Yeah it seems like flawed logic to me too. Why is intelligent suffering worse than dumb suffering? Both feel the same pain when slaughtered. Are smart beings "worth" more? Does a smart pig contribute more to society than a dumb pig? Nonsense distinctions lead to nonsense questions I guess.

But it does pile on more proof for that theory that on some level we are just "inteligence" personified and tend to instinctively act in the interest of inteligence as a concept. Probably also why we're nice to LLMs on principle despite them having zero ability to suffer, and we like to fantasize about making galaxy spanning alliances with smart aliens.

Suffering and pain are supposed to be minimized no matter what. The pain from the slaughter itself is next to nothing when done properly, and not the reason for the distinctions about which animals it's acceptable to kill.

Only when you're an utilitarian. Not everyone is.

My deontological take is that animals deserve the right for bodily autonomy. Violation of that, even if painless, is unethical.

Plus we all know that most animals are factory farmed and suffering and pain there is not limited to the time of slaughter.

Which part of my post do you think is different between those systems?

I said all animals deserve a lack of suffering. It sounds like you agree with that.

I said the reason to avoid (or not avoid) killing animals is a different reason from pain. You gave a reason based on bodily autonomy, so it sounds like you agree with that statement.

We might disagree on the specifics of bodily autonomy, but I made my previous post focused and kept those specifics out of the argument.

So when you get a rat infestation you leave them their bodily autonomy? This is such a naive, black-and-white view of the world, I hope you get into a situation where this will be made extremely obvious.

Modern educated humans are so smart yet so dumb. The city dweller that has never suffered the relentless drive of nature to fuck with him (and instead, sometimes eat him) is quite a specimen.

We group outliers with the rest of humanity because there are severe moral hazards with not doing that.

If all humans had the IQ of a waffle, then it would be reasonably fine to farm humans.

I have yet to see a sci-fi scenario where the extra-terrestial super-intelligence considers us just a food source.

I don't have any example on the top of my mind but surely there is.

Matrix is a story were sentient machine use humans as feed for energy so not extra-terrestrial but somewhat close.

It's the lack of personhood, and low demonstrated consciousness, in spite of sentience. We have a social contract with each other, not animals.

We have moral duties to the extent we collectively share values, which are arrived at subjectively and change with time.

In the secular world in the West, even human life in itself isn't considered sacred, as exemplified by sentiment on abortion. The moment we pop out into the world though, we assume personhood and are protected by the social contract.