This used to really bother me, but lately I'm thinking it is probably for the best.
Some people get caught in minutiae about downstream effects, I tell them it can go however they want (house pets are free or gone too, planes land harmlessly, etc)
In my circles, I've found it's about 50/50 button pushers to non-button pushers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, vegetarians are more likely to be button pushers.
Where do you think animals live?
I’m not saying I’d be one to push the button, but I think it’s worth trying to understand the mindset of someone who would. It’s very arguable that pushing it would be the ethical thing to do.
If you were locked in a room and being tortured, would you think it'd be appropriate for me to go: "they feed you at the end of each torture session, isn't it worth it to keep going for that?"
Speaking as a lifelong atheist, I cannot stand this genre of nihilistic post-Christianity, all questionable moral baggage with none of the guidance. Here's a tip for you: humanity did not introduce evil to the world. If you don't understand this, find a church, it'll be better for us all.
It requires a sense of morality to divide good from evil, and I don't think that existed on Earth before humans. Digging into the Hominid tree might add some qualifications, but I don't see that as a meaningful distinction.
I you don't like the conversation you're also free to ignore it.
I don't think it's explicit, that's why I put the quip in there about assisted suicide. This thread is showing me that perhaps a lot of people would be okay with the "complainers" offing themselves but I'm not sure... my gut feeling is that a lot of optimists hold conflicting beliefs around this.
I don't want most "complainers" to kill themselves, nor would I recommend them to, but I support their right to. And if they showed me convincing evidence their life contains too much suffering to be worthwhile, I would agree with their decision.
But Most Vegans I Know (tm) regard human life as valuabe, speak in terms of harm reduction, and tend not to fantasize about making Vault Tec real.
I just think we are going to absolutely deserve the outcome as we collectively and metaphorically push that button... which we continue to do and are regressing on stopping ourselves from doing so a handful of super wealthy can watch gamified number go up.
Life is a gift. A painless life has no value. In fact, if you are genetically immune to pain, your lifetime survival rate is something like the teens.
Did any one ever state that there was? Religious types will argue, but my counter is just humanity came up with religion as a stop gap in knowledge.
The older I get, the more careful I am to remember there's young people left in my wake and I get to decide whether I owe them anything or not - and, I make a personal belief that I do, a very great deal in fact. So getting comfortable that the whole system is damned and worth tossing is very convenient but too cavalier for me to find comfort in
I don't disagree with this at all, and on a personal level I do everything I can to reasonably leave things as good or better than I found them. I just no longer believe anything I do is going to pull humanity as a whole back from the edge.
And for reasons of arbitrary weight increase, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ractopamine is used in the USA. Doesnt degrade when cooked, so humans also get fat from it amongst other bad side effects. Banned in most countries, but not the USA. This is also why pork export is banned in most countries.
I know 1 person who is "allergic to pork". But European pork is fine. Even Canadian pork is fine. But what's different with US pork? Ractopamine.
To me, this is yet another reason why capitalism initially was great at making an economy, but profit-seeking behavior gets legally and ethically worse and one trades ethics for money.
Generally I look at EU for what's good/bad to consume though. It's scary how much stuff is banned there that's in everyday US products.
Ractopamine is used in Canada.
This sounds like a possible case of the nocebo effect: Someone experiences symptoms based on a belief that an ingredient is bad for them. When they consume the same thing without the belief that the ingredient is present, the effects are absent even though the ingredient is present.
This happens with people who believe they have WiFi sensitivity disorders, too. If you put them next to a WiFi router with blinking lights they will experience the pain of their condition. If you turn off the lights on the router but leave the WiFi transmitting, they stop feeling the effects.
Initially it wasn't that great either if you were a slave or worked 14 hours a day .
Hmm? Capitalism neither precludes nor predates slavery.
Meat is nice but would be better if we can skip the whole suffering thing
Not super interested in pink slime style concoctions either
Humans eat animals because they are a denser faster nutrition than plants. More bang for your buck. Trying to act like humans “only eat animals because” is ignoring reality.
But debrained animals are certainly more plausible.
You just need a miminum interface to keep their bodies running. Cruelty free meat.
also, you misspelled "meat" as "mean"
The problem is that it costs slightly more and our society is more concerned with cost than animal suffering.
Raising animals for meat is theoretically doable with no suffering (not sure about milk), but it's not happening in practice. With pets the situation is better - a lot of people adopt and some care about how their pet was raised if they buy it from a breeder.
I also think we need to be careful with the idea that we should entirely avoid suffering because it's impossible to do.
Society is only concerned with cost, regulations are weak and rarely enforced and companies are operating in a capitalistic market where they can't compete unless they squeeze every last cent out of each animal. That's hard to change as lots of people have an interest in keeping the status quo and the citizens who vote don't have the time to read everything that comes their way. We can't expect that society will wake up, that people will start voting with more conscience or that everyone will go vegan.
Lab grown meat (or growing brainless animals or something similar) is a technological solution. When it becomes cheaper than normally-grown meat and similar in quality, the atrocities committed in the farms would cease to exist as the farms themselves would cease to exist. The same market forces that are responsible for what's happening to the animals now would prevent any future torture.
I find it hard to believe you could convince a large portion of Americans to eat lab grown meat just to save a buck.
But if lab grown meat is cheaper, some part of the population would buy it. The farms would lose part of their business so economy of scale would help lab grown meat and hurt the farms. I think it would lead to a feedback loop where lab grown meat will get even cheaper and farm meat would get more expensive.
With lab grown meat you also have the option not only for a perfect piece of meat, but for different kinds of tastes, textures and compositions that haven't existed before. Just like people eat processed meat (think ham or nuggets or deep fried pieces), they would love to try the new tastes. I know I would.
And to be glib, I'm not thrilled about the idea of catering to the bar set by "things they don't understand" from that group in particular.
Breeding animals _specifically for killing them_, no matter how they are killed, is not what I'd consider humane. If we take 'humane' literally, it means to be treated as you would treat a human. I doubt we'd do this to humans. So the only way to be okay with this is adhering to a form of specieism.
Not too different from humans in that respect; humans are bred systematically (we have dedicated hormonal supplements, birth facilities, documented birthing procedures, standardized post-birth checklists of forms of vaccination regiments, standardized mass schooling, government-subsidized feeding programs, etc) and most are used machinistically by society exclusively for productive output, regardless of whether the society is corporatist, capitalist, socialist, communist, etc.
But still, egg and dairy animals are culled when productivity drops. The human equivalent would be killing all male babies, and females after age ~40.
I can't think of a reasonable argument that this is more "humane" than the human equivalent of meat farming, where all human offspring would be harvested at age ~15.
And pregnancy is _hard_ on animals (including humans), it changes your physiology and psychology. Even if we take for granted that a cow isn't as conscious as a human (IMO consciousness is a sliding scale, not a binary), then they are still being primed for giving birth and taking care of offspring which never comes. Imagine doing that to a human - it's a definite form of cruelty.
If you support this, visit one of the handful of restaurants selling it to show interest and support the companies. The salmon I had was ready for prime time in the right context, and if you didn't know, you probably wouldn't have noticed.
I'd assumed it would mostly be limited to cultured ground beef and chicken nuggets.
In a proper rending facility, a captive bolt pneumatic/hydraulic pistol punctures their skull and sends a shockwave through their brains, killing them like Tony in the last scene of the Sopranos.
From my own little box I think that that if lab grown meat was available and affordable, I would never eat a bit of real chicken, pork or beef again. I know veganism is an option too, but... I grew up with meat and it's very difficult to give up.
I think "a provision that would condemn millions of pigs to a lifetime in gestation crates" is in fact horrific, however, outrage is the currency on places like X.
Posting a page number sounds specific, but then why not post the page (or quote it)? Particularly in any even remotely political environment where the default is "vote for (or oppose) this bill or you want [insert cute animal, baby, person, minority group] to die."
Just a tiny bit of source referencing could go a long way to help people better understand what you want them to support (or oppose).
The insane language in the sponsor's own press release tells me all I need to know about who the evil side on this bill is.
California prop 12: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/fd/mb-fdp-03-2022-a.asp
If you live in the district of one of these people you might consider contacting them to let them know your opinion.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4673...
There are not enough consumers to care? Or maybe with legislation we get better outcomes due to scaling effects?
If we are willing to use legislation, could we tax such gestation crates, and use that tax revenue to breed unconscious pigs? Or find a way to disable consciousness in their brain? Or fund lab meat? I'm sure small labs are doing this, but if we are at the point of legislation, I imagine there is enough willpower to solve this problem rather than bandaids.
Also in an economy of rising costs, people are going to choose affordable options even if they might be vaguely aware of worse conditions happening somewhere else, far away from the grocery store aisle where they are making that choice for their family.
This is the kind of "big government libertarian" thinking that you only find on HN. It's like virtue signalling but the virtue is contrarianism. What you've suggested is more complicated, less ethical, less effective, and likely to be opposed by just about everyone across the political spectrum.
As an Iowan, it is obligatory to show love for Herbert Hoover and our pig population when called upon.
https://www.kcrg.com/2026/03/06/rep-hinson-speaks-iran-confl...
hansbo•2h ago
Ancapistani•1h ago
There is a need for something like it, though. A sow will absolutely lay down on her piglets and suffocate them.
hangonhn•1h ago
This makes me really curious because that behavior seems very maladaptive for a species. That leads me to wonder if something else, ie. the environment or domestication, is leading to this behavior rather than pigs being really, really prone to wiping out their own species. Does anyone know why they do this in a farm environment?
jonah•8m ago
hansbo•9m ago