
Humanity has truly lost its way if we’re weaponising beluga whales - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/30/beluga-whale-military-marine-mammal
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adolph
As opposed to dogs, horses, Hannibal’s elephants? If that’s a sign humanity’s
lost its way, it's been lost a long time.

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ordu
How about dogs? They are smart and friendly but they was used for military
purposes for ages, and I believe they are used today. How about people? They
are smart but they are used for military purposes even today. Governments use
different stimuli like patriotic ideas or money to trick people into killing
others and risking their lives. How about this?

How can we speak that using animals for a warfare is less humanistic than
using people for that purposes?

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subjectsigma
I agree with you, the article is pretty absurd, but to play devils advocate: I
think most people would feel that tricking children into doing something
harmful is worse than tricking an adult because they don't know any better.
They don't have the reasoning to be able to decide and give consent. If an
adult gets tricked, that's "on them", but it's different for children. Despite
the author saying how smart baluga whales are, even the smartest animals can
barely reason as well as a human child, so isn't tricking them even worse?

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ordu
Yes, tricking children is worse, because they are humans. But beluga or dog is
not a children, they are not humans. To be humanistic is to be concerned about
humans. It somehow leads to be concerned about other animals too, but humans
first, animals later. As for me it is a matter of prioritizing things.
Appealing to the animal cuteness is no more than appealing to an emotions. If
you are choosing between human and animal for a mortally dangerous mission,
what will be your choice?

I see an ethical issue though. There are a lot of discissions about AI killing
people. What about animals trained to kill people? If we lay aside the
cuteness of animals, is it somehow different from AI?

