Most Explicit Animal Axiom Question Yet

[augie_]

David,

It's not fair, you won't let us kill the people who do the torturing!

[etxel]

To me its a question of values. And whats the value of a human life (good man or bad man) vs. an animal life.

Well, I'll take my human life. Its worth to me is infinite against an animals life, meaning my life is worth more to me than the life of an infinite number of animals. Of course asumming that I can live in a world where an infinite number of animals are killed : ).

Ok, so now if we take someone elses life and what they're life is worth to them. Well, I have no idea. Say they're life to them is worth x number of animals. So, they'd rather be dead if x animals are killed (painlessly or not)

Now, what is other people's life worth to me? Well, since I would like my life worth to be respected by other people, meaning that no one will kill me (or wish I was dead) even if animal deaths are infinity, then I think it is fair for me to respect other people's life worth (against an animals life).

So, to know whether I think a person should die or not after a certain number of animal kills, I would have to find out what that person's own x is.

And, in theory if I find that someone's x is 10, and 10 cats die in front of the person, I would ask "is your x still 10 or do you want to reconsider", if the person says "why don't we make it like 20" then I would say "Okey dok, but remember my x will always be infinite!"

What I'm trying to say is that an animal's life has different values to different people but if you think that someone's life is worth a certain number of animal lives, its fair to accept that to everyone else you're own life is worth certain number of animal lives.

To me it doesn't matter if the person is good or bad. If the person is bad (because he did something bad to humans, not animals) then its a different story, but that person's life worth would be the same no matter how many animals die.

And in theory if someone doesn't respect "my x (which is infinity)", and thinks that I should die if it saves 1000 cats, then its fair for me not to respect "their life x" even if to me they should die if it means saving 2 cats.

Therefore, I don't think anyone should wish or decide over a person's life vs. an animal life except that same person.

[etxel]

sorry for some typos. ie change their for they're above. It must be dyslexia or something

[etxel]

What would you chose your own x to be? Meaning how many animals whould you be willing to die for (painlessly)?

[RobertJohn]

I answered these questions without realizing the pain distinction you stipulated. This makes the problem much harder. For me, I think I view it through the lens of something I learned about criticism .

I’ve forgotten the name of the concept, but it’s basically this: try not to comparatively judge a piece of art with other, different forms of art. You must find work from the same school or genre and judge it by that criterion. For instance, in film, you can’t say that this romantic comedy is a great film overall, but rather that it accomplishes everything a romantic comedy should set out to do, and it’s either good or bad in relation to the goals/attributes of other romantic comedies. It can only be justifiably critiqued through the lens of other romantic comedies, not horror films, dramas, etc.

Here’s what I’m getting at in relation to these questions:

I think you have a better chance of randomly selecting any non-human animal that is a better example of its species than you do of selecting a human who is a good example of the human species. Basically, the ratio of worthy humans to unworthy humans is lower than the ratio of worthy kittens to unworthy kittens, or worthy grizzly bears to unworthy grizzly bears, etc.

Obviously “worthy” is a loaded, subjective word, but you might get my drift.

To further clarify my point:

[ QUOTE ]
Obviously I would trade 1 human life for the life of all animals on Earth, but only to preserve humanity.

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I strongly disagree with this statement.

[Albert Moulton]

[ QUOTE ]
...whether you think random human beings are close to infinitely more important than any random animal (not a pet).

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I do.

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1. Someone is choosing between letting one random human die painlessly or letting x random sentient animals (choose whichever is your favorite) die painfully. I have no idea how this situation has arisen so don't worry about it. Is there some number for x that would make you wish he chose the human? If so, what is it?

2. The human is not random but is instead a very bad person. How bad would he have to be for your x to be below 100? How about 1 (in other words one animal is more worth saving)?

3. Same question except while one alternative is to let x animals die painfully, the other alternative is one random human becoming blind in one eye. What's x now? And for x to equal one, how bad a person does he have to be?

PS If the human or animals are saved, assume their life is now normal.

[/ QUOTE ]

1. Save the person. Allow x animals to die painfully. I suppose if x were large enough to make a species extinct, that I'd have to consider the loss of a species to the rest of humanity before making a decision. It is possible that allowing one person to die painlessly would be better than the extinction of a species, painfully or otherwise. Any large number of x short of extinction, however, and I'd save the person.

2. Same as 1, above. Save the person. Even a bad person is worth more than the animals. In fact, even if the person were on death row pending execution on Thursday for multiple murder, I'd let the animals die on Wednesday so the person could be executed in accordance with the law on schedule rather than die due to some decision of mine to save x animals the day before.

3. Same as 1 and 2, above. Save the person's eye no matter how big the x as long as x isn't so large that the species would be extinct. Even then, it would depend on the species.

[Spence]

"2. Same as 1, above. Save the person. Even a bad person is worth more than the animals. In fact, even if the person were on death row pending execution on Thursday for multiple murder, I'd let the animals die on Wednesday so the person could be executed in accordance with the law on schedule rather than die due to some decision of mine to save x animals the day before."

In that case, i'd choose you to alleviate suffering of one animal.

[jimmytrick]

If someone messed with my dog I would cheerfully shoot them down if I could get away with it.

But if I did that God would punish me. In fact he will punish me just for thinking it. God is a tough dude.

He already knows what Sklansky is trying to figure out. David, why don't you pray about this?