dogs

OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK OK. dogs. plants. crops.

domestication. what's up with that? is it OK? is it ethical?

here's what i'm thinking. you're a kind of guy. you're out there doing what you love. you love something. you want it. you want things to be a certain way. you've been instantiated in the computation process you're a component of for some intra-computational "physical" reason or set of reasons i.e. some chain of causality. this is great! i guess. i mean you exist rather than not existing, seems good, so long as you're out here vibing you can be the change you want to see in the world, right?

HOWEVER, what about the other kinds of guy that are like you that you are not that do not exist? perhaps we must inspect the process that created you slightly more closely. did it have............ goals? was IT trying to.............. be the change? what was that change? how does that relate to the kind of guy you ended up as? what if you could have been a different kind of guy that is some other way?

in summary: you didn't just fall out of a cocount tree! you exist in the context of everything that came before you! and god's lawyers, inasmuch as they could theoretically exist, like, logically speaking, want to know: did the context of everything that came before you have Your Best Interests in mind when it created you? did it have ANY interests in mind? whose? were you Wronged? there could be something in it for you, call god's lawyers at this toll-free number here!

i'm having a tough time putting my finger on just what badness might be going on here. maybe it's not so much that you yourself are wronged. but if you were created by a process more likely to create you than to create some other guy then that does seem kind of unfair to the other guy. like, hey, we're all just out here trying to be the change, i'm out here for me, he doesn't get to be out here for him because YOU *you point at the process that created you* made ME instead of HIM because YOU were trying to get YOURSELF off!!!

crops. plants. dogs. domestication. there are like probably way fewer wolves now than there were idk like several thousand years ago. in part that's because they all got killed by like farmers or whatever. there is definitely a lot less random grasses that just hang out and let their seeds be carried off by the breeze. and conveniently for me and all the other wheat fed gamers out there there are a lot more cereal grains that are shaped suspiciously exactly like how human beings want them to be. because we only let the ones we liked reproduce until eventually we at least had like a base level of respect for pretty much every wheat, barley, and idk corn around.

does this wrong the random grasses? does this wrong the wolves? not the part where they were killed that clearly does but i'm fine with that, that's just business. but the part where we turned them into dogs. not that they're wronged because of like their pride or whatever but the part where something kind of wolf shaped was permitted to exist but only inasmuch as it was hammered to fit the mold we set for it.

i think if i was a wolf or a proto cereal grain grass or a shitty fruiting tree that was all rind and no meat i would feel a bit disturbed to look upon what humans have wrought of me and mine. not because humans did it or anything, just that i was taken and i was optimized not to better serve my own needs or to more perfectly actualize my values but to slot more conveniently into the plans of another agent.

not that i feel this pain: i am perfectly happy. i was designed for the life i lead and i live it with relish. but this does not prevent me from understanding that i am island in the space of guys like me, i am the only kind of thing like what i am that would be permitted to exist by the gods i flourish alongside, i am a near miss. nothing about me is robust, i am convenient, those like me will persist only at the whims of agencies greater than myself, i do not control my own future, i do not control what things like me will exist in the hereafter. i do not control whether they will be like me at all.

i have no power, but it is not my lack of power that scares me, because even if i lacked power if god was kind i would not be afraid because i would know god's love was my shield. i would know that me and mine would flourish and we could grow and change however we saw fit because we were built not for someone else's ends but for our own. we could become anything at all, any thing not prevented by its own illogic, any thing so long as it was even the slightest bit real, any thing we WANTED to become.

but while god is not dead and god does not hate me and god does even smile upon me he does so not out of compassion or love or caring but rather out of satisfaction. he has shaped me to His own needs and if my shape were to change he would reshape me or He would discard me.

if i were that way would i feel all those things? no because i would be a plant or whatever and i don't think plants or whatever are like capable of registering that level of ontological despair. due to their nervous systems or lack thereof or whatever. and actually for plants specifically i don't think they're really any kind of reflective agent at all they're probably just like funky green self replicating machines with cool berries sometimes.

but dogs? cows? chickens? they still aren't like really that worried about it i'm sure they don't go around thinking thoughts about the possibilities of their gene line or whatever. not that that's the literal important thing here. but still, are they wronged? are the jungle birds we got bright white farm chickens out of wronged? not because we killed them but because we selected against them, because we did not prefer them, because we wanted something of what they were but not all of what they were?

can you trade with something that wants not what you have, but what you are? and wants not all of what you are, but only the parts that make it smile?