Agreed. Look, the glaciers are disappearing, the Amazon rainforest has been lit on fire and almost eradicated by humans, and the climate radically altered. All because humans think they own the world and may do as they like with all of it, unilaterally. They don’t need to think about long term consequences because only their immediate needs matter. They don’t need to take any life into consideration other than themselves. They don’t even need to take humanity beyond their own person into account. It’s solipsism taken to a global, permanent scale because there are people who could unilaterally decide to end all life on earth as we know it through mass destruction.
Human level is just silly sophistry really even if though there should be some special protections for great apes such as minimal conditions, abolishing medical testing except for when they are outright patients to be aided, etc.
If it were truly human level rights bestiality laws would be unconstitutional in that context for one. Orangutans would be allowed to vote (only age, citizenship, and possible felon status are valid qualifiers and not mental competency), and we would arrest orangutans for committing crimes against organutans and allow them to face their accusers in court. To be found incompetent to stand trial would require special casing for every last incident.
This is definitely not as bad as the Saudi robot that is a person. Though despite the intelligence of nonhumans I am not sure I can support granting personage to things and property at this time.
I think the Old Testament has interesting things to say on this topic: "Everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea are under your authority. "
In a lot of ways Judaism and what it evolved into is the unreligion religion. Events in it, like the plagues of Egypt, are digs at the asinine nature of contemporary customs. E.g. the frogs were a plague because the frogs were sacred and could not be killed. In general the Abrahamic God doesn't want you fettering your wealth away on complicated rituals.
In the West, you can usually see a split between people who view animals largely as property and those that don't. The latter concern me, because although I can oppose wanton cruelty -- when it comes down to it, there are people, and not people. And if I need to get rid of property because I can't maintain it, I should be able to do so.
I'm unaware of the Saudi robot but as we are a long way off AI, that would be a thing with no inner life.
This is a sentient creature, and - leaving aside the clear ethical questions that raises - considering our not always entirely inspirational stewardship of the planet and the creatures on it, I question your support for consigning it
all to the cold classification of "property".
It is not intended to be cold. I still appreciate nature, enjoy the company of animals, and want to work towards conservation. But a line does need to be drawn and that is where I think it should be drawn. Giving not-people the privileges of people is a slippery slope and I think best reserved until we achieve a greater understanding of intelligence.
That's a fair argument - but I would counter that in the context of animals that behave in what appears to be clearly intelligent and social behaviour of a higher order, higher order rights should follow. They don't need to be the same level, just indicative of a special status.
I saw them but am not sure they made a point. Can you add anything?
They're appealing to emotion by (re)stating that bad things can happen to nonpersons and that the nonpersons have some capacity to feel bad about those things. Which is true and not really disputed.
But the counterargument of the relative importance isn't being addressed. Why should we have laws on this?
As an extreme example, if someone kills puppies for fun they're probably not a great person. At the same time I do not know of a good legal framework to handle this. Relying on people thinking to themselves "that guy kills puppies for fun and may not be a great person" seems the more robust solution. Even then, what is fun? People selectively breeding dogs sometimes kill litters. If you keep people from killing puppies (for potentially good reasons) you have in a roundabout way made certain animal husbandry illegal.
The comment I'm referring to is the one saying we shouldn't grant rights because bad stuff happens to humans so we should solve those problems first. There are multiple replies to that, including mine, which I refer you to.
Hmm... I think you are misreading his point. He seems to be pointing out that there are other things that are more important and that this seems to be a waste of time. Broadly I agree.
One problematic reply I think is:
>We should fix both immediate problems and the fundamental ethics issues that perpetuate an exploitative mindset. Animal rights are part of that.
Until we have a really good test for animal intelligence and some tractable way to map that to utility I think this is seriously misguided. At the end of the day the wants of a human supersede the wants of an orangutan, even if only by force. Do I think there is much utility in how this orangutan was treated? Not really. But am I allowed to exploit the orangutan? Yes, to the same extent I have a right to life.
So what you're saying is that we humans are above nature and we should consider animals as our slaves even though they share similar emotions to ours?
Do you really think that animals are here for us and not with us?
You think this is moral?
And by your logic it's morally okay for an alien race to enslave us, breed us so they can eat us?
Jesus fucking christ man. You religious people are the worst. Preaching about morality but behaving/thinking like savages.
I am not necessarily religious. I included the quote from the Bible as a counterpoint that provides some kind of justification. The Egyptian army was at one point routed by a Roman(?) general driving "holy" animals before his men. Is that... normal? A state failing because of undue respect for animals?
So yes, at this point I think people occupy a privileged position in ethical considerations. If you saved an orangutan over a human most people would question your motives and some locales would try you for at least manslaughter.
Consider that your generalization of all religious people as same is illogical, and that some religious may be more or less worse than worst. Perhaps you meant to say that this particular person proselytizing to you is in your subjective opinion the worst.
Or perhaps you are comfortable making sweeping generalizations about abstract sets of people.
Religious flamewar and personal attack will get you banned here regardless of how wrong another commenter is. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.
It's possible for society to tackle more than one injustice/problem at a time. Choosing one thing to work on isn't at the direct cost of another.
It's reasonable to say that the overall efforts towards things should be proportional to the amount and degree of injustice, but it's not useful to mock people who are concerned about a specific problem.
Instead of countering my arguments you’ve attempted to use a logical fallacy to negate my point. Two things can be true because they’re independent or caused by similar preconditions. You’re not offering the contradiction you appear to be claiming.
Your statement is implying all humans must only focus on the one most pressing moral issue of the time. This is simply an absurd notion.
Why should veterinarians exist? After all, people are still getting sick and dying.
Why devote medical research to the flu? Cancer is much more deadly and still exists.
Why fight for marriage equality in the US? Homosexuals are stoned to death in other countries.
If you're trying to imply some sort of hypocrisy, you've also run afoul of a logical fallacy. Hypocrisy would imply that the individuals granting an orangutan rights are the same people denying immigrants rights. But they almost certainly are not, and you have no evidence that they are. Hypocrisy doesn't apply to groups of uncoordinated individuals.
(Moreover, the rights were granted by a judge in Argentina. No-one's claiming that the US plans to recognize those rights. So I really don't know what your comment is getting at.)
You are using your perfectly logical reasoning to hide how horrible beings humans are. We show compassion for orangutans and care for the environment. And we can carry on normal productive lives while horrendous pain is inflicted to millions of other human beings, and this pain should be so unbeareable for ourselves that it would hoard all of our attention.
This orangutan was born in captivity, sold, had a baby in captivity, had her baby sold and taken from her, and now she’s gained some respect of her life in a sanctuary for her kind. It’s actually pretty high up in the scale of bad things that humanity does to itself.
No one is trying to hide anything, and your "we do this but not that" language obscures the issue.
We show compassion for animals, and also brutalize them. We care for the environment, and destroy it. We fight for human rights, and ignore human rights, and actively abuse human rights. A lot more people need to move towards the good sides of those spectra. This is a small and local movement, probably not one that will have a major effect; we shouldn't let it distract us, obviously, but I think we can still appreciate it.
I still fail to see how people fail to realize this point. Perhaps you can argue that the whole prison system needs to be reformed, but to make a special case for refugees from the south goes against fundamental laws that the US has. I feel like I’m in the minority for thinking that immigrants are welcome and great, so long as they’re legal. Dealing with illegal immigrating is something nobody wants to do. Nobody wakes up in the morning and hopes that we have a border crisis. However, laws need to be enforced, and clearly the treatment of these individuals does not deter the countless daily immigrants who nevertheless choose- willingly- to take the risk. I say all this as a legal immigrant to this country, for which I am eternally grateful and cognizant of my luck.
> clearly the treatment of these individuals does not deter the countless daily immigrants who nevertheless choose- willingly- to take the risk
Have you ever met a refugee? I suspect not. Every refugee I’ve ever met had no interest in leaving their country but felt they had to for the safety of their family. They’re well aware they’re breaking the law and the consequences they face if they get caught. But when you’re desperate even the possibility of your family being separated and caged and treated entirely inhumanely is a better prospect than sticking around a war-torn country or a dangerous political environment.
Should we jail the starving person who steals a loaf of bread? The homeless person who “camps” without a permit? The old man with cancer and without health insurance who politely and half-heartedly attempts robs a bank in order to get access to health care[1]? Maybe that last one, sadly. But my point is that desperation can make a “criminal” out of anyone.
Edit - Link to the unfortunately true story for anyone interested.
Where and how do we draw the line, as a country? I can empathize with the struggle of refugees. Is the answer open borders? I would think not, but then, what is?
There’s an argument for open borders. Immigration grows markets directly. Especially when population growth is negative as it is. The push against immigration isn’t rooted in economic reasonings.
Where I see a lack is in jobs and job growth. But jobs will definitely be created in response to the demand created by new people. Immigrants are even better than population growth through having babies because immigrants come from a distribution of ages. So demand growth isn’t concentrated at things babies want but closer to what all people want.
Edit-this is particularly helpful to grow the social security revenue.
I feel the only moral option for refugees has been enshrined in plain text of the treaties and is well established in precedent for the value of human life. It is akin to complaining about firefighter's hoses and people fleeing burning buildings tracking mud into their yards and concluding armed men should be set up around the perimeter to prevent mud from being tracked in. It is callousness and detachment without reason. Thus the only reasonable and humane response is utter harshness and ridicule to those who support and normalize it.
Fuck your stupid borders you selfish stupid cunts. Don't you dare to complain about civility or harsh language when people's lives are in imminent danger is the height of moral obscenity.
(At the risk of wading into a topic that can easily go off the rails, I'll preface this by saying that I'm absolutely in the minority here, but...)
I really wouldn't have a problem with open borders at all. In fact, I think it makes sense from a humanitarian and an economic perspective.
We have open borders between and among the states in the U.S. and it works great. Same goes for the E.U. And the internet is basically a giant borderless market for information. I'd even go so far as to say that the internet has suffered real harm over the last decade or so as governments have been forcing internet service providers to arbitrarily "recognize" borders more frequently.
Free trade is good economic policy. Why does that somehow not apply when it comes to the free movement of people? And for the most part we actually do allow "people" to freely cross borders - as long as they're a legal person and not a natural person. A corporation can enter just about any market with an afternoon's worth of paperwork.
I'm just not sure I see the distinction that justifies the free movement of information, goods, and services but not the free movement of labor.
And, of course, economics aside, I'm one of those "crazy" people who believes that if we have the means to help someone, we should. If we have the choice between showing hospitality or hostility to an uninvited guest I'd much rather take the opportunity to make a new friend.
Very few people are for open borders. Humane treatment of human beings is what so many people are for. If you don't like the possibility of immigration for those in desperate straits, you should talk about that reality instead of arguing it's open borders or nothing.
If a person takes his baby to rob a bank or commits any other arrestable offence and there is no other family available to take the child, then the child will end up in government custody. I concur that it is a sad and unfortunate result, but it's necessary supposing you don't want bringing a minor along to be a free pass for committing crimes. Since that policy creates incentives for endangering children, I strongly oppose it and anyone else who cares about the welfare of children should too.
edit: I debated posting and then deleting this with myself quite a lot, but I'm going to leave it because I think it's important to consider more than just first order effects to protect child welfare, which is something we (I hope) all want.
I agree with everything you said, of course, that if a crime is committed and nobody is left to look after the child, the child becomes a ward of the state. They don't go to county lockup, they end up in the foster care system. It certainly doesn't provide a free pass to commit crimes in a "you can do literally anything you want so long as you've got a baby on you" haha. Either way the consequences are negative to the child and the child is also innocent. That is definitely sad and unfortunate.
In the case of legitimate refugees seeking asylum, fleeing war-torn areas, the worst case outcome of ending up in a prison in the US may be a better outcome than near-certain death at home, which is why asylum seekers do so, and why the program exists in the first place. I think very few people in the US actually internalize and recognize this.
It's also important to remember that some half of all illegal immigrants in the US are visa overstays, and assuming they did intend to leave when they originally spoke with a border guard, merely being in the US while out of status is not a criminal matter, it's a civil matter, like a traffic ticket. This was addressed in 2012 in Arizona v. USA. Congress has repeatedly refused to criminalize unlawful presence. It's a criminal matter if you lie to a border guard, if you enter without inspection, or try to re-enter after deportation. [1]
This ignores the objective truth that despite your intentions children are being harmed intentionally by the state. Stop pretending to care, it’s deceitful.
> If a person takes his baby to rob a bank or commits any other arrestable offence and there is no other family available to take the child, then the child will end up in government custody.
"Government custody" in that case will most likely not involve being crammed into an overcrowded cage without sufficient food, blankets, or sanitation for weeks. When we get angry about border detention today, it's not because it exists, as it has for decades. It's because the way detainees are treated has changed suddenly and dramatically for the worse.
And there's a huge difference between a robber bringing their baby along, and a parent struggling to get their children out of a broken nation where their health and survival are at risk. Nobody jumps the border for funsies. The law has no obligation to treat these people and bank-robbing thugs exactly the same.
No, the trespasser commenter's personal preconceived notions and views about what humanity is and the responsibilities of a society to its out-group de jour are enable their vitriol. They've been lead to believe "outgroup bad, America good" by what tends to be a right-wing media following. You're not going to successfully fight nativism/tribalism this way. I'm not sure why you keep stapling unrelated issues together, it's possible to have more than one problem at a time.
I'm not sure how you got that out of what I said. I said that human rights are valuable and animal rights are valuable, and that we should pursue both simultaneously. It's possible to have -- and try to fix -- more than one problem at a time. Pursuing one does not cheapen the other, and one isn't a precondition to the other. They're disjoint sets.
At the hour of my posting this comment, all of its siblings fail to appreciate that the parent points out an irony (one that absolutely is there by the way) and does nothing much else. It's not a policy recommendation. It doesn't mount a logical argument as to relative priority of problems. All of that stuff has to be inferred by the reader. Some of it perhaps we are intended to infer, but the writer's intent also, would have to be inferred by the reader. It's not even really a piece of 'logic' at all; that square peg has to be round-holed by the reader. The only thing it actually says (and I encourage people to try to mostly stick to that in general) is to point out the irony, which I think is absolutely worth pointing out given the well-meaning but frankly ridiculous context. The thing that makes it ridiculous in fact is this very irony. It sucks to have your Saturday feel-goods about the emancipated orangutan shit-upon, but after a while you learn that life is full of these little ironies, and it's an acquired taste, and like anything that's worth doing or living or having, the contradictions make it richer and you appreciate it more.
Exactly. I, the parent, have probably the same opinions on policy of animal captivity as those who disagreed that I should have said a thing. Those who can't see the point I was making are precisely those who enable the kinds of atrocities looked back on with the thought "how could they let that happen?".
You mean those that enter a country illegally? As an American if I were to do that in any 1st world country I would be detained and deported. What this article and conversation is about is that a non-human has essentially been given “basic” rights.
By determining that all animals are sentient beings, would putting a plough on a cow to farm a piece of land then be viewed as a form of indentured servitude, what about harvesting honey from beehives, spraying bug spray could be viewed as some form of genocide? Where is the line drawn?
80 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 68.3 ms ] threadThe time for animals of this cognitive and social level to be granted special protected rights and respect seems long overdue.
It’s time to open the blinders.
If it were truly human level rights bestiality laws would be unconstitutional in that context for one. Orangutans would be allowed to vote (only age, citizenship, and possible felon status are valid qualifiers and not mental competency), and we would arrest orangutans for committing crimes against organutans and allow them to face their accusers in court. To be found incompetent to stand trial would require special casing for every last incident.
I think the Old Testament has interesting things to say on this topic: "Everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea are under your authority. "
In a lot of ways Judaism and what it evolved into is the unreligion religion. Events in it, like the plagues of Egypt, are digs at the asinine nature of contemporary customs. E.g. the frogs were a plague because the frogs were sacred and could not be killed. In general the Abrahamic God doesn't want you fettering your wealth away on complicated rituals.
In the West, you can usually see a split between people who view animals largely as property and those that don't. The latter concern me, because although I can oppose wanton cruelty -- when it comes down to it, there are people, and not people. And if I need to get rid of property because I can't maintain it, I should be able to do so.
This is a sentient creature, and - leaving aside the clear ethical questions that raises - considering our not always entirely inspirational stewardship of the planet and the creatures on it, I question your support for consigning it all to the cold classification of "property".
They're appealing to emotion by (re)stating that bad things can happen to nonpersons and that the nonpersons have some capacity to feel bad about those things. Which is true and not really disputed.
But the counterargument of the relative importance isn't being addressed. Why should we have laws on this?
As an extreme example, if someone kills puppies for fun they're probably not a great person. At the same time I do not know of a good legal framework to handle this. Relying on people thinking to themselves "that guy kills puppies for fun and may not be a great person" seems the more robust solution. Even then, what is fun? People selectively breeding dogs sometimes kill litters. If you keep people from killing puppies (for potentially good reasons) you have in a roundabout way made certain animal husbandry illegal.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100715
One problematic reply I think is:
>We should fix both immediate problems and the fundamental ethics issues that perpetuate an exploitative mindset. Animal rights are part of that.
Until we have a really good test for animal intelligence and some tractable way to map that to utility I think this is seriously misguided. At the end of the day the wants of a human supersede the wants of an orangutan, even if only by force. Do I think there is much utility in how this orangutan was treated? Not really. But am I allowed to exploit the orangutan? Yes, to the same extent I have a right to life.
Jesus fucking christ man. You religious people are the worst. Preaching about morality but behaving/thinking like savages.
So yes, at this point I think people occupy a privileged position in ethical considerations. If you saved an orangutan over a human most people would question your motives and some locales would try you for at least manslaughter.
Or perhaps you are comfortable making sweeping generalizations about abstract sets of people.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony
Orangutan is granted rights, and as a result is moved to a jurisdiction where the rights do not apply.
But yea, long overdue monkey rights.
If we were to follow your logic we'd never make any progress in any laws.
But I suspect your lack of support for the rights in this case is not actually connected to the false equivalence you have drawn to undermine it.
If that doesn't annoy you, you are warped.
It's reasonable to say that the overall efforts towards things should be proportional to the amount and degree of injustice, but it's not useful to mock people who are concerned about a specific problem.
HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Don't dare "logical fallacy" me.
Why should veterinarians exist? After all, people are still getting sick and dying.
Why devote medical research to the flu? Cancer is much more deadly and still exists.
Why fight for marriage equality in the US? Homosexuals are stoned to death in other countries.
If you're trying to imply some sort of hypocrisy, you've also run afoul of a logical fallacy. Hypocrisy would imply that the individuals granting an orangutan rights are the same people denying immigrants rights. But they almost certainly are not, and you have no evidence that they are. Hypocrisy doesn't apply to groups of uncoordinated individuals.
(Moreover, the rights were granted by a judge in Argentina. No-one's claiming that the US plans to recognize those rights. So I really don't know what your comment is getting at.)
We show compassion for animals, and also brutalize them. We care for the environment, and destroy it. We fight for human rights, and ignore human rights, and actively abuse human rights. A lot more people need to move towards the good sides of those spectra. This is a small and local movement, probably not one that will have a major effect; we shouldn't let it distract us, obviously, but I think we can still appreciate it.
They are not innocent, they are trespassers.
Have you ever met a refugee? I suspect not. Every refugee I’ve ever met had no interest in leaving their country but felt they had to for the safety of their family. They’re well aware they’re breaking the law and the consequences they face if they get caught. But when you’re desperate even the possibility of your family being separated and caged and treated entirely inhumanely is a better prospect than sticking around a war-torn country or a dangerous political environment.
Should we jail the starving person who steals a loaf of bread? The homeless person who “camps” without a permit? The old man with cancer and without health insurance who politely and half-heartedly attempts robs a bank in order to get access to health care[1]? Maybe that last one, sadly. But my point is that desperation can make a “criminal” out of anyone.
Edit - Link to the unfortunately true story for anyone interested.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nc-man-allegedly-robs...
Where I see a lack is in jobs and job growth. But jobs will definitely be created in response to the demand created by new people. Immigrants are even better than population growth through having babies because immigrants come from a distribution of ages. So demand growth isn’t concentrated at things babies want but closer to what all people want.
Edit-this is particularly helpful to grow the social security revenue.
Fuck your stupid borders you selfish stupid cunts. Don't you dare to complain about civility or harsh language when people's lives are in imminent danger is the height of moral obscenity.
(At the risk of wading into a topic that can easily go off the rails, I'll preface this by saying that I'm absolutely in the minority here, but...)
I really wouldn't have a problem with open borders at all. In fact, I think it makes sense from a humanitarian and an economic perspective.
We have open borders between and among the states in the U.S. and it works great. Same goes for the E.U. And the internet is basically a giant borderless market for information. I'd even go so far as to say that the internet has suffered real harm over the last decade or so as governments have been forcing internet service providers to arbitrarily "recognize" borders more frequently.
Free trade is good economic policy. Why does that somehow not apply when it comes to the free movement of people? And for the most part we actually do allow "people" to freely cross borders - as long as they're a legal person and not a natural person. A corporation can enter just about any market with an afternoon's worth of paperwork.
I'm just not sure I see the distinction that justifies the free movement of information, goods, and services but not the free movement of labor.
And, of course, economics aside, I'm one of those "crazy" people who believes that if we have the means to help someone, we should. If we have the choice between showing hospitality or hostility to an uninvited guest I'd much rather take the opportunity to make a new friend.
edit: I debated posting and then deleting this with myself quite a lot, but I'm going to leave it because I think it's important to consider more than just first order effects to protect child welfare, which is something we (I hope) all want.
In the case of legitimate refugees seeking asylum, fleeing war-torn areas, the worst case outcome of ending up in a prison in the US may be a better outcome than near-certain death at home, which is why asylum seekers do so, and why the program exists in the first place. I think very few people in the US actually internalize and recognize this.
It's also important to remember that some half of all illegal immigrants in the US are visa overstays, and assuming they did intend to leave when they originally spoke with a border guard, merely being in the US while out of status is not a criminal matter, it's a civil matter, like a traffic ticket. This was addressed in 2012 in Arizona v. USA. Congress has repeatedly refused to criminalize unlawful presence. It's a criminal matter if you lie to a border guard, if you enter without inspection, or try to re-enter after deportation. [1]
[1] https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/mar/15/fl...
"Government custody" in that case will most likely not involve being crammed into an overcrowded cage without sufficient food, blankets, or sanitation for weeks. When we get angry about border detention today, it's not because it exists, as it has for decades. It's because the way detainees are treated has changed suddenly and dramatically for the worse.
And there's a huge difference between a robber bringing their baby along, and a parent struggling to get their children out of a broken nation where their health and survival are at risk. Nobody jumps the border for funsies. The law has no obligation to treat these people and bank-robbing thugs exactly the same.
Human rights for humans. Until that's the case, your monkey debates enables vitriol like the trespasser comment.
Riiight.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21100636 and marked it off-topic.
Deluding the meaning of what a person is or what is not doesn’t look like a good idea in the long run.
This statement you're making today might be constructed has hate-speech toward non-human people in the future.
Or is this a person without the full breadth of human rights?
It's not enough to say 'legally a person,' you must say 'person' without any qualification whatsoever.
> Or is this a person without the full breadth of human rights?
Rights are for peoples or persons, not humans.
Sounds like a fun place to work