I anticipate you will get a lot of criticism by people who have extremely strong emotional connections to their animal companions.
And who are we to say they are wrong? The problem isn't that people care too much about their pets: it's that we don't care enough about human beings we've never met.
And it's a hard problem to solve, because it's like a wetware problem, and we are hard to upgrade.
HN is really immature in this regard. The way I framed my post left nothing specific to pick out as objectionable but these people obviously don't even like the suggestion that their values are in question.
So do I let them continue as before and be a hypocrite by valuing fake internet points more than human lives?
And who are we to say they are wrong? The problem isn't that people care too much about their pets: it's that we don't care enough about human beings we've never met.
And it's a hard problem to solve, because it's like a wetware problem, and we are hard to upgrade.