[fao_]

... that's really no excuse?

1. How many animals have humans driven to extinction now? Perhaps they would not be extinct were people to treat them with greater respect.

2. If you treat an animal with respect the tables will never have an opportunity to turn, because you won't be blatantly trespassing on it's turf.

[thatswrong0]

Using animals as test subjects isn't really comparable in magnitude to the damage we do on a global scale to ecosystems, which is what is actually causing extinction

[jacquesm]

That we do even worse is really no excuse.

[coldtea]

Who said an excuse is needed? That's what nature is. Species using other species for food, for starters...

[thatswrong0]

It’s not an excuse. There are just way way way better things to focus our outrage

[valuearb]

What if you are just out for a run?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=renTN4IlSjQ

[0xfeba]

This reeks of naturalistic fallacy. Humans are bad because we exploit animals. Yet, humans are animals, and this is what animals do given the chance. We don't need an excuse.

Just because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things doesn't mean we have to abandon all progress and be an agrarian society.

Can we improve? Sure. I don't like to see anything needlessly suffer, but a few bears being killed in the name of science is a drop in the bucket to other concerns.

[fao_]

> This reeks of naturalistic fallacy. Humans are bad because we exploit animals. Yet, humans are animals, and this is what animals do given the chance. We don't need an excuse.

> Just because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things doesn't mean we have to abandon all progress and be an agrarian society.

It's exactly because we can introspect and consider the ethical state of things, that means that we should. The fact that you can think and reason about the fact that you're stealing from someone else, or otherwise harming something else, the fact that you are (hopefully) intelligent enough to think of a different way, means that you have a moral duty to be better than that.

You argue that I succumb to the naturalistic fallacy, and yet you are the one doing so. You argue that we do not need an excuse for our behaviour because we are animals, and it is natural for animals to exploit other animals.

In addition to that grave error, you're also making a complete false equivalency in equating "not using a random bear as a test pilot" with "abandoning all progress and becoming an agrarian society".

[lopmotr]

2. Pretty much all human buildings are on land that was previously occupied by animals and those animals are now excluded from those areas. Do you want to demolish human civilization and cut the population down to numbers small enough that we can all survive eating vegetables from places that animals can't reach?