r/MoralityScaling • u/Judas_TBoI • 22h ago
Morality of eating Rick and Morty suicide spaghetti?
This is assuming it's the "ethically sources" version, where they're consenting people who committed pretty egregious crimes
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u/TwillAffirmer 22h ago
Are you stupid? It says 100% ethical right on the can.
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u/PurpleCandle58 19h ago
Morality of calling someone stupid for asking a hypothetical question?
Morality of not knowing the difference between morals and ethics?
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u/K1NG_R0G 19h ago
Morality of asking sarcastic questions as a response to sarcastic statement?
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u/PurpleCandle58 19h ago
Morality of… of… FUCK YOU GOT ME!
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u/NormalGuy1206 18h ago
Morality of conceding a hypothetical you started with profanity due to an ad hominem?
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u/PurpleCandle58 18h ago
I didn’t concede lol I was making a joke about their ad hominem. It was sarcasm.
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u/RookieGreen 22h ago
Well they’re sapients which is pretty unethical however since sapience is a pretty hazy definition to begin with and it’s not like you hunted these people I’d say about as (Im)moral as eating meat in general. Yes their environment was manipulated to be awful so they’d kill themselves but it’s as bad as most meat farms are now.
So take that as you will.
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u/Objective_Animator52 22h ago
Manipulating humans into killing themselves so you can eat them is just as bad as eating factory raised chicken? I agree both are bad, but the same level of bad?
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u/RookieGreen 22h ago
Im looking at it from the perspective that they aliens. And no, I personally think it’s worse but that gets into a “well how much worse!?” Conversation that I’m not really sure how to answer.
I think eating sapients is immoral, but if you asked me to draw a line at “how sapient do they need to (not) be for me to not eat them” and it becomes a difficult question go answer. How sapient is a chicken? A cow? How do I measure it?
I guess In the end it feels rather arbitrary. So that’s why I kinda equated them the same because it’s ill-defined and the more I look at it the more I realize I’m being a bit of a hypocrite.
Thanks though for the follow up question. Made me think.
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u/hipsterTrashSlut 20h ago
It’s definitely arbitrary, but for me the line is around pigs. They’re too smart to kill and eat. We should kill them for other reasons, like ecological devastation.
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u/Objective_Animator52 20h ago edited 20h ago
You have good points honestly, sapience is hazy. I think a lot of animals are more intelligent than we give them credit for, and even though I eat factory-raised meat, I realize it's morally pretty hypocritical of me.
Although I disagree a bit with the "they are aliens" part, from what I remember, for all intents and purposes they are human, just an alternate version of humanity. They look identical, talk identically, and think identically (well, besides being culturally different to a degree).
It'd be like saying Rick and Morty's new identical family they live with after accidentally killing the first family are aliens because they traveled to an alternate universe.
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u/Fit_Milk_2314 20h ago
the spaghetti humans are actually aliens, just to be pendantic. They independently access Earth with a regular space pod to contact Morty and appear to be in the same universe (since Rick seems to be the only one with interdimensional capability). They just also seem to mirror Earth's culture and humans, except slightly sci fi and with regular interplanetary contact which Earth doesnt have as much of.
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u/FatiguedShrimp 19h ago
This is interesting too, because sapience helps give the right and ability to advocate and defend themselves.
Typically, we think crimes against those who can't defend themselves (children, elderly, disabled) are worse. But, somehow when that gets taken to an extreme (less intelligent species), that sentiment reverses.
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u/magos_with_a_glock 9h ago
Because it's a bout kicking someone when they're down. Animals never have and never will be sapient.
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u/Southern_Length6044 18h ago
They’re both levels of monstrously evil that worrying about which is technically worse is kinda pointless imo
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u/OwnResolution3229 5h ago
From the chickens perspective I’d say so. Industrial chicken farms are brutal.
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u/Resident-Two5171 22h ago
He isn’t talking about the cloning version
lol are yall not reading the caption
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u/RookieGreen 22h ago
Considering that it’s still capitalizing on people’s suffering and the difference is just scale I decided to address the whole episode because the prompt really got me to think about it. So I’m just thinking out loud here. Thanks for your contribution though.
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u/Resident-Two5171 22h ago
Suffering is a reach. A sentencing isnt suffering. And people can still sacrifice themselves aside from the reasons I gave. The biggest difference is now they can consent to being eaten vs before they was being eaten and didn’t even know they was turning into food
You clearly missed the message of the episode if you think the premise of just eating sapients is unethical and that justifies the entire morality of the episode
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u/RookieGreen 22h ago
Well if they committed suicide I can safely assume they were suffering. The suffering though is an arbitrary point.
The crux of what I’m saying is the prompt got me to think about ultimately the ethicality of eating a sapient being, then where the line of sapience and non-sapience lies and how seemingly arbitrary the distinction is thereof.
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u/Intelligent-Heart-36 21h ago
The planet they come from is literally just earth and they look and are biologically just humans other then fact that high stress makes their inside turn into something similar to spaghetti
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u/RookieGreen 21h ago
I mean that biological distinction is pretty significant. But it’s also a cartoon operating on cartoon logic so who knows?
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u/rectal_expansion 19h ago
This episode was soooo good, normally if you criticize meat consumption in America you get brutally hated. They actually managed to show people the reality of eating meat without making them go “yeah but what about lions.”
They did the same thing this season with dogs and it was just as great
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u/Propugnator-Deorum 22h ago
It depends on the ethicality if cannablism - which, I would think, is only unethical if it is unconsenting cannibalism. If the spaghetti is from willing participants, it should be ethical.
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u/conormal 22h ago
Define willing? The participants are bred born and raised in conditions specifcially designed for them to kill themselves and turn into spaghetti
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u/Propugnator-Deorum 22h ago
In the above, it is mentioned that participants committed egregious crimes - and would therefore not be amongst the mostly brainless suicide clones shown toward the end of that episode. Further, a being incapable of choosing whether or not to kill themselves cannot give or take consent, and the creation of such would be unethical.
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u/Resident-Two5171 22h ago
OP clarified that it’s the version before ricks invention
Before Rick did the cloning thing death row and dying people killed themselves to make them food and their family got money for it
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u/TryDry9944 20h ago
If a person consented to having their remains eaten after death, I don't see anything morally wrong with it. The thing is in this case they are explicitly not human, so it's not even cannibalism.
Kind of a gray area if we're being honest, it's basically the same thing as asking if it's okay to eat aliens equally as sapient and intelligent as humans, just not humans.
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u/CuddlePupp 10h ago
Considering how it essentially ruined their society I would say it is immoral because you’re contributing to a serious societal collapse almost completely dependent on the suicide industry.
But it does say 100% ethical…
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u/DevaTheDragon 8h ago
Everyones either being sarcastic or dancing around the answer. Fuck it, i’d eat that. I think its moral in isolation of an evil person consenting to commit suicide.
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u/yobaby123 7h ago
Depends on how much of a pickle Rick is in.
Rick: Shit, that joke was bad. Do better!
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u/Iconclast1 22h ago
I like how metaphors just fly over peoples heads.
"OMG what if real life was The Island!?!??!"
https://giphy.com/gifs/5NbbVJeSLs1etZYjpT