this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Ripple effects, sure, I'm with you there, sustainability considerations, which I haven't seen anyone mentioning ITT.
I completely disagree with you about the status of humanity. Is it really your view that the well-being of a crab has equivalent moral status to your own well-being?
Why because we happened to evolve to think? Given enough time something else would of if not us. Given we may end up causing our species to go extinct due to careless disregard for our environment and even human life in general. We really are not that special and it would serve us to treat the ecosystems, which enable life on this planet to thrive and evolve, with respect if we want to live long enough too see other stars or at least leave the planet in a decent state for the next species if we all die from pointless wars like humanity seems to love doing regardless of if we treat our environment better.
If the crabs die out we lose the blood, from both sides its better to be as sustainable as possible.
I don't like hurting animals. If one believes we really are a special species because of things like our innate curiosity, I think you'll understand the interesting quest to try to eat without hurting anyone/thing.
Why? Better, why not?
I still eat eggs & cheese. Perhaps a day will come where I don't need those either. I hope you'll be curious enough to try some alternatives too.
I've read good moral arguments for a veganism. I think it's the right thing to do when it comes to diet. For what it's worth, this isn't really a discussion about diet.
It isn't a decision between a lentil burger and a beef burger, this is an animal resource that can assist in saving human lives. There are other clotting factors used in medicine, and that's great, let's use and develop those. But suppose something more lethal and dangerous than COVID comes along, and vaccines need to be produced quickly and globally. I think it would be foolish to wince if we needed to take crab blood to roll out a program that would save human lives.
I'm vegetarian for moral reasons primarily. Steak smells great, I miss al pastor tacos, etc. But, nothing wrong with wincing, doing the extraction as gently as possible, and trying to keep the crabs alive as well. Sure, we gotta live too but I won't accept taking every other creature with us just so we can survive.
We need to degrow a bit. As a species, humanity is running the planet a little too close to the redline, to put it mildly. Overpopulation has almost guaranteed a dependency on fossil fuels for more than just powering farm equipment, we now artificially produce fertilizer out of it.
Nothing is black and white, and the older I get, the more shades I see. I think we can exist, in a less damaging way that people can enjoy. We humans can, should, and will strive for better.
I don't know about spacecowboy, but I do. I still eat crabs, but I don't think I'm superior to them morally just because I'm more intelligent or something. We're just animals eating each other.
What I mean when I say moral is, I don't see why it's wrong if a bunch of invertebrates are subjugated, in pain, or die in order to provide something that improves the lives of humans. It's not sad, it's a good thing. "Oh but the crabs get stressed out, and 30% might die", yeah, who cares, they're crabs.
Sure, I'm a human, and I have a particular perspective on these things. But, we are special. Anyone who considers a trolley problem with a crab on one track, and a human on the other and honestly says, "hey it doesn't matter humans aren't special", that's, unappealing. In a purely academic, cosmic, arrangement of particles sense, OK, nothing is special. But in that condition, the suffering of animals isn't even a question worth considering.
The fact that so many accounts in this thread are going out of their way to give weight to the well-being of invertebrates, in a conversation about human well-being, is baffling.
Should we be using existing clotting factors in medical settings that don't rely on the blood of an endangered species that lives in an incredibly volatile habitat? Probably, but crab discomfort is at the very bottom of the list of reasons why.
People can think of other species as being morally as valuable as people and not be psychotic.
They can also chose the human in the trolley problem and still feel bad for the crab. If the trolley problem included people from my familly and strangers, I'd chose my family, but not because I think it's morally superior. I would feel bad for the other people.
The line where compassion stops can be drawn anywhere. Many people draw it where their nation or race ends. Many people draw it at the elusive pet/food distinction. Many people draw it where being mammal stops.
I don't think drawing the line is based on moral principles. It's practical. Sometimes you need to eat meat, sometimes you need to fight in a war. But when it comes to morality animal lives are animal lives, no matter whether it's a crab or a white male human. They're either all worthy of compassion or non of them is.
So that's my point of view. And thanks for your previous answer.
Disclosure - Before you had replied, I edited out the word 'psychotic' above, felt it was unfair.
Cheers, thanks for the thoughtful and reasonable reply. I agree with most of what you say. & it circles something I think about a lot but haven't made much sense of (if there even is sense to make if it), which is, the role of bad feelings in moral decision making.
I think though, the compassion line should be drawn somewhere, sometimes, with moral reason as a guide. To dip into the quagmire of philosophical thought experiments, you know, what if certain humans produced this special clotting factor, and we had to bleed them to get it, and it came with a risk of their mortality? I think reasonable people could agree, that would be an entirely different question to grapple with. So, you know, I would say it does matter, it's not a black & white thing, where either everything is worthy of compassion or nothing is. The circumstance can, should, dictate the moral approach. Eating meat, fighting in wars, there might be a right or wrong that's worth determining there. And knowing that, the moral and the practical are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
And totally, I expect people to have differences when it comes to compassion. Suppose I'm just surprised at the outpouring of love for the gross horseshoe crab, in spite of its real usefulness for global human health. Or at least my understanding of it, which I admit, is not very deep.
Because some people see morality not as something that's subjective but believe it is a moral objective truth that suffering should be reduced as much as possible.
That's not more or less rational than to believe humans are somehow 'special'.
For the sake of argument, let's take for granted your statement, that 'suffering should be reduced as much as possible'.
If the discomfort of a single crab can prevent worse discomfort/suffering/death of many other beings, and results in reduced net pain, then the utilitarian line of reasoning seems to be that we might actually be morally obligated to take blood from crabs.
Sure, but the question was why humans in the first place have trouble with seeing suffering. And the reason is that we naturally seem to have a tendency of making moral judgements in the favour of being against suffering.
It's often not easy to decide which decision leads to the best outcome. And people have a tendency to react more to what they are seeing now than to judge the bigger picture.
So, while the outcome may be the same (whether you believe the pain of animals doesn't matter or that you accept there isn't a better solution at the moment) the way people react is influenced by their moral compass.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make above.
In this case specifically, the outcome isn't unclear. Let's call the crab's pain one unit of pain. Assume that unit can directly alleviate 20 units of pain across a handful of other beings. The utilitarian ought to prefer avoiding 19 units of net pain, than allowing 19 units of net pain to occur.
I read your initial post to be some sort of utilitarian moral argument, roughly, that less pain is better. Or something like that. That argument, in this case in particular, leads in the opposite direction than I think you want.
"If I shot a couple of your fingers off, who cares, you're not me. I only care about me."
That's called not being a cunt.
I'd rather see a dead human than a dead non-human, to be honest... (with the exception of insects, those buggers freak me out).
Would you tell that to your spouse when the dead human was your kid?
In that fictional universe, do I get superpowers?
Not quite sure how this answer is relevant. Childfree, or just too young to have kids yourself? The question stands for your mother, a sibling, a niece/nephew, a girlfriend, or whatever makes no stop and consider for a second that you just said you're okay with random, innocent people suffering and dying.
Do I get superpowers in those universes?
(reading post history)
Ah. I understand now. Enjoy the block.