> If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them.
I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.
But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?
It's just the circle of life. Live in a remotely rural area with animals around and you're going to see pretty regular death. For instance foxes are beautiful, extremely intelligent, and amazing animals. They'll also systematically and sadistically kill literally every single chicken inside a henhouse, one by one, if they get in. In another instance a dog I loved more than anything as a child to young adult was killed by a wild boar - tusk straight into the lungs.
The same, by the way, applies to vegetarian stuff. The amount of critters being killed to keep them away from the veggies would probably shock you, especially in the rather inhumane way its sometimes done in industrial farms. Shooting, for some baseline, is considered one of the most humane ways of dealing with large pests.
I simply see nothing wrong, at all, with eating meat. It's a natural and normal part of life and also, by far, the easiest way to ensure you hit all your necessary nutrients without going overboard on calories - especially if you live an active life and/or are into things like weight training.
Murder is also part of the “circle of life”, whatever that may mean, given that it’s pablum that means nothing. As is disease.
We rightfully find these immoral and don’t engage in them.
That’s not a defense of the immoral act. It’s just words to describe the immoral act.
Try this then: every animal eats other living things to survive. We have been doing it for a billion years. Is a basic drive built into it DNA. After that, is just a question of which living things you are going to eat.
The key difference between humans and every other animal that has ever existed is our ability to reason about systems and the morality of actions.
Some birds will abandon weaker chicks to focus on the ones most likely to survive. Others will allow siblicide. That these behaviors exist and have existed for billions of years is a fact orthogonal to morality because birds don’t have the capacity to reason about systems and the mortality of actions.
“Living things” is a sleight of hand, logically. When it comes down to it, everything is just atoms in the end. So why not murder? Why not steal? Why not exploit the poor? Reductionism leads us down some very dark paths indeed.
> Some birds will abandon weaker chicks to focus on the ones most likely to survive. Others will allow siblicide. That these behaviors exist and have existed for billions of years is a fact orthogonal to morality because birds don’t have the capacity to reason about systems and the mortality of actions.
There's something missing from this analysis. Namely that animals that have many offspring generally expect most of them to die and this is part of selective pressures that keeps the population healthy. If, for example, a mouse could reason morally it might still let many of its weaker babies die because keeping them alive would not be good for mouse-kind. It's inappropriate to assume that the child rearing morals of a low-fecundity, high-parental-investment species like ourselves applies to other species with different reproductive strategies.
> If, for example, a mouse could reason morally it might still let many of its weaker babies die because keeping them alive would not be good for mouse-kind.
I agree. If a mouse could reason morally and inside the system it currently inhabits, it might reason that way because it was unconscious of or had no access to alternatives for survival.
It’s is absolutely inappropriate to assume any morals on a species that has no capacity for reason.
Some birds. And some people.
Morality is arrived at through value judgement. We have a social contract with each other, not animals.
People generally dislike gratuitous pain and cruelty, hence we're seeing a push for cage-free hens and the like. They don't oppose slaughter in and of itself.
What people generally oppose today is a function of their consciousness and ability to access alternatives. They don’t oppose slaughter because they don’t think there’s an alternative, the same way that a person who is on the verge of starvation will steal food. They also don’t oppose slaughter because it’s hidden away from them, and done by others.
Slavery is an excellent cognate to this.
It’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? If you’re not careful with your compassion, you’ll end up having it for all sorts of beings you’ve come to see as like yourself.
> Slavery is an excellent cognate to this.
No it's not. I always find the idea that humans are not in some way special (at least to other humans) off-putting. Even animals treat members of their own species generally better than they treat other species.
I love animals, I think we should treat them with dignity and respect as much as possible. At the same time I would not hesitate to kill an animal for food or if it endangered another human.
The cognate here is about how attitudes about systemic actions can change due to a shift in consciousness and access to alternatives. Many people saw black people as not their own kind, and saw no reason — beyond economic imperative - to treat them with compassion.
You said yourself:
>I think we should treat them with dignity and respect as much as possible.
It becomes more possible to treat animals with more respect and dignity every day. For vast portions of the population (Not all! Not yet!) the slaughter of animals for food is becoming less and less necessary.
So the question becomes, given that you believe we should treat animals with as much respect and dignity as possible, do you believe you have a moral imperative to take advantage of these systemic advances?
Good points.
I think where we disagree is the question of whether slaughter is necessarily undignified or disrespectful. When I say "treat them with dignity and respect" I think the experience of the animal up to the point of death is what's most important. The slaughter, if done humanely and quickly, is not inherently immoral to me. For example, I think most people would agree that it's better to "put down" a suffering pet than let them die of natural causes.
My problem mainly lies with industrial farming practices like battery cages.
> My problem mainly lies with industrial farming practices like battery cages.
Yeah, we definitely have common ground here. I’ll also mention that industrial farming practices are also cruel to people. Slaughterhouses in the US are overwhelmingly staffed by migrant laborers who work in unsafe conditions, for low pay, being exposed to antibiotics that damage their long term health.
We can and should do better.
> They don’t oppose slaughter because they don’t think there’s an alternative
That's clearly not true, and a projection.
They don't oppose slaughter because they find no objection with killing an animal for nourishment, "necessity" having no bearing.
That's factually incorrect. You don't have to kill a plant to get the fruit and/or the seeds it produces.
Killing is part of the "circle of life". Murder is not. They are two very different concepts.
You skipped a step. Immoral acts are immoral because we deem them so. Animal slaughter in itself is not generally thought as such. Unless you think aboriginal / hunter-gatherer tribes who maintain their traditions are immoral for not modernizing.
> It's a natural and normal part of life
So is dying of smallpox.
Wikipedia:
> Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence.
Completely natural, and completely normal.
That doesn’t mean we should be engaging in it in 2025.
The naturalistic fallacy is not justification for killing living things.
Ease cannot be used to ethically justify an action. But even so, you ignore that, according to research, people who eat meat have worse health than people who don't.
It's not that simple. High consumption of animal saturated fat can raise total blood cholesterol, but animal consumption in and of itself does not necessitate that. Notwithstanding, with a balanced diet high in vegetables and fiber, omnivores do not fare any worse than vegans in acm.
While that’s true in theory, we don’t observe a sufficient fiber intake for most human omnivore. That is Erfgh point : the classic diet don’t meet nutrients goals when studied on the field by researchers.
> we don’t observe a sufficient fiber intake for most human omnivore.
This has no bearing on the argument. That is just as true of vegans who purchase boxed products.
It's also fairly US-centric. If you observe countries with the longest lifespan, lowest CVD incidence and overall best health outcomes, they consume a more varied whole-foods diet with animal products.
> the classic diet
This is the Americanized diet of ultra-processed foods. Whole foods are the solution, which is in no way shape or form contingent on whether animal products are included (unless the diet is "carnivore" which is not representative, and even there you can find traditional societies who fare ok even if not completely optimally).
I agree that a whole food diet is better than the “boxed” one but I have no comparaison point for the US. I’m from France and many people value whole food, “good products” and cook at home however even those gets diabetes, intestinal and blood cancers and other problems that would be easily avoided with more vegetable consumption. The fact is meat is often the central peace of the dish, second the carbs and then salads, cabbages and roots. People say they loves them but when they are on the plate it’s more a decoration that a portion.
> diabetes
This scales principally with excess weight gain.
> The fact is meat is often the central peace of the dish, second the carbs and then salads, cabbages and roots.
This is one meal, dinner, and the fact that it is more protein-heavy is not the problem. Nevermind ratio, some diets are devoid of fiber. The secondary "carbs" are just pasta, white bread, crackers, etc.
If you consume a whole-foods diet, with a dinner that has a larger meat component, you will easily, easily have enough fiber.
> If you consume a whole-foods diet, with a dinner that has a larger meat component, you will easily, easily have enough fiber.
I mostly agree but not with the easy part: you thirst has a maximum and people can’t ingest as much food they want without a limit. If you have a large meat component there’s less space in your belly for the vegetables. The point for carbs is the same (they cut your satiety and you’ll be less hungry for the cauliflower). Thought I get your point that a diet including meat isn’t bad in itself, but if you look around the biggest meat eaters are not the fittest, however the opposite might often be true.
Look up Sepp Holzer on YouTube, or really any permaculturist that eats meat. They treat their animals well, but also eat them. I think it’s healthy to feel a twang when you kill anything. It can contribute to the gratitude you have when sitting down to a meal. The native cultures seem (at least in pop culture caricatures) to have understood this.
I have a farmer friend who occasionally has to kill one of his milk cows. He names them, pets them, cares for them like a pet. It pains him to kill them, and I always know when he’s had to do it— I can see it on his face. I’ve bought some of the meat form his cows, and I was grateful for the meat, and the man who raised the cow with such care.
Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with.
But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved.
As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People don't like to kill in general. Go outside and ask people how they felt getting their first kill on a hunt as a kid, you're going to realize that a unifying element is learning to deal with harming another animal.
Bonus: being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.
> being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.
That’s like saying you kill chickens to eat eggs. You don’t kill a plant to eat its fruit. In fact, plants benefit from animals eating what they produce, be it oranges or tomatoes or something else and crapping the seeds somewhere else for proliferation.
The dark truth about keeping chickens and many other poultry is that they hatch in an approximately 1:1 male:female ratio, but can't be kept in that ratio without severe conflict and stress. Thus, hatching chickens to keep for egg-laying requires killing most of the male chicks. So yes, you have to kill chickens to eat eggs.
The "severe conflict and stress" part may be hard to understand for the cityfolk; you have to kill chickens to eat eggs, or else they will do it.
Same for dairy cattle: males are redundant. My grandfather was an AI pioneer in the UK in the 1940s. AI being artificial insemination of dairy cattle....
I mean, dairy cattle also have the issue of keeping the female pregnant and then taking the baby anyway. And then, once they are done producing milk, what do you do with a giant animal?
Same with chickens that lose the ability to produce eggs.
We put the redundant roosters in the woods, let nature do the killing for us. They didn't last one night.
Getting eaten alive makes you feel better than euthanizing them quickly?
Well, at least a wild animal had something to eat?
I'd say main benefit is not doing it youself.
That is pretty much just fruit. Vegetables are typically either the whole body of the plant (like carrots) or a vital part.
I killed so many slugs eating my broccoli it started to get to me. I technically didn't kill them myself, I put the cannibals in a bucket together. 1/3 to 1/2 bucket per day. About 30 full buckets for 20 broccoli plants of which about 8 were ruined.
The conversation is about the necessity of killing what you eat. Those slugs have nothing to do with either argument nor were they a necessary casualty.
I think in practice pest control does require killing the pest, and in that example was a necessary part of growing broccoli to harvesy
Not sure how killing things and then not eating them is morally superior. If you aren't eating meat you are probably getting most of your calories from grains and legumes. The people that grow and store those for you are killing a lot of animals to get them to your grocery store.
This response feels quite emotional, so I’ll start by saying there was no judgement in my comment. At no point have I made a comment on the morality of the matter. Furthermore, not only do grocery stores not even enter into the conversation, you are assuming to know what the people who grow and sell the food at my local markets eat. I assure you, you do not.
I think you’ll benefit from this video. Don’t let yourself be consumed by emotions of an imaginary argument. The entirety of your point is a response to something you imagined I said and not my words or intentions.
I think you misunderstood me, perhaps I didn't express myself well. You said the slugs were not a necessary casualty. Growing the acres and acres of grain and pulses necessary for a vegan diet necessitates the killing of way more animals (insects and rodents, etc) than the few cows, chickens, or pigs necessary to feed a carnivore. Every kind of agriculture requires killing. There is no other way to do it at scale.
The real problem is the sheer number of humans we have to feed. Hopefully another couple centuries of low birth rates will help.
Admittedly this is pedantry on my part, but isn’t this only true for fruits? GP’s argument seems perfectly valid for e.g. carrots or mushrooms.
Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores).
And fruits are broader than most people think. Many of the things you think as vegetables are fruits: pumpkins, zucchinis, tomatoes. But even outside fruits there is food you can harvest without harming the plant, like potatoes. And we haven’t even gotten into seeds and grains, like rice.
So you can definitely live without killing what you eat.
Hah of course you're 100% right on mushrooms - that totally slipped my mind. Am I completely out to lunch on root vegetables though?
> Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores).
They are the "fruiting body" of the fungus, but biologically they are not fruit.
That is correct, which is why I used quotes. It is important to not get bogged down in pedantry and lose sight of the argument, though. The matter being discussed is if you need to kill what you eat, and I’m using “fruit” as a shorthand for the thing a plant produces to be eaten but is not the plant itself.
aren't plants alive?
They are, and you don’t kill them or harm them to eat the things they produce with the purpose of being eaten and spread. If you want to engage in the conversation, please make an effort to do so in good faith and actually address the arguments. If you’re only going to make basic queries everyone already agrees with, we’re just wasting time and space.
"Aren't plants alive?" is such a bad faith argument that I don't know why you even bother replying. It's legitimately on the level of "internet troll". I eat meat btw, but I wouldn't even entertain someone that pretends there's no difference between a sentient mammal and a stalk of broccoli
You are right, of course. But I have noticed as of late that I sometimes became unkind in my replies, which I don’t like and didn’t use to happen. I want to do better.
Surely the right move here is not to play, but if you don’t get annoyed trolls can’t win either.
The point is that you're still killing that broccoli, not that the two acts have equal moral value. It doesn't normally need to be said but you know, someone was wrong on the internet
Ever ate a carrot? The whole plant has to be "killed". Killing doesn't even make sense in the context of plants, a lot of them can just be cloned from a leaf, stem or root. Where do you draw the line between damaging and killing a plant, the termination of the apical meristem? The plant will stop growing but it can still clone itself, or grow more apical meristems...
This whole argument is absolutely meaningless.
edit: just pointing out I'm not directly replying to you but to the whole thread.
> purpose of being eaten and spread
why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?
You're arguing on the Internet, it's already a waste of time and space.
> why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?
Pretty sure it is the cow's purpose. Humans first domesticated a wild animal and then with selective breeding cows were "made". That has no weight on ethics tho.
Also, this is a ridiculous argument.
If someone raises their human kid “to be eaten”, that would be the purpose of the kid.
Does that make it ok to eat the kid?
Here’s a compromise.
Neither you nor I get to decide what the purpose of another sentient being is.
Absolutely. But while I cannot declare its ultimate "final cause", perhaps I have some right to declare a penultimate one? I have my reasons for believing this is the case. What are your reasons for believing it is not (or do you believe that we do have some right to declare penultimate final causes for living creatures, and if so, what are the limits?)
> why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?
Clearly you’ve never experienced the sight of animals in a slaughterhouse, as they realise what is happening to the animals in front and begin to panic and violently bellow and push back.
> You're arguing on the Internet, it's already a waste of time and space.
That is only true for people who don’t engage in good faith and don’t have a genuine desire to learn and are open to changing their minds. For everyone else, it can and does provide value.
your attempt to evoke an emotion doesn't answer my question though.
Why do you get to decide that the purpose of a cow isn't to be eaten?
Why do you get to decide it is? The onus of proof is on the one making the claim.
I guess someone could also repeatedly bash you over the head with a tire iron and break your legs, and when criticised reply “how do you know their purpose isn’t to get hurt?”
“Well, when I approached them to hit them, they cowered in fear, asked for mercy, and tried to flee.”
“Your attempt to evoke an emotion doesn’t answer the question though. How do you know their purpose is not to be ravaged?”
> They are, and you don’t kill them or harm them to eat the things they produce with the purpose of being eaten and spread.
There is a chasm of difference between your purpose and the purpose of something you do.
If you build a chair, the purpose of doing so could be to sit or to earn money by selling it. We can derive exactly which from your actions and the outcomes, but there is still an identifiable purpose. However, it is entirely different to claim your purpose is to build chairs.
Similarly, in my previous example someone can hit someone else with the purpose of harming them, but it doesn’t mean that person’s purpose is to cause harm.
Do you see the difference? I do kind of feel like I’m discussing middle school philosophy here. I surely hope that is not my purpose. This whole conversation was unnecessary with a tiny bit of steel manning on your part, don’t you think? Does it truly seem reasonable to you to claim an entire species’ purpose is to do something they do not only not pursue but actively avoid? I’m confident you are able to see the point by now.
Harvesting crops is materially different from slaughtering animals, and calorie for calorie, plant-based nutrition involves less termination of life than getting calories from animals (if you're grouping insects and non-animal life into the "forms of life" being killed).
If people don't like killing in general, or killing animals more specifically, they can live a wonderfully health(y|ier) life by going plant-based, be responsible for less killing, and today do it without having to give up the textures and experiences they've be conditioned on.
It's difficult in 2025 to conclude that a person who doesn't choose to eat this way is particularly opposed to killing, in the way that you propose.
Less termination of life based on numbers or some version of (sentience * number of individuals)? I find it hard to believe the sheer number of individual insects killed during harvest could match the killing of one cow, calorie for calorie.
Also, what if we increase the calories of the animal we choose to slaughter, say we start raising massive whale-sized animals instead, would that tip the scales?
Insects do not have the same level of sentience as birds and mammals.
However, do keep in mind that a large proportion of agricultural output is used to feed animals.
It takes 20 to 40 plant calories to raise one calorie of beef. So slaughtering a cow kills 20 to 40 times the number of lives as eating plants directly.
What makes my wife and I fail every time is protein intake. We are both active and require a lot of protein. We drink whey protein 1x a day, have quinoa for salads and occasionally eat eggs. The problem is come dinnertime, we have few options. We can't eat: - beans: Yes, I rolled my eyes too. My wife gets bloated painfully and it's happened so many times that I've stopped preparing bean-primary dishes - beyond meat: it's expensive, gas and bloat is still an issue, a big one
Tofu, seitan and TVP are all good, but they're extremely boring (user error attributes to this I'm sure).
Every vegetarian/vegan I've talked to is just not into weightlifting, so they sort of dismiss the diet needs we need. We always go back to chicken because of this
> We are both active and require a lot of protein.
I'm curious what your targets are. I've found getting 0.8g of protein per kg of bodyweight (USDA recommendation) is easy on any diet whereas 1.5g/kg or higher on a vegan diet can be hard depending on your target macro ratio. If you're bulking or doing long-distance running/biking (i.e. carbs aren't a limiting factor) then it's totally doable. Besides tofu, seitan, and beans there's lentils, chickpeas, edamame, spinach, nuts, seeds, nooch, etc.
> beans: ... My wife gets bloated painfully
If she's committed to making beans work you could experiment with varieties and preparation methods that are more digestible, or she could try Beano. But honestly that seems like a lot of work.
> beyond meat: it's expensive, gas and bloat is still an issue, a big one
Same, I just can't digest it. I'm glad the faux meats exist for folks who want them, but I'm sad at how it's displaced other veggie burgers at restaurants.
> Tofu, seitan and TVP are all good, but they're extremely boring (user error attributes to this I'm sure).
I've come to appreciate the blank canvas they provide but that did take a lot of trial and error to get to the point where I knew what to do with them. Similar to beans it depends on how committed you are. (In my case it took a long time for the incongruence between my food choices and my ethics to grow big enough to overcome my innate laziness and affinity for barbecue.)
> Every vegetarian/vegan I've talked to is just not into weightlifting, so they sort of dismiss the diet needs we need.
I know a few vegans into powerlifting/streetlifting, and as mentioned above bulking isn't too hard -- the real issue is cutting. Every one of them supplements with protein powders, especially while cutting. Then again, so do all the omnivore lifters I know.
> beans
Have you tried various types? cannellini beans don't seem to have the same effect as others in my experience.
Perhaps have a look of tempeh, it’s more digestible that beans (because pre disgusted by shroom) and already comes with a slight nutty flavor but that stuff is a songe (shroom…) and get impregnated sigh any marinade very quickly.
The tvp are tasteless by design, my way is to use them to mimic sliced beef recipes therefore 1) they get different flavors depending on what I cook 2) they trigger my memories and those makes me feel more taste that they are.
For the beans digestability another tip is to remove/by dehulled beans, that’s the hardest part to digest. Also soaking them overnight is a big help for digestion.
Being against child slavery doesn’t exclude you from benefitting from child slavery when you use your phone.
I guess you should just be pro child slavery and enslaved some kids to do your housework then?
Cars kill 50k Americans a year. I guess we are just ok with killing peoplr and therefore shouldn’t be against murder either?
It doesn’t even take philosophy 101 to understand there’s a significant moral gulf between killing deliberately and incidentally.
> People don't like to kill in general.
I used to believe this.
Then I came up with a twisted question to ask people (I am fun at parties)
The question is something like, if you had to come up with a name for someone to kill within twenty four hours can you do so? The conditions are you get a full and unconditional pardon. It won't be held against you at all. If need be, we will even arrange it such that the person can't protest. However, once you agree, you must come up with a name and you must follow through. You must kill this person no matter what within a short time frame (make something up like a month).
I expected people to answer no. You can't come up with a name in a day! However, over half the people I have asked have said they have a name right now.
> I expected people to answer no. You can't come up with a name in a day! However, over half the people I have asked have said they have a name right now.
I don't think that's surprising, and it doesn't meant that people are okay with or blasé about killing people. Like, arguably this is just the trolley problem rephrased; there exist people whose death would clearly be a vast net benefit and would save many other lives. So is it okay to kill them? It's not an easy question.
I think it's more or less unrelated to the issue of killing one's own chickens; there is no such thing as an evil chicken who death will save thousands.
If you got that person in front of them and put a gun in their hand, do you think they'd follow through?
Your question is like a game, and people you ask will most probably treat it as such. People 'kill' in videogames, but most would not like to actually kill in real life.
I feel like that's a different question though. Most people have at least one person they think would make the world a better place by their absence, but that's not quite the same thing as wanting to kill them, even if they would guaranteed get away with it.
(for a pithy version: "I've never wished anyone dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure")
But why? You can easily come up with a whole list. I’d ask for a week to perform research on more names I wasn’t aware of. There’s so many bastards in this world I’d specifically choose a less sharp weapon for and skip the can’t protest part. The only thing I’d worry about is getting physically exhausted and mentally unstable after such marathon, but it has to be done.
Kinda disagree on the latter part. If there's no chance to toss them in prison, but other opportunities, do whatever is necessary to prevent further suffering.
But then there's the question on whether you could trust your own judgement.
E.g. I wonder how many people would choose Kim Jong Un without realizing how EXTREMELY progressive the guy is on the scale of the hell hole that is North Korea.
Allowing just anyone who wants access to the countrwide intranet with some curated and heavily censored information from the outside and ending the crackdown on user generated content? Blasphemy! Allowing a selected few foreign restaurants to open up? Witchcraft! Building semi-normal housing in the prison camps you toss entire families together with their children, grand-children and elders in? Cracking down on systematic rape and arbitrary mass executions in those camps? He's going to come for our (prison) children next! Trying to shut down the practice of high ranking officials forcing young girls into sex slavery squads? And even after inflicting an "undisclosed physical ailment" on him, he still only barely agreed to restart the squad, controls the selection of girls himself instead of allowing us to force anyone we like into it, requires parental consent, makes us wait until the girls receive an education and doesn't recruit anyone under 14 anymore? SCREW HIM!
And many other things that seem absurd to us and the Juche system for exactly opposite reasons. Like allowing other countries but China and Russia to offer work in their special economic zones, agreeing to a meeting with the US President at the border inside NK, considering negotiations with South Korea and allowing very limited cultural exchange, giving some priority to increasing living conditions for anyone but those who have the priviledge of living in the capital, turning a blind eye to tiny private markets selling some less controversial contraband, ....
The guy is just barely holding on in a system that completely vaporized anyone with even but a tiny bit less than utmost loyality to the Juche ideology. For several generations. All institutions, government bodies, civic organizations, education and corporations are under complete control of Juche extremists. And then there's this one basketball obsessed fatty raised in Switzerland.
His greatest achievement so far is probably opening up their intranet to about a quarter of their population (less than 1% were allowed to use it before him) and slowly expanding the group of people who have access to the outside internet. At this point more people have access to smartphones than to television or radio. And now social media and chatrooms are apparently being reopened after the previous government took those from the 0.1% elite who had access to the intranet back then in 2005, because they organized a spontaneous sport event with a few hundred people.
And not long ago the NK government became very worried about people accessing the global internet through their intranet enabled devices, extending the application used to connect to the intranet with spyware trying to detect foreign network accesses. So it seems VERY likely to me someone hard to stop is currently hooking their intranet to the global internet in the background. And the NK establishment is not very happy about it.
Maybe the life of North Koreans will become much better within one or two generations.
That’s why I say we need a detailed list, and a long one. Most bastards are in the middle of these structures, not on top (with notable exceptions).
Your game doesn't test what you say it does, but someone else already covered that.
I'm not saying people have an inbuilt moral objection to the idea of killing, I'm saying most people find hurting other living things emotionally difficult.
This doesn't sound like "liking to kill" but more so like an "I know someone who's an absolute piece of shit and the world would be better off without them" kind of deal.
The curse of a poll. You always get more than you asked for because any question is too flat.
Putin and Xi immediately jumped to my mind.
There are autocrats all over the world I could name. Unfortunately there are most likely a whole list of people ready and waiting to step into their place.
It's different perspectives.
For a lot of people it's an exchange thing. You give the chicken a place to stay, food and care and in exchange you get to eat it when it gets old. They do bond with them but there's this understanding from day 1.
If you don't get that out of it it'd turn into an omlette so instead of turning into an omlette it gets to enjoy a large percentage of its life.
One needs to decide if an animal is a product or a pet. It's difficult to have them be both.
Having them as a product does not mean you don't care for them, on the contrary, but I would say it's a completely different type of bond.
> But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?
I would argue it's about the purpose, not the bond. You don't kill a pet, but you do kill food. And you should never kill for the sole sake of killing.
> but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land
You needed HN to figure that out? I assume this is obvious sarcasm but almost none of the domesticated animals species would exist if almost all humans throughout history weren't willing to do that.
Even eating dogs was perfectly standard in most more "primitive" and/or destitute societies.
My wifes family was wicked as they would let the children bond with the animals, without letting them know they gonna be dinner.
She tells a story of a wonderful pet goat. Until one day it was "gone to another farm", and they enjoyed goat curry for dinner.
The older siblings knew... and now they dont talk lol.
I grew up the same for much of my childhood tho it was never hidden or explicitly stated all the time. I bear absolutely 0 resentment about any of that tbh. I just fed the chickens, petted the goats, waved the bees away from fruits and helped pluck the chickens
In the end it makes me feel like the people eating their nuggets but have a traumatic reaction to what created them are the odd ones.
My friend would spend summers at the family farm, and the youngest kids would be issued a rabbit as a pet for the duration. They'd then make the kids watch the rabbits be slaughtered and cleaned, and serve them up at the end of the vacation...
Straight psychopath approach to child raising. The adults were all convinced this is how you made kids grow up tough
That's straight from the TV trope book, this is how movies/shows portray Evil Organization training ruthless spy assassins (except usually it's a dog, and they have to kill it themselves).
Most tropes have some basis in reality. I've met a few farm-owning parents who view any kind of sentimentality towards animals as counterproductive.
But that's normal - emotionally boding with a farm animal you intend to slaughter and eat is indeed counterproductive.
The trope is about something different - it's about intentionally making a subject bond with an animal over long time, as with a close friend, and then finally making them kill the animal as a final test of loyalty.
Doing that in real life, and for no good reason, is just sick.
It is, those people think this practice will speed up process of that bond being understood as counterproductive.
Or why should the "bond" cause us to not eat animals? They aren't pets we eat in a panic, but animals we raise with the intention of eating but still bond with them and continue the process through consuming them and letting the animal go on to fulfill a higher purpose of providing sustenance to the humans they bonded with.
> Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.
I love my chickens and I'm really sad when I lose some to predators. Yet I have no issue to harvest them for eating. They are not pets, I raise them for eggs and meat.
Maybe it's because I was raised on a farm, but I make a difference between pets and farm animals and that does not mean that I don't have a "bond" with some of the latter.
The first step is to acknowledge that there is something wrong here. This categorization of "pets" and "farm animals" as different sets is completely virtual. In real life, both are just animals.
It is completely virtual, but are you going to include humans into animal group too? Because we're just animals with ties and anxiety.
You have be arguing in bad faith if you claim that you don't see difference between a random cat and a cattle.
Why should they "bat an eye" about killing animals raised on their own land? It's how we've lived since the dawn of time. Death is a part of life.
If you think it's wrong to kill animals to eat, I would ask you "By what moral standard?"
This argument would be valid if humanity would continue all practices it has done "since the dawn of time".
We have dropped some practices and we continue with some. We no longer leave the dead to rot, we bury/burn them, and so on. We developed religions, science, etc, and we are in a different era now, our lifestyle has completely changed, we don't have to hunt, don't have to build our own shelters, and we are no longer nomadic.
I am of the opinion that `killing animals` is a practice we can safely stop now, it was a necessity at that time, but right now it is completely optional.
There are various angles to look at this. One is sustainability and another one is morality.
Sustainability: Do you think we have enough animals to feed 8 Billion people on earth meat daily? I hope you know why we had to fallback to agriculture as a source of nutrition. Why most early settlements were started on river banks?
Morality: My moral standard is: Don't kill animals for my own sake of pleasure, kill only what's necessary for my survival, kill only what is there to kill me/hurt me.
So can I "kill" plants?: Yes (Using the term 'kill' wrt plants is just wrong, but I will continue with it for the sake of argument).
How is it morally okay to kill a plant but not okay to kill an animal?:
Let's agree on the definition of an animal. By animal, we all mean the set of (humans, pets, goat, horse, pig, lion, etc), there are no plants in this set. They are in a set called `living_beings`, which will have bacteria, viruses, insects as well (who can be further clubbed into smaller sets). Now my moral standard is "Not kill animals" (Not 'don't kill living beings'). It is on this entire set, not selectively for X or Y, which will be hypocritical. I am applying the same level of morality to everyone in this set. Now coming to plant-based food. First of all vegetarian food is not just plants. It is fruits, vegetables (akin to fruits), seeds, leaves, and other different parts. The plants are not always "killed" unlike when producing meat-based food (except eggs). The plants are "evolutionary hardened",i.e. built for harvesting, they don't die if you pluck a fruit (moreover they drop it naturally). They don't die when you take a flower or take a bunch of leaves (as long as you are within limits). The same can't be said for any animal.
Is the use of pesticides, deforestation, and killing of insects/rodents okay for producing large amounts of vegetarian food?:
No, I am against that but I don't see any other alternative to feed the calorific needs of 8 Billion people on earth. Of course there are other farming practices but they can't be commercialized or don't have high yields. As much as we can, we should try to eat locally sourced items to avoid carbon emissions due to transportation over large distances.
So what will be my ideal world that is according to my moral standards?: Ideally, everyone has a backyard where they can grow their own plant-based food. If you want better nutrition coverage, keep some chicken and eat the eggs. Let the chickens enjoy their lives, doing chicken things.
Will I eat an animal if I am stranded on an island with nothing else to eat?: Yes, at my current level of ego, I would prefer to stay alive by killing and eating the said animal.
Just so you know I agree the "counterargument" about killing plants makes no sense at all. But thank you for your thoughtful reply. My ethical framework is different than yours but I respect how well thought out yours is.
> I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals
You develop bonds, just different ones and you learn to place limits because you know what the purpose of the animal is.
I still felt it when I was really little, but that was gone by the time I was a teenager and the reality that this was our living set in.