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Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by verisimi on Monday February 19, 2024 @08:08AM (#39429343)
> News that the world's first commercial octopus farm is closer to becoming reality has been met with dismay by scientists and conservationists. They argue such intelligent "sentient" creatures - considered able to feel pain and emotions - should never be commercially reared for food.

I really don't get the dismay. Sheep, cows, fish even, feel pain and probably feel emotions. So why stop now? It's such an arbitrary line.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by HelloMcFly on Monday February 19, 2024 @08:26AM (#39429484)
> So why stop now? It's such an arbitrary line.

Speaking personally, I wish we'd stopped sooner. I'm not here to say all meat is bad and everyone should be vegan, but I don't feel it's out of bounds to be dismayed that we're expanding the barbarity to new animals that clearly appear to have a form of higher intelligence.

I'm not the arbiter of truth on this, but I'm sad when I see pigs in factory farms, and I'm every bit as dismayed to see us expanding this to cephalopods just the same as if we expanded this to domestic canines.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by 8jef on Monday February 19, 2024 @08:26AM (#39429477)
Traditions (old habits + time passed) and rationalizing make people comfortable with eating most animals.

Then, it's easy to grow a conscience when confronted to trendy newish things like so-called sentient animals we never really ate before.

This is a good thing. Growing the masse's consciousness through new fads and phenomenons is a great way to create cognitive dissonance that contribute to changing old habits. Even if one will always encounter resistance to change.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by yreg on Monday February 19, 2024 @08:21AM (#39429437)
Any line is arbitrary by definition.

However, the current consensus is that consciousness/sentience is a gradient. The higher the sentience, the higher the ability to experience (anything, including pain and emotions).

We believe humans to be more sentient than octopi, which are more sentient than cows, which are more sentient than fish, which are more sentient than yeast.

We might be wrong of course. It's probably impossible to even ever find out. But no one cares about hurting yeast.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by tbitrust on Monday February 19, 2024 @08:22AM (#39429445)
Imagine human beings farmed for food by an alien civilisation that has "debates" on whether it's ethical or not to eat homo-sapiens.

They have centuries and centuries to settle the question while rearing and killing billions of human beings each year.

N.B. The price of baby meat is higher because it's more tender or whatever.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by c22 on Monday February 19, 2024 @09:55AM (#39430386)
Imagine an ecosystem where living things don't eat eachother and live in full cooperation and harmony. No chance to ingest the biological building blocks created by other organisms. No evolutionary pressure to develop defenses or hunting strategies, etc...

Now ask yourself if the level of sentience that develops in this environment is satisfactory. Is there even a chance of developing thinking matter that can have a debate about ethics?

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by datameta on Monday February 19, 2024 @10:58AM (#39431178)
I recently read a sci-fi short story that describes an alien forest that has no predation, only vicious instant scavenging the moment something dies. The colonists wear light-suits to prevent brutal death because only the dead indigenous lifeforms create no light.
Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by pvaldes on Monday February 19, 2024 @05:10PM (#39435437)
"Mum nature is so wise that made babies leak shit, and smell like shit, as a clear warning that we aren't supposed to eat them". (pvaldes 2024)

Fortunately we could teach this aliens about the delicacy of octopus farming.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by lolinder on Monday February 19, 2024 @09:34AM (#39430130)
To anyone else who got confused—this isn't a quote from TFA, it's from the article linked by another comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39427703

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by verisimi on Monday February 19, 2024 @10:01AM (#39430466)
Oh sorry!
Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by globular-toast on Monday February 19, 2024 @10:10AM (#39430563)
Two wrongs don't make a right. There are also some other arguments in TFA.
Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by crawancon on Monday February 19, 2024 @11:31AM (#39431634)
I think it's because they are very intelligent vs fish or sheep. The arbitrary line seems to be intelligence but I am not saying it's a good line.
Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by pvaldes on Monday February 19, 2024 @04:56PM (#39435317)
Fishes can be very intelligent in fact. Many are more clever than mammals of its same size for sure.

They can do basically anything that a bird does, but underwater, and also a lot of tricks that we can't do.

There is not a single bird or mammal crystal transparent, or electrical, or bioluminiscent, or that could change their color at will in seconds. If I remember correctly, the vertebrates with the biggest brain/body weight ratio, or the fastest movement registered, are fishes.

Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by kjkjadksj on Monday February 19, 2024 @12:42PM (#39432481)
Who is to say a plant does or doesn’t like getting ripped apart either? You can take this logic further and realize its all just culural biases. Life is life at the cellular level, we all have mitochondria and similar fundamental metabolisms. Yet when those cells become a complex organism we start to get a sense of bias toward complex life. Even more so when we start considering concious thought. All that being said its still just bias towards one specific niche of life, that of a multicellular organism with a human centric definition of thought or consciousness. I’m sure many a vegetarians still swat at flies without considering how ironic that is.
Re:Biologists Discover Four New Octopus Species in the Deep ... by ArtDev on Monday February 19, 2024 @12:59PM (#39432700)
Pigs are really smart, too. It's just more of a mainstream thing to see on a menu.