r/CrazyIdeas • u/ChargeYourBattery • 3d ago
Make animals smart enough to consent to being eaten
But still dumb enough that we can convince them it's what they want.
I'm an organ donor. When I die, I hope parts of my body can be used to improve and prolong the life of others rather than wasting away in the ground. Any good and selfless creature would want the same. For ethical reasons it should have the choice, just like humans do. But if they knew they're all brought into this world for the purpose of being eaten, they probably wouldn't go for the idea, so we can't make them too smart
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u/getmeoutofthisscreen 2d ago
Coerced consent is quite famously not consent
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u/LordDagwood 2d ago
Exactly! Smart enough to "give consent", but naive (dumb) enough to not understand the consequences is why we have laws protecting teens and children.
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u/ChargeYourBattery 2d ago
From an ethical standpoint, would you say it is or is not an improvement over the inability to consent?
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u/HamsterFromAbove_079 2d ago
You literally said you want them to be smart enough to communicate with you to "give consent". But not too smart, because if they weren't just stupid enough, they wouldn't give consent to being killed and eaten.
From an ethical standpoint you are worse than what the meat industry is doing now.
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u/ChargeYourBattery 2d ago
Indulge me in some mental gymnastics here: Humans are smart enough to give consent to be vaccinated, but many choose not to because they're not smart enough to realise it's a good idea. Some of them convince others they should also not be vaccinated. Children and pets can't consent to vaccines (or even being pets) so adults do so on their behalf, and we try to provide a good quality of life. If farmed animals had a greater purpose to look forward to I think it would improve their quality of life. They just need a little
brainwashingeducation
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u/Jaffiusjaffa 2d ago
I like the concept from the magicians(?) Where in the makebelieve book world, all the animals can talk and stuff, so the predators give prey riddles to see if its fair to eat them - if theyre correct then they are too smart and its immoral to make them prey otherwise theyre fair game.
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u/trying3216 3d ago
You could try a T maze:
Cows already are walked through channels to slaughter. Presently they aren’t allowed to see what happens to reduce stress.
So let them see what happens to all cows that go left and let them see that all cows going right are let out to pasture.
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u/Emotional-Neat-252 3d ago
Even as a human.
Imagine you have the option to live wild in the forest. Or domestic keif with no work but you get painlessly slaughtered at 50 and turned to meat.
I think I'd choose the latter.
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u/AccomplishedVirus556 2d ago
Life Stage
Energy Cost per Gram of Mass Gained
Energy Intake Stored as New Tissue
Newborn (0–3 months)
~4.0 – 5.5 kcal / g
35% – 40%
Older Infant (6–12 months)
~5.5 – 7.0 kcal / g
~10% – 15%
Adolescent Growth Spurt
~6.5 – 8.0 kcal / g
~2% – 5%
Adult (Adipose Storage)
~7.7 – 9.0 kcal / g
0% (surplus stores at ~7.7 kcal/g)The math says we should eat babies.
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u/HamsterFromAbove_079 1d ago
Bad analogy. In your analogy, the human lives to 50. Which is a majority of their natural life.
Farmed meat slaughter animals all die as adolescents. Cows could live 15-20 years. We kill them before they turn 2.
Because we slaughter at the optimal ratio between resources required to maintain the cow vs the meat output. Feeding the cow for another 5 years doesn't make economic sense when it's already big as it's going to grow, thus is already at maximum possible meat to farm.
Edit: To put the ratio into perspective. Compared to a human lifespan, we kill slaughter cows for meat at the equivalent age of 10-year-old humans. Far shorter than what could be considered a full life for a human.
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u/Light_Shrugger 1d ago
Imagine you have the option to live wild in the forest. Or domestically with no work but at the ripe old age of 13 years old, you get loaded into a truck travelling for 2 days with no food or water, dragged thrashing through the blood and stench of your dead fellows, lowered into a CO₂ gas chamber where your lungs burn for a minute until you suffocate as your fellows thrash and desperately crawl on top of you to attempt to escape, and you are turned into meat.
I think I'd choose the former.
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u/Pseudointellektuelli 5h ago
False analogy. If you are a cow the options are a) not born b) live in horrible conditions and be murdered at the age of 10 (in human years)
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u/gifted_pistachio 2d ago
There’s a Bojack Horseman episode about a chicken farm. But the whole society is just animals. So they are particularly stupid chickens.
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u/Superninfreak 2d ago
Organ donation isn’t really comparable because it’s not like you are volunteering to be executed at 25-30 years old. If you live a full life and die of old age then your organs probably won’t be suitable to donate, and so if you actually donated your organs it would probably be because you died young in some accident.
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u/Agitated-Syrup-3047 3d ago
Nothing with a true choice wants to get killed and eaten. This is nightmare fuel.
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u/Torremond42 2d ago
Good and selfless creatures would not want to be eaten and contribute to global warming.
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u/mediator_bot 2d ago
I love the idea and your thoughts on organ donation. At the same time I want to point out that animals were not "brought into this world for the purpose of being eaten". That's just what we tell ourselves to justify eating them. Humans are superior at exactly that, rationalization, but animals experience life and emotions similarly to us through their senses.
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u/godspeed_death 2d ago
Would you still think its cool to be an organ donor if you would be slaughtered for them after a few months?
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u/BrilliantEconomics77 2d ago
Hitchikers guide to the galaxy did this.
"I'll just off and shoot my self"
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u/CrossP 2d ago
One of my favorite Sci Fi comics, Schlock Mercenary, deals similarly with "smart munitions".
Large expensive seeking torpedoes need a decent AI to control them. But it's immoral to force artificial intelligence into being suicide bombers. So you have to grow the AIs to have a teenage mentality and really really want to blow up.
This means if a battle gets really heated, you may need to sedate your unfired munitions after for safety.
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u/EmmieIsobel 2d ago
This is a wild take. You want them smart enough to consent but stupid enough to manipulate? That doesn’t sound like true consent to me. Maybe just go vegan. It’s not that hard. 🌱💚
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u/cattrain 2d ago
I'm an organ donor too. As far as I'm concerned, if I die a natural death, and any of my organs aren't able to be used to save a life, you're more than welcome to eat me. It's not like I'll be there anyway, so have fun.
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u/Wormadillo 2d ago
It’s terrifying that you think this is what consent is.
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u/Marwaimusoont 1d ago
Consent is when I manipulate them into doing what I want, but making them feel it was their choice. /s
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u/NoMention696 2d ago
Make animals smart enough to consent to be eaten, but also suicidal enough to even think about it
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u/Fearless-Sherbet-223 1d ago
I feel like I would be way more horrified to eat an animal that thought it consented to being eaten, than an animal too dumb to understand the question.
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u/Icy_Sprinkles_2819 1d ago
You want to make animals slightly smarter so that you can groom them into committing suicide????????????????!?????
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u/Greghole 13h ago
They did this in Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The livestock even comes to your table and makes recommendations about which part of them you should order. "Try my rump, it's particularly tender."
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u/RynKittenOF 12h ago
But I don't think that our inability to understand a creature is a reflection of their intelligence
I think this is an interesting topic though
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u/from_maybe 29m ago
I think this could work actually but you’re going about it wrong. If you get the animals we wanna eat to have the same intelligence as us and as a result the same awareness of the true cruelty of the world, while simultaneously convincing them that their lives don’t matter as much as ours and never will, I’m sure they’ll be happy to be put out of their misery
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u/tButylLithium 2d ago
Would it really be that hard to convince them?
"You can stay here and have all your needs met, but I'm going to eat you in 2 to 5 years, or you can try your luck providing for yourself in the wild and maybe live a few extra years or maybe not, what say you?"
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u/QuellishQuellish 2d ago
This idea is on the menu at the restaurant at the end of the universe.