Yup, totally arbitrary. That's why I prefer the poetry yeast writes about the beauty of the universe and the pain of existence to that written by humans.

Is your point that only humans have culture? There is evidence of culture and learned behaviors in animals as simple as birds.

My point is that the hierarchy is ordered by increasingly sophisticated internal conscious experience. This is the least arbitrary thing ever when it comes to concern around suffering.

My argument was more that there is no association between a theoretical "hierarchy of care" and actual, real brain sophistication. If there were, people would for example eat cats before they ate pigs.

Cats don't have much meat, I imagine larger mammals are farmed because they're large. But inhibition to eating pigs would be larger than that for eating cats, I'd agree on that.

Sorry edit: I disagree strongly that there is no association, it's an 80-20 thing. 80% can be explained by real brain sophistication, with 20% explained by cultural baggage.

I didn't realize that was your argument. I'd agree with that.

"As simple as"--are you placing birds in a hierarchy?

Sure, a hierarchy of complexity. You don't think such a thing would exist?

Why are you trying to seek out a hypocrisy angle in my arguments? I feel like that's a somewhat boring way to go about this.

> why does human experimentation happen ever?

There are a lot of drugs that pass animal testing only to fail human testing. Ethics review boards are a pretty good, but imperfect way to moderate the harm of human experimentation.

> hierarchies like that are almost totally arbitrary

This hierarchy corresponds roughly to some mix of genetic, morphological and behavioral similarity. It's obviously not arbitrary.

> like anything about a culture

lol

You seem to be amused by my assertion that culture traits like this are arbitrary. I'm guessing you also believe in universal morality.

Anthropologists that argue against universal morality are used to being derised and mocked, but I don't mind being a punching bag - please, feel free to present your evidence that the hierarchy of care is the result of perceived similarities, and how this must apply rigidly and universally across all cultures. That, for example, there was never a culture in all of human history that placed a less-human-appearing animal's value over a more-human-appearing animal... or even over other humans.

Because expiraments on humans can provide information that expiraments on other animals can't, and the information in question is information that we care about.

In addition, humans can consent to things.

Consent is interesting, usually poor people will get paid for it, in which case it's a sort of coerced consent.