back
1 comments
Definitely interesting times for animal rights. There have been a number of law changes making animal abuse as punitive as the human equivalent. But the general sentiment was for dogs and cats as far as I could tell and there are some nuanced questions that follow regarding how different orders should be treated. For instance, is a child with a pet goldfish that dies because they forgot to feed it an animal abuser, or does it not count because we see fish as lesser than mammals. Most wouldn't object to squashing a fly/mosquito/cockroach though.

And then it goes back to questions of animal consumption (directly - meat, and indirectly - eggs, milk etc) and how that relates to animal abuse or whether killing humanly makes it acceptable. Most vegans I know would say that even 'humane' killing is one that isn't sanctioned by a conscious animal being hence is effectively murder.

And to throw a virtual bone to HN world, what happens when we encounter this phenomena in the virtual or even robotic worlds with conscious machines?