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Comment by nefitty | Hacker News Reader

> Last year, researchers at the London School of Economics concluded from a review of 300 scientific studies that octopus were sentient beings capable of experiencing distress and happiness, and that high-welfare farming would be impossible.

I don't understand how someone can decide to ignore that in an effort to make money. I fear that if we don't more quickly move the Overton window on the suffering of sentient creatures, we may suddenly find ourselves with synthetic sentient life devoid of protection under the law.

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Is it not clear that cows experience distress? And we farm and eat those.

Or is this conclusion that octopuses experience distress and other animals are p-zombies which only react in a way that looks like distress but might be emotionally neutral inside?

I mean specifically octopods, considering this is the first farm. It means someone really went out of their way to get past historical momentum to be the first to create this process.

The worst part is that it will be easily replicable. That's really sad. I feel sympathy for these poor creatures.

I think the point is to start somewhere and nip this one in the bud.

Yes, Temple Grandin’s work to reduce animal distress is very important.

Grandin also developed an objective, numerical scoring system for assessing animal welfare at slaughtering plants. The use of this scoring system resulted in significant improvements in animal stunning and handling during slaughter.

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

Edit for quote format

That is some absolutely twisted shit.

It's also true and important (at least in the context of this whole HN discussion).

Sure, I agree

the same would apply to pretty much all animals no? and dare I say plants too?

Animals yes. Plants? I eat them without guilt. I wouldn't eat insects, not only because of my conditioned disgust, but now even moreso because crustaceans were found to be capable of suffering based on an 8-point scale. Bugs and crabs don't seem so far off to one another in my mind.

We as a society seem to have no problem killing millions of insects to make it easier to grow plants though. No matter what you eat, things are dying to supply your food.

If you want to minimize the number of animals being killed, it’s probably best to eat the largest ones you have.

Sentience is a matter of degree. That's why people can compare the intelligence of a chimpanzee to the intelligence of a three year old human. Or why it's intuitive to prefer saving the life of a human to saving the life of a fish. That does not diminish the capability of suffering that the fish has, but merely comparing the objective complexity of a human's preferences vs a fish's.

How do you think we grow those bigger animals though? We grow plants to feed them and convert those plant calories to animal calories at a mind bogglingly inefficient rate.

If you want to reduce death and suffering overall, sticking to plants only is the best route.

We also grow plants to burn in F150s. OTOH you also cannot convert all the pastoral land into agricultural land. In fact its probably pastoral land in the first place because the land is not that possible to farm on otherwise (e.g. hilly/narrow/rock laden pastures which are quite common across hilly areas like appalachia).

The fact is there are good ways to grow animals and plants, and bad ways, and we should just focus on eliminating the bad ways and allowing the market to set prices on what the good practices are. It honestly wound't be too expensive; grassfed pastured beef isn't too much of a premium, neither is soybean that came from an ohio field instead of a Brazilian rainforest. If subsidizes were eliminated for the mass market operations that damage the environment, and introduced for these sustainable operations, you'd see a lot of self correction in the market to fit these more sustainable practices.

Kurzgesagt has a great video explaining how grass fed beef isn’t really very viable at all. I suggest you watch it. It came out a couple months ago and talks about this at length. Give it a google.

If its something like its too costly then that's fine too. Let mcDonalds become bean burgers if their pricepoint with the cost of proper grassfed beef doesn't make any sense anymore.

> it’s probably best to eat the largest ones you have.

This fails at scale. Feeding our population on large animals requires significantly more plant mass than if we eat plants. Large animals are terribly inefficient at converting plant matter into food.

We will harm fewer sentient creatures if we simply eat plants directly.

If you are eating grains directly or feed grains to (say) chickens you have to plow the land, clear other vegetation, cause erosion, probably use fertilizers and pesticides.

At a certain scale though you can graze animals on grass sustainably, building soil structure instead of destroying it.

The environmental movement has a beef with beef but the more I look at it chicken is the problem.

So are you saying since all flora and fauna might also apply, that we do nothing?

This is the all or nothing fallacy mentioned up thread.

I can't read their mind but I don't know if that's what they're trying to say. The common anti-veg(an)itarian argument is that if you apply standards evenly it would result in an absurdity, thus leading you to question the premise.

I think we can do something, I think these research are good, and we can try and reduce harm. Personally I just try and reduce food wastage, I've kept a journal and boy do I waste a lot...

So we all just starve now because we can't eat plants? I don't like your plan.

I don't think their "plan" is anything, it looks like an (common) anti-veg(an)itarian argument that tries to say that if standards were applied evenly it would result in an absurdity.

> and dare I say plants too?

I mean, if we also can't eat plants... there's not gonna be much left to eat.

by the way love the lab food concept due to this, don't really trust big Ag/Pharma would leave us alone though; there're profits to be made damnit.

Your comment is a series of logical mistakes.

1. Plants don't have a central nervous system. They're not sentient and don't feel pain.

2. The fact that something "applies to all animals" doesn't somehow make an action morally justifiable. You're suggesting inaction because perfection can't be achieved.

In our understanding you need nervous system and brain. That doesn't conclude that plants don't feel pain. Pain is how we know about our injury or whatever. That doesn't mean plants will feel that way too. We excrete through our butthole but plants excrete through different way or process. They may feel pain in the way we don't understand yet. Like we now know they are sensitive to light, food, host etc. They emit electrical signals when their body parts are cut. The answer will always be maybe yes or no. We don't even know properly about ourselves, forgot plants and animals.

suggest exposing yourself to some Wittgenstein and lion? It's merely some conjecture, nowhere did I suggest inaction too

I'm calling BS on the happy octopus study.

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