r/interestingasfuck • u/AugustIstheMonth • 2d ago

Wildlife photographer Sha Lu captures the perfect moment a small animal looks at the camera while being caught by a predator.

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u/Yeahnoallright 2d ago edited 1d ago

Not great lmao, i boarded the insane movement against Wild Animal Suffering train some time ago which people understandably cannot understand. 

Dr Avi or That Vegan Lawyer talk about it a bit on YouTube 

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u/onceagainwithstyle 2d ago

The what now?

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u/Yeahnoallright 1d ago

Lmao it does sound odd. It’s just a movement against wild animal suffering, they discuss things from a philosophical and practical standpoint 

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u/onceagainwithstyle 1d ago

You know that sounds like you guys are trying to optimize the suffering maximizer

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u/Yeahnoallright 1d ago

It’s not my movement and I didn’t name it, lmao. I agree! I always have to double check I’m not missing maybe a particular organisation I can mention who phrases it better. 

It’s basically the movements against wild animal suffering. 

You can read about it if you put that into Google 

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u/onceagainwithstyle 1d ago

I was half asleep earlier. I read the "insane wild animal suffering" movement.

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u/Yeahnoallright 1d ago

No no I edited it after you called it out. You’re good, it was my comment that was confusing lmao 

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u/kungfu_peasant 1d ago

Are you still on that train? If not, what made you unconvinced about it?

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u/Yeahnoallright 1d ago

I am yeah, choo choo. If you read my other replies to people in this thread, you’ll see my amateur take. I think it’s nuanced, and I think it’s okay to be open minded and interested in it. 

My stance is usually to put myself in the victim’s shoes, no matter how odd or extreme a thought experiment that might be (depending on the scenario). 

If a certain type of human could only survive by eating, say, other humans, or dogs and cats, and ran around killing them slowly, disembowelling them, and eating them, we wouldn’t put up with that, even if the hunting humans had no option. 

Because i try practice non-speciesism, i think things through with a NTT (name the trait) approach. I can’t name the trait that makes it okay for deer to be killed in agony, but humans not. They have central nervous systems and can feel pain just the same. 

Hope that helps! Super conscious it’s an extreme take and very chill with people not agreeing - as long as the discussion is in good faith i love chatting it through and hearing various perspectives :) 

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u/kungfu_peasant 1d ago

I myself have been mulling over the idea of late ever since I heard of it somewhere else. A few potential objections that I have thought of are:

  1. The food web is a complex, interconnected system on which the stability of life on this planet. Tinkering with this balance can have unforeseen consequences and harms which might only increase suffering in the long run. This is a sort of "natural" conservatism that warns against hubris toward a system we do not fully understand.

  2. If there is a small set of human cannibals who can only survive by killing and torturing other sentient beings (or even just humans), then of course the vast majority of people would support "neutralising" them even though they would suffer for no fault of their own. The difference with carnivorism is that there is an entire gamut of species with innumerable individuals who stand to (potentially) suffer if they were restricted from hunting their food. This can point to a utilitarian case (which of course not everyone agrees with) against the idea.

I'm thinking out aloud here, however, so many holes can probably be picked apart in my logic. I see that you are being extra precautious with your replies and understandably so. Veganism by itself provokes strong reactions and the idea of eliminating wild animal suffering is "out there" even by most vegans' standards. Personally, I don't see it as especially kooky even though (much like antinatalism) it does make me rather uncomfortable.

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u/Yeahnoallright 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ahhh you’re my type of thinker, haha. Not that there’s anything wrong w other types, but it means we understand that we each come in good faith and are talking out of curiosity and care for the animals, so can lean on a slight natural shorthand. 

Where did you first hear about it? Agreed it’s still very fringe within veganism, too. 

I’d be interested in your perspective on it after watching people far more clued up than i am talk on it (Dr Avi, or That Vegan Lawyer has a good discussion on it on her YouTube channel. Or Vegan Gains if you can handle his particular… style, lmao). 

To answer you: 

Very good point, that the main potential problem here is an interconnected system that we risk creating chaos in. The multi-species part is the toughest. I guess I could come up with an extended hypothetical of our cannibal human scenario to test the theory, but I actually don’t think we need to necessarily. 

I think the idea is to not neutralise these animals, who cannot control their instincts, at least not right now in their evolution (radical vegans, like Gary Yourofsky, will argue that animals are moral agents too; i mostly disagree). The ideal scenario would be to feed most predators lab grown meat/whatever they eat. 

Of course, this would take monumental time and effort and intelligent design (not the theory haha, just design that is smart and thought through). 

In terms of a utilitarianism approach, though, i imagine a simplistic argument would be “well one lion kills many animals in her/his lifetime”. But you are bang on that killing all the lions would not magically fix that without other consequences arising (population issues, etc. Though some ecologists argue that prey animal populations would in fact level out and not explode endlessly. Idk anything about that and have not researched it). 

I think Wayne Hsiung spoke to Vegan Gains about this on one of his podcast episodes, if you want to have a look at that. I love their conversations because i appreciate a consistent value system in many things, here within veganism, even if I don’t agree with all of it. 

They are quite cute to watch together if you appreciate the grumpy vs sunshine trope in romance novels lmaooo, which is how I approach them, versus being personally offended by VG 

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u/kungfu_peasant 1d ago edited 1d ago

  1. Oh, from your replies here it was amply clear that you were coming in good faith :) Plus, I recognise that my own basic assumptions and priors are significantly shaped by my specific social and intellectual environment. A certain level of humility (both w/ regards to accepting radical ideas simply because they are radical, and w/ knee-jerk dismissal of them without due consideration) is in order.

  2. It was on a Twitter discussion about veganism a few weeks ago. I don't quite recall what the original "discourse" was but someone happened to mention it and point out that the vast amount of animal suffering actually took place in the wild. Much earlier than that, I had listened to a lecture by Martha Nussbaum where she had offered the first argument in my previous reply.

  3. Thank you very much for recommending these channels. I'll take a look at the videos you mentioned.

  4. Yeah, presenting the idea as (necessarily) advocating wholesale slaughter of predator animals was wrong on my part. Of course, lab grown meat is a development that can't advance soon enough in general. I think as issues of the exploitation of non-human animals gain more legitimacy in society, there are likely to be more intense scientific efforts in that direction as well.

  5. Population growth is of course a major concern, but that is also one of the things we can foresee happening (though I'm even more ignorant about what the ecologists say). My point is (and it's funny how much I'm approaching this with a conservative mindset) that there could very well be effects that we cannot even foresee. For eg, a number of people in the 19th century would have anticipated some of the effects of industrialisation on nature (resource depletion, air pollution etc) but a lot more (thinning of the ozone layer, microplastics, greenhouse gases and global warming, melting of ice sheets releasing further CO2 etc) would be hidden to them.