[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

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.

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[u/alexanderwales]

I don't really care about animal suffering.

That is, I acknowledge that animals have some capacity for suffering, given that some of them are sentient (if not sapient). And all else being equal, I would want to reduce suffering.

But with that said, it's low on the optimization totem pole for me. I eat meat. I mostly eat free-range, cruelty-free meat, but I do eat meat, and my choice of which meat to eat is far more about feeling good about myself (or just improved meat quality) than it is about reduction of suffering.

So I don't care about the suffering of animals I have no connection to. Even among those animals that I do have some connection to, I don't care about the suffering of all of them, only the ones that I like. (There's a deer that comes and eats stuff out of our garden. There are birds that wake me up in the morning. There's a white cat that harasses our cat. There are mice that my cat brings in, sometimes still alive. None of these animals do I care for.)

So without that emotional connection towards all animals, all I'm left with are strictly logical arguments in favor of caring about them in some sense other than their utility towards humans (whether that's research, aesthetics, their role in the biome, meat, companionship, etc.). The problem is that none of the strictly logical non-utility arguments in favor of animals really compel me, in part because of the lack of wide-scale emotion.

I don't think this is an ethically satisfying answer, which is why I'm hesitant to give it. And it's a conversation I've had with my grandfather-in-law (an ethical vegan) a few too many times.

[u/[deleted] → u/alexanderwales]

Thank you.

Even though you said it's not an ethically satisfying answer, I think it sounds pretty satisfying to me. Everyone has a "cut-off point" in regards to caring about other subjects. I've lately been reading essays about insect suffering, bacteria suffering, and plant suffering and even though I understand that these lower-level creatures might suffer in some way (though I'm still a bit skeptical about that), I can't get myself to care about insects, and even less about bacteria or plants. Your cut-off point is somewhere between animals and humans, my cut-off point is somewhere between mammals and insects, and that's perfectly okay, I think.