What is more ethical to kill: A blue whale or 800000 shrimps?

[Jannes]

I compared their weight. Of course that not all actual meat mass but it's a rough estimation of what you are getting. For the meat of one blue whale you need about 800000 shrimps. We sometimes compare the sentience of living beings to estimate how ethical it is to kill them. The more sentient a being is the less ethical it is to kill it. But weight is an important factor as well. Its quantity x quality. Shrimps would pretty much have zero sentience in order to be more ethical to kill compared to Wales because you need 800000 of them to get the same meat (I am not including other environmental factors)

For chickens to cows its like 1:500 as well its crazy. 

Are there some seriously dumb and fat animals? Maybe crocodiles?

 

 

 

 

[ZenAlex]

The Whale. Those shrimps could feed many animals, not just one whale.

[Dryas]

I'd say a whale is more sentient, so yea.

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Jannes said:

Are there some seriously dumb and fat animals? Maybe crocodiles?

Lol

Have you ever eaten a crocodile? It doesn't taste good.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Israfil]

The shrimps. They taste better.

[Jannes]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Lol

Have you ever eaten a crocodile? It doesn't taste good.

No. I just heard it tastes a bit like chicken. 

[Jannes]

3 hours ago, Dryas said:

I'd say a whale is more sentient, so yea.

yeah but its not one whale vs one shrimp its one whale vs 800000 shrimp.

1 minute ago, Israfil said:

The shrimps. They taste better.

The question is ethical.

[universe]

What you mean is speciesism.

It's bullshit. You can love every species on this planet the same.

[Israfil]

21 hours ago, Jannes said:

The question is ethical.

I know, but the question is in my point of view meaningless. So I go with an aesthetic joke instead of answering it.

[Carl-Richard]

On 23.3.2023 at 2:50 PM, Jannes said:

Shrimps would pretty much have zero sentience in order to be more ethical to kill compared to Wales because you need 800000 of them to get the same meat (I am not including other environmental factors)

I don't understand what you mean.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Jannes]

54 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I don't understand what you mean.

Let’s say you can rank sentience of a living organism. A shrimp has let’s say a sentience of 3 because it’s a rather simple creature. A wale has a sentience of let’s say 400 because it’s a way more evolved creature. If sentience is the determining factor for the right not to get killed then it’s 400:3 = 133. One wale is worth 133 shrimps. In this hypothetical example at least. My point was that in order for the wale to have a higher right to live then shrimps the wale must be so incredible sentient or the shrimps so incredible unsentient (around 0) because it’s 1 vs 800000 for the same meat mass. 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Jannes

[InfinitePotential]

2 hours ago, Jannes said:

Let’s say you can rank sentience of a living organism. A shrimp has let’s say a sentience of 3 because it’s a rather simple creature. A wale has a sentience of let’s say 400 because it’s a way more evolved creature. If sentience is the determining factor for the right not to get killed then it’s 400:3 = 133. One wale is worth 133 shrimps. In this hypothetical example at least. My point was that in order for the wale to have a higher right to live then shrimps the wale must be so incredible sentient or the shrimps so incredible unsentient (around 0) because it’s 1 vs 800000 for the same meat mass. 

But then can you really just add these “sentience units” to compare whether one group of organisms has more “sentience units” than another? The shrimp just aren’t capable of suffering like the whale is.

It’s more like, what’s less ethical: pinch every human on their weenus or kill the whale? 

I feel like from a certain perspective, there are no amount of ants that I would not be willing to kill to save the life of a human, much less a corgi puppy. Even if their sentience is .000001 and a corgi’s is 1000, I’d kill all the ants regardless. Of course, that would bring a whole ‘nother host of problems, but the direct suffering as a result of killing the ants vs the corgis would make me choose the ants. 

Of course I’m biased here cause I like dogs and don’t like ant bites. Also, my reasoning kinda worries me for what an ET civilization / super-intelligence may think about us…

[Gesundheit2]

On 24/03/2023 at 0:37 AM, Jannes said:

The question is ethical.

Ethics is a philosophical field, and it's very personal and subjective. It is not a mathematical field, which is impersonal and objective. This is what people call the absolute vs. relative conflation. You're asking an absolute question and demanding a relative answer, or possibly the other way around. It wouldn't be confusing if it wasn't twisted like that.

TL;DR, mathematics is what you do when you're moving purposely, while philosophy is what you do in your spare time.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Gesundheit2

[Jannes]

5 hours ago, InfinitePotential said:

But then can you really just add these “sentience units” to compare whether one group of organisms has more “sentience units” than another? The shrimp just aren’t capable of suffering like the whale is.

I think so. A higher quantity of low quality sentience will at some point outgrow a lower quantity but high quality sentience. Just like 10x 10€ equals 1x 100€. 

But I guess there are some metaphysical assumptions that I made there. Because 10x 10€ is not 100€ because it’s not getting duplicated. It stays 10x 10€ forever in a sense. The quality that the wale experiences will never be reached. 

 

 

[Jannes]

2 hours ago, Gesundheit2 said:

Ethics is a philosophical field, and it's very personal and subjective. It is not a mathematical field, which is impersonal and objective.

Depends what ethic your subscribe to. There are literally philosophers who made ethics calculators. I don’t think they got wide spread agreement on that but still. The utilitarism and categorical imperative that I know is pretty calculated as well. The minority of ethics integrate feelings. I don’t necessarily agree with that though because I think we should be driven by an authentic voice which integrates feelings and not just rationality. 

2 hours ago, Gesundheit2 said:

This is what people call the absolute vs. relative conflation. You're asking an absolute question and demanding a relative answer, or possibly the other way around. It wouldn't be confusing if it wasn't twisted like that.

How is it an absolute question? 

2 hours ago, Gesundheit2 said:

TL;DR, mathematics is what you do when you're moving purposely, while philosophy is what you do in your spare time.

You want to get to answers in philosophy. 

[Devin]

You shouldn't eat anything. HOW DARE YOU think you're better than a shrimp, you neanderthal ego maniac!!

 

[zurew]

12 hours ago, Jannes said:

Let’s say you can rank sentience of a living organism.

Except you probably wouldn't evaluate just based on sentience, but based on outcome as well and maybe based on other things as well.

The ranking of sentience is very problematic in and of itself, but regardless of that,  what if  you would kill all those shripms you could directly save 10000 humans (because you could give them food). Or what if that whale is the last pregnant one and the only one who could save its own species from completely dying off? Do you consider things like that in your evaluation or you would completely ignore those?

4 hours ago, Jannes said:

I think so. A higher quantity of low quality sentience will at some point outgrow a lower quantity but high quality sentience.

100 million dogs vs 1 human. How do you decide this one?

9 hours ago, InfinitePotential said:

The shrimp just aren’t capable of suffering like the whale is.

What if it is guaranteed that the killing process is painless and instant?

Edited March 25, 2023 by zurew

[Nilsi]

Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

[Basman]

I think the question of ethicacy relative to killing animal is somewhat relative and depends a lot on the human bias towards relatibility. We are mammals and we relate to and find other mammals cute. Insects and gastropods less so. If wolves looked like cockroaches, there would be a lot less people protesting wolf hunting.

You are going to feel stronger about killing a whale than 800000 shrimps on an emotional level.

But you could take a purely ecological approach instead, where you measure the importance of the animal to the food chain. Shrimp are lower down the food chain and are an important source of food for a wide range of animals. Depriving the ocean of 800000 shrimp would mean 800000 shrimp less in the bellies of starving sea animals. You could say the same about the whale since there are many animals that live of whale meat but shrimp are more fundamental in the food chain.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Basman

[Jannes]

7 hours ago, zurew said:

Except you probably wouldn't evaluate just based on sentience, but based on outcome as well and maybe based on other things as well.

The ranking of sentience is very problematic in and of itself,

You gotta abstract somewhere. You can’t take everything into account. 

7 hours ago, zurew said:

but regardless of that,  what if  you would kill all those shripms you could directly save 10000 humans (because you could give them food).

I would save the humans. But I think it’s a very rare situation where a single shrimp feeding can save 10000 from starvation in the long run. 

7 hours ago, zurew said:

Or what if that whale is the last pregnant one and the only one who could save its own species from completely dying off? Do you consider things like that in your evaluation or you would completely ignore those?

Of course I ignore those. That ethical list would have a million points to consider.  

7 hours ago, zurew said:

100 million dogs vs 1 human. How do you decide this one?

Dogs 

7 hours ago, zurew said:

What if it is guaranteed that the killing process is painless and instant?

If it is possible to know that and if the whole breeding and growing process is also nice for the shrimps I would say there is nothing wrong with it but that are big ifs. Also I would take enrinonemental factors into account but as another layer.