Do they actually live 25 years in the wild on average? My understanding was that wild animals have dramatically shorter lives than the same animals in captivity, as a general rule. The exact difference varies from species to species but typically the lifespan would be around half.
We generally don't kill animals "unnecessarily". We kill them to eat them. If we could eat them without killing them, we wouldn't kill them.
We also don't kill them "prematurely". We kill them when it's time to eat them, or else to relieve them of pain.
Also, since we're onto wolves, wolves will kill animals and not eat them (see "surplus killing" article on wikipedia). Conversely, wolves will often eat animals without killing them first. Humans at the very least kill our food before we eat it most of the time.
I don't know. Is it necessary to shower if you can sustain yourself without it?
I'm asking because your comment is about the meaning of the word "necessary" but the same meaning should apply to every other human activity, not just food. But the discussion about necessity crops up about food, in particular.
Also, I understand that the comparison to showers might sound irrelevant to the discussion about the ethics of eating meat, but it turns out it is anything but. I don't want to preempt your opinion, so I'll leave it at that, but I'm not just making a glib riposte to your comment. Despite appearances, this is an important question: how necessary is it to shower?
When we say that it is unnecessary to eat animals, we mean it is unnecessary in order to survive and be healthy.
So then using that same metric to answer your question about showers, I think it’s fair to say that showers are absolutely not necessary. Nice, sure. Perhaps necessary according to social norms, probably. Required for a normal life span with average levels of health? Nah.
cheese_goddess, if I ever get you to see the validity of veganism, or at least cede a point, I’ll die a happy person. I don’t see that ever happening though. You are my HN veganism white whale.
Perhaps not under your preferred moral system. But yours is not the only moral system. It should be obvious that there are plenty of moral systems where counterfactuals do indeed affect the morality of actions (e.g. any utilitarian system or compound system with a utilitarian component).
I think you're reading me more broadly than I meant you to. As I mentioned in my comment, at a minimum, any utilitarian system would consider an action's morality in light of what would happen in the absence of that action. Yes, people absolutely do subscribe to utilitarian systems, at least as a component of their overall moral stance.
There are also of course many moral systems that do not value the welfare of other species as highly as that of humans.
The general rule was my own synthesis from what little I know of this subject. This study is one of the main sources I used to drive my current understanding. You can also try this search term: "do wild animals die of old age?"
It’s not an issue to the animals. They aren’t made aware of their impending death and made to ponder what more of a life they could have lived. From their perspective they are alive and then suddenly, not.
a more equal comparison would be an adolescence to mature human... So 12-18 years? Food, shelter & protection provided? Blissfully unaware of my predetermined fate?
And if they don't eat me, I never exist in the first place?
I'd opt to be eaten.
Just seems like the aliens would be better off eating cows...
I’m not a vegetarian and I still really hate that “if I wasn’t farmed I wouldn’t exist at all” argument because it’s really just an excuse to be shitty to other life forms.
The fact is if you didn’t exist then you wouldn’t care either way, so it’s a moot argument. The fact that you do exist changes that, not excuses it. Or in other words: we are not doing other species a favour by eating them.
It’s also worth noting that many of the species we far isn’t the natural evolution of that animal. They’ve been bread to be fatter, or more docile etc. Many of the species suffer from health issues due to breeding that their natural cousins do not. The reason a lot of these animals seem suited to farming is because man has bread them that way. This isn’t doing these animals a favour either. It’s purely for man’s own benefit.
If farming result in the existence of happy animals then the process definitely favors them. If it results in their unhappy existence then it does not favor them.
The argument around doing them the favor of providing them existence relies on them having a nice life, until the day we eat them. It sounds like you are opposed to them coming into existence because it means they exist in existential agony.
Also that physical agony is a near certainty, by your last paragraph. But that does not seem to be the core of your objection.
> It sounds like you are opposed to them coming into existence because it means they exist in existential agony.
No, I’m opposed to stupid arguments where you justify being a carnivore because you’re somehow doing these creatures a favour by farming them. You’re not. If you’re going to eat meat, and I have zero issues with being a carnivore, then you have to reconcile the fact that what you’re doing is immoral for the animals but you’re doing it for your own personal survival. At least call a spade a spade rather than creating these stupid mental paradoxes where you’re the hero for breeding docile animals and then cooking their flesh.
It’s all about taking responsibility for your actions and respecting the consequences they have.
When done responsibly, it's pretty clear ranch cattle are in the same or less physical agony as their counter parts. Where I live, it's not uncommon to see wild elk, antelope and sometimes even bison grazing alongside cattle. The wild ones must fend off predators and often starve during the winters. Cattle do not.
The same cannot be said for industrial scale ranching. In fact, I think the production of dairy is typically far more more inhumane than that of beef.
>a more equal comparison would be an adolescence to mature human... So 12-18 years? Food, shelter & protection provided? Blissfully unaware of my predetermined fate?
So basically the plot of the Never Let Me Go. Except you can't really get the blissfully unaware of my predetermined fate thing if the organisms are intelligent.