Gae Bolga Wrote:A poor implementation of an effective form of anesthesia isn't going to produce the intended effects. This is going to be the case regardless of the method we use.Well, see, this is the Unicorn Fallacy.
First, what makes you think CO2 poisoning would be painless if it were done "properly"? I only see quite a few reasons to think otherwise.
Second, how is that relevant to whether it's ethical to eat meat today? That video shows how it usually happens today, and by buying meat, you are supporting that, not some imaginary slaughterhouses that kill animals painlessly.
I mean, you position is basically that you realize that meat, as is currently produced, causes a lot of environmental damage and a lot of animal suffering... but you have been convinced by some saturated fat denier and anti-GMO quack that meat can be produced in a way that doesn't do that... and that the laws which recommend non-science-based methods of "anesthesing" animals somehow make sense... and that it's therefore somehow ethical to eat meat today. Sorry, but that's the Unicorn Fallacy.
Would you use the MergeSort algorithm in your program just because, in theory, it always does n*log(n) operations, while QuickSort in theory can do up to n^2 operations, despite the empirical measurements showing that QuickSort is, on actual computers, significantly faster in the vast majority of cases? And eating meat is even worse that that, because there is no proof it actually can be produced efficiently, even in hypothetical scenarios.
Gae Bolga Wrote:No animal feels pain "the way we do", as far as we can tell. Not fish, but not pigs or cattle either. Nevertheless, all three feel pain.What makes you think that's the case? You've been reading a lot about neuroscience from people who know less than nothing about it, right?
Scientists can easily determine which beings feel pain and which ones don't. There are mammals that demonstrably don't feel pain, such as naked mole rats. And, much like for naked mole rats, the only way to claim that fish feel pain is to make complicated ad-hoc hypotheses about how their nerve system functions. And claiming that crayfish (or bees, or any such animal) feel pain also requires claiming that much of what we know about neuroscience is false (a possible exception being octopuses, which have quite complicated nerve systems, but entirely different from humans). And claiming that sponges or non-animal creatures feel pain is an insane assertion.
So, please, let's direct our attention to what really matters. We shouldn't care about whether we are using a natural sponge for bathing or a synthetic one. We shouldn't care much if people have bought into the myth that omega-3s protect against heart disease and are eating expensive fish because of that, fish which is probably not killed "humanely". What we should care about is how farmed birds and mammals are being treated because of people eating meat.
Gae Bolga Wrote:It wouldn't help a single iota to address hunger in the worldAbaddon_ire claimed that the developed world eating vegan diets would hurt the poor countries, because many people there would lose their jobs. I explained why I think that's not a valid argument, and how people in the developed world going vegan might, for all we know, help the world's poor. Of course, it won't do much, it won't address the causes of poverty. It might just slightly decrease the prices of food. And I still think it actually would, because, as my math shows, more than half of human-edible grains are currently given to farmed animals.
Gae Bolga Wrote:and it doesn't have to be cruelMaybe. But it currently is. And I don't see it's becoming less and less cruel over time. If anything, the cruelty is becoming less and less visible to humans, since people don't necessarily see the animals struggling to breathe in agony as they are being poisoned with CO2. And that's insane.
