[jmusall]

It is horrifying. OTOH, we force-breed, torture and kill animals and their children in the millions every day just for the pleasure of consuming meat, eggs and dairy products. I'm not saying this makes it okay to create a conscious brain in a dish. But maybe thinking a little more about what constitutes consciousness and how we want to protect it from harm can also bring about some desperately needed change in some other questionable human activities.

[fgfarben]

> we force-breed, torture and kill animals and their children in the millions every day just for the pleasure of consuming meat, eggs and dairy products

We do the same thing to plants. Why do you have no qualms about killing plants to eat the food they accumulated for their young?

A grain of wheat and a chicken egg are evolutionarily and nutritionally, maybe even ontologically, indistinguishable from one another.

[lachs2k]

I am not aware of any plants that show signs of consciousness or feelings. This would even by disadvantageous to many plants because they "want" parts of them to be eaten to disperse seeds, pollen, etc.

Even if you accept that plants might be conscious and their suffering has to be reduced, you would still harm way fewer plants by eating them directly instead of eating other animals that consume them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level

[c22]

Perhaps you are not looking that closely? Plants have memory and demonstrate directed action through time and space. They can respond to touch, light, sound, and chemical signalling from other plants, insects, and fungi. What are the fingerprints of consciousness and feelings that you are looking for?

[arbitrary_name]

arguing on hn

[vjerancrnjak]

Your “what about plants” argument is such a worn-out trope that you must have seen it before and read a valid explanation of why it makes no sense.

Peter Singer has been writing on the topic for decades, including others. What-about-plants needs to fade away.

[bondarchuk]

That's fair, but "what about animals" is to "we should not torture human brain organoids" as "what about plants" is to "we should not torture animals".

[fgfarben]

I am suffering substantially more psychic damage from being forced to watch videos of pig euthanasia at meathouses than any pig has ever suffered from being euthanized at one of those meathouses, because I have 10x the neurons as a pig and therefore e^10 more capacity for pain.

[birdsongs]

1) I specifically qualified my horror to the tech domain "Either way this makes me nauseous in a way I haven't experienced much with tech."

2) Multiple things can be horrible at the same time. Being upset at this doesn't diminish the atrocities happening elsewhere (like war, genocide, slavery of humans). We can hold multiple things in our heads at the same time.

3) This has nothing to do with the conversation or this domain, but because you're bringing it up, I also have ethical concerns about the experience animals have of their own existence, and reduce or eliminate my consumption when possible.

[jmusall]

My comment wasn't supposed to be whataboutism, but I can see why it comes across like that. What I was trying to say is that I think we shouldn't judge all of these things independently of each other. So if you really want to be consistent, you'd either have to come to the conclusion that this particular example isn't as horrible as it initially feels, or go vegan, never buy leather, etc.

I also agree, the horrors of the tech domain are usually much more subtle and indirect.

[birdsongs]

Sorry, I didn't mean to be so defensive either. It feels like so many people comment in bad faith these days, I think I am hasty to react sometimes. I thought it was just a red herring argument to detract from the article.

But you're right, these things are all linked and should be considered. I think often about sentience. I see the way animals express deep, complex emotions, and I think humans are a bit naive to think it's state/domain solely alloted to them.