Octopodes don't actually have a very long lifespan, as adults die shortly after mating. Which is only to say that the decision to consume is more complicated for this creature than others, because if the goal is to minimize suffering, an ethically aquaculture-farmed octopus harvested after mating will not live much longer anyways.
And I've always found the argument that "more intelligent/sentient creatures deserve more protection and rights" to be basically a post hoc defense against cannibalism. We can't know what "suffering" feels like to less intelligent and "simpler" animals so why make our sentience a criterion for the morality of eating? Just from a safety concern we shouldn't be eating humans, but not because we "suffer uniquely more" than other species.
> And I've always found the argument that "more intelligent/sentient creatures deserve more protection and rights" to be basically a post hoc defense against cannibalism.
It's not some veiled aversion to cannibalism, it's because humans have empathy for other humans, and our empathy for non-humans scales with how human-like we perceive those animals to be. If someone sees intelligence as a defining trait of humanity, then they're likely to empathize with animals that display great intelligence. And if you empathize with the animal, you're more likely to be sensitive to its perceived suffering.
Raw intelligence isn't the only thing that drives our empathy toward animals though. I'd argue that it isn't even the main thing.
We care much more about an animal's biological/genetic similarity to ourselves, which is why people are comfortable eating octopuses but not lemurs, even though octopuses are much better problem solvers and lemurs are relatively dumb.
We also care more about sociability / the animal's ability to communicate with humans. This is why people are more comfortable eating pigs instead of dogs. Pigs might be smarter, but dogs are much better at communicating with us, eager to please, etc.
This is completely cultural and has little to do with "genetic similarity". People have been eating monkeys since forever. Monkeys that have the most human-looking gazes.
> We can't know what "suffering" feels like to less intelligent and "simpler" animals so why make our sentience a criterion for the morality of eating?
Using the power of the scientific method, we can form hypothesis. Take a bite out of a few hundred people, give them IQ tests. Give surveys. Use induction.
As our ability to communicate with more and more animals improves with technology, start giving them surveys after taking a bite out of them.
My hypothesis is that every animal along the questionnaire wave front will overwhelmingly self report that they prefer not to be eaten.
At some point, we'll all have to wring our hands about an arXiv preprint where somebody convincingly lets us know that the corn doesn't like being eaten either.
We'll find a few really depressed plants and animals that are ready to be eaten, and some people will propose we make the world a more depressing place so there's more consent in all this. That's a bad take, but the argument will last 1000 years. All the while everyone and everything will keep on eating and eating.
Have you ever sat and thought about all the eating that has gone into making this moment for you? Like, all the eating you've done, all the eating of the creatures and plants that you've eaten have done. All your ancestors. So on and so forth back to the simplest primordial chemical reactions. Life is the tip of the spear atop a long cone of death and teeth gnashing. It's quite horrific.
The universe would be a lot more chill if we could just leave the clouds of fluorine to meditate. They're quite serene when they do that.
The same impulses of MAGA culture warriors to protect US history against "woke" is explored here. Our cultural icons are all flawed, because they're human, but examining them critically is very hard because we project so much on them. Navigating this moment is very hard because of "cancel culture" and "anti-cancel culture". We can't and shouldn't erase these men (and it's overwhelmingly men) from history, but trying to add any nuance or criticality to their story is very difficult in our current moment.
There’s an obvious religious element to this. Whether it’s the idea of Maya or that this realm is but a precursor to heaven or hell. I think that at least some people believe that morality is more arbitrary if this realm is not ”real”. And just as people seek refuge in religion or other ideologies in order to give their life meaning, if this realm is not, in fact, real, then the meaning they thought they had established evaporates.
Walabot DIY 2 in expert mode looks great! Definitely a bit more single-purpose for walls - only works on flat surfaces and probably has trouble w corners. Great suggestion, thanks!
How can you prefer one thing over the other if you haven't tried both? It's so funny how we are set up to think we are in control but overriding the default here would take some serious effort. Who is in charge really? The gut microbes order specific kinds of food then we obey? Trying to refuse to eat or change the order is pretty hard.
I have not heard that this is known to be a reason dogs do that - it's more common for them to eat their own feces, which can't have any gut-culture benefit - but it does work in humans, where it's called a "fecal transplant".
Look at Poland since 2015. We don't have UBI per se, but we have uncoditional handouts of free money to families with children, which goes to about 4 millions of families (so, like half of them).
And while the programme is not universal nor the handouts are very big (around $200 per child per month) the costs are astronomical and it’s already driven inflation in the country (along with other social programs). I can’t imagine what would happen to economy if this was expanded.
TLDR: it's harder to have more kids when the law demands we keep them safe to a certain standard when children ride in cars. Car seats take up more space than children. This is a financial pressure against larger families.
If your problem is low birth rates in America, sure, car seat laws are a small but measurable and possibly easily-remedied contributor to said problem. But really that's one of like a thousand things[0] including car culture generally. Trains, light rail, and busses don't add that pressure, and bikes are cheap.
[0] TFA mentions a bunch of other pressures, but that list is certainly non-exhaustive, and seems very facile, tbh.
