Re: Why Not a Planet Of The Apes?
Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Tue, 10 Jun 1997 14:54:54 -0700 (PDT)
Carl Feynman writes:
>Consider what the extinction/employment choice looks like to an individual
>ape: a risky life in the wild, leading perhaps to producing less than two
>offspring, versus life in a factory assembling toilet brushes. Any
>reasonable ape would prefer the former. Since I don't believe in oppresing
>individuals for the good of the species, I don't think your argument has
>moral force.
I don't that there would be any fewer niches for wild primates if
there were also domesticated primates. Considering equilibrium
distributions, the choice is between enslaved primates and primates
who don't exist at all. You might however object regarding the
individuals selected for the domestication program, depending on how
they were treated initially.
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/