[deltaonefour]

>Evolutionary biology is overused as justification for human behavior.

Let me get one thing straight. I am not justifying anything. My angle is, what's the point? Don't justify anything at all. We're evil for killing, so be it. I am looking at it from a completely dispassionate angle. I do not need to somehow merge and mutate my moral framework to make it work with the existing reality.

>We were not "designed" to eat meat because we were not designed.

Ok we were "designed" by natural selection to eat meat. I am not making a theological argument.

> Chasing an animal down, killing it, and eating it is in my opinion a significantly different activity than subjecting it to thirty likely-invasive procedures over the course of its life and then continuing to perform experiments on its dead body. Not saying it's more or less morally questionable, but significantly different.

In the wild, carnivores devour the flesh of their prey while it is alive and awake. Possibly more significant if not equal in being morally questionable.

>Other animals have also been shown to "befriend"/care for/grieve over animals of different species, so our own capacity to sympathize for animals should be no surprise.

No it is not. But what is surprising is that this empathy is the dominant behavior to our own evolutionary detriment (however mild). Empathy evolved to aid in survival of our genome, but when empathy evolves to the point where we are unable experiment on animals to assist in helping our own species... that is something unnatural.

[_nothing]

I think we're on the same page in believing that there's not an inherent morality to these behaviors. I'm not accusing of you to try to justify some morally evil act.

The comment you originally replied to said this:

> Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature

To which you replied:

> It's not weird at all. Biologically speaking, we are designed to eat meat. > The weird thing is how we developed sympathy and concern for such things.

What I was responding to was the claim that because we evolved the capacity to eat meat, we should naturally be dispassionate to the killing of animals. What I'm saying is that since we evolved both the capacity for carnivory and sympathy, that our capacity for eating animals does not make our sympathy for animals at all unnatural.

It's not unnatural for us to want to kill animals for our survival. But it's also not unnatural for us to care about and feel sympathy towards animals. I feel that you've been using our capacity for meat-eating to deem vegetarianism, sympathy towards animals, etc. as against our nature.

With that, the point of my differentiating between the act of hunting and eating animals versus experimenting with them and their dead bodies is comparable to the difference in severity of humans fighting each other versus torturing each other. Humans clearly have the capacity for both, and yet one typically elicits a higher negative reaction in people than the other. Our ability to empathize with all sorts of pain falls along such an axis.

Edit:

To your last point, if people naturally develop an empathy towards animals so strong that it overrides their own sense of self-preservation, why is that unnatural? Is a human giving their life to save other humans unnatural? That's exactly why I keep repeating that there is no "design" - or if you'd prefer, "intent". There is no rule in nature that says species are supposed to prioritize the survival of their own, and so deviating from that nonexistent rule is not unnatural. If experimenting on animals is absolutely necessary to humanity's survival and humanity one day refuses, it will simply die out like millions of species before it. Going extinct isn't unnatural either.

[deltaonefour]

I've never talked about "rules" or "intent" the way you put it.

I am simply saying how else do you describe the hand. The hand is for grasping things the rock is not. How to I ascribe this difference without using the word design or purpose because clearly the hand is much much more efficient at grasping things.

Sure you can use the hand for things it was not "designed" for like hand stands and walking while hand standing and if there was selection pressure your hands can evolve to be less hand like. But in doing such things you are departing from a "design."

Let me put it in a way that won't distract you. Your hand is efficient at grasping things by doing hand stands you are using it in ways that are not efficient. You are departing from the efficiency zone. There is merit in ONLY using the hammer on a nail rather than a screw driver even when the hammer was evolved with Zero actual "design" or "intent" and can one day evolve into something different.

Get it? So the same thing applies to not eating meat. By not doing so, someone is departing from the "efficiency zone." See how awkward it is to use "efficiency zone" in place of "design"?

I'd rather operate in my efficiency zone rather than push the boundaries of it just so that my progeny 1 million years later can walk on their hands. But that's just my personal take. My argument itself has no agenda other than to say that by not eating meat you are willfully departing from the efficiency zone. By being compassionate about the pig you are doing the same. And using the word "design" is just an EASIER way to express this departure from the "efficiency zone".

[_nothing]

I appreciate that explanation. While awkward, I believe "efficiency zone" is a much clearer term to use, or at least it was worthwhile clarifying that that's what you meant.

While I understand what you're saying, I still don't think that ultimately matters when talking about what humans should or shouldn't be doing, what we're supposed to or not supposed to be doing, considering:

1. Human nature is not particularly efficient, and neither is evolution, at least on the surface. Peacocks' feathers are not particularly efficient features for them to develop. Yes, avoiding meat may seem harder than not avoiding meat, but the same could be said for following a religion, or organizing into a governing body, or adhering to some social norm, and yet humans have naturally done those for probably their entire existence. They do so because they at least perceive a benefit for them even if some might disagree on that benefit.

2. The human digestive system is not mono-faceted. It evolved to be multi-use and flexible. You are not using a hammer incorrectly by refraining from using the claw side because you've decided your problem can be solved perfectly fine with the hammer face. You are not using a TV incorrectly if you never visit channel 19 because you don't want to watch whatever is on channel 19.

I stand by my point. The fact that you can efficiently do something doesn't mean you're "supposed to" do that thing. It just gives you the option.

[deltaonefour]

"suppose to" is another loaded and ambiguous word. You can smoke and inject your self with heroin everyday. It's not efficient and it doesn't mean you're not "suppose to" do it.

But there is something off with doing these things and I don't want to get into the pedantics of it all. Not eating meat is in the same general area without the social stigma of being a drug abuser.

[watwut]

> Other animals have also been shown to "befriend"/care for/grieve over animals of different species, so our own capacity to sympathize for animals should be no surprise.

This part is actually true. Some animals do befriend, cooperate with or grieve over animals of different species. Not all animals are bugs and spiders.

> Empathy evolved to aid in survival of our genome, but when empathy evolves to the point where we are unable experiment on animals to assist in helping our own species... that is something unnatural.

Evolution is not a god. Things evolve because it happens, not for fixed purpose. If we genetically evolve to be "unable experiment on animals to assist in helping our own species", then that evolution is as natural as anything else.

[Lio]

Yep, I've seen a few people chucking around phrases like "designed by nature" which are both wrong and confusing. "Design" implies intent before the fact, which is not the case.

We, as a species, are not "finished" in any way or "more evolved" than other species. There is no destination evolution as such.

We have plenty of traits that are not useful but also not a hindrance and so they remain.

On the subject of cooperation between species I'm always fascinated by inter-tree species communication. You might think that trees in a forest are all individually fighting each other for resources but it's more complex than that.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/exploring_how_and_why_trees_t...

[deltaonefour]

>Yep, I've seen a few people chucking around phrases like "designed by nature" which are both wrong and confusing.

That's me chucking that phrase and I am telling you there's good reasoning for it. Think about it. How do I differentiate between the human hand and a rock? Do I say:

   The human hand is a low entropy configuration of atoms that is very efficient at grasping things while the rock is a high entropy configuration of atoms that is not efficient at grasping things. 

OR do I say...

   The human hand is designed to grasp things the rock is not. 

See. One sentence just rolls off the tongue better but I guess I have to get into the technicalities otherwise people are confused.

Either way, People like to get into linguistic debates on the definition of a word without realizing that it's a trap. Nothing profound is actually being discussed when we're just talking about how to properly use the word "design." Think about it... you're just debating about the proper definition of a vocabulary word.

Granted I'll tell you it's an effective trap. People get into these debates without realizing how pointless it all is. The famous debate is "What is life?" Well if you want to argue about that you have to realize that the word "life" is loaded and ambiguously defined. Attempting this argument is simply trying to demarcate the complex boundaries of the word. It's simply an attempt to add more bullet points and rules to an overly complex vocabulary word.

How about we stop arguing about vocabulary.

>We, as a species, are not "finished" in any way or "more evolved" than other species. There is no destination evolution as such.

Where did this come from? I don't see anyone making that argument. Sure we can as a species can start ingesting gasoline and likely with enough time and natural selection we could involve into a gasoline eating species.

This does not change the fact that there is meaning to the sentence: "Humans are not designed to eat gasoline." Guess the intent of my usage of that sentence without getting pedantic and try to express and convey the same intent without the use of the word "design" or "purpose."

[Lio]

> Where did this come from?

It’s came from the use of the word “design”, which is a loaded term in the context of evolution.

I take it to imply either a designer or a direction to evolution. Two things I personally don’t consider to be true.

I hope that doesn’t sound pedantic for the sake of it, that’s not my intention and I don’t intend any offence by it.

Without actually knowing you though I only have your choice of words to go on as to what you really mean.

In your gasoline example I would personally just swap the word “designed” for “evolved” unless designed is what you actually mean.

[deltaonefour]

>Evolution is not a god.

Never said such a thing. However we can influence macro features through something called artificial selection. In this sense we design something through the same mechanism used as natural selection. The difference is, the hand that guides is artificial rather then natural but the outcome is the same: a design, a machine with a specific purpose. Man... this is just pedantry. I'm not here to discuss the definition of a unimportant word.

[watwut]

The word is important, because you use it to cast judgement on one kind of evolutionary path. In your comment, it is wrong, because it is not "as originally designed".

[puchatek]

You would say that a species advanced enough to throw quantum computing at theoretical math problems would be able to develop and act in ways that are not dictated by the laws of evolution.

After all we manage successfully to abstain from actual reproduction in much of the developed world to a degree that makes our societies shrink. Not exactly fit, from an evolutionary point of view.

[metta2uall]

I think a more accurate phrasing is that we're "designed" by natural section to _optionally_ eat meat. Large numbers of people like many Hindus, Mahayana Buddhists, and now vegans don't eat meat and can live healthily. By the way, most meat-eaters utilise fire when processing the meat - something that was invented - rather similarly to how Vitamin B12 supplements have been invented and now help vegans.

Re. empathy - I very much doubt it's to our detriment when one of the main threats to our survival is lack of empathy leading to extinction-causing wars - something that may have already destroyed previous intelligent civilisations around the universe. Even with medical experiments on animals - if they were much reduced I think this would likely lead to more effort & subsequent innovations in replacement technologies like cell cultures & simulations - which could lead to faster medical breakthroughs than if we continue on the current animal-testing business-as-usual trajectory.