This is what I meant by coherent. Maybe a very short* sighted hedonism could arrive at this conclusion, but if we prevented all carnivores from mauling all prey animals, can we say for certain it would not lead to a geater suffering? What happens to an ecosystem with no predators?
I think the idea is that you don’t really have a true ecosystem at that point. The idea basically contemplates turning the entire biosphere into something more like a managed garden than a wild space. Which is one of the reasons I brought up being nowhere near the technology required among other things, because to give the idea more than idle speculation, you’d essentially have to be able to artificially run the whole planet’s life support system without requiring a functional ecology to do it for you.
Hmm, if I stop one wolf from mauling one deer that’s less suffering for sure.
If we have to extend it to all such cases, it leads to interesting questions. How would we manage animal populations? How would we feed predators? Can these two goals be reached without suffering?
While the suffering is in some sense “natural”, it’s not clearly necessary. There was a time when some humans thought society couldn’t function without slaves, or with worker’s rights, or with women voting. But if we keep our minds open to ways of reducing suffering, we can find ways to make the world better.
Whether we have in mind a comprehensive and certain remedy, is independent of whether a problem exists though. If someone objects generally to suffering and/or death in a way that goes beyond only what’s directly in front of them, to be intellectually honest with themselves they would have to contend with the scale of brutality of the natural world and our existence.
“We must change everything to not work this way” seems like a very straightforwardly coherent conclusion. What end result would actually be ideal, and the issues of getting there, could be considered separately.
You artificially manage it, I guess? The whole world like some zoo.
Anyways, it seems like a pretty natural and normal thought to not want others to be murdered. Actually being able to do anything to prevent that without introducing all kinds of other ethical problems (in addition the technological and resource impracticalness of such), but if you don’t think, it makes sense.
This is what I meant by coherent. Maybe a very short* sighted hedonism could arrive at this conclusion, but if we prevented all carnivores from mauling all prey animals, can we say for certain it would not lead to a geater suffering? What happens to an ecosystem with no predators?
I think the idea is that you don’t really have a true ecosystem at that point. The idea basically contemplates turning the entire biosphere into something more like a managed garden than a wild space. Which is one of the reasons I brought up being nowhere near the technology required among other things, because to give the idea more than idle speculation, you’d essentially have to be able to artificially run the whole planet’s life support system without requiring a functional ecology to do it for you.
Hmm, if I stop one wolf from mauling one deer that’s less suffering for sure.
If we have to extend it to all such cases, it leads to interesting questions. How would we manage animal populations? How would we feed predators? Can these two goals be reached without suffering?
While the suffering is in some sense “natural”, it’s not clearly necessary. There was a time when some humans thought society couldn’t function without slaves, or with worker’s rights, or with women voting. But if we keep our minds open to ways of reducing suffering, we can find ways to make the world better.
Whether we have in mind a comprehensive and certain remedy, is independent of whether a problem exists though. If someone objects generally to suffering and/or death in a way that goes beyond only what’s directly in front of them, to be intellectually honest with themselves they would have to contend with the scale of brutality of the natural world and our existence.
“We must change everything to not work this way” seems like a very straightforwardly coherent conclusion. What end result would actually be ideal, and the issues of getting there, could be considered separately.
You artificially manage it, I guess? The whole world like some zoo.
Anyways, it seems like a pretty natural and normal thought to not want others to be murdered. Actually being able to do anything to prevent that without introducing all kinds of other ethical problems (in addition the technological and resource impracticalness of such), but if you don’t think, it makes sense.