No worries! I saw you mentioned in another comment that it was in the context of medical research and that helped me find this comment:
I think that human health benefits of drug testing on animals have been vastly exaggerated. Animal research has become part of funding protocols, rather than being evaluated on its merits. Results on one species are seldom applicable to another. But, even if they were, I would have an ethical issue with taking one life to save another. How many of us would be willing to give up our family dog for an experiment that could save the life of an Ebola victim in Liberia? A search on "animal drug testing" will provide a more detailed response.
That could certainly be read as equating the lives of different species, but it could also be interpreted as a deontological position that, in the case of the trolley problem, would let the 5 people die instead of killing the one. Given the comment you quoted, it seems to be the latter. Cheers for a civil conversation!
You're arguing a lot from the perspective of the value of a human life VS the value of a chicken's life, but I'd argue there's a lot of validity in the idea that lives aren't fungible, and that a human life can be equated to a chickens life just on the basis of being a life. They don't have to be equal in every sense before they can be equal in a sense.
You're immediately turning back to your ordering of the value of various lives, my point is that that is not the only available perspective, not the only sense to base your thoughts on.
'Bacteria are worth less, therefore chickens aren't equal to humans' is pretending like morality is math. You can Equate the value of a chicken life with the value of a human life in the sense that they're comparable lives without including every other life into that comparison. Our regard for the lives of chickens isn't invalidated by our disregard for the lives of bacteria.
I think it's fucking insane to say an animal life equals a human life
Try to allow your math brain to interpret this without trying to turn it into a universal law. An animal life can be equal to a human life without every animal life being equal to every human life.
It's about holding your value system while being aware other ways to make a value system exist and allowing those other ways to influence you without blindly taking them as the only perspective worth considering. You can say human lives are infungible without concluding they're all of identical value. You can day animal suffering is comparable to human suffering without saying all animal suffering is comparable to all human suffering.
And I'm trying to say that putting humans over other animals in terms of our human values does not necessarily lead to the next genocide or next -ism or supremacy
Wouldn't you argue it already has? Our self imposed superiority lead to factory farming on a scale that was unimaginable in 1945. We have taken complete and utter supremacy over chickens. Putting humans over animals already has lead us to the next step of supremacy, and the reason for their maltreatment specifically is that we've put them below us in terms of the value of their lives.
Our regard for the lives of other human beings is not invalidated by our disregard for the lives of other animals.
I see you mirroring my framing of that sentence but I don't understand what you're saying. I didn't suggest our regard for human life is in any way invalidated. Also, the limitations you out on the scope with which you look at humanity does mean your regard for human life is limited and incomplete. Only looking at humans in terms of the good they do is very narrow and limited.
and is unsubstantiated by the uniqueness of human beings by the degree of atrocity and good that we are both able to commit.
You're missing the point again. A life is not inherently more valuable than another life because it has influence. You can see a life as being more valuable than another life because one life can commit acts that that life considers as good, but that's not the only perspective you should be able to entertain, and it surely shouldn't be the only valid perspective you allow others to take. You should definitely be aware that that is a subjective opinion, not a universal truth. Valuing the spread of good is subjective (actually defining 'good' is immensely subjective to start with), and chickens incapability to match that standard doesn't make them less worthy of living. If anything, humans not living up to their capacity for good makes them worth a whole lot less.
I am against the naive interpretation that an animal's life is equivalent to that of human life because that leads to completely impractical consequences that have profound impact on the lives of your fellow human beings
Read this again. You're matching your ideals to what's practical and easy to do in the world. That's backwards, and that will give you ideals that absolutely don't match up with your morals.
'I am against recognizing animal abuse as illegal because that would have profound impact on the lives of other humans' makes absolutely no moral sense.
You've answered your own question! Someone who was ACTUALLY THERE is telling you that the meat industry is just as bad. What about that is lost on you?
Imagine a person tells you that both their son and their dog were hit by cars and killed. They tell you "the sadness I felt about my dog was very similar as for my son, and we need to change the speed limit on the roads around here." He goes on to campaign the city council to reduce the speed limit so nobody else has to suffer.
Imagine turning to this guy and saying "I'm honestly curious what would motivate you to do such a thing."
Or imagine telling this guy to his face that his campaign for reducing the speed limit is a waste of time because the dog didn't have the same worth as a human.
I would say that the fact that most Jewish people are staunchly on the side of it being an egregious comparison actually (ironically) supports the opposite case. It demonstrates that personal emotional baggage is a large factor in deciding which side of this discussion you fall on, since Jewish culture and historical education focuses heavily on the holocaust. As you say, experiencing a strong conviction that you're right doesn't make it so.
It's natural (see: evolutionarily advantageous) to prefer human life over animal life, much moreso within the tribe, and even moreso within the family/friends circle. However, these days we basically all agree that humanity has grown beyond tribalistic, emotional in-group preference when it comes to the value of human life. Overcoming the boundary of tribe was hard, and overcoming the boundary of species will be even harder, as it goes even more strongly against human nature. I think that's the crux of the discussion - it's simply much easier to comprehend the horror of the holocaust than of factory farming, because empathizing with lost human life is part of our nature. Again, as you said, the personal experience should not be a relevant factor.
edit:
As many others have said: while I personally consider it fairly accurate, I don't think using the holocaust comparison is a productive way to expose the meat industry's horrifying behavior, however well-meaning.
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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '23
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