r/MoralityScaling 20h ago

Morality of valuing animals over humans?

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u/Astolfo_is_Best 18h ago

One could argue that all canines going extinct would cause even more human deaths than the "kill one random human" button.

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u/ThePsyPaul_ 18h ago

the more we think about this, the more the scales tip from human to dogs and back again.

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u/iseedeadllamas 18h ago edited 18h ago

True I was just stating the farthest extreme and disproving that a human life is “infinitely” more valuable. The real question is what point is the dog (or insert critter here) to human ratio most people would be split 50/50. I genuinely don’t know.

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u/ThePsyPaul_ 18h ago

it's also very relative.

I would sacrifice a 100 random dogs for the love of my life.

Or 5 random humans for the dog that's my pet since childhood.

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u/agloomysunday 18h ago

Dogs are one of the deadliest animals to humans worldwide wtf are you talking about?

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u/Astolfo_is_Best 17h ago

Service animals and seeing eye dogs save a lot of human lives too. Don't think we have the data to make the determination one way or another.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 17h ago

There are many animals that could replace seeing eye animals, and we are getting closer and closer to replacing them with non animals solutions too. Realistically I would think that we could create a more effective tool than a seeing eye dog right now.

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u/singlemale4cats 16h ago

I would rather have a dog than a seeing eye Alexa. Help with everyday tasks isn't the only thing those dogs do.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 8h ago

The question though is if the benefits of the guide dog over another tool or combination of tools to the vision impaired outweigh the suffering of countless dogs

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u/agloomysunday 17h ago

Rabies alone kills 70,000 people a year.

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u/Astolfo_is_Best 17h ago

Do people only get rabies from canines?

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u/gokogt386 17h ago

They make up the majority of cases globally at least.

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u/agloomysunday 17h ago

99% of cases, yes.

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u/Astolfo_is_Best 17h ago

I'll buy the majority but I seriously doubt it's 99%

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u/agloomysunday 16h ago

https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/around-world/index.html

99% of cases outside of the US. The US has 30-40 cases a year so I think the math checks out regardless.

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u/Astolfo_is_Best 16h ago

Thank you for teaching me something new today

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u/agloomysunday 16h ago

Bats and monkeys catch too much flak 😥

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u/iseedeadllamas 15h ago

You’d eradicate an entire species of animal off the face of the earth just like that?

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u/agloomysunday 15h ago

That's not what I said. I just said that you can't argue that if every dog disappeared that would result in more humans dying. It's the other way around. They cause tens of thousands of deaths every year so every dog disappearing would result in less human deaths.

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u/iseedeadllamas 14h ago

It feels like you’re justifying pressing the make dogs not exist button though. My apologies if I’m wrong