reminds me how I always get a kick out of people that draw their line at what they will eat based off of that thing’s intelligence.

They’ll loudly proclaim the rest of us are just anthropomorphizing until specific institutions tell them that a particular animal is intelligent. And then they’re like “I cant eat that” and assume the rest of us a) didn't know and b) were operating by the same consumptive standards

farcical, since their super late enlightenment makes them the dumb ones

So you get a kick out of judging people being open-minded and listening to scientists?

I get a kick out of them needing that to dictate how they choose to collaborate with other beings

When the rest of us didn’t need that

I love how you think you're representative of the "rest of us". A phrase you've used twice now.

Clearly you don't talk to other people and think your views are in the majority rather than a tiny minority.

Cute.

yeah I don't talk to any other people

do you have a specific rebuttal to this? "I get a kick out of them needing that to dictate how they choose to collaborate with other beings"

Yeah, go into any tapas restaurant and watch tons of people order octopus.

Are you really this unobservant and poorly informed about the other humans you share the world with? Or do you just enjoy being contrarian on forums?

We're normalized to eating meat and there's a lot of subtle social pressure to not "rock the boat" on things that are widely considered normal and acceptable.

I have a lot of sympathy for individuals trying to reconcile these flashes from their conscience with "normal" social behavior, and struggling through the cognitive dissonance that results from it.

I have very little for just taking open glee in the emotional distress people experience while going through that process? Or calming your own dissonance by nihilistically avoiding the question? Better a late and compromised enlightenment then a proudly never one.

am I projecting? I don’t think so, it doesn’t satisfy that criteria

I think we can make fun of people that just watched an Octopus documentary on Netflix and act like the rest of us didn’t know they’re neurons

I don't see how this is dissonant to you? I will occasionally eat beef, I'll never eat octopus.

I helped my farm friends raise calves for 4H in junior high. They're dumb as bricks, don't think they knew they were food even on the way to slaughter. So on the whole, as long as you take care of them, they enjoy life and you enjoy a burger, minimal suffering.

If something is intelligent and understands it's going to be food, and that causes it to suffer for its entire life, it tips the scales quite significantly. You already live by this assumption if you are vegan; you choose to eat things with no brain over things with a brain. Being an asshole over people drawing the same line as you but in a slightly different spot just makes you sound like the fool.

If a person is going to consume animal protein, trying to minimize the pain/suffering of the animals being consumed doesn't strike me as "farcical". And it seems reasonable to posit that a smart animal is more likely to suffer than a dumb animal (for whatever definitions of smart and dumb).

My only issue with this is the more we learn about both animals and plants, the more complex they both appear to be. Reductio ad absurdum - we can't eat anything because everything is smarter than we thought. The only truly safe answer is to bio-engineer humans to use photosynthesis.

> Reductio ad absurdum - we can't eat anything because everything is smarter than we thought.

Which is my leading criticism of the idea.

If I'm like "hey that being is clearly reacting to stimuli that could hamper its self preservation and it is aiming to avoid that" and it takes another decade for Neil Degrasse Tyson or somebody you respect to tell that person the same thing about, say... plants, then what's the point of listening to that person ever?

Like, we were allll eating plants - in this example - with the same observation that the anti-suffering person willingly ignored and lorded over us, and now they move their own goal post while acting like we're only eating plants because we're oblivious to their reactions to harmful stimuli. again, example. replace plants with octopus if you need to.

but its an ideological line that doesn't seem based in anything except an arbitrary line. I can go along with desiring sustainable practices. no factory farming but preservation and keeping populations stable. but "omg it can think and feel!?" just isn't something I can be surprised about to draw a line at that. amoebas avoid negative stimuli. there's no need to gain consensus species by species.