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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • 4ce@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlI'm tired of the inequality
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    1 year ago

    i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us

    Do you have a source for that? Intuitively 1/3 of all species extinctions (keep in mind this in general includes plants and other kingdoms of life, not just animals) sounds far too high imo. Maybe you have read that number in a slightly different context, like bird deaths in urban areas, or perhaps in a more specific context similar to the one in your link? Don’t get me wrong, like your link shows, (house) cats can easily have a devastating effect on the local wildlife, in particular birds and small mammals or reptiles (wikipedia has an article on the topic, although I didn’t find anything like your numbers in it). But as far as I know the major ways in which humans have caused extinctions are historically overhunting (mostly affecting large birds and mammals), habitat loss in particular since the advent of agriculture, and more recently of course the effects of the climate crisis since the industrial revolution.


  • 4ce@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlI'm tired of the inequality
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    1 year ago

    No, it says

    100 to 1,000 times higher than the background extinction rate

    both in the general intro and in the “Extinction rate” section, and

    10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth

    in the “Extinction rate” section (both verbatim quotes from its first sentence).


  • lesser function

    Putting aside that this might be difficult to quantify, why do you think it matters? There are some groups of humans who exhibit severely diminished mental capacities compared to the average human (e.g. babies, severely mentally handicapped people, people in a coma, etc.). Would it be okay to eat them? Because I’m fairly confident that for whatever measure to compare cognitive functions you could come up with, we would be able to find at least some humans who perform worse on them than the average pig, for example.

    different species

    Why does this matter? As a hypothetical thought experiment, do you think it would be morally justified for us to eat aliens who are biologically very different from us but of comparative intelligence (or higher)? Or for them to eat us?

    it’s the easiest, most accessible, most fulfilling, and healthiest way

    Apart from the “fulfilling”, which is arguably subjective, I don’t think the rest is true. At least I don’t see how not eating meat would be difficult or “inaccessible” in a significant way, and considering the last point studies regularly show that vegetarians and vegans are, on average, slightly healthier than other people if anything (which might be in part just correlation, but it does contradict your claim of meat being the “healthiest” way to get nutrients).

    Fuck Tyson though, those bastards can go to hell.

    On this we can definitely agree.


  • 4ce@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlI'm tired of the inequality
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    1 year ago

    they are not sentient

    Science disagrees with you here. Most of the animals being used for meat are in fact not just sentient, but also conscious:

    Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

    – From the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness


  • nature intended

    Nature doesn’t intend anything, it simply is. We are, in the grand scheme of things, not separate from nature, and in this sense everything we do is natural. If you’re using “natural” to distinguish things from the results of human civilization, then eating animal products stemming from animal agriculture is just as “unnatural” as supplements, as both are products of civilization.



  • Agreed. I’ve no idea what u/vegantomato@lemmy.world is talking about. I’m pretty sure I’ve personally never seen it used as a slur. What I’ve seen is people not knowing what it means and assuming it’s one of them there evil genders, so maybe some people think it’s meant as a slur, but imo that says more about their ignorance than the word itself.