as thinking a band-aid would help a man who just went headfirst into a woodchipper. You could go completely offgrid, live off the land, maximizing everything you can do to help this problem, and you wouldn't even begin to put a dent into it.

But if it helps you sleep at night, then by all means. At least you've some semblance of peace, which is more than most people on this planet have.

Not my point. My point is that the poster I was replying to is talking past the initial poster, rather than responding to them.

I don't think vegans/vegetarians do so because of their singular impact on the world. Worth saying that (presumably) you and I choose not to kill other people, knowing that our taxes might be funding wars, our gadgets might be built in sweatshops, etc.

Not sure about the meaning of your second paragraph, but in theory, animals bred for human consumption could live happy lives up to the point of a painless, instant death. The issue becomes whether they would be missed by other animals.

Some would consider this a dangerous way of thinking, but someone like Temple Grandin would agree, I think, that the correct thing to worry about is suffering, not 'harm' in some abstract sense.

Considering suffering alone seems like it could justify some counterintuitive conclusions. Would it be wrong to have a child, raise it happily to adolescence, and then give it a painless, instant death? If so, why?

That's a valid argument, but I think a more relevant question is: between the options of having a child, raising it happily to adolescence, and then killing it, vs. not having the child at all, which option is "better"? Which is more net positive in the world?

This is a closer scenario, since billions of e.g. cows would not be born and raised if not for our use for them as food. (Of course, in reality, they're mostly not raised happily).

When deciding the answer to the scenario, keep in mind that most parents who have children with e.g. terminally ill diseases, who die in adolescence, or even kids that die as teenagers from accidents, would probably not say it is better that they had not lived.

Also worth considering - we have children knowing that their lives will tragically end in death after 100 years at most. Why is that not wrong? Just cause we're used to 100 years being a lot, doesn't really change the fundamental argument does it?

I didn't mean that happiness wouldn't be considered, just that that appropriate thing to worry about is suffering (can we call it negative happiness?).

There is obviously not going to be a simple happiness score at each moment of life—it should at least be a vector of scores. Would make sense to integrate over time, but then there's the spectre of a "happiness maximizer" (like a paperclip maximizer) that might produce undesirable outcomes, whether it's average or aggregate happiness you consider. Ethics is difficult to formalize.

Adding happiness to the model solves some of its problems (suffering+happiness model doesn't advocate nuclear annihilation), but I don't see how suffering-vs-happiness utilitarianism reaches the conclusion that infanticide is wrong. It seems like we need to consider more than happiness vectors for infanticide not to be okay.

Well, the prohibition of infanticide is a norm that presumably derives from a perception that killing babies harms the person who does it or others with a relationship to the child (possibly in a very indirect, diffuse way). It is perceived as going against the natural order of things, I guess. Utilitarian ethics does flirt with accepting infanticide in many cases, which is something a lot of people undoubtedly find repugant. Like this story:

"On his faculty page, Mr. Singer argues: “Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents."

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/16/peter-singer-...

if i remember correctly it has something to do with the nervous system being less central and more distributed. probably similar to limbs that continue to move once severed (in other species)

What is worse, causing pain or killing?

If we consider an extreme case of someone going through a horrible torture, but the next day waking up as healthy as before, and without some kind of mental illness, and without losing significant amount of his time, or opportunity, would it be any different than a game? Would most people try such a game, where they play for someone getting executed in middle ages?

My guess is they would, so fear of the pain is misplaced, and death is the horrible part. And therefore killing painlessly doesn't let one off the hook, since it is still killing. (And if one thinks killing is ok, then some amount of pain should be ok too.)

Wait, what? You mean most people would volunteer to be tortured horribly as long as any damage is 100% reversed the next day? Uh, I’m not sure whether your model of people is entirely accurate.

Not volunteer for it alone, but try it as a part of a bigger package. Kind of like a more realistic version of a horror movie/game.

Do you think i am entirely wrong, and suffering is worse than death?

Do you think it is better to die, instead of enduring suffering and then getting to live some more?

My gut feeling is that you do very little work with your hands, because your pain-o-meter seems to have drifted in a very unrealistic direction.

I agree. I'd do a heck of a lot more unsafe shit if I knew I could survive it without permanent damage. It's the permanent damage that keeps me from doing flagrantly unsafe stuff, not the pain. You wind up causing yourself pain in all sorts of avoidable but not terribly unsafe ways.

It's is amazing the pain and suffering a human can endure through shear force of will. In Ranger School in the US Army the primary thing you learn more then anything else is you mind can tell your body to shut up deal.

> Do you think i am entirely wrong, and suffering is worse than death?

Yes. Read reports of torture victims. They frequently request death over continued pain.

Torture violates several points of the hypothetical:

- torture causes permanent physical damage

- torture causes mental trauma

- the torture victim does not know when the torture will stop

> Do you think i am entirely wrong, and suffering is worse than death?

In some cases, certainly.

I'd also say that it being voluntary, and knowing that there is an end (and can be brought to an end by you), makes for a very different experience.

I think you severely underestimate how much painful torture is.

If you knew there would be no permanent damage would you do it for $10, $100, $1,000, some amount that assures you never have to work again, etc?

There's many cultures that have coming of age rituals that would be considered torture in the western world. People do those things because they're "part of a larger package" so to speak.

There being "many cultures" that do this, I'd like to hear some examples. The only ones I can come up with are fictional

Random cut and pastes:

THAIPUSAM, MALAYSIA

In a demonstration of devotion and offer of penance to the Hindu God Lord Murugan, devotees perform incredible (and sometimes gruesome!) feats. They pierce their body and face with skewers, drag chariots with hooks attached to their skin and carry uncomfortable metal frames called ‘kavadis’ through the streets and up the 272 steps to the shrine at the top of the cave. During the festival some participants enter trance-like states when their soul is believed to be cleansed of sins.

PHUKET VEGETARIAN FESTIVAL, THAILAND

By the name of this festival you may assume it to be a gentle affair where new-age vegetarian hippies share tofu recipes over yoga mats in Thailand. However, the Phuket Vegetarian festival is one of the craziest, most spectacular events in South East Asia. You’ll witness incredible acts of self-torture such as walking on hot coals, climbing bladed ladders and the piercing of cheeks with swords, shards of glass – even beach umbrellas.

Filipino fanatics re-enact crucifixion for Good Friday

In a bloody display of religious devotion Roman Catholic fanatics in the Philippines have had themselves nailed to the cross as the Christian world marks the day Jesus was crucified.

Read the link for quotes from people talking about the repeated nerve pain, blood, etc.:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-06/philippino-fanatics-cr...

These are the most extreme example I know of, but it's a lot of pain for a manhood ritual

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maw%C3%A9_people

I absolutely, 100% would not volunteer to go through a "horrible torture."

I certainly wouldn't do it for "a game." I don't think I would do it for any amount of money or other benefit, either. What you're proposing is (seemingly) no benefit beyond the experience of being tortured--which coincidentally you are going you erase when you delete the mental illness.

Anyway, you're wrong, nobody would sign up for that. People who are afraid of roller coasters don't ride them. Everyone's afraid of torture.

Yeah, that part didn't make sense. I would agree with the argument that a day of torture with no lasting effects would be preferable to death though.

> I absolutely, 100% would not volunteer to go through a "horrible torture."

Even if it was to unlock a new level in a game, or to remove a tooth? :)

More seriously though seems like i didn't manage to express what i wanted to say in my comment.

My point was that people are afraid of torture, and many other things (like roller coasters) because there's a large chance to die in the end. And without that chance the whole thing is just some neurons being active, and is not a big deal.

Your point about needing to erase all memory of the experience to not get mental illness is very interesting. I'd expect the brain to be more stable, but we don't know enough about the brain to say for sure.

> Your point about needing to erase all memory of the experience to not get mental illness is very interesting.

I actually didn't express that very well. I kind of meant that if you were to erase the mental illness, you've effectively erased the whole experience. Horrible torture isn't something you just leave behind you the day after. The influence it has is almost necessarily mental illness in some form or fashion.

If anyone did go through horrible torture voluntarily, I would expect they would do it to know what it was like. And mental illness is part of what it's like.

> My point was that people are afraid of torture, and many other things (like roller coasters) because there's a large chance to die in the end. And without that chance the whole thing is just some neurons being active, and is not a big deal.

There are people afraid of bugs, dogs, cats, birds, balls etc... There are also people who experience anxiety for unknown reasons due to anxiety disorder. Moreover, there is no, quoting you, "large chance to die in the end" in roller coasters. I don't think any part of your argument makes sense, sorry.

> or to remove a tooth?

The point of tooth removal in dentistry is to end pain, not to cause it.

Sure, but if you do not have the proper painkillers, it's hell of a lot more painful than the pain it ends. You are trading long term nagging pain, for short intense one, which is totally worth it, but is a lot of pain.

People painfully remove perfectly good wisdom teeth all the time just because it's convenient to do them all at once and on the off chance that they're preventing some pain in the future.

Hell no.

Accidentally catching my hand on a table saw was bad enough, thank you very much. I knew very well I wouldn't die or suffer permanent damage and it still sucked like hell.

Same is true of many afflictions - stubbing your toe, mouth ulcers. Pain remains real even if you know it's for your own benefit and have the option of simply opting-out, see half of medicine.

> My guess is they would

No, your guess is absurd. Of course they wouldn't.

It's always been possible to quite reliably cause extreme pain with little long-term consequence. The pain remains real, and people remain motivated to avoid that pain.

This isn't even a thought experiment - you're just describing torture!

> killing painlessly doesn't let one off the hook, since it is still killing

If we're talking about human beings: obviously. No-one in their right mind would disagree with that. Most people treat non-human animals as categorically different.

> And if one thinks killing is ok, then some amount of pain should be ok too.

Non-sequitur.

The killing in this case is a foregone conclusion, so it's really a question of, What is worse: causing a lot of pain before killing, or causing a little pain before killing? A bit easier to answer.

In Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovach novels, virtual torture typically drives victims insane. And for me, I fear prolonged illness and pain more than death.

> virtual torture typically drives victims insane.

Is that self evident though? It seems like the difference between pleasure and pain is that pain is a signal that is interpreted as "get out of here, or you may die". And brain is pretty flexible when it comes to reinterpretting the meaning of signals. E.g. with food taste, some tastes that induce revulsion on first try, become peculiar and interesting after a while.

Yes, and that's part of the strategy that Envoys (and presumably, real life counterparts) use in resisting torture. But with virtual torture, the victim can experience thousands of AI-driven sessions with a clock rate that's thousands of times faster than normal. So years of torture in hours.

Haven’t read the novels yet, but have watched half of Altered Carbon series on Netflix. This was the first thing that came to and a resounding ‘hell no.’

I recommend reading the novels! The Netflix series puzzles me. It's like they put everything from the novel in a box, and pulled it out in random order. Some of the changes were arguably necessary so viewers could follow the plot. And some were typical mass-media dumbing down.

But others just seemed pointless. For example, in the novels, the Envoys are not dissidents, but rather enforcers for the Protectorate. Quell was a dissident, and Takeshi did quote her frequently, but she died centuries before he was born. The Quell character in the video is actually Virginia Vidura, who was his trainer in the Envoys. And Reilieen was not his sister.

Also, the virtual torture sequence in the novel is far more extreme than depicted in the video. I doubt that it could be shown, even on Netflix.

According to this BBC article:

"crustaceans have decentralised nervous systems, meaning that unlike fish, they can't be rendered unconscious with a single blow to the head.

To "spike" a lobster to death, again unlike fish, you have to pierce the body in more than one spot."

From: What's the kindest way to kill a lobster? (Yes, I'm aware of the irony of the headline) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42647341

Is a lobster conscious?

Is this knowable by anyone who is not a lobster?

Love that whole series of essays in the Consider the Lobster collection - you can also listen to several of them on YouTube and I have to say Wallace’s tone when reading the essays makes them more enjoyable

https://youtu.be/_fZOl7C_vDI

I'm not convinced that 250,000 neurons is capable of much self reference at all, so the psychological suffering must be negligible.

But sure, electrical stunning is probably preferable.