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Strong opinion, loosely held:
A century from now, our descendants will not look kindly upon how we treat other* animals today. I wager that within this century, a radical shift will occur in mankind's perception of animal consciousness, and with it, animal rights as well.
We will eventually come to accept as obvious that Homo sapiens does not hold an exceptional place in the animal kingdom; that our qualia is not substantively different from that of other living fauna; and that an elaborate language, while a great multiplier for intelligence, is not a prerequisite for it.
It will appear evident to our great grandchildren that other animals feel perceive, and think; and that if those qualia are difficult for us to imagine, it's only because of our own sensorial and brain limitations.
The seismic change starts here: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv223z15mpmo
* I eventually added "others" but my first human bias was to skip the word, as if we were not ourselves members of the vast animal kingdom 18 replies
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That’s a great question and I haven’t thought through the details of what those rights (beyond those that exist today, such as cruelty laws) would look like.
Spitballing, those rights could include the right to a protected habitat far larger than the natural reserves in existence today, no-contact rules inside their biomes, not using them for entertainment (zoos, circuses, etc), and not deliberately subjecting them to any treatment that we wouldn’t impose on a conscious being with the ability to experience fear and pain.
And yes, I also predict far more people will be vegetarian by then, or at least consume artificial meat proteins, so that the mass slaughter of farm animals will be unnecessary and collectively frowned upon to begin with.
More importantly, the “spirit of the law” would be that we treat animals more like our cousins within the animal kingdom, and our “earthmates” in a galaxy that is otherwise seems pretty devoid of life (making it all the more precious).
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