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Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

The food chain is immoral. Got it.

The food chain is an abstraction that describes the natural world, not a moral agent any more than the water cycle is. Wild animals predate in the wild, yes, but they aren't moral agents. Humans are able to reason about our own actions and more importantly we can live and indeed thrive on a plant-based diet. So since there are ways to get our food other than killing other thinking, feeling, suffering individuals, we aren't forced to do so. We just choose to inflict incomprehensible amounts of suffering on animals not out of necessity but because we like the taste of cow milk slightly more than we like the taste of oat milk, or we love the way their flesh tastes, and would rather eat it than cook a plant-based meal.

We inflict billions of lifetimes of misery and torture on creatures with their own desires and will to live, who feel suffering and pain just as much as we do, in service of an utterly unnecessary and trivial benefit, that while we could live incredibly well, even healthier and with less impact on the environment on a plant-based diet, we like the taste of their flesh and excretions too much to choose oat milk and tofu at the grocery store.

Yes it is wrong! Future generations will look back at our time as with disbelief that we behave like this.

You're just moving your consumption farther from your leaf of the tree of life--which is totally fine, even most meat-eaters will balk at cannibalism. But what makes you so certain plants are unfeeling and can't experience pain? I observe plants attempting to avoid and heal from damage, so I assume they do have some analogue experiences around feelings of suffering.

Unfortunately even if you only cared about plants, you would still be better off on a vegan diet because animal agriculture requires order(s) of magnitude more plants to be cultivated than a vegan diet would, on account of it taking many calories of plant feed to produce a calorie of meat.

Whether plants feel pain or not doesn't impact our responsibility to reduce the suffering of animals we can naturally better empathize with.

Plants lack pain receptors and the nervous systems to process pain signals. Whatever their "experience", it's safe to assume it is so alien to us as to be incomprehensible. In that case, it's very unlikely any of the concepts we use to describe our lived experiences (ie suffering) would apply to a plant whatsoever. The correlate is trying to imagine what photosynthesizing feels like.

I can viscerally imagine what a bird feels when its beak is cauterized.

Lidocaine works on plants.

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

Changes in bioelectric signals trigger formation of new organs: Tadpoles made to grow eyes in back, tail: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111207175740.h...

Like the other commenter below you says: you anthropromorphize and project lowlyness onto the other lifeforms because they lack nervous systems - because they aren't you. A nervous system isn't necessary for consciousness and feeling. What's more vital is information pathways. And plants have plenty of that. We do too as evident by how changing these electrochemical pathways alters our biology.

I agree that a plant's lived experience is likely somewhat alien to our own, but why do we have a "responsibility" to reduce suffering only for living things closer to us? And where do you draw the line? Is it okay to squash bugs I don't like? Would it be a ridiculous waste of our time to develop farming and harvesting techniques that reduce the suffering of plants? If we deploy such solutions for animals does that make eating meat better? If not having meat available causes humans to suffer is that worse? It all just seems so arbitrary. Personally I eat all sorts of things and try to source what I consume from the most conscientious suppliers I can find, but I'm not convinced going full vegan would make me a better person.

It's not at all arbitrary. My starting position is that I want to be free of pain/suffering and I want to be able to pursue my desires and preferences. I take those as inherently good. I apply those internal truths to other living beings.

Plants, bacteria, etc don't feel pain, although they might have preferences for food, etc. Those beings, then, are not especially relevant to our ethical obligations viz a viz the experience of suffering.

A fish feels pain and exhibits distinct preferences. Therefore, we are obligated to respect its life by virtue of the inherent good of painlessness and autonomy. It is immoral to kill any living creature that fits that framework.

Finally, this does not mean that our moral obligations are cemented here. We may eventually learn that other living things have properties that require us to expand the scope of our ethical duties.

It sounds like your moral framework would include bugs as sacrosanct as well? I do wonder, then, why you are so quick to dismiss the feelings of plants? I guess because they move in time-steps out of sync with your own? But if you take a shade-loving plant and put it in the direct sun it will turn its leaves away so they don't get burnt. If you stab a tree it will exude a coagulating sap and heal the damage with a scar. Plants have no immune system comparable to ours, but they still remember and respond differently to viruses they've been exposed to in the past. These actions are clearly in response to the environment. Since my own pain-avoidance and healing actions are very similar and also in response to the environment I consider this evidence that a chemical analog of my pain response must be occurring in plants, however alien the experience may be to me as a mammal. Whatever plants feel, there are other moral issues surrounding the food chain that cannot be solved by simply adopting a plant-based diet. I think it is more arbitrary than you are willing to imply.

I don't think plants can feel pain. To me, pain is tied to learning and agency. Theres little to nothing a plant can learn from/ change upon being eaten, so why would they be able to feel it?

I bet plants get some version of depression though.

Plants learn and have agency [1]. It just takes a bit more patience to observe.

[1] - https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/commentary-plant-neuro...

Wow! Those stalks almost look like tentacles!

Amazing, his recent comment appears to indicate that he does have sentience after all! He almost looks like a _______. But of course he's just a lowly human. ;-)

Plants literally produce nicotine, caffeine, mescaline, and other chemical insecticides to thwart off predation... Lidocaine literally works on plants because all living organisms have electrical gradients and ion channels regardless of whether or not a nervous system exists.

Plants have a consciousness, it's just not the same as yours or mine. We shouldn't be eating animals or plants, we should be eating pollen, wax, and nectar - seeds and fruit. This would be true permaculture without any reaping or sowing of any life.

I literally own a startup dedicated to this futuristic goal. You can email me if you are interested in Roylent.

The least we can do at the current moment is to not torture animals for food. That can be agreed on regardless of one's views and understandings about information, computation, and consciousness.

What about bacteria and bugs?

What about them?

Does your flavor of permaculture actively preserve their lives?

Yes

How so? How do you avoid crushing them?

Drones.

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