(it was a toss up between that and ‘‘Survival Of The Tastiest’’, but that’s a bit more Natural Science.)
In my opinion, the human taste for the flesh of the cow is the best thing that has ever happened to that species.
Before responsible human farming, tastiness was a disadvantage. Now it’s great because we will preserve it as long as we desire it.
The same thing goes for the preservation of national parks for recreation, this preserves the habitat of many species.
If panda’s were tasty, it’s a sure thing that there’d be more of them around.
So much for consciencious preservation.
My question is: Have we become the ‘‘Ark’’ species, not because of our consciences, but because of our indulgence? And if we preserve, then who is the strongest species?
Would it be the best thing for us if an alien civilization came here, bred us for specific traits - docility, huge udders, whatever - because they found both our meat and breast milk tasty?
If it happened relativeley, then we wouldn’t know if it happened. Do cows know what’s happened to them historically? I doubt it.
What’s the difference between preservation plus selective breeding, and survival of the fittest?
And the answer is yes. Unless we were a food fad, like fondu(is that how you spell that hot cheese and bread thing?).
Of course it would be. Whether or not it would cater to human indulgent desires is another question, but I’m talking evolution.
The span of the human species would be greatly increased.
And again, the answer is yes.
And yet we would resist this with great energy and vigor. I certainly would. It sounds like you are saying that survival is THE criterion to use when judging outcomes. I disagree.
Your first argument is that the cows do not remember. Does this mean that if someone bopped you over the head, took you to a ‘human farm’, after operating on the memory centers of your brain, it would be OK as long as you survived? Or are there perhaps other criteria people, and even you, use to evaluate the goodness of an outcome?
If it was aliens who were running this ‘human farm’ perhaps their technology would seem to guarantee humans - who would be rapidly changing into something different from what humans are now - a greater liklihood of long term survival. Of course, would it be humans that survived, or something else? would it be you?
You seem to think that I’m theorising a sci-fi movie.
I’m talking about how we impact evolution through our psychology.
I said: Do cows know what’s happened to them historically.
I did not say: Do cows remember what has happened to them.
Cows have memory, but not memoirs.
Cows have history, not historians.
That was my point.
You’d resist it. That’d be the shortest action movie ever.
You’re thinking of an alien race using methods similar to our methods of domestication. They wouldn’t.
If the alien race did decide to use us for food cause we were tasty, I’m thinking that they’d take pretty effective precautions to failure and the ability to enforce those precautions.
That’s just ignorant.
That’s the point of evolution. Nothing stays the same. If the human species continues to evolve, do you think that they will look anything like us? Give me a break.
No. I never thought this. I imagined a scenario where we would be in a similar situation to the cows to show the problems with what you consider to be obvious values. I came up with the sci-fi scenario. I never thought yours was sci-fi because, well, I’m aware that we have domesticated cows, etc.
Yes, I understood that. Thus they have no collective memory of ‘being free’ or whatever other value laden judgment one might make about a pre-domestication existence. However the implication was that since they do not remember anything else, it is really the best thing. IOW if one does not have a memory of a another state of life to compare the current one then it can be the best even though one might not choose it if one knew about the others.
But this does not make sense, since you, a being who does know about domesticated and wild existences, are saying that one is better than the other. Your criteria: population levels and long term survival.
But as I have pointed out there are other possible criteria which, in fact, many humans, if not most, would prioritize.
Which is irrelevent even if it was, for some reason, necessarily true. My resistance, which would be the rule rather than the exception for humans in general, indicates values that you are not including in your evaluation of what is best.
Read your own OP where you can see the implication that the ‘wild cows’ (and pandas) had a problem with being tasty and now they don’t because it makes us breed them. Given the title of the thread the implication is that the fact that they are tasty is good for the species, period. As if they were the same then. Those cows who were tasty pre domestication are not the cows we have now. So you set up the changeless scenario and it was that I was responding to.
We, now, are the counterpart to the non-domesticated cow. You, personally, would not see it as a problem if an alien race came and domesticated us for food. You will not find many people who will agree with this, nor will there be many humans who will say ‘human burgers would be best because they insure our long term survival and proliferation on the various planets in this alien race’s empire.’
No. Most humans would prefer the scenario where they are not domesticated even though this might mean their chances of long term survival and short term proliferation around the galaxy were reduced or eliminated.
This,
and the emoticon were unnecessary.
It would make your case stronger if you either 1) disagreed with me and said that most people would agree with you or 2) admitted that most people would resist domestication themselves and then go ahead and explain why most people are wrong about this. To simply skip past this seems disingenuous.
If you do agree that most people would resist domestication and you make a case for their values being incorrect, you leave yourself open to the criticism that you are taking a subjective stance - your belief that proliferation is THE criterion - and saying that other people’s values - which are also subjective are objectively wrong. Which means you are saying that your values are objective. How does on go about proving that one’s values are objective?
Neither one of them allows for judgments of best. You are bring a moral or value judgment in. Once you open that door, other people get to weigh in with their values. Their values may not be, and quite clearly are not, the same as yours. This can be seen in your acceptance of being domesticated yourself if it aided the spread of ‘your’ dna.
The title of the thread implies that from the Cows perspective - as if it could compare its domestic life with its predomestication life - being tasty to humans and thus domesticated is good.
But the cow that was wild is not the cow that is now. It changes as you reminded me, for some reason, but did not seem to notice yourself.
Your value system in this arguement seems to be personal, or from the perspective of no value.
A more vulnerable species(cow, chicken, wheat, rice) is safe-guarded(because of their usefullness) by less vulnerable species(human).
This now means that the more vulnerable species becomes less vulnerable and closer to as vulnerable as the less vulnerable species.
Vulnerability. Vulnerable to what? To environmental changes, a.k.a the agent of natural selection.
Thus, through the more vulnerable species’ usefullness(ie; tastiness, nutritional value, etc) and not it’s genes does it achieve a better chance of survival of the species and progeny.
We are less vulnerable because we can understand and therefore manipulate our environment to our advantage in terms of survival of the species and progeny, a rare ability, and one to which we are uniquely adept.
Survival of the species and progeny are the goals of all life-forms, always will be, with the latter being foremost.
This is my arguement’s value base.
My arguement is in terms of evolution.
I’m beginning to think that i’ve somehow led you to believe that my arguement attempts to be universal. Is this the case?
Believe me, I’m not that naive.
I think Daniel Dennett once said the human taking over of the lives of sheep has been of overall benefit to them. Same goes for cows.
If powerful aliens came to this planet and “farmed” us like we farm cattle, it would probably be a good thing (as long as they let us enjoy ourselves during our lives). It would be the end of war, the end of famine, and the end of inequality.
Which is precisely what fascists and other utopians promise. Me, personally, I would not think this was best. I enjoy my freedom and I do not want to be bred for docility, amongst other traits. As one example.
I am not sure what you mean by universal, here. Perhaps.
But even in terms of evolution your argument has problems. 1) who knows what will happen next 2) the cows are not what they were, so one cannot argue that it is they who benefit. What the species was in the wild is not what it is now. So this predomestication animal either no longer exists or a new animal was created via breeding. If the latter, then it is not better for the wild animal. If the former it is not better for the wild animal.
There’s an important difference between those aliens and fascists/utopians - the latter are human. A species can’t apply eugenics to itself very well, but it can be applied to it by another species. So we wouldn’t have to worry about C20-style cock-ups.
But you raise a good in point about docility. They probably would breed us towards some ideal that would suit them better than us, so yes, maybe the farming thing wouldn’t be so good after all.
Our only experience of this application to other species is where we have done it. Hence we are inclined to view the results as positive, but this positive is hardly objective. Also there are plenty of questionable examples - take a variety of small dog breeds as one example - where even some of us recognize that errors have been made. No reason to idealize the aliens. They may be ahead of us with technology but no more mature. Hell, they might breed us for our hides for truly ridiculous fashion statements. I mean, look where some of our culture is heading - is it really more mature than, say, the Roman Empire’s.
and perhaps even some pan-alien council - iow a group with a perspective approaching objectivity - would come along and consider what they transformed us into as rather gauche or offensive.