Comments on: Property with Feelings

By: Phil Bowermaster

Phil Bowermaster — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:31:11 +0000

Is it error, Triticale, or simply a matter of wanting to have your cow and eat it too? [Insert Bart Simpson "don't have a cow" reference here.]

By: triticale

triticale — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 07:11:32 +0000

By the time burger is grown and harvested, it will be cloned animal tissue. The vegetarian practice of forming their slop into “burgers” is a confession of their error.

By: MikeD

MikeD — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:15:18 +0000

When cows and chickens are on the endangered species list, we can visit them in zoos – and marvel at the fact that we once ATE those creatures. We’re stop by the food court for a slurp of spirolina fresh from the pond and a block of moldy soybean (Tempeh) or fungus cutlet (Quorn) and think how barbaric it was when animals had to die for lunch. If the availability were increased, I’d already be a vegetarian – but I’m an American, which means I typically don’t go to great lengths to choose a healthier alternative when the easier choice is right in front of me. There’s hope though, if the major fast food restaurants have switched their frying fats in response to health concerns, maybe one day that “burger” will be grown and harvested rather than raised and slaughtered.

By: Vadept

Vadept — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:24:51 +0000

I am excessively shy, it seems. After I post here, I often feel like I’ve spoken out of turn, and then you go and put my post on display, seeing it as thought provoking. You stoke my ego, sir!

I have a cat, and if someone tortured and slaughtered him, I would be devastated, and I certainly would like some legal protection. But what are we protecting? Him? Or my feelings for him? Which should we be protecting?

I happen to think that if godly AI were to treat us as we treat animals, it would work out pretty ok. They’d breed and maintain those that are useful, keep and lavish luxuries on those they found aesthetically pleasing, exterminate those that posed them a risk (and often fail to exterminate them completely), and ignore all the rest, sometimes to the point that some of their number get mauled in back alleys by bad seeds. There are worse ways to go, and the way we treat animals isn’t that bad (though George is NOT wrong about the conditions of agriculture today)

Personally, though, I would favor a faux-flesh solution. Not from an ethical standpoint, but from an economic one. Growing meat in a vat, or bioengeering something whose sole purpose in life is to feed us, would be much, much more effecient than maintaining things like cattle or pigs, which do alot more with their metabolism than create choice cuts for us.

But I have to wonder… what HAPPENS to these domesticated slaughter-animals when that day comes? I can’t imagine cattle surviving on their own in the wild (pigs maybe, but pigs can be scary). I don’t intend to sound like one of those people that suggests we do cattle a favor by raising them in pens and then slaughtering them, but it does seem likely that after we’ve grown beyond “crude herd animals,” their population numbers will drop greatly as they become a “hobby animal.”

By: MattShultz

MattShultz — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:50:35 +0000

I’ve long thought the Extended Golden Rule – do unto your inferiors as you would have your superiors do unto you – was a good idea for the exact reasons you mention at the end.

By: Stephen Gordon

Stephen Gordon — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:59:54 +0000

“If the AIs follow a human example…”

If we’re talking beyond-human level AI’s that’s a big “if.”

But regardless of “animal rights” or being an example for others that follow us, it’s always a good idea to be a good steward of the Earth’s resources and to avoid cruelty.