Your hypothetical insists that it's either a or b; the truth of the matter is that you're not selling the antlers for a TV, it's for currency. Currency could be used for any number of things, and even then, you're implying you have to sell them. They can be used for medicine, handles, whistles, replacement buttons, fire-starters, pressure flakers, et cetera. The antlers have far more practical uses beyond wall-hanging. Add into the fact that using as much as possible entails more than that (including the skull, eyes, the fur, and meat that isn't traditionally eaten by humans) you get more from "hunting for food" than you do "hunting for sport".

A trophy is worth less do to it being less useful, and what's more useful is more ethical.

I think the idea of exchanging a precious commodity (a piece of a once-living organism) for a frivolous good was more to his point, however. Let's say it was a barter.

It's true that you don't have to sell them, either, but again--I think that would be missing the point of his experiment.

A) Animals grown commercially live under worse living conditions than those that live their lives naturally. [Reasons provided previously]
B) To purchase the meat of commercially grown animals is tantamount to supporting commercially growing animals.
C) Provided Points A and B, to consume wild game is more ethical than to consume commercially grown animals.
C2) Simply the point to "eating natural game is more ethical than the equivalent alternative".

C) Point of clarification: could it not be argued that, given the worse living conditions of commercially-grown animals relative to those in the wild, it would be more ethical to "put them out of their misery" and eat them, as opposed to killing perfectly healthy wild animals? I would amend C) to be more consistent with B) to state that, "to consume wild game is more ethical than to purchase/support commercially-grown animals."

D) Define "useful" as "able to be used for a practical purpose or in several ways".
E) The option which is more useful ("honoring" the death) is more ethical.
F) The most ethical way to use meat is for consumption.
G) Decoration is less practical than an object that maintains a purpose of semi-frequent use. (e.g. a knife is more practical than a photograph.)
H) A mounted head has fewer possible uses than raw material.
I) Given Points D, E, F, G, and H, a mountain head (or trophy) is less a less ethical use of resources than converting them to food and raw material.

I) Given Points C2 and H, it is more ethical to eat for food than for sport.

I have no contentions. (y)

This is....a thread about doing drugs

what

and i obviously don't do drugs, so i responded with a non-sequitur

is this what happens when you smoke too much pot

Quote from: Verbatim on May 31, 2015, 11:21:32 PM

i'm on that ethical high ground

You can call it dumb if you want, but implying that putting something into your own body is somehow unethical is retarded.

...what are you talking about, you crazy fuck

i'm speaking in general
i never implied anything about drugs

i don't have any phallic objects to suppress my non-existent homosexuality with

#BadTelevision

Whether you eat the animal or mount it on your wall, you are still "making use" of its body. So I don't see any valuable difference between them on this basis  -- and merely finding one "gross and tacky" isn't really good enough.

Ummm, let's put it this way... Personally, if the situation called for it, I'd rather feed a family with my body than have someone stuff me and hang me on their wall. But that's just me.

sly instinct likes a lot of my posts, but i don't know, maybe he just likes the way i talk

You don't even have to be a vegan, in my opinion. Just don't encourage meat-eating.

Years before I was a vegan, I was still able to concede that it's the right thing to do. Then one day, I just decided I wanted to be a bigger part of the cause than that.

But that's the minimum standard. You can continue eating meat--but just don't advocate it.
I think that's reasonable.

although that does raise the question... do you as antinatalist view all suffering as equal? would you be content in a world where the most severe cases have been wiped away? or rather in a state of eternal happiness..

Well, clearly, two broken legs is worse than one broken leg, so I wouldn't say I view all suffering equally. I argued a bit with Das earlier over other sentient beings' capacity to suffer--and I believe all sentient creatures all have the same capacity, essentially. There's no distinction to make between cutting a pig and cutting a human in my eyes--it's the same negative. But suffering does indeed vary in intensity and pertinence.

The suffering endured from me calling someone an idiot, for example, is hardly suffering at all. If you had the choice to safe someone from being run over by a train, or to save someone from being called an idiot, it would be a ludicrously simple choice to make.

A world where the most severe cases are wiped away... I'm not sure what that means. I know what you're getting at, but it's sort of hard to qualify severity. If we lived in a state of perpetual orgasmic pleasure that we would never get sick of, that would be ideal. But I suppose if we get rid of all disease and all bigotry, I think we could go a long way.

Yeah unlike convincing evey living thing in the universe to commit sudoku which is sure to happen.

No one's doing this. Anti-natalists don't do this.

why? why not just strive for life without suffering?

like, what separates an antinatalist from someone who wants to eliminate suffering? Why assign a negative value to birth if that individual's life ultimately helps to create a society based solely on happiness?

If you're going to impose anything on anyone, you have to have a certainty that it'll work out perfectly in the end. If you take your parents money with the intent on gambling it all away, you better leave the casino a millionaire. And if you're not dead-certain that you'll become a millionaire, you don't have the right to steal the money. So I'm for childbirth in the sense that if you're dead-certain that your child will one day cure cancer, then it's justified.

For me, I just don't think there will ever be a point where all suffering will end. There's a concept called the hedonic treadmill. We'll always find a way to be unsatisfied with our lives.

I have. All it tells me is the various kinds of dietary contortions vegans have to go through just to maintain a serviceable supply of nutrients you could just as easily and more efficiently have obtained from meat.

And that makes meat-eating okay?

I don't even care if meat-eating increases your lifespan by twenty years.
It's still unethical.

Oh, this is an anti-natalism thread now? How did that happen?

My apologies. I didn't bring it up--they did. I can drop it, if you'd like.

what puzzles my understanding of the philosophy is if antinatalists are prepared to quantify all sentient existence into periods of suffering and happiness, why not strive towards an end goal of strictly happiness instead of wiping away the two options?

We strive for both. I realize that anti-natalism isn't going to catch on in the mainstream for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In that time, we'll probably have created marvelous things that will help mitigate human suffering AND animal suffering. But that's not going to shy me away from expressing what I honestly feel we should do.