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It's almost like a zombie movie for them (startrek.website)

submitted 7 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@startrek.website to c/memes@lemmy.world

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[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 64 points 7 months ago

I believe in nature, humans are regarded as persistence hunters. Which is to say we have incredible stamina and perseverance while hunting. Other creatures can run faster than us, but only for short stints, relatively speaking, as long as we can keep track of them, we can continue to pursue prey for hours or days without significant external assistance (food, water, rest, help from others, etc).

So regardless of what we may be trying to kill, if we continue to keep our focus on it, we can absolutely find and kill it, given a long enough timeframe.

This also explains marathons, quite frankly. I don't see too many animals just running for dozens of kilometers without a reason to do so. Many can't run that far, and those that could, generally never would... Unless they're running from us, I suppose.

Something like the cheetah, is very very fast in short duration, but after a few minutes of running at full speed, it's thermal regulation tends to fail and it is biologically required to stop or it will overheat and die.

Add to that our intellectual capacity for planning, the creation of tools to assist us, strategy, teamwork, and all the things that are associated with intelligence and we're basically a killing machine, if we choose to be....

Amazingly, we're also the only species that we know to exist that feels bad about eating our prey. I've never seen a lion have an existential breakdown after killing off a gazelle so it can eat, yet there's entire subcultures of people who refuse to cause any harm to their food. Have you people not understood the "circle of life"? Did you not watch the lion king?

Whatever. Go live your life. Weirdo.

[-] Nevoic@lemm.ee 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I don't know if your second to last paragraph is a meme, but all humans reject immoral behaviors that occur in the wild, not just vegans. Lions also commit infanticide so their genetics carry on and competing male lions don't, it makes sense biologically. Yet humans don't commit this behavior because we know it's wrong. Dolphins rape other dolphins, which again for the furthering of your own genetics makes sense. You should implant your seed in as many helpless victims as you can, and yet again, humans don't do this because we know it's wrong.

Pretending like vegans are the weird ones because we're simply consistent about our morality is wild. Non-vegans even get upset at the idea of eating dogs or cats, so it's not even like they're universally in favor of torturing and slaughtering helpless animals, only the ones that have been objectified by whatever culture they live in.

[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

Weird and wrong. These are extremely subjective.... Same with good or bad.

I'm sure the gazelle thinks it's bad to be killed and eaten, I'm sure they think it's wrong. The Lions who hunted it down and ate it think it's good and the right thing to do.

This is entirely subjective. The universe doesn't have an absolute of good, bad, right, wrong, weird, or normal. It simply is. Anything that is good/bad or right/wrong is a matter of opinion and perspective.

Only humans attribute their system of right and wrong to animals that may be entirely okay with the matters at hand. We don't impose our laws and values into animals just as they cannot impose their morals and values on us. To judge them for the actions that they take without being able to understand their thoughts and feelings on those matters is juvenile.

You simply cannot transpose human notions of right and wrong into situations where humans have no say, no context, and no understanding of the social constructs of those species.

I'm sorry that you don't like it, but I promise that the animals you're referring to, see it differently than you.

We don't understand it, and maybe we never will. Let them do their thing and if there's ever a time where we can adequately communicate with those animals and ask them how they feel about what's happening, then at that point, maybe we can take action for or against it as appropriate.

Until then, let them live the way they choose to live. Let them sort out their own problems as we have been trying to do for humanity.

[-] Nevoic@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Normative truths are just as foundational as descriptive truths. You use the same logic to get there. I hope you're intelligent enough to be an epistemological nihilist, so hopefully you know the basis for all scientific and descriptive understanding of the universe is self-evident axioms. The same is true for moral truths. Harm is axiomatically bad in the same way that our senses are accurately able to translate information of an external universe into our brains.

If you disagree with the former, we can't have moral discussions, and if you disagree with the latter we can't have scientific discussions. This is how the whole of epistemology functions.

You're also strawmanning me. Ought implies can, so an animal without an ability to act morally obviously has no moral obligations. I hope you somehow just severely misunderstand the vegan position, and you're not intentionally spreading misinformation.

Factory farms aren't us allowing them to sort out their own problems. We spawn billions of sentient creatures into torture boxes every year just to slaughter them when they're a few months old in brutal and terrifically painful ways.

If you think that's awesome, keep buying meat, more power to you, you're just probably a psychopath (though I obviously can't give you an official diagnosis).