Do you tend to dislike people who step on bugs?

Where would you draw the line between whether it is fine to crush something or not? If a human shrunk to the size of a bug in front of you would you crush it?

Such a discovery would be too rare to just crush. I would pocket him and then put him in a container in my room, where I could study him further.

So is it only the fact a shrunken person is “rare” that would stop you crushing them or would there be any other reasons?

Without any further information, there would be no reason to. If it were a tiny alien, I might try to sell access to them. If it were an actual person who somehow became ant-sized, I could think of all sorts of reasons to keep him (or her) trapped within a container and not tell anyone. I would keep them as a personal slave, forcing them to do the unspeakable. :evilfun:

So how exactly would an ant-sized person be useful to you as a slave if they are only the size of a bug? Would you still treat an ant-sized person with the same level of respect you would a human? Or would you treat them like dirt and torment them for your own entertainment? After all, an ant-sized person would be very insignificant compared to you so they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Yes, and I also tend to bug people who dislike steps.

Being small means they could get help clean those hard to reach places. I’m a pretty creative guy and can think of some chores for them to do. There’s earcanal duty, armpit duty, crotch duty, toejam duty… :evilfun:

Would be very unfortunate for a person the size of a bug if they were noticed by you haha. What would a bug-sized person’s daily life become once you had captured them apart from treating you like a God?

That might make you something like a Nazi, no?

[b]What Are The Nuremberg Code’s Ethical Guidelines For Research?
The Nuremberg Code aimed to protect human subjects from enduring the kind of cruelty and exploitation the prisoners endured at concentration camps. The 10 elements of the code are:

Voluntary consent is essential
The results of any experiment must be for the greater good of society
Human experiments should be based on previous animal experimentation
Experiments should be conducted by avoiding physical/mental suffering and injury
No experiments should be conducted if it is believed to cause death/disability
The risks should never exceed the benefits
Adequate facilities should be used to protect subjects
Experiments should be conducted only by qualified scientists
Subjects should be able to end their participation at any time
The scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment when injury, disability, or death is likely to occur[/b]

How about this…

Do you dislike people who eat bugs…and cows and pigs and chickens and fish?

Then taking that to this:

Should we dislike people who who eat bugs…and cows and pigs and chickens and fish?

Culminating then in this:

Should we punish people who who eat bugs…and cows and pigs and chickens and fish?

You all know my own “fractured and fragmented” reaction to questions such as this.

But at least I’m still looking to be…cured? :-k

Maybe but there would be no one to find out or punish me, or at least no one who mattered.

Fishing is an interesting question. A lot of people fish recreationally, having no intention to use the fish as a food source. Strangely, the activity is embraced. However, whether intended or not, fish which are caught can get injured and die in the process. Recreational does not mean “not lethal.” I assume everyone who does catch fish with the goal of releasing them is aware of that potential outcome. Yet its entertainment that is even ritualized as a method of “bonding” with others. And these are vertebrate organisms with a developed central nervous system which I must assume experiences pain. But people do this to “pass the time.” To them this activity is a “hobby.”

When I go to raise my shoe over a line of mindless ants during an outdoor lunch, the same guy who may look on with disdain may very well be someone who regularly fishes for sport instead of food. But why? Does it come down to a perceived difference in distress or terror caused between The Attack of the Giant Sneaker versus The Attack of the Giant Hook From Hell? Obviously I’m not a bug or a fish but given the choice, getting one’s face punctured by a hook and dragged 20 yards until its torn out and you can’t breathe seems way crueler than being quickly crushed by some giant white rubber thing.

Again, who knows?

Other than, of course, those who insist that they do know. Whether stepping on bugs, fishing or doing anything else that involves harming creatures other than ourselves, different individuals make different choices. And different individuals react to those choices differently.

And here I am with my “fractured and fragmented” “I” convinced that 1] individual reactions are rooted subjectively in dasein and 2] philosophers [among others] seem unable, using the tools at their disposal, to determine what all individuals ought to think and feel about human interactions with other animals.

If they wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings.

Only “I” go beyond that and suggest this quandary is true in regard to all contexts in which moral and political value judgments come into conflict.

Again, this thing:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Then I challenge others [especially the moral and political objectivists] to explain why their own sense of self is not “fractured and fragmented” like mine.

Bugs may be more sentient than we think.
I read a couple articles the other day, one was about how researchers discovered bees recognize each other’s faces and another about how ants become vastly more skilled at traversing terrain the older they get.

Just because they’re small and funny looking, doesn’t mean they’re insentient.
I mean sure, the smaller your brain, the less complicated it could be, but some insects like the eusocial ones (ants, bees, wasps) have a large brain for their size, and a large % of it that isn’t devoted to regulating physiology, sensation and basic instincts could be devoted to consciousness, memory, cognition and emotion, or something like them.
Also, insect physiology may be adept at packing a large number of neurons and subneurons into a small space.

We know so much more about ourselves, pets and cattle than than we do about bugs.
What we don’t know, we tend to oversimplify.

The word sentient (or insentient even) is problematic because people’s understanding of it is nebulous and varies to several degrees. Some people understand it to mean ‘being able to sense things,’ while others associate it with self-awareness. Ants certainly have senses; that’s not even in question. They can see and communicate. And though I’ll admit I treat ants like dirt, I still appreciate that the distance and speed at which they communicate and mobilize collectively in response to deadly threats – like my feet :evilfun: – through chemical signaling and vibrations alone, is pretty remarkable. No other insect I can think of comes close. I doubt ants have any significant memory though. If they did though, the ones in my driveway would probably stop rebuilding their ant mounds since I have a tendency to demolish them on sight.

“But everything God created as a reason.”
“Even bugs?”
“Yes.”
“What good are bugs?”
“Everything has some good, Davey.” He had read about that and talked about it with his teacher, he said. Snails are supposed to be a cure for certain infections. Gnats are used agains the poison of a viper. The viper cures other kinds of infections and the lizard is used when someone has been bitten by a scorpion.
I regarded him with wonder and awe.
“That’s right,” he said, rowing us away from the tree and skirting a dense patch of water lilies. “Everything was created to help man and to praise God.” We can learn a lot from insects and animals, he said. For example, when a cat makes dirt it always covers it up afterward. That teaches us something about cleanliness. A grasshopper sings all through the summer until it bursts and dies. It knows that it wil die. Still it sings and sings. Because that is its duty. And that teaches us that man should do his duty toward God, no matter what might happen to him.
“But what if a bug is going to bite you, Saul?”
“Then brush it away or kill it. But that doesn’t mean that bugs can’t do something good somewhere else.

(From “In The Beginning” by Chaim Potok)

Probably depends on whether they did it accidently or on purpose. If they did it intentionally, I guess that I’d wan’t to know why.

If they were just killing the little animals just for the fun of killing them, yeah, I might tend to like them a little less.

I tend to feel some kinship with all of the other sentient beings that share this planet. I feel like they are just trying to live their lives like I am. So I’d feel guilty taking their life for no reason.

You know, bugs and I are quite literally relatives. Distant relations true, but related nevertheless. If you go back far enough in both of our family lines, you will end up with common ancestors to both me and them. Sometime prior to 500 million years ago, when the ancestors of the arthropods split away from the ancestors of the chordates.

Part of it is I enjoy experimenting with their reactions. Not sure if I count that as “fun” as much as just satisfying curiosity. It’s cool to watch their reactions in response to different situations. For example, when I encounter an ant or just a few ants separated from their colony, they will zig zag in response to a shoe overhead, clearly trying to avoid getting crushed. Meanwhile, their reactions are way different if I’m standing over their home. I could hover my foot inches above an ant mound, and they don’t try to evade it at all. It’s like Independence Day where there is a giant spaceship over the city but instead of everyone panicking, they’re still taking the train to work. Even after I bring my shoe down, it is interesting to watch how quickly they return to business as usual. Even if I stand with my foot completely covering their home to try and block traffic in and out, they are undeterred. A small number will crawl on top of my sneaker I presume trying to bite me but the majority just continues to crawl around or even underneath the obstruction so they can go in or out. Ants seem to react differently to a human presence depending on their number and location. To me that is interesting.

You could say the same thing about single-celled organisms though, if you go far back enough. I think we’ve diverged to a point where that stopped mattering. The kinship you describe sounds more like an intellectual acknowledgement of a common ancestor rather than an emotional bond. I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with that. But it always flummoxes me that some (but not all) see how one treats bugs as a measure of their capacity to empathize. To them I’d say bugs are unempathizable.

If we take your statements as truth, such as (paraphrasing) others are unable to determine what individuals ought to think and feel about human interactions with other animals, how does that shape your perception of a guy like me who – I freely admit – doesn’t value the lives of bugs. Does it constitute a free pass to do whatever to them? I am curious as to your statements application. Since it seems to veer away from choosing sides morally or politically. It sounds like nihilism although I may not be fully comprehending.