Yeah, I agree, it sure is a great read! All the credit goes to GONADS125@lemmy.world , they are the one that wrote it and shared it in a comment in an old thread. I figured it definetly warranted its own post.
So far as the mystery as to why so many people don’t seem to want to consider that maybe animals have their own inner worlds, I recently heard about a relevant study. They asked people a bunch of questions, then said they would be getting them a snack, meanwhile they continue answering questions. Some of those questions were about how they perceived the complexity of mind of animals. Some people had been told they would be getting apples, and others were told they would be getting beef jerky. The apple group was more likely to perceive animals as having more complex inner worlds than the jerky group. This is from memory, so maybe some details are off, but the main idea is there.
I don’t know how big a part it plays, but maybe people eating animals so much plays into their unability to see them as having complex conciousness. It’s a very complex issue, but maybe this is one piece of the puzzle.
That’s interesting… Seems like the jerky group may have been rationalizing to insulate themselves from guilt. It’s harder to eat meat if you think about it like you are eating a being. It’s easier to eat if you dissociate meat from its source.
Wonder if that was a conscious or unconscious thought process in the participants in the study.
Here is the video where I heard about the study. It’s a good video, but the relevant part is towards the end, 20:30. It would be interesting if to know if they asked any followup questions afterwards to find out if the jerky had occured to them when they were judging the minds in the questions.
Yeah, I agree, it sure is a great read! All the credit goes to GONADS125@lemmy.world , they are the one that wrote it and shared it in a comment in an old thread. I figured it definetly warranted its own post.
So far as the mystery as to why so many people don’t seem to want to consider that maybe animals have their own inner worlds, I recently heard about a relevant study. They asked people a bunch of questions, then said they would be getting them a snack, meanwhile they continue answering questions. Some of those questions were about how they perceived the complexity of mind of animals. Some people had been told they would be getting apples, and others were told they would be getting beef jerky. The apple group was more likely to perceive animals as having more complex inner worlds than the jerky group. This is from memory, so maybe some details are off, but the main idea is there.
I don’t know how big a part it plays, but maybe people eating animals so much plays into their unability to see them as having complex conciousness. It’s a very complex issue, but maybe this is one piece of the puzzle.
That’s interesting… Seems like the jerky group may have been rationalizing to insulate themselves from guilt. It’s harder to eat meat if you think about it like you are eating a being. It’s easier to eat if you dissociate meat from its source.
Wonder if that was a conscious or unconscious thought process in the participants in the study.
Here is the video where I heard about the study. It’s a good video, but the relevant part is towards the end, 20:30. It would be interesting if to know if they asked any followup questions afterwards to find out if the jerky had occured to them when they were judging the minds in the questions.