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Where's the Beef?: The lab-grown-meat revolution that wasn't

75 points · 166 comments · Hooke

  1. dr_dshiv · · focus · HN ↗
    Would it make the meat industry more ethical if happy drugs were made available to animals? If I had to choose between a meaningful (even if I didn’t know it when living), blissful unnatural life and none at all, I’d choose the former.

    It’s the negative affect and suffering (stress, pain, boredom etc) that is the bad part of eating animals.

    (I think— I know others have thought more than I on this topic)

    It just seems like an easier tech solution might be promising

    1. OroPla · · focus · HN ↗
      What I find interesting about this whole discourse is that the lived experience of animals matters to people. At all.

      Just a hundred, two hundred years ago we made the Elephant rifle, because a normal gun couldn't bring it down, but it was a fun sport to go out and kill just for the heck of it. No one cared about the animals.

      It seems like we are living in an age of suicidal empathy and I'm not sure how we got here.

      1. throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
        What do you mean by suicidal?
        1. vjsrinivas · · focus · HN ↗
          He's referencing the common conservative notion that "too much" empathy for certain groups (in this case animals) is at the detriment to ourselves... somehow. This, of course, makes no sense when you look back at the long historical strides taken with animal rights in just western societies. You'll find very old philosophical vegetarian and vegan thoughts in other non-western societies.
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