[mechnesium]

This resonates with me. It deeply disturbs me that other animals still don’t have rights on parity with humans.

I can play devil’s advocate and make the ethical argument that animal lives have more intrinsic value than human lives. For one, they are innately innocent due to their (as we currently understand) more limited capacity for reasoning. This limited reasoning dismisses blame when they do things we see as wrong (similar to the way we do for children) and also limits their capacity to cause significant harm to the planet.

I will always side with other animals over man. If I could only rescue one organism from a burning building and had to choose between a human or another animal, I’d choose the other animal. If I had to choose which species becomes extinct tomorrow, it would be humans. We are a plague to this planet and solar system.

Selfish humans, obsessed with self preservation, will easily disagree with this judgement.

[nefitty]

As an anti-speciesist vegetarian, I’d like to note that the above viewpoint probably sounds as extreme and incoherent to me as it does to most other people.

Parity as regards rights should be based on interests. There is nothing special about life itself. A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child, and saving the child would generally result in the least amount of suffering.

I did my best to take the parent comment seriously, but I really need to stress how ridiculous it is. Please don’t assume that that is a common viewpoint amongst vegan or vegetarians. It ultimately commits the same error: devaluing the life of an individual because it happens to belong to the “wrong” species.

[mechnesium]

I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, so I don't know why you're conflating my devil's advocate argument with those philosophies.

> A mouse’s interests are not on par with the interests of a child

For an anti-speciesist, this is a very anthropocentric and speciesist statement.

I would argue that saving the child would cause greater suffering[0], not only because the human condition unto itself is rife with suffering, but because we have the greatest capacity and demonstrated ability to cause grave harm to all species and to the planet, more so than any other living being.

The voluntary human extinction movement[1] is a very real movement, however ridiculous you find it to be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering-focused_ethics#Argum...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Mov...

[nefitty]

I’m sorry. To clarify, the entirety of a mouse’s interests are less than the interests of a child. This includes external interests, like the interests of the parents, etc.

I agree regarding the generally higher capacity of healthy humans to experience tremendous suffering, and also the human ability to cause tremendous suffering. I do see a tension between those facts and my contention that saving a human results in less suffering. In my mind, human experience falls on a 3D plane, with positive/negative on the y-axis, severity on the x-axis and complexity on the z-axis.

The human ability to experience complex emotions like inspiration, jealousy, etc. make our interests slightly unique and weigh more as compared to most animals. Add on top of that the social aspect of interests (eg a parent has an interest in the well being of their child), and suddenly the value of human life can take on exponential degrees.

With that in mind, I think an individual should have the choice to end their life if society finds that the net suffering of their continued existence is greater than if they ceased to exist. To that end, human extinction is antithetical to my understanding because it implies forcing individuals to end their lives involuntarily. It’s the same with a pig. I wouldn’t eat a pig unless he somehow gained healthy adult-level sentience and told me he wanted me to eat him and that that would fulfill some deep desire of his. I know that example sounds absurd, but consequently, because no animal has a level of sentience complex enough to consent to being murdered, I refrain from eating any animals at all.

If you still want to engage, I have a question. I’m curious why, if you feel that humans are such a huge cause of suffering to, as you put it, innocent animals, you aren’t vegan or vegetarian?