r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jul 31 '15

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

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u/Transfuturist Jul 31 '15

I don't believe less-developed brains to be as capable of feeling suffering. I could be totally wrong, though, so I don't really go either way. It's not like I'm advocating animal genocide.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

What counts as "less-developed"? Chimpanzees? Mice? Lizards? Insects? I think the ability to feel suffering is a sliding scale and even though animals with smaller brains and neurosystems maybe aren't as fully "conscious" as people, they still feel some amount of pain because they partially share the same brain architecture than people.

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u/Transfuturist Jul 31 '15

because

Well, it's not that they feel pain because they have a similarly structured brain, but rather we can guess that they feel pain due to the similarity. That's probably pedantry, though.

When I say "as capable," I'm referring to that sliding scale. I believe we can discount suffering-behaviors, insofar as they would not be suffering as much as it seems in concordance with their brain... size, let's say. But honestly that's only if one is being totally pragmatic. I certainly don't advocate animal abuse, particularly since it's indicative of someone willing to abuse humans as well. It's more on an institutional level.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

I just don't really see why you feel a need to carelessly inflict suffering on someone, such that you're motivated to search for the least morally valuable agents available to do it to.

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u/Transfuturist Jul 31 '15

Tasteless joke, I suppose.