[patagonia]

If you wouldn’t be willing to “experience” the same set of experiences and pains via a similar subset of your sensory system and brain in exchange for the benefit of a meal that could have been cruelty free, then you shouldn’t. The burden of proof should not be on others to prove to you via rationalization/ intellectualization that it’s not a nightmare of an end to a sentient creature’s life experience.

[toolz]

I find this line of thinking somewhat short sighted. Animals in the wild will almost certainly die more agonizing deaths than they would at the hands of humans. Would you rather a cannibal kill you with one cut to the throat or would you rather be killed by a polar bear that might even enjoy watching you writhe in pain for 10s of minutes before you ultimately pass out from either the excruciating pain or loss of blood.

This isn't a moral argument for me, it's simply giving a fair comparison as to what the likely choices are for these animals. The choices are not pain from humans or some pain-free experience in nature.

I will say that being boiled alive is likely one of the worst ways to go though - luckily there are nearly painless alternatives to killing lobster that many people employ.

[patagonia]

“…might enjoy watching you writhe…” I’ve seen no evidence that polar bears enjoy watching their prey suffer. Since you are broadening the scope of the argument then let’s talk about how we raise almost all animals that make it to our plates. The process is meant to be economically efficient and has the minimum legal required considerations for the animals welfare between birth and death. It’s not just about their suffering when killed. It’s about the suffering from birth to death.

Let’s broaden it further. Human’s system for producing meat has an insane amount of harmful externalities. The polar bear fits into an ecosystem that generally find balance.

Not to mention, straw man. You can’t sidestep the question as to whether it is moral to kill an animal a certain way by making a weak argument as to how they might have had it worse.

[toolz]

> It’s about the suffering from birth to death.

I would suggest for most all animals being raised with constant supply of food and having your health maintained by intelligent actors is far better a life than the brutality found in nature. Caveats apply I'm sure, but in general a farm animal is raised intentionally to eat as much as it can with as little stress as possible. I'd be curious what criteria you could give that would rank animals in nature as suffering less than animals specifically raised in captivity with a specific goal of reducing stressors.

> Human’s system for producing meat has an insane amount of harmful externalities. The polar bear fits into an ecosystem that generally find balance.

harmful to what? to the world ecosystem? You mean the ecosystem that we generally believe has had 5 mass extinction events prior to humans ranging from 75 to 95% of species being wiped out in each of those events? Is that what you call "balance"?

> Not to mention, straw man. You can’t sidestep the question as to whether it is moral to kill an animal a certain way by making a weak argument as to how they might have had it worse.

Well this isn't a strawman at all. I'm not building up some weak argument as you suggest. It's a documented and understood that most animals have predators and of prey species, predation is the most common way to die. Have you ever seen an animal kill another animal gracefully? It does exist, but it is not common.

also, yes I can bypass the moral question and I will do so gladly - completely subjective arguments are pointless, I feel very comfortable in accepting a different moral code than you and I'm fine with your moral code being different than mine.

[patagonia]

“Caveats apply I'm sure…” “harmful to what?” You’re living with blinders on. Willfully or not, idk. We can’t have a conversation if you don’t at a minimum gather some basic, widely and easily available information. Enjoy your life of ignorant bliss.

[uxcolumbo]

Animals in the wild are free, yes there are many dangers lurking around, but mostly they are free.

Animals in factory farms are not free and grow up suffering and the slaughter isn't humane at all.

So taking your mode of thinking, which one would you choose:

A) Mostly a free life out in nature with a potential painful death

B) Miserable life in factory farms where you go crazy with a painful death

Also, if there wouldn't be this insane level of demand for animal meat, we wouldn't have to breed animals.

And we are worse than the polar bear. Animals are being abused, mutilated tortured on a regular basis. Plus all the other damage our meat addiction causes, i.e. destruction of our biosphere and degrading working conditions for people having to work in those factory farms or slaughter houses.

[afiori]

I like to pose this as not empathy for the animal but empathy for ourselves*

It is not nice to the kind of colture that inflict pain on an indutrial scale and we can empathise with the torture that is mutilation and being boiled alive, does not need to be about what an octupus feels during slaughter, it can be about how to approach the act itself.

I believe that buddhism teaches to pay respect or thank the lifes that died to become your food (plant of animal); in this context the question on my mind would be whether you can honestly pay your respects to something you boiled alive because it would have tasted worse cooked another way.

It feels disrespectful to the food.

Slaughter is natural, we should find a way to be ok with how we do it.

* I like to offer egotistical arguments for altruism, just my perspective

[toolz]

I would suggest lobster tastes worse when boiled alive. Any animal that has an endocrine system is likely to taste worse when boiled alive. My understanding is that adrenaline rush caused by immense stress eat up the glycogen stores in muscles which in turn prevents the production of lactic acid to tenderize the meat postmortem. I can't imagine this would be any different in lobsters than basically every other animal.

[phonypc]

That stress / lactic acid / meat quality relationship only really applies to meat that's going to be aged, and it's as much about preventing microbial spoilage as anything.

There's no time for it to be a factor for lobster, which is going to be alive or frozen until right before you cook it.

[bumby]

Your premise may hold true in the general sense but not in the specific. I don't think lobsters produce adrenaline. There may be some other hormone that has a comparable effect though

[bumby]

"Experience" is the tough part to define here. Granted, it's not an easy answer but there are some smart thinkers who've tried. Here's an interesting take from the neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran

"your withdrawal from a hot kettle is a different pain from the pain that you then contemplate. In the first case, the pain from withdrawal from a kettle, there is no qualia, no meta-representation."

From his framework, to truly "experience" pain, there needs to be a sense of self. You need higher levels of cognition for the "meta-representation" that causes suffering in our human conceptualization of the term. (There's some interesting brain lesion studies about people who lack this sense of self. They can witness their own body interacting with the environment but have no actual "experience" of the action; it's as if they are watching someone else perform it.) Everything more primitive to that higher cognitive function is just stimulus-response. For example, Gerald Engelman draws the line at lobsters in terms of what "experiences" pain and suffering. The implication being anything below that from a neural perspective would be cruelty-free to consume.