Animal pain, suffering, and death: why does it matter?

[w_alloy]

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I think from an evolutionary view that its the opposite, theres nothing wrong with torture/killing bunnies, but the behavior is wrong. In a communal/gregarious society that behavior would be selected against (who wants to live with someone callous/crazy enough to pointlessly torture an irrelevant living being? A lot of serial killers get their start doing this) and taboos and repulsion is manifested toward these actions.

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I definantly agree with this, and it is a good point. I alluded to it in my frist post. This explains things very nicely from a 3rd person view, but how do you feel on the subject?

The vast majority of social norms that have evolved specicically help a society when they are enforced. However, this does not have any negative impact except by appearence. In the case of slaughterhouses and animal testing, it actually has a very positive benifit when people deviate from the norm.

So again, I do not think that the quoted passage is a good reason to personally maintain this moral in certain situations.