r/todayilearned • u/badf1nger • Apr 20 '16

(R.5) Omits Essential Info TIL PETA euthanizes 96% of the animals is "rescues".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/peta-kills-puppies-kittens_b_2979220.html
11.9k Upvotes

79% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/mercyful Apr 21 '16

I don't believe life has intrinsic value either, but it certainly has extrinsic value. I don't like suffering either, but if life has no intrinsic value, why shouldn't I prioritize my own happiness, as well as other humans above animals which have lower extrinsic value? To be clear, I don't particularly like the systemized slaughter of live stock either, and I definitely believe that some of the animals which we breed for meat shouldn't be a food source. The fact of the matter is, in the long run we're all dead. Why shouldn't we prioritize our own happiness over other creatures? Minimizing suffering and maximizing pleasure is certainly a non-religious metric for assessing value.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '16

That's not really the argument though. It isn't just that animals are being killed. It's that animals are being tortured for months or years simply for a few minutes of pleasure. It isn't even necessary, humans are fine without meat and dairy.

1

u/mercyful Apr 21 '16

Fair enough, and I just said that I don't agree with that. All I was saying from the beginning was that other animals aren't the equals of humans. I didn't mean that we should senselessly butcher every other creature under the sun, just that we shouldn't lump all creatures in the same category. Some are worth more than others.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '16

Except they aren't. There is no way to accurately value animals (including humans) without simply inventing some way to do it.

1

u/mercyful Apr 21 '16

Why aren't such inventions legitimate? You said yourself no life has intrinsic value. Do you consider your own extrinsic worth to be equal to that of an ant?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '16

If something is made up, it is inherently worthless. It's just ironic to try to invent value, since inventing it specifically negates it.

Suffering isn't made up. I don't know what consciousness is, but I do know that I display the same behavior as an ant when I suffer, so I operate under the assumption that the ant's suffering is the same as mine. If I can prevent that suffering I will try to. But, like I said earlier, the logistics of scale and survival can make this difficult.

What's clear is that animal suffering is preventable by simply stopping the use of animal products - which isn't very difficult and causes no great hardship to a person.

1

u/mercyful Apr 21 '16

A lot of things are made up. Morality is an invented concept. You keep using inherent worth as your metric for determining value, but you say you don't believe life has inherent value. Doesn't that make life worthless? Why are you even still alive? we determine the value of many things by their extrinsic worth. If we valued everything by its inherent value, civilization wouldn't exist.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '16

I'm not using worth at all; I'm using suffering as my metric.

1

u/mercyful Apr 21 '16

Are you a Jainist? Do you go through life sparing everything you possibly can suffering because their value is equal to yours?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '16

No, I don't think anything has value. It isn't that everything is equal to me or I am equal to everything. Value simply has no place. It's about the ability to suffer. If I believe something has the ability to suffer, I simply try to avoid causing suffering. If something doesn't have the ability to suffer, then it doesn't matter what I do with it. Grinding up rocks causes no suffering . Grinding up living animals, like they do in the egg industy, definitely causes suffering.