"Imagine that humans had all left earth and we could destroy the world, killing every living thing painlessly. I would, in an instant, support doing so"
Just imagine an alien civilization thinks our lives are terrible and decides to kill us all to spare us from our misery.
I think I don't need to explain further why I think you're wrong on that
This is a really great article and it really made me think. I've seen many tiktok videos from people who own pet snails, explaining the importance of smashing their snail eggs. Snails are also k strategists and a number of these eggs develop into runts, snails which are very small, yet their organs keep growing to their regular side, eventually crushing them. I've been unable to find how accurate this information is, and I'm not sure about the extent of snail sentience, but the important thing is that people generally seem to be sympathetic towards this cause, and see it as altruistic, despite probably not being okay with something like this in nature.
I think there is definitely something weird going on with how we approach our responsibility for animal wellbeing, when it's a pet we can make extensive medical intervention, even viewing pet wellbeing in a utilitarian sense (for instance, my dog wants to reproduce, but I neuter it because I know it would neuter the wellbeing of dogs overall). When we find an injured deer, we can treat its injury before foregoing responsibility and releaseing it back into the wild, where it's bound to suffer greatly again. I don't really see why zoos are immoral, for instance, if it can provide animals with a much better experience than in the wild, free of threat of predation, and with medical treatment and painkillers.
A couple of thoughts. Feel free to ignore, since this is an older post I've just read now.
Is being a squirrel or rabbit so bad? I don't think I'm wearing rosy lenses when I perceive a joy in their existence, a confident competence in being alive and doing their thing, as fraught as their lives can be. I'd be careful about painting all "Nature" with a red brush, and even more careful about dropping that X-Bomb on all of it!
I have a very privileged life, relative to the trillions of babies getting eaten alive, but there's a sense in which I'm always being chased by sharks, too. A "low-level anxiety" always with me, about a hundred different sharks swimming in the murky margins of my days and dreamy nights. To a Buddhist demi-god, our lives are an intolerable dukkha we're dumbly accustomed to. Perhaps we'll all diasporize into a galaxial Civ of enlightened angels, but perhaps squirrels will too, if we give them 20 million years!
Maybe in the extreme long term, cephalopods will become highly sentient tool users, supplant humans and populate the universe with 10^some-large-number of supremely happy beings. As a longterm-ist you should be concerned more about those than the relatively small number currently living harsh lives.
God fucking damnit your one of those religious freaks who loves to believe nature is some evil entity. Just burn the rain forest down and start mass hunting animals
Thank you for covering such an important, difficult, and neglected topic.
"Imagine that humans had all left earth and we could destroy the world, killing every living thing painlessly. I would, in an instant, support doing so"
If the assumptions you are making about wild animal well-being are correct and if we take the impartiality requirement of utilitarianism seriously, then such destruction would still be the right solution (regardless of humans leaving earth), correct? If you are assuming there is massive net suffering (over pleasure) in nature and consider the population ratios, it is very unlikely any pleasures humans get from nature directly (or even any pleasures they get at all in their lives) could outweigh this suffering. (I don't have one personal view on the topic but I think what I stated follows from the assumptions you've made.)
It isn’t much of an argument, is it? Vividity of description is one thing, but a large chunk of the essay is taken up by what would, in a single sentence, amount to “humans severely under-estimate the utilitarian weight of animal suffering in the wild”, and then you ridicule environmentalists a bit. I could argue with that sentence if it at least took seriously the view that animals probably have clearer eyes on their own suffering than do humans, or that there might be unforeseen consequences to getting rid of nature at all, but I don’t feel much like getting into a debate with the kind of person who openly says that this kind of thinking is only for tree huggers.
It’s a fun thought experiment, but doesn’t seem to fold in the opinions of the octopus and all the other creatures dying in agony as I write this comment.
But it does work well against that stupid argument about how cows wouldn’t live at all if we didn’t eat their produce.
"Imagine that humans had all left earth and we could destroy the world, killing every living thing painlessly. I would, in an instant, support doing so"
Just imagine an alien civilization thinks our lives are terrible and decides to kill us all to spare us from our misery.
I think I don't need to explain further why I think you're wrong on that
This is a really great article and it really made me think. I've seen many tiktok videos from people who own pet snails, explaining the importance of smashing their snail eggs. Snails are also k strategists and a number of these eggs develop into runts, snails which are very small, yet their organs keep growing to their regular side, eventually crushing them. I've been unable to find how accurate this information is, and I'm not sure about the extent of snail sentience, but the important thing is that people generally seem to be sympathetic towards this cause, and see it as altruistic, despite probably not being okay with something like this in nature.
I think there is definitely something weird going on with how we approach our responsibility for animal wellbeing, when it's a pet we can make extensive medical intervention, even viewing pet wellbeing in a utilitarian sense (for instance, my dog wants to reproduce, but I neuter it because I know it would neuter the wellbeing of dogs overall). When we find an injured deer, we can treat its injury before foregoing responsibility and releaseing it back into the wild, where it's bound to suffer greatly again. I don't really see why zoos are immoral, for instance, if it can provide animals with a much better experience than in the wild, free of threat of predation, and with medical treatment and painkillers.
A couple of thoughts. Feel free to ignore, since this is an older post I've just read now.
Is being a squirrel or rabbit so bad? I don't think I'm wearing rosy lenses when I perceive a joy in their existence, a confident competence in being alive and doing their thing, as fraught as their lives can be. I'd be careful about painting all "Nature" with a red brush, and even more careful about dropping that X-Bomb on all of it!
I have a very privileged life, relative to the trillions of babies getting eaten alive, but there's a sense in which I'm always being chased by sharks, too. A "low-level anxiety" always with me, about a hundred different sharks swimming in the murky margins of my days and dreamy nights. To a Buddhist demi-god, our lives are an intolerable dukkha we're dumbly accustomed to. Perhaps we'll all diasporize into a galaxial Civ of enlightened angels, but perhaps squirrels will too, if we give them 20 million years!
Maybe in the extreme long term, cephalopods will become highly sentient tool users, supplant humans and populate the universe with 10^some-large-number of supremely happy beings. As a longterm-ist you should be concerned more about those than the relatively small number currently living harsh lives.
TLDR; natura mala sic est delenda.
Stunningly arrogant. And so very, very wrong.
God fucking damnit your one of those religious freaks who loves to believe nature is some evil entity. Just burn the rain forest down and start mass hunting animals
Thank you for covering such an important, difficult, and neglected topic.
"Imagine that humans had all left earth and we could destroy the world, killing every living thing painlessly. I would, in an instant, support doing so"
If the assumptions you are making about wild animal well-being are correct and if we take the impartiality requirement of utilitarianism seriously, then such destruction would still be the right solution (regardless of humans leaving earth), correct? If you are assuming there is massive net suffering (over pleasure) in nature and consider the population ratios, it is very unlikely any pleasures humans get from nature directly (or even any pleasures they get at all in their lives) could outweigh this suffering. (I don't have one personal view on the topic but I think what I stated follows from the assumptions you've made.)
It isn’t much of an argument, is it? Vividity of description is one thing, but a large chunk of the essay is taken up by what would, in a single sentence, amount to “humans severely under-estimate the utilitarian weight of animal suffering in the wild”, and then you ridicule environmentalists a bit. I could argue with that sentence if it at least took seriously the view that animals probably have clearer eyes on their own suffering than do humans, or that there might be unforeseen consequences to getting rid of nature at all, but I don’t feel much like getting into a debate with the kind of person who openly says that this kind of thinking is only for tree huggers.
It’s all a bit tabloid.
It’s a fun thought experiment, but doesn’t seem to fold in the opinions of the octopus and all the other creatures dying in agony as I write this comment.
But it does work well against that stupid argument about how cows wouldn’t live at all if we didn’t eat their produce.