The Animal Argument

[Dent]

Here is the tree of life, we are on it and so is every other branch of organisms alive. (this bit isn't going to be true because we haven't looked everywhere)
They are literally our distant cousins, literally related to us.

When is it morally accepted to harm others? What grounds should we go by?
How much worse or better is factory farming of animals when compared to modern day racism, or the holocaust?

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Orgazmo

Oh, speaking sorta abstractly I guess--that the goal of evolution / natural selection is spreading the seed of a species. By factory farming these animals, we're making them prolific as fuck and spreading the seed far more than they would see via evolution.

Basically, if the goal of an entity's life is to make sure its genes are represented in future generations, farmed animals are doing a hell of a lot better than non-farmed animals (speaking generally).

Again, I'm not necessarily making this argument. But I could understand if someone did.

So I reckon winning the replication competition isn't what life is all about, valence or pleasure is what matters, natural selection doesn't optimise for this. What matters is the pleasure-pain axis and currently it's recruited by natural selection for goal-oriented behavior. This might not always be the case, the functional role of pleasure could be outcompeted by something much closer to a hellstate.

The future could be a lot worse for our successors than it is for pigs.

#winning?


suffering risks >> existential risks >> catastrophic risks

Join the fight to save the lightcone.

https://qualiacomputing.com/2017/12/...e-replicators/

FIGHT MOLOCH
FIGHT EVIL SINGLETONS

[Orgazmo]

But the pleasure/pain axis exists to increase fitness. If humans weren't so damn good at capturing pigs, does it make sense that pigs that enjoy being captured and bred would eventually outcompete those that try to evade capture?

Kinda like a praying mantis fucking even though it just saw his bed buddy get eaten for doing the same thing. Or an angler fish being cool with being absorbed into a female.

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Orgazmo

If humans weren't so damn good at capturing pigs, does it make sense that pigs that enjoy being captured and bred would eventually outcompete those that try to evade capture?

You'd think that eventually birds that get cucked by cuckoos would adapt to recognise their own, and that's true, adaptation or extinction would follow, genes that invest in things that aren't other copies of their genes or somehow beneficial to other copies of their genes don't hang around.

But the cuckoo doesn't target a single species so the selection pressure on detecting them is weak, they can keep it up indefinitely.

Your scenario is a bit silly with little bearance to reality.

[Dent]

Interested in FC's take on non-humans and how they fit into whatever economic freedom shit, they're like retarded humans right?

Anyone listen to the Reith lectures this year? anyone worried that in the next decade AI will outcompete us and paperclip the planet?