It's stated in the study[0] that the pigs were not locating the food by smell.
But ignoring that test for a moment, you haven't really responded to any of the other points.
Or how would you respond to the fact that our law acknowledges that animals experience pain.
Your line of reasoning is a logical fallacy that a lot of us make.
But that line of reasoning has allowed major atrocities in the past, i.e. objectifying other sentient beings or comparing them to lower forms of life like cockroaches, justified their immoral actions.
Holocaust survivors are drawing comparisons with what is happening in the factory farm industry to what happened to them in concentration camps [1].
IIsaac Bashevis Singer said: ‘For the animals, life is an eternal Treblinka,’. It's a bitter pill to swallow if you look at it from that perspective.
I know winning arguments might be important here on HN, but I'm not sharing this information to win arguments.
I'm encouraging you to watch Earthlings and to see how your humane side reacts to what you see. Do you really agree that it's OK how we treat other non-human animals, just because we can't prove (yet) that they don't experience pain like humans do? What if they experience it even more severely - hence why they scream when we hurt them.
But you might just not care about animal cruelty. If so, do you care about our biosphere[2] or do you care about the people having to work in the factory farm industry. Slaughterhouse workers experience PTSD. Could you work in that environment - killing and gutting hundreds of animals?
Future humans most likely will claim that the way we treat farm animals is immoral[3], the same way we say that slavery in the past and now is immoral.
Moral progress is important - it's what makes us human.
But ignoring that test for a moment, you haven't really responded to any of the other points.
Or how would you respond to the fact that our law acknowledges that animals experience pain.
Your line of reasoning is a logical fallacy that a lot of us make.
But that line of reasoning has allowed major atrocities in the past, i.e. objectifying other sentient beings or comparing them to lower forms of life like cockroaches, justified their immoral actions.
Holocaust survivors are drawing comparisons with what is happening in the factory farm industry to what happened to them in concentration camps [1].
IIsaac Bashevis Singer said: ‘For the animals, life is an eternal Treblinka,’. It's a bitter pill to swallow if you look at it from that perspective.
I know winning arguments might be important here on HN, but I'm not sharing this information to win arguments.
I'm encouraging you to watch Earthlings and to see how your humane side reacts to what you see. Do you really agree that it's OK how we treat other non-human animals, just because we can't prove (yet) that they don't experience pain like humans do? What if they experience it even more severely - hence why they scream when we hurt them.
But you might just not care about animal cruelty. If so, do you care about our biosphere[2] or do you care about the people having to work in the factory farm industry. Slaughterhouse workers experience PTSD. Could you work in that environment - killing and gutting hundreds of animals?
Future humans most likely will claim that the way we treat farm animals is immoral[3], the same way we say that slavery in the past and now is immoral.
Moral progress is important - it's what makes us human.
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[0] Pigs learn what a mirror image represents and use it to obtain information https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...
[1] https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/108867/
[2] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environme...
[3] Dietary Requirements of a Starfleet Officer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS7NRtEJBcA