It certainly makes us unusual

It's funny how humans spend most of the time getting drunk or stoned in an attempt to be as unaware of what's going on as that 99.99% though. I'm jealous of rocks and empty vacuums of inhospitable space. Ignorance is bliss!

Curious what qualifies as fairness to non-humans.

When we die we turn back to stardust and forever. Nothing to be jealous of.
We'll all get there soon enough. let's just have fun being conscious while it lasts.

(August 30, 2015 at 5:55 am)ignoramus Wrote: I'll answer it...
We live because we are here...
We didn't ask to be born or to even evolve, we're just here.
Ask Mother nature why she did it? She'll say: you shouldn't be asking me, I'm in construction only, ask the singularity who created me out of nothing...
Then we ask the singularity and it says: You don't technically exist! Your negative "other" cancels out your existence, what you are experiencing as consciousness is just a byproduct of space time. It's only temporary, please ignore.

hehe

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=you...C97C838AB1

(August 30, 2015 at 7:17 am)wallym Wrote: Curious what qualifies as fairness to non-humans.

This is even more difficult than fairness to humans. My ideas of what is fair are very different to the bulk of society. At the very least, I'd like to see unnecessary suffering reduced, and on the whole that is the way things are going. Well, in some countries anyway. Even in England our animal welfare laws are horrendously flawed, and fucking Cameron is trying to regress them further, but in some countries they don't even have any.

Personally, my mantra is to try and treat animals as well as humans, as far as is practically possible. This becomes more and more difficult as you move towards lower forms of life like insects, but I still try and at least minimize my harm. I'm far from perfect, I just do my best.

It's possible that one day things will be very different. There's a brand new business venture on the go which could revolutionalize things if it works out.

(August 30, 2015 at 9:36 am)robvalue Wrote:

(August 30, 2015 at 7:17 am)wallym Wrote: Curious what qualifies as fairness to non-humans.

This is even more difficult than fairness to humans. My ideas of what is fair are very different to the bulk of society. At the very least, I'd like to see unnecessary suffering reduced, and on the whole that is the way things are going. Well, in some countries anyway. Even in England our animal welfare laws are horrendously flawed, and fucking Cameron is trying to regress them further, but in some countries they don't even have any.

Personally, my mantra is to try and treat animals as well as humans, as far as is practically possible. This becomes more and more difficult as you move towards lower forms of life like insects, but I still try and at least minimize my harm. I'm far from perfect, I just do my best.

It's possible that one day things will be very different. There's a brand new business venture on the go which could revolutionalize things if it works out.

Curious what you do to rank animals.  Some science involved, or is it a 'least like humans' dealio?

It's very difficult. I take the assumption that the more intelligent a creature is, the more capable of suffering it is. So I put more weight on the wellbeing of larger animals. Wherever possible I wouldn't harm any animal, but my merest existence causes harm which is pretty impossible to avoid. I would hope that my efforts to help them outweighs the damage I accidentally do.

But sometimes, decisions have to be made such as giving flea treatment to my dog. If I don't do it, my dog will suffer. If I do it, fleas will probably die. Both of those suck, but I weigh the suffering of my dog higher, and I treat my dog.

It is very hard because no one knows what other life forms really experience, so I can never know if my ranking system is accurate. It makes me sad to even admit to it, but the practicalities of life demand compromises, and the "lesser of two evils".

(September 1, 2015 at 1:42 pm)robvalue Wrote: It's very difficult. I take the assumption that the more intelligent a creature is, the more capable of suffering it is. So I put more weight on the wellbeing of larger animals. Wherever possible I wouldn't harm any animal, but my merest existence causes harm which is pretty impossible to avoid. I would hope that my efforts to help them outweighs the damage I accidentally do.

But sometimes, decisions have to be made such as giving flea treatment to my dog. If I don't do it, my dog will suffer. If I do it, fleas will probably die. Both of those suck, but I weigh the suffering of my dog higher, and I treat my dog.

It is very hard because no one knows what other life forms really experience, so I can never know if my ranking system is accurate. It makes me sad to even admit to it, but the practicalities of life demand compromises, and the "lesser of two evils".

More followups!

If you can kill something instantly, how does that factor into your suffering strategy?

If a Lion is going to eat a baby gazelle, do you have a problem with that?  Try to save the Gazelle?  Feel the lion is acting badly?  

You kill, what, hundreds? of fleas to make your dog more comfortable?  That's an interesting rationality to place the comfort of a big animal over the life of a smaller one.  

Have you considered looking into feeling of pain/loss/suffering/etc of various animals to develop your behavior a bit more rationally rather than somewhat guessing?

Yes, that is a direct result of my sliding scale, which I completely admit to. In this case, I am explicitly placing the wellbeing of my dog above the lives of fleas. I have to decide one way or the other, harm will happen either way. It's not a decision I'm at all happy about making. It's not a hard science, I'm estimating and doing my best. If there was a way to accomplish the same goal without hurting anything, I would do it. I will admit there is a selfish element here: I feel particularly responsible for my dog, and I would feel awful if I knowingly allowed her to suffer.

I am interested in learning more about how other life forms feel, yes. I can't say I've spent a lot of time researching it when it comes to lower forms of life (insects and smaller). Perhaps I should. But realistically, I have to draw the line somewhere and "not worry" about the effects of life below that line. It sounds callous to say that, but compromises have to be made. I have only a limited amount of time to make each decision and I literally can't weigh up the eventual effects to everything. That being said, I don't cause any needless harm to anything, so I do still care about things below that line and I carry out anything I need to do in the most humane way I can.

I'm not claiming to be perfect, morality is hugely complex. I'm doing my best, and as you point out, I don't have all the information. It's probably impossible to have all the information. I probably fail at times, or do things which I could objectively say are hypocritical; I think that's true of everyone. But it's my ideal, and I strive to improve my morality always. I can't have a belief that "I'm perfect and will always achieve maximum morality" because I'm not, and I won't.

Additional: I realized I missed a question. No, I don't hold animals in the wild to the same morality that I use. I don't generally condone interfering in the natural (non-human, in this setting) interactions between animals. Relieving unnecessary suffering or rehabilitating I consider valid exceptions. Killing animals when it can reasonably be avoided is generally wrong in my estimation. Suffering is bad, but snuffing out life is a different kind of bad. (This is a simplification. Like I say, morality is very complex.)

Animals aren't capable of the kind of deep contemplation that we are, or making "alternative" arrangements, and making big decisions on nature's behalf (such as stopping a carnivore hunting, effectively killing it) is likely to have disastrous consequences.

Coming back to my moral framework, I'm not saying it's perfect, it's my best try. My only other two options to trying my best, as I see it are kill myself or fuck everyone and do what I want.