https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-03/fake-meat-industry-eyes-crickets-beetles-mealworms-maggots-for-burgers

    • SerLava [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Plants though... Act a lot like simple animals when you watch a time lapse. They react to stimuli, seek nutrients, and physically move just more slowly. They even chemically communicate. They don't seem any less advanced or aware than a clam.

    • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I've responded to this idea at length elsewhere in the thread, but thanks for your contribution. I had this comment in mind as I was drafting the larger one. It may be that what makes ‘pain’ and ‘suffering,’ and perhaps then their corollary positives like ‘pleasure’ important is the subjective and conscious experience of those things. Those are fundamental to the way that we as humans understand them, but if you remove that element of it, it may be that we are observing something like ‘pseudo-pain’ or ‘pseudo-pleasure.’ It looks like 'pain' from the outside, and certainly our first intuition as an empathetic species is to assume it is, but maybe it’s just not a comparable experience? Or if it is, to what degree? Does it outweigh other competing interests when not considered in isolation?

      • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        there's literally nothing different about a bee and a fly/ant. it's just that bees are helpful pollinators, that doesn't give them magical vertebrate-consciousness status

          • FidelCashflow [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Who is to say. Humans have been known to exibit that exact same behavior. And if I found myself coverned with the sent of my rotting family I might not hang out around the dinner table. Especially if I live in a society without antibiotics

              • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                I will have to look up the name of the delusion but there are fairly rare cases of people becoming convinced they are dead. Usually as the result of some kid of brain damage. I have, seen some people have a similar episodes during amphetamine psychosis but I think the two are unrelated.

                However in this case also, we must consider another analogous behavior. We would find being coated with a goop that smelled like rotting flesh highly traumatic and avoid people as well. Either out of mortal terror or politeness.

                It is hard to say which if these two situations is the closest analogue.

                  • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    You are welcome to. I won't understand it. My study of insect cognitive science is lacking but shoot your shot. I'd appreciate to learn some more about their cortisol response or whatver mechanism you postulate is at play in those behaviors.

                • SerLava [he/him]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  3 years ago

                  Pretty different to have like brain damage and hallucinations vs. a normal person sniffing something on their hand and reliability wandering into a pile of other people who also smelled their hand and just laid down to die

                  • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 years ago

                    Unless one of us gets real friendly with a prank youtuber we will likely never be able to run the experements of covering people with corpse juice and observing their reactions.

                    I think the wording you used in perhaps intresting. As tiktok tells me the urge tonjust lay down and die among the teens is a pretty common responce to plenty of situations.

                • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  That's the thing, humans react to the stimuli and then feel pain. The reaction is subconscious. What if that's all 'pain' was? Subconscious and automatic withdrawal from a source of stimuli? That's not really pain as we conceive of it, and that brings on the question of whether or not it deserves the same moral consideration? If that's all certain animals experience, lets say bugs, then should we consider that tantamount to the consciously felt and misery inducing pain humans have?

            • FidelCashflow [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              Infact pain is the perception of that signal. Some kinds of brian damage render unable to feel pain despite the signal reaching the brain just fine. So, we say that despite having a clear pain responce signal plants do not feel pain as they cannot process it.