Perhaps so. At least it's debatable. According to this poll murder is worse:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/21...284-worse.html

And it appears even DS agrees.

Being murdered can be worse than being enslaved, but the comparison with killing animals is different in each case.

Huh? In a society that equates killing animals to killing humans, what's the difference?

Stop with this silliness. Every pro slaver knew that black people were the equal to mildly disabled white people. The most vociferous PETA member knows that a moderately disabled white person is more conscious than the smartest chimp. The argument in favor of humanely killing animals to eat will always be far more excusable than the argument to enslave black people.

I could also add that most meat eaters nowadays admit to mixed emotions and that they engage in a practice that they can't justify except to give it up would make them worse off. Few slaveholders made this admission.

Drawing practical connections is like bridge building. What happens if too many people start driving over a bridge that looks sturdy, but has hidden weak supports?

I know all that, and you know that, but their are loons out there today who don't agree. What makes you think consciousness is the appropriate measure? I have no idea what morals a future society will have, one that has harnessed all the energy and resources they can ever use (think Kursweilian, or Star Trek), making room for creatures to thrive without competing with us.

You can just look how we arbitrarily choose which animals to kill today, based on some measures of intelligence, awareness, cuteness, taste, annoyance, endangerment. Compare that to what is acceptable in other cultures.

It's just a hypothetical that may not ever be the case in reality, but you are being too rigid if you think there won't be lot's of things people like you in the future will decide we're "pond scum" for doing today.

Here's a good example of "How to Spot a Racist"

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=5379

Where somebody shows up spouting bull**** in a Mike Brown thread like

You can make a lot of assumptions about what would drive to make this weird tangential post in that thread.

Hmm- let's look at his other posts:

To me, that's a guy super likely to be a bigot. I'm going to call him one and not feel bad about it.

The notion that smart people can't read between the lines when looking at crap like this is just awful. People know they'll get shouted down and banned if they just bitch about the dirty Mexicans and blacks so they hide it in coded language.

When you wait for people to be overt with their hate, you just allow it to perpetuate.

because when we're talking about slavery we're talking about the systematic subjection of a group of people for economic gain based on their race and alleged inferiority. When were talking about killing humans then its far more general and not pointedly racist or economic.

You could make up examples of slavery that don't have any racial element or examples of killing for economic gain based on race and alleged inferiority. Then the comparisons of each with killing animals become more similar and equally tough.

This is the sort of idea I ponder

How many of those who make that sort of admission now about meat eating would have been slaveholders who didn't make it about owning slaves back then?

We all like to think we are better in some way other than our circumstances but it sometimes seem the figures don't stack up so perhaps its more about progress. I don't know and haven't really looked at the figures but it worries me anyway.

edit: just to be clear this is a concern about how good we are not how bad they were.

The thing about eating meat is that, for some, there is sacredness about it and ideas about limiting a diet are more about the purpose of having smart consumption, rather than the morality of killing animals. This tradition and sensibility is old as Shamanism, at least, and persists.

Not like slavery.

We currently breed all sorts of animals and raise them under all sorts of inhumane conditions, merely to be systematically killed and eaten. This is a very profitable industry. You don't think a society who equate killing animals to killing humans might find that disgusting and condemn us for it? Some already do.

they might but a society that equates killing humans to killing animals it either going to be profoundly different to ours or simply wrong. Some are already wrong.

That doesn't mean we cant compare killing animals with killing humans just that they don't match up anything like equally.

this might be the sanest thing i've ever seen DS write

Quick, someone give him a sklansky buck!

The animals other than **** sapiens sapiens might disagree.

The ones that can disagree do equate. Even suspecting they might be able to might do it, many of us try hard not to kill dolphins even incidentally.

Whoa whoa whoa. I'll tolerate a lot of **** in this forum. FoldNDark and chez having a CONVERSATION, as if they thought they were people, is not one of them.

SHUT THE **** UP

As if they thought they WERE PEOPLE. As if their opinions were as valid as any of ours. As if they deserved respect! Outrageous!

Trying hard not to isn't the same as not. And we're still happy to enslave them at Seaworld. I use pretty much that same standard for killing animals, it's one based on intelligence. A pretty good one, imo, arbitrary really though. What happens when the world becomes so populated, resources so scarce, we start raising the bar from those intelligent enough to voice disagreement, to those who shout the loudest? Are we already doing this in some ways?

Just look at the uneven distribution of funds given out by the world bank. Who gets the most, not necessarily those countries that need it the most. I don't think people give enough weight to how much our morals depend on our economic situations. That's why it's so much easier to save the dolphins and whales when your next meal doesn't depend on fishing.

randall from xkcd obviously a politard

we're not! The only reason i know anything at all about seaworld is because some americans I know are disgusted by it but its still not in the slavery ballpark because dolphins (the killer whales are the bit I keep hearing about) are plausibly believed to be significantly below humans in both intelligence and how much they are harmed by being 'ensllved'. There is also the sort of argument that we help these creatures by studying them etc, there's no way that can be applied to slavery. Still anyone who supports seaworld is significantly worse than someone who eats a chicken its just not in the same ballpark as slavery as DS would put it.

Its not just intelligence though. its also about whether they suffer like we do and have the capacity for a better life like we do.

I do and slavery is wholly condemned by it whereas eating/killing a dolphin when you're starving isn't. Its an important point though because the correct way to avoid a lot of bad things is to avoid situations where people only have bad choices. That pretty much is the reason why I argue liberalism is the best approach.

Remember in the movie Braveheart when the king gave all of his lords the right to prima nocta in their fiefdom. The female subjects who submitted to this(at threat of death) knew they were being raped, and their families who couldn't do anything to prevent it(also at threat of death) knew it was rape. Just like slaves that were raped by their masters knew they were being raped, and their families and loved ones knew it was rape.

Bro, rape been rape since people been forcing themselves on others without consent. That the justice system that was established by slave owners predictably chose not to prosecute slave owners who raped slaves only means that those that had the power to enslave had the power to rape.

History is written by the victors. So when those victors/rapists, and their apologists, rapesplain away their raping as being culturally acceptable, think for a moment about the victim of that rape. If she was allowed to be literate, let alone keep a diary, what would it tell us? That she had sex in a culturally acceptable way, or that she was raped repeatedly?


Cliffs: Slave owners who raped were rapists. And, Everybody knew it.

Sounds like we're in agreement.

Pretty good rationalizations. I agree with all of them.

Don't forget the cuddly metric.

But seriously, who gets to measure what's enough suffering, or what's a better life? I was looking for a place to drop in a Douglas Adams quip, but to this Daniel Quinn is better. The animals seemed to be doing quite well before we came along. Maybe even for us the jungle life wasn't so brutish as it seems. Why do we think so damn highly of our accomplishments? Have they really gotten us anywhere but to an overpopulated, over polluted, generally unhappy world?

Rationalisation is too broad. I know some thing I do are indefensible and I know I often don't follow the path I 'rationalise'. So its not a simple idea about explaining away anything we do.

When it comes to our own actions then we get to decide about suffering, better life etc and any reasonable judge of us will take into account how honestly we did that.

What if I choose to use the Socratic method to genuinely challenge the ideas in your posts? Is it a mistake to label a person as racist in cases where a person actually is racist but you mistakenly believe the person is not a racist?