Comments by "Trazyn" (@Trazynn) on "See How Easily a Rat Can Wriggle Up Your Toilet | National Geographic" video.

  1. What kind of psychopath researcher let's an animal swim for three days straight!?
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  2. If you genuinely don't care about the suffering of other sentient beings then any care about human beings is superficial as well. It's not the life I'm concerned about. It's the suffering that's involved that matters.  
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  3. +Enigma Jack Mistreatment of humans is a really lousy excuse to abuse animals.
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  4. +Enigma Jack so you believe that two wrongs make a right?
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  5. +Enigma Jack Oh sure there's a degree in which animals can suffer. I don't give a shit about mosquitos, but when we're talking verterbrates and especially mammals we're getting really close to the same type of sentience as humans (apart from abstract reasoning and self-awareness).
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  6. +Enigma Jack You seem concerned that empathy for animals while humans are suffering is a case of wrong priorities. Understandable, however I believe that people who are able to see the sentience and the preferences of animals are also better able to understand what it is about humans that we should empathise with.
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  7. SixFeetOnTheInternet I'm no medical biologist but I'm pretty sure it won't involve making rats swim laps in a contained basin for days.
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  8. Andro Nom I don't draw any lines, it's a gradual scale of sentience. The consideration of each being should be derived from it's level of sentience. Insects have a nervous system but lack the capacity for sentience or feeling. Their behaviour is complex but still completely reflexive. I'd still give them more consideration than plants however.  It gets interesting for vertebrates and certain cephalopods. This group of species all shares the same core brain. The more advanced the species the more brain layers they posses and the more properties of sentience they start to have. This moves from fish<reptiles<birds<mammals with one more tier for the sea mammals and primates and perhaps one exclusive for humans but that difference should be quite slight.  We can make rough estimates how each of these tiers experience the world because we have all the brain layers they have. We have a fish brain processing our primal instincts, pain, hunger, fear reproduction etc, we have the mammal brain giving us social needs and we have the advanced neo-cortex giving us rationality, self-awareness and time projections.  One extra caveat needs to be made for advanced senses. Many animals have much more advanced senses than humans do even though they may not have the type of sentience that could make them suffer through it.   Special care needs to be taken for animals with sensitive organs AND high sentience. A dog could suffer from air pollution than a human does and a marine mammal will suffer from captivity due to the echoes it constantly have to deal with in confined spaces.  Anyway, this is the system of ethics I consider the most valid. If you want a more complete explanation on the scale of suffering I suggest you google Peter Singer.  If you're more interested in the philosophical ramifications of how these ethics become a moral code then I suggest the excellent book 'The Moral Landscape' by Sam Harris.
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  9. +Andro Nom Yeah I would say that a human with reduced consciousness is less important than one with full on conciousness. Luckily we never actually have to chose who has to suffer between them but should such a dilemma arise then that would be an easy choice. The person who has more capacity to suffer has priority. And yes, any being with equal conciousness to a human is equally important to a human. This also brings us to the logical yet very uncomfortable conclusion that beings with a higher conciousness (hypothetical AI or Aliens or something) would deserve even greater consideration than humans as they have a greater capacity to suffer.
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  10. +spacescookies Right because that's what's required for the already inhumane testing, to let rats swim for three days straight.
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  11. Jennifer Hamels So because animal experimentation exists for a broad range of topics we can do with animals whatever we want for any purpose?
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  12. Jennifer Hamels This experiment has zero utility other than absolutely cruel.
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  13. +Gamerbash If you don't understand what makes animals deserve ethical consideration then you also don't truly understand why humans deserve it.
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  14. Josh VanTubergen 'Population'  and 'nuisance' are two reasons that people have used to justify testing on certain ethnicities in the past. 
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  15. +Bee G. "Rats and animals are two different species" That shouldn't even warrant a reply.
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  16. +Bee G. It clearly illustrates the atrocities that happen when you stop factoring sentience into your ethics. Speciesism is merely the new racism. We used to justify transgressions against different ethnicities because they weren't the same race and now we justify even worse transgressions against different species because they're not the same as us.
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  17. +Bee G. You are indeed done as you have no possible grounds to make a meaningful difference between speciesim and racism, except for, of course, sentience.
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  18. +Josh VanTubergen If you don't understand why we should value animals then you also don't truly understand why we should value humans. Saying that you do is just a platitude that you'll instantly replace whenever it's convenient for you to value certain humans over other humans.
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  19. +Josh VanTubergen The Klu Klux Klan believes that God made white people above the others that God designed white people to be at the top. They believe it in so far that hurting non-white people is their way of paying respect to Jesus Christ. Of course unlike you, these people are highly offensive and dangerous bigots however, they are using the same logical steps to get to their own conclusion. Its a bit of a conversation stopper. As for hunting. I personally don't see why anyone would take pleasure out of taking an animal's life for sport, but then again, it's definitely one of the more benign forms of animal exploitation. Most hunted animals enjoy a life of freedom in nature, something which our livestock can't even imagine.
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  20. Caramel Johnson That's also horrific. And rats are definitely sentient. You may be confusing it with self-aware. 
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  21. Jennifer Hamels Sure it's an ethical dilemma that needs to be weighed carefully. The brunt of current animal testing is frivolous and unnecessary. That doesn't invalidate the sparse few medicine trials that may end up producing important medicine just like important medicine doesn't give a free pass on abusing animals for whatever we like. 
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  22. +Gamerbash I'm not suicidal. Not sure what that has to do with anything.
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  23. +Defenders of tomorrow Yeah fair enough. They deserve some consideration either way.
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  24. +Defenders of tomorrow If there were no sentience then there would be nothing to value. There's no morality on Jupiter so to speak. The only places where morality starts to exist is where there's sentient beings that are able to experience life and have preferences. Humans are indeed the most sentient and that indeed entitles us to more moral consideration than say, a fish. A human will suffer more from being locked up than a fish. They both want freedom of movement but a fish has no long term goals or strong social needs that will be frustrated by being confined. However, humans are not necessary for the ethical model to work. It also applies to hypothetical beings of different, perhaps greater sentience. And it also stresses the enormous care we have to take with species that we can't really gauge the sentience of. Like primates and marine mammals, and well perhaps also that of other mammals like our livestock.
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  25. +Defenders of tomorrow Imagine a universe where there's no sentient beings. Nothing except lots of spectacular forces of nature physics clashing, colliding, fusing and exploding. Although it would've been a very grand and impressive place to be, I'd say that that place has no morality. There's no right and wrong as there is no being that is able to value anything that happens in that universe. In that same way there also wouldn't be any morality in the raging hurricanes of Jupiter or within complicated crystals on Mars. Nobody would be better or worse depending on what happens in these places. Back to our place. Now we have a planet filled with lots of beings able to experience life. They're all born with senses, experiences and preferences. To varying degrees they're able to suffer and enjoy their own existence, and whether or not they suffer and enjoy their own existence depends on the behaviour and choices of other, similar beings. That is where morality starts happening. We can roughly imagine the absolute worst possible planet to be on. One with permanent suffering for everyone. We can also imagine multiple ways in which that terrible planet would be better for everyone involved. It'd be impossible to imagine a Jupiter that is better or worse than this Jupiter, nothing turns on it. Same for the insentient universe or the non-experiencing crystals on Mars. They exist but there's nothing to value that existence. Only of course, if you say 'I value the crystals on Mars' which means you've started to include a sentient being, like yourself, into the model. Whether or choices move us down to that 'worst planet possible' or take us up to one of the many 'better worlds for everyone' is where ethics and morality become relevant. And in that sense I believe you can derive universal rights and wrongs. Physics may be descriptive but biology at some point becomes normative.
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  26. +Defenders of tomorrow Exactly because suffering is an emotion biological phenomenon, a chemical response to physical stimulus we know it's not voluntary. If you starve a being to death by locking it up in a room then it doesn't chose to suffer, it just suffers. Questions of 'better' or 'worse' only make sense in the context of sentient experience. There is no such thing as 'better' or 'worse' outside it. Only that which can value something can be considered within it's own values and that of others capable of valuing. Morality is about preferences interacting. Outside of the sphere of sentient beings there are no preferences at all, just complete indifference.  And subjectivity is definitely a part of morality. But then again it's still only a part. That's why each idea about how sentient beings ought to treat each other can be rated on whether it gets us closer to a moral society or whether it gets us closer to an immoral one.
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  27. +Defenders of tomorrow You can't really have morality on a personal level. There's very little morality going on in the movie Castaway where Tom Hanks is stranded on a deserted island. Other than him catching a few fish ofc. Other than it's his island and he's not encroaching on anyone else's preferences while being there. Morality is about how we shape society as a group of beings. And because this group consists of beings with biologically rooted preferences rather than arbitrary or random ones, we can say that there are right and wrong answers on how to best shape this society.
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  28. ***** That's where it gets interesting. Now we're grounding moralism on sentience it means we get to evaluate ideas like communism, or any doctrine or religion on their merits. This is where Sam Harris refers to a 'moral landscape' of ideas. A landscape with mountains and valleys. Communism may be a hill or a valley depending on it's execution but it never really managed to become a truly impressive mountain peak. Same goes for capitalism and the different modules that western society applies to it.  Or let's look at the Islamic State, regarding the experience and preferences of sentient beings it clearly shapes itself out to be a valley.  Zimbardo calls these kinds of faiths 'transcendental hedonism'. They place all the pay-offs and fruits of their effort and suffering into the after-life. So ISIS zealots may think they're on their way on a huge peak (eternal bliss in heaven) but without any shred of evidence for such an after life it clearly is a deep valley of misery. 
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  29. ***** If they're correct then the suffering the bring about is a small price to pay for eternal bliss. If there way is the way to heaven then their idea would be the highest possible moral idea. However, if they're incorrect then they're causing suffering for naught and their idea is the lowest moral idea.  Either way it's a moral idea that purely involves the experience of sentient beings. Only this time it includes sentience in a hypothetical after life as well.  I hope that demonstrates that all morality is about the preferences of sentient being. Whether or not those ideas are the best of reconciling these preferences in a way that suits these beings the best then becomes a question for which there are right and wrong answers. Answers to which science can provide an answer.  The hypothesis of an almighty creator that follows one specific sect of one specific religion is an empirical hypothesis after all.
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  30. ***** I fully agree with the first part! It's wildly dangerous to arbitrarily pick the one thing your 'group' distinguishes itself on and then declare that the defining property to claim all rights on.  Sentience however, is not such a unique property. After all, we humans vary very slightly in our sentience compared to other mammals or more widely, vertebrates. This is not to lower humans but rather to raise the status of all other similarly sentient beings. It's precisely because we share that trait, and because that trait is so fundamental for every individual's well being that it is the most important trait to base our morality on.
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  31. Josh VanTubergen KKK love quoting Deutoronomy "the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, "
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  32. It's one of their licenses for racism. 
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  33. Josh VanTubergen That's just your interpretation of the Bible, just like the KKK has theirs. There's plenty of people that interpret the Bible in a way that is much more benign to all sentient beings. That's the issue with drawing ethics from scripture, there's so much room for interpretation.
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  34. WarezStuff Frankly I believe anyone to claim superiority or dominance over others should disappear into the history books as fast as possible.
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  35. +John Anon His methods of processing Jews on a large scale were also inspired on the new found factory livestock methods.
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  36. +John Anon I care about sentient beings. The animal/human distinction merely serves to instrumentally exploit one or the other.
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  37. +Unique and Hilarious Username 'Most' things?
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  38. ***** Can't say its a very clever question mate. Of course I mean it. Try again.
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