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Comment by grumple | Hacker News Reader

Wow. The cruelty these workers display and the conditions they work in and the pigs live in are absolutely disgusting. I don't see how you can behave the way they do without being evil - it's easy to see how Germans could have no problem killing Jews in concentration camps if they were similar personalities. We see this cruelty play out as Russia rapes and murders civilians in Ukraine as well with increasingly creative tortures. The casual nature of human cruelty is remarkable. How do we prevent people from ending up like this? Once someone reaches this point, I can't see them being able to safely integrate into society.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683

Confessions of a slaughterhouse worker

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28506017/

Prevalence of serious psychological distress among slaughterhouse workers at a United States beef packing plant

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4841092/

Slaughtering for a living: A hermeneutic phenomenological perspective on the well-being of slaughterhouse employees

https://hazlitt.net/blog/monstrous-cruelty-just-world

The Monstrous Cruelty of a Just World

https://faunalytics.org/differing-empathy-in-vegetarians-veg...

Differing Empathy in Vegetarians, Vegans, and Omnivores

> it's easy to see how Germans could have no problem killing Jews in concentration camps if they were similar personalities

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

The last study is interesting.

I'm somewhat surprised by the increased empathy to humans though.

As a meat eater the ethics of meat eating is more a question of respect for the animal, I don't lack empathy for humans.

Further, my observation of pet owners, their empathy for pets seems to reduce their empathy for fellow humans.

> my observation of pet owners, their empathy for pets seems to reduce their empathy for fellow humans.

Hmm, I haven’t seen that correlation, but it’s worth noting that there are all sorts of people who keep pets for all sorts of different reasons, so I don’t doubt it’s true for some.

A lot of people would rather save their pet than an unspecified stranger from a sinking ship: https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/202...

That makes sense. But becoming a pet owner also makes you more likely to want to save an unspecified dog over a unspecified person.

Regarding your first point, that’s not a pet owner thing but a family thing. Most people would save their own before helping a stranger.

> becoming a pet owner also makes you more likely to want to save an unspecified dog over a unspecified person

From the article:

> In the scenarios involving an unspecified dog, only around 20% of American pet owners say they would choose to save the dog over the person or people

My reading of that data is different from yours. Does a 20% chance of something sound more likely or less likely?

>Regarding your first point, that’s not a pet owner thing but a family thing.

'Family' takes many different forms though (nation, ethnicity, species, etc) I'm not saying it's right or wrong but I would include a human stranger in my 'family' over a known pet.

> My reading of that data is different from yours. Does a 20% chance of something sound more likely or less likely?

More likely than a non pet-owner (10%).

> As a meat eater ... I don't lack empathy for humans.

As a meat eater ... you cannot yet know what you lack/you'd gain ;)

> pet owners, their empathy for pets seems to reduce their empathy for fellow humans

It's funny that when someone adopts a rabbit, pig, or chicken as a pet, they often (based on anecdotes) stop eating that specific type of meat, but they don't typically stop eating other animals.

Something changes when people decide to stop eating meat.

>As a meat eater ... you cannot yet know what you lack/you'd gain ;)

No, I'd even grant that my pov could even be a sign of lowered empathy, but as my second part was meant to indicate. On the other hand developing an empathy for other animals can lead to lowered empathy for the 'murderers' of those animals.

If you empathise with foos and bars, and foos are harming bars, surely that would impact your empathy for foos.

I believe empathy isn't zero-sum. Feeling for animals doesn't mean their empathy for humans diminishes.

Btw, most vegans used to be meat eaters previously.

As my SO says: "they (carnists) just don't know ... yet".

It’d be interesting to read more about the psychology of “when people decide to stop eating meat”. Conversely, I’ve talked with individuals who were raised culturally vegetarian who started eating meat as an adult.

Interesting topics all around.

The Stanford prison experiment was fraudulent: https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...

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