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I am going to say that it’s unethical for someone to eat others or themselves, lab grown or not, because the community members in a society want to 1) curtail or reduce suffering and 2) increase ways to promote better judgment and impulse controls.
1 - We treat cattle and animals for food production with such contempt and disdain and cruelty, and if we were to start eating humans (lab grown, self-eating or otherwise) we’ll treat humans the same. Delegating some humans to be eaten, lab grown (by choice or not) or otherwise, is going to create a lot of societal strife and suffering. How does self-eating contribute to suffering? See reason 2.
2 - People who consume others or themselves cannot be guaranteed to be devoid of sociopathic characteristics. Even if someone is just eating themselves, it blurs the line between food source and community member.
I think it is the same as people who smoke or cut themselves to relieve stress—yes, whatever you’re doing is your choice and seemingly only affecting you. However, the second hand smoke/scarring in the case of the self-cannibal is their poor judgment and poor impulse control. We expect society members to exercise better judgment and impulse control because the way they think impacts everyone around them.
Why does self-cannibalism seem like poor judgment? Think again of someone who cuts themselves to relieve stress. The way you treat your yourself, including your body, is a reflection of your state of mind. Only a narcissist would say that they’re in complete control of their mind, including the subconscious part, and so their self-eating will be harmless and not result in any bad behavior towards others, ever. We already know vegetarians have more empathy than meat eaters: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201207/brain-scans-show-vegetarians-more-empathic-omnivores
As mentioned, we have historically always treated animal sources of nutrition with disdain, contempt and cruelty. If someone feels that it’s okay for them to eat themselves using lab grown meat, I worry what kind of psychological interplay justifies that decision for them. Do they hate themselves? Is this self-harm? What will their interactions with other people be like after doing this?
So, yes autonomy and self-actualization is an inherent right of cognitively advanced beings. But they lose that right the second it starts impacting someone else’s self-actualization.
In short, even self-cannibalism is unethical because society wants members who are not sociopaths and who won’t contribute to the suffering of other members.
How is this any way self-harm? To be clear we aren't talking about growing a whole person here as you seem to be confused. We are talking about a few cells in a petri dish or vat. This is all just psychobabble nonsense. You're the one here who shouldn't be in polite society.
How can you qualify that it’s not self harm? Maybe we need to do brain scan study of what it looks like for people who cut themselves vs those who eat meat grown from their cells.
Because it doesn't physically harm me to do so. Cutting yourself is physically painful and damaging to your body. Growing cells in a pitri dish to save on dinner is neither of those things.
Self harm isn’t just physical though, https://www.healthline.com/health/emotional-self-harm
Okay now you've really lost me? How in the hell is that emotional self harm? If anything I'd take it as a self-compliment that I taste good :p
So, if self-cannibalism of lab grown meat is allowed, then cannibalism of lab grown meat (so cells from other people) would also be allowed.
Think of how we treat other sources of animal derived foods, it’s pretty shitty and cruel treatment. In this case, the person chooses to eat self sourced or other person sourced lab grown meat because eating a real person would be murder, and cutting themselves up would be physical self harm.
The question is what is the underlying psychological justification for them deciding to eat lab grown human meat. Is it that they’re avoiding physical pain and murder? Lab grown animal meat is there to substitute for animal meat. But what’s the justification for lab grown human meat? Novelty? Taste? Psychological issues? How do we trust this persons judgement for themselves and others?
The issue is that human societies veered away from cannibalism for social issues, and so how do we trust those people who would engage in some form of cannibalism, even if it’s their own lab grown cells.
Some context which also gives European views on first encounters and how the social revulsion to this idea was established https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/making-of-an-imperial-polity/cannibalism-and-the-politics-of-bloodshed/D4D05AE81BBADD074FBCDC09504605D3
I fail to see how we treat meat animals as relevant. No ones going to be caged and mistreated because there's no reason to.
The fact you're eating human meat isn't enough to cause psychological issues when no one was harmed, and the idea that it does is fucking laughable.
Unless someone is actually mistreated, which again no practical reason to, as getting a microscopic sample to grow from is harmless. Where would this psychological damage come from? Because it would remind us of the animals we did kill and eat? That's fucking goofy. The psychological harm of cannibalism IS FROM THE PHYSICAL HARM BEING DONE TO THE OTHER PERSON. NOTHING ELSE. THATS IT.
Eating something that harmlessly grew from my body isn't going to impose psychological damage, nor does it imply I lack empathy for myself or those around me.
There's ethically no difference between eating your own lab grown meat, and eating your own boogers. There's ethically no difference between someone eating your own lab grown meat, and someone eating your boogers.
It doesn't automatically put me in the same class as livestock. I'm not undermining my humanity, nor does it mean I don't care for myself. Your hang ups are your own. Get the fuck over yourself.
This almost reminds me of the weird psychosexual hangups incels have but for vegans. Imposing meaning where there is none, Jesus fucking Christ dude.
No, not actively remind. But the justifications we used to treat animals the way we do. Like, it’s okay to eat animals because they can’t fight back, or think or speak like we do etc. Or animals are not conscious the way we are conscious.
What’s makes you think someone eating lab grown muscle cells will stop there? Maybe they’ll want to eat brain because brain is a delicacy in many cultures. People eat cow and goat brains all the time. What if they grow a “person” to harvest all the organs efficiently? At what point do we say someone is conscious or not?
Heck, what if someone who hates you decides that they’ll secretly harvest your cells and grow you to eat your clones? Or maybe they’ll make sex slaves out of your clones? Clones are distinct entities because of epigenetic expression, so it’ll never be “you”. But the point remains. Is it okay to eat clones?
So the argument comes to the idea why someone wants to eat humans? What’s going on in their brains that they would like to do this? How can communities or other people trust someone who thinks like that
Cloning a meat steak and cloning functional human being are two wildly different things, and only one of those is really possible with anything near modern tech. Hell cloning brain meat and cloning an actually working brain are two very different things.
This is like if the atf treated slingshots as machine guns.
If you’re one step removed from something society actively discourages, and just by advent of technology, then people who have more power and less impulse control will indulge in the real thing. From my pov, indulging in eating human flesh via lab grown meat is the same as indulging in being a pedo via ai gen child porn. I could be wrong, but I think it would be interesting to brain scan people who want to eat human flesh to understand how and why they’re overcoming millions of years of evolutionary impulses
Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a winner of the most braindead take award!
Stop brigading posts nifty
People will eat meat if they want to, you can't stop them and at the end of the day brigading annoys people and disrupts social media
It's the exact same thing you and your group did on reddit
Just stop brigading posts and stop mass downvoting any posts that contain meat, I've looked at the vote ratios of posts in food subs enough to know that it is being done
What the fuck are you on about? I am only on lemmy, and don’t use any other boards.
You’re the one lying about me and brigading.
Maybe you’re a stooge sent by big-Cannibalism to help make this tech popular? See, I can make baseless claims too 🙄
This is exactly what I tell people who want to drink their own cum. Like, how can society trust you, man.