I was just reading how fishing industry’s longlines have caught many dolphins and other bycatches. It would be great to be able to give them warnings, or even better, to ask them to keep other big animals away from the longlines.
I know this comment is totally innocent but it does kind of bum me out to be at a point in time where instead of addressing our impact on the environment directly, we're trying to make computers that can talk to dolphins so we can tell them to stay out of the way lol
You don't tend to hear about it and not that there isn't still progress to be made, but there has been tonnes of progress on fisheries interactions with protected bycatch species. For ex the infamous dolphin problem in the eastern tropical Pacific purse seine tuna fishery is down 99.8% from its peak to the point populations are recovering, despite the fishery intentionally setting on dolphin schools to catch > 150,000 t of yellowfin tuna per year.
Pelagic gillnets are probably the gear that still have the most issues with dolphin bycatch, and acoustic pingers that play a loud ultrasonic tone when they detect an echolocation click are already used to reduce interactions in some fisheries.
One of the things I think is amazing is that people will say “here’s a way to make the world better” and others will react with “it’s so sad that you propose making the world better instead of making it perfect”. I think it’s great.
Or, like, we could stop ravaging the oceans by industrial fishing, stop pretending magical technology will save the day, and try to limit our resource consumption to sustainable levels?
Humanity’s relationship with animals is so schizophrenic. On the one hand, let’s try to learn how to talk to cute dolphins and chat with them what it’s like to swim!, and on the other, well yeah that steak on my table may have once lead a subjective experience before it was slaughtered, and mass-farming it wrecks the ecosystem I depend on to live, but gosh it’s so tasty, I can’t give that up!
Humans are omnivores. I am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to eat other animals.
At the same time, I want to be as humane as practical; I don’t want to cause needless suffering to any creature. If I kill a bug, I don’t want it to suffer. Same with food animals.
The more like me an animal is, the less I want to eat it.
There are a lot of humans. Any action to forcefully reduce the number of humans or to forcefully reduce birth rates is almost certainly way more morally abhorrent to me, than doing what is necessary to feed those humans.
> Humans are omnivores. I am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to eat other animals.
This is akin to saying ''humans are violent, so i am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to commit violence''.
So just be honest: you WANT to eat meat because you like it, consequences be damned.
And of course if you truly want to feed as many humans as possible the only solution is vegetarianism or even veganism. Meat is just way too wasteful to be a decent solution.
> And of course if you truly want to feed as many humans as possible the only solution is vegetarianism or even veganism. Meat is just way too wasteful to be a decent solution.
This myth needs to die. Two thirds of all farmland on this planet is pasture [1] that isn’t fertile enough to grow food for humans except by raising animals on it. If we were to switch to a plant based diet, the vast majority of our farmland as a civilization becomes unusable. Most of the world uses animals to generate calories from unproductive land, first via dairy and then slaughtering the animals for food.
Not to mention, animals have been crucial sources of sustainable fertilizer for many thousands of years, without which agriculture would never have been as productive.
Do you also have this negative attitude towards all other non-vegitarian animals, or is it just for humans since they have more capability to cause more ecological harm?
Most importantly, humans have the ability to reflect their actions and decide differently. Both to minimize suffering, and to keep the plant hospitable to humans.
What’s gross is the idea that plants are “lower” and thus less deserving of value to life. Either embrace radically life denying Jainism, anti-natalism, voluntary extinction movement, and benevolent world exploder theory - or admit that you are just as cruel as those you implicitly claim to be better than (as a presumably non gross person)
But white vegans aren’t prepared to actually reckon with the logical conclusion of their ideas. Go read David Benatar (he’s a vegan whose actually consistent btw)
I never understood that line of reasoning. Plants do not have a central nervous system and, as of the current scientific consensus, are not aware of their subjective experience like animals are. Humans are omnivores, capable of thriving on a plant-based diet. The logical consequence, if you try to minimise suffering, is to eat plants instead of animals.
Life is a game of shifting carbon. To stay alive, you need to kill. But you can try to limit that to the least amount of killing required, and to killing those life forms without sentience as we understand it. This is the foundation of any ethical reasoning.
Having said all that, I also reject the vertical ordering of life on the tree of evolution. Plants are just very different from us, not necessarily higher or lower. Considering we have to make a choice as to what we are ready to sacrifice to survive, we can still choose those life forms that likely are not capable of suffering like we do, before turning to those more similar to us.
Specifically, this gave me the reaction, bc it seems in bad company with other ideologies:
> I am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to eat other animals.
Deep history exists in our "biological" context and is critical reality, but arguing some "biological imperative" to act on it, that strikes me as a strange place to start
Context: am biochemist, and I think about biology and biochemistry as a very integrated part of my worldview. But I don't harken to any biological imperative for my actions and choices. It explains them, it doesn't command them. Distorting our biology and psychology is what makes us human and agentic imho
