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Comment by kjkjadksj | Hacker News Reader

The factory farming argument is a little tired. I'd rather be killed by an airgun over what nature intended: slowly eaten alive by a pack of wolves from the anus first.

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That’s ridiculous though. A normal life for an animal involves lots of hardship, but also pleasure. Factory farms are 24/7 torture for the entire life of the animal. It’s like being born in hell.

> That’s ridiculous though. A normal life for an animal involves lots of hardship, but also pleasure.

https://youtu.be/BCirA55LRcI?si=x3NXPqNk4wvKaaaJ

I would rather be the sheep from the nearby farm.

I’ve seen these videos. They depict what it would be like to be a human in the body of the animal, not what the animal would go through. There’s presumably a lot of suffering that wouldn’t be useful as a signal to the tripod fish. For example, the weight of the pressure on its body would be a distraction and thus a hindrance to reproduction. The same goes for the depiction of its attitude towards a partner (presumably these aren’t social animals). The goal of the video is to exaggerate the horror of the animal’s life for entertainment and ad revenue. It’s also, of course, something we don’t have an immediate capacity to change through political and social means. We could probably make farm animals’ lives infinitely better and improve the food quality they produce with very little reduction to our quality of life.

I'm not a vegan but this argument makes no sense. Show me a scenario where the pack of wolves kills every single herd participant. Otherwise, I'd rather take my chances surviving in freedom than locked and airguned in the head. This is comparing a human surviving outdoors to being on death row.

Isn't that an argument in favor of taking care of wild animals instead of continuing factory farming, though?

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