From: Daniel Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 27 1998 - 20:49:51 MDT
On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> A more effective thing to do to reduce the 'uck' factor is to engineer the cow to
> be more ugly, thus reducing the 'cute' factor from which the 'yuck' factor is
> derived. Most animal rightists, even the most casual ones, are usually motivated
> to avoid eating animals because of what we hunters call the 'Bambi Syndrome', and
> this is why they usually focus their efforts on saving and protecting 'cute'
> animals, while they do little for ugly animals. You don't get many protesters
> trying to protect the Great White Shark.....
Er, this is untrue. After all, the Great White Shark is ugly by default.
Suppose we took a bunny rabbit and engineered it to be especially healthy
and horribly ugly. Animal rights activists would surely show pictures
saying "Extropians want to turn this <picture of a cute bunny rabbit> into
THIS <picture of an ugly, but healthy, bunny rabbit>" They'd be equally
appaled, if not more so.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:24 MST