polymathwannabe comments on The ethics of eating meat - Less Wrong

6 Post author: necate 17 February 2016 07:03PM

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Comment author: kilobug 22 February 2016 01:57:58PM 0 points [-]

I guess the average driver kills at most one animal ever by bumping into them, whereas the average meat-eater may consume thousands of animals.

There we touch another problem with the "no meat eating" thing : where do you draw the line ? Would people who refuse to eat chicken and beef be ok with eating shrimps or insects ? What with fish, is it "meat" and unethical ? Because, whenever you drive, you kill hundred of flies and butterflies and the like, which are animals.

So where to draw the line, vertebrates ? Eating shrimps and insects would be fine ? But it's not like a chicken or a cow have lots of cognitive abilities, so feels quite arbitrary to me.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 22 February 2016 02:47:58PM 0 points [-]

Short of telepathy, we can only guess. Chicken do appear to be able to manifest visible signs of distress, whereas the nervous system of a shrimp is too simple for that.