Is it ridiculous to take steps to reduce personal harm to insects?

I was outside working in my parents garden today and noticed that the air was thick with small flying insects (I’m not exactly sure what they were – sand flies perhaps?). I didn’t want to breathe any of them in, so I went and grabbed a homemade mask I’d made for outings during COVID-19. As I was working, it occurred to me that someone might think that was a ridiculous thing to do, and I thought of a defence for it.

Here are two questions for someone who thinks that the suffering of insects is ridiculous.

  • Is human suffering ridiculous?
  • If there were a species or intellect significantly more intelligent, more capable of experiencing suffering/wellbeing etc. (insert any other morally relevant mental trait here), would that make human suffering any more ridiculous?

I am assuming that most people would answer no to both (though if someone doesn’t – ok). And so, in the same way that human suffering wouldn’t be any less important in that case, I would argue that insect suffering shouldn’t be any less important simply because a species with different mental traits exists. Their suffering is real and bad (if you would like to debate about how bad, sure, we can do that).

Note, this relies on me believing that insects are likely sentient to at least some degree. They have neurons, which is likely what gives us sentience. It seems strange to me for there to be some cut-off where having one fewer neuron results in zero sentience or capacity for pain (other than perhaps something like 2 to 1 or 1 to 0, but fruit flies have ~100,000). Or at least, in the absence of knowing where such a cut-off would lie, it seems prudent and safest to assume there is none.

More rigorously, there are some insects that recent tests have shown to be self-aware (e.g. this). Also given the trend of science showing that more species more unlike us are sentient and self-aware (most researchers in the field thought that all non-human animals were not sentient and nothing more than machines as little as ~50 years ago), it seems likely for the trend to continue from vertebrates to invertebrates.

Anyway, it took me like 20 seconds to do something to stop me from probably breathing in some insects and causing them to suffocate and die, so why not? And yes, I try where possible to avoid stepping on insects, it doesn’t really cost me anything.

Final note – I’m aware of and sympathetic to the wild-animal suffering argument but did not cover it here for simplicity.

Is not caring about wild-animal suffering speciesist?

Two terms to define here first:

Wild-animal suffering is the idea that animals in the wild experience some amount of suffering naturally, e.g. from parasites, exposure, hunger, being killed slowly by predators, etc. Some argue that the life of an average wild-animal (especially when you consider marine animals and insects) is so full of suffering that they experience more suffering than wellbeing. This might lead to the conclusion that their lives are not worth living, and would be better off not being born, so to speak. (Note this doesn’t automatically mean we should kill all predator animals, as some strawman makers of this would argue)

Speciesism I’ll leave to Peter Singer to define (from his book Animal Liberation): “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species”. It is a similar idea to racism, sexism, or any other ‘ism’.

Many argue (and I’d agree) that causing harm to animals for small amounts of human pleasure (such as eating their flesh or secretions) is speciesist. I prefer the utilitarian framework, but I concede that this is speciesist as much as the mistreatment of other races would be racist.

I’ve seen recently some people argue that thinking we have the right to intervene in the lives of wild animals in any way to try and alleviate suffering is speciesist. I argue here the opposite.

When a human is intentionally harmed by another human, we naturally think that this is bad. Most people also believe that a human intentionally harming a non-human is bad (though some will exempt certain animals from this care!). When a human suffers through some natural cause, e.g. exposure, hunger, disease, we tend to also think this is bad, and will do our best to help them. Why should we think that the same suffering, experienced by a wild animal, is not bad, or that we shouldn’t also try to prevent it?

Suffering is bad regardless of the cause, as the individual experiencing the suffering doesn’t intrinsically care where the suffering came from. And so I argue that caring about natural human suffering but not natural non-human suffering is speciesist.

Alternate explanations for conspiracies

This is a cautionary tale of understanding the existence of alternate explanations.

I’ve seen this image floating around with the caption of something like: “That blue book is called ‘How to lie with statistics’. And you trust this man?” Implying I suppose that he wants to kill us all with vaccines after all.

Image result for bill gates how to lie with statistics

I was intrigued so I looked up what the book was about. It turns out to not be aimed at teaching people how to misuse statistics, but rather about how others can misuse statistics to caution readers of statistics and infographics etc. to be wary of people misusing or manipulating statistics (ironically, some conspiracy theorists might actually benefit from reading the book). I wonder if a single person actually looked up the books’ contents, or if they saw the title and were happily confirmed of their suspicions.

In any case, even if the book were teaching malicious use of data, one should not fear reading books they disagree with. It’s a cornerstone of being open minded.

Stay sciencey folks.

Possible environmental benefits of off-Earth mining

Executive order signed by Trump to encourage extraction of resources on the Moon. Not sure what this means in practice (possibly it’s just symbolic), as it seems to fly in the face of the Outer Space Treaty, which the US is a signatory to. I know many people are worried about the downsides of this (there are some, I acknowledge), but as someone who works in space science I want to talk about some of the possible upsides. Notably, there are possible environmental gains to be had.

It is easier to get from the Moon or some asteroids to low Earth orbit than it is to get from Earth to low Earth orbit. If we mine ice on either the Moon or asteroids, apply electrolysis to separate out the hydrogen and oxygen, we can use that as a propellant for satellites or space missions. This will mean fewer refuel launches from Earth, and having to relaunch fewer satellites (today they last ~20 years then run out of fuel so we relaunch them).

Metals are becoming increasing harder to extract on Earth, with many of the concentrated, near surface deposits already being extracted. This leaves a number of deeper and less concentrated deposits with a greater impact to extract. As we are reliant on metals, extracting these from an asteroid and returning them to Earth may have less of an environmental impact.

Helium 3 can be found on the Moon in abundance. While nuclear fusion technology seems to be some way off, if it were commercialised, a supply of helium 3 from the Moon could supply fusion reactors for clean energy.

And an extra one not quite related to mining – but some people have proposed putting solar panels on the Moon and beaming the power back to the Earth’s surface to be collected and used.

Streaming to raise money for Animals Australia

Whether it’s animals in farms, on live export ships, companion animals being mistreated or native animals having their habitat destroyed, animals across Australia need our help.

On the 27th of August, I will be doing a 16 hour stream on Twitch.tv playing one of my favourite games which is being re-released that day, World of Warcraft Classic, starting from 8 am AEST.

Please consider making a contribution to support the great work that Animals Australia does to help animals across Australia. Let’s kick some butt for the animals!

I will be matching all donations made up to a total of $1,000.

If you’d like to watch the stream live, you will find it at twitch.tv/vegan_bandit. Please stop by and say hello!

Thoughts on vegan activism in Australia

A few people have asked me for my thoughts on the animal advocacy performed across the country yesterday, so I thought I would share them here.

There was an impressive variety of different actions taken yesterday, and it’s important not to lump them all together. Some actions focused on raising awareness about the realities of animal abuse, others took the form of protests, while others still involved other disruptions.

I strongly support the right of activists to protest peacefully in drawing attention to the cruelties that are inflicted on animals. Peaceful protest is something I support regardless of what is being protested for. We don’t get to pick and choose which cause protests should be seen as an acceptable means of seeking change.

For those who oppose the use of protest and disruption to raise awareness for animals, ask yourself this: if the victims being advocated for were human, would you be ok with the action? If the answer is yes, your issue is probably not about the action, but rather about the cause itself.

Thisarticle sums up this idea rather succinctly.

The need for a tax on harmful products

Taxing products that we want people to buy less of is a blunt tool, but it works, and the revenue from the tax can be spent on other means of solving the underlying problem, like subsidising alternatives and launching education programs.

This week, I wrote about the need for taxes on products that are harmful to our environment and health, like coal and animal products, in the Independent Australia. This is just one of the ways we can reduce our public health burden and environmental issues, but it’s important to have the discussion.

Cellular agriculture – The need for it and its progress

A few weeks ago, I had an article about the promise and science of cellular agriculture published in the Independent Australia. Check it out!

Here are some key quotes:

“One need look no further than the impacts of the animal agriculture industry to understand why so many people are working on the development of cellular agriculture and are excited about the benefits it may bring to our food system.”

“Finally, some 520 to 620 million farmed animals each year in Australia alone would benefit from being spared a life of farming. Australian law does not adequately protect animals seen as profitable.”

“If you can’t wait for clean meat, there are plant-based products already available in Australian supermarkets which have been hailed by vegans and meat eaters alike to be as good as the real thing. The Impossible Burger even “bleeds”, getting its juicy texture from heme extracted from plants, which is present in real meat.”