Should Carnivores Be Brought to Extinction?

[Anna Blume]

Anyone here who enjoys Tamworth pigs or not have an opinion about today's essay in The New York Times?

The author is a philosophy professor at Rutgers whose writings focus on the problem of killing as it intersects with evil and suffering:

Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their prey. Agonized suffering and violent death are ubiquitous and continuous. This hidden carnage provided one ground for the philosophical pessimism of Schopenhauer, who contended that “one simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.”

[deangold]

It would be good to prevent the vast suffering and countless violent deaths caused by predation. There is therefore one reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species, provided that this could occur without ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation.

As Miss America, I want to end all war, stop hunger, get everybody to like each other and have sex with Don Rockwell.

Gosh, this guy actually gets paid for writiting such utter nonsense? We can't even fucking plant corn without ecological/social/health upheval beyond belief.

[DonRocks]

As Miss America, I want to end all war, stop hunger, get everybody to like each other and have sex with Don Rockwell.

Gosh, this guy actually gets paid for writiting such utter nonsense? We can't even fucking plant corn without ecological/social/health upheval beyond belief.

Just don't ever, ever make any mocking comments about Ben Hur (that's my nickname for it). I had to endure these constantly back in the day, when I was naive enough to think I could break through into mainstream films.

"It's the world's smallest predator!" they'd say, and they named it The Etruscan Shrew.