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Messages - Pendulate
421
« on: May 12, 2015, 03:57:45 AM »
even science says meat is necessary for a healthy diet. Could you please expand on this? What about meat makes it necessary for health (as in, health benefits that are exclusive to meat)?
I've just been told that at most a few servings of red meat per week is good for a balanced diet...can't really link it because it's just things I've heard and read about long back, kinda stuck to that. And by science I mean food experts, class it science or whatever.
*sips tea*
That's quite different from your claim that meat is necessary for a healthy diet, though. Meat is generally recommended in small quantities for convenience, not because there are benefits to meat consumption that can't be obtained from other foods.
422
« on: May 12, 2015, 03:55:24 AM »
Vegans make me laugh
Vegans, or veganism?
Both
What about veganism makes you laugh?
423
« on: May 12, 2015, 03:15:04 AM »
Vegans make me laugh
Vegans, or veganism?
424
« on: May 12, 2015, 03:14:17 AM »
Because prohibition worked well, lets try it with food options. Irrelevant. Otherwise, I guess we should legalize murder, because people still murder people every single day regardless.
Bad straw man.
I'm only pointing out that it wouldn't work, whatever her intentions are, no one would follow it, and like hell would anyone enforce it. The amount of backlash it would get would ensure it would never happen.
I think this is rather short-sighted. Nobody expects the world to turn vegan overnight; it would be a gradual shift, like every great feat of moral progress has been a gradual shift (or is currently in the process of shifting).
And hey, animal farming may never stop completely. That doesn't mean we should rest on our laurels and not even try.
Thats assuming people actually accept that being forced onto them.
That would depend on how gradual the shift was. Undoubtedly some (many) of the people currently alive are beyond help, and no amount of reason will sway them. However, we can still raise awareness with the goals of a) reducing animal exploitation today by getting through to those who are more open-minded, and b) creating a different social climate for tomorrow. This is not rhetoric; it is already happening, and will continue as long as logic and reason continue to supersede irrationality.
425
« on: May 12, 2015, 01:59:12 AM »
Because prohibition worked well, lets try it with food options. Irrelevant. Otherwise, I guess we should legalize murder, because people still murder people every single day regardless.
Bad straw man.
I'm only pointing out that it wouldn't work, whatever her intentions are, no one would follow it, and like hell would anyone enforce it. The amount of backlash it would get would ensure it would never happen.
I think this is rather short-sighted. Nobody expects the world to turn vegan overnight; it would be a gradual shift, like every great feat of moral progress has been a gradual shift (or is currently in the process of shifting). And hey, animal farming may never stop completely. That doesn't mean we should rest on our laurels and not even try.
426
« on: May 12, 2015, 01:55:03 AM »
even science says meat is necessary for a healthy diet. Could you please expand on this? What about meat makes it necessary for health (as in, health benefits that are exclusive to meat)?
427
« on: May 12, 2015, 01:03:27 AM »
You can't win no matter what you do either way anyway, in regards to being vegan or meat eater. Plants have nervous systems, plants feel pain, plants, even have short term memory. You're still killing something to survive either way. Verb probably already addressed most of this but I'm gonna chime in anyway. Plants do not have nervous systems; this is a fact. They may feel pain, but we have no evidence that they do, and since we know that pain is realized in a nervous system -- which plants lack -- there is no rational reason to believe it. Plants do not have "short term memory" in any way comparable to the kind of memory that is produced by a mammalian brain and consciously recognized. This is where people are often bamboozled by terms that are used by scientists in a much stricter sense than in everyday language. When terms such as "short term memory", "behaviour" and "response" are used they are not inferring any of the properties that we normally associate with them -- namely, conscious awareness. I should say at this point that I'm currently pursuing degrees in agrochemistry and plant biology. I'm in the infant stages, mind you, but I am not a dunce when it comes to plant behavior and I'm certainly not clouded by bias (or I am very wary of it, at least). As it stands, there is no scientific consensus that plants are conscious in any way comparable to humans and animals. There is (keyword) inconclusive evidence that some plants have basic sensory perception, but this is radically different from the consciousness that we know and toward which we have moral obligations. If veganism became a big deal, some other asshole company out there would abuse it. They already do. GMO crops, altered plants, chemical sprays on farms, desicating crops ect ect. GM tech is not inherently harmful and is actually incredibly promising for vegans and civilisation in general. Crops can be bioengineered to contain nutrients they do not naturally contain (the benefits this can have for developing countries are enormous); produce narrow-spectrum pesticides that target only threatening species of insect, or require less to no pesticides in general; to become more resistant to saline levels in soil, meaning they can be planted on less fertile land; to produce greater yields; and to create in-vitro animal products removing the need (or, to better put it, want) for animal farming. On purely ethical grounds, biotechnology is one of the most promising fields of research we currently have. I'm not one for killing or damaging anything as much as I can. But sometimes you can't not do it. The best you can do is be respectful and appreciative that something died to extend your life. Appreciate that loss, but do it not out of joy or for sport. Just be respectful and mindful is all. Going to a different area of the supermarket is probably the easiest thing you can do, so I don't think this is a valid argument. Either way you can't win these days. Everything's already modified and altered to shit anyway.
This isn't relevant to the ethics of eating animals, though. Do you, personally, think it is ethical to eat animals? Why/why not?
428
« on: May 12, 2015, 12:30:45 AM »
Freelee is a terrible advocate for veganism, as is her boyfriend Harley (durianrider) and many other popular vegan channels on Youtube -- Vegan Gains, Gary Yourofsky (yes he has a channel now), bananiac, etc.
I'm not attacking them personally; they're just preaching to the choir. None of their videos present rational, reasonable arguments for adopting veganism and instead spout pseudoscience and pillory other prominent youtubers for eating meat. Freelee and Harley are particularly insistent on making videos to peddle their spurious fruit-based diet and e-books, with the occasional video addressing some far-wing study suggesting that meat causes cancer or something. I'd say the ratio for these videos is about 30:1.
Edit: just watched her video. I want to commend her, but I can't. Her passionate rant has, evidently, done nothing but reinforce the popular belief that vegans are radical extremists immune to logic and reason, which is a smear on the logic and reason veganism has going for it.
She's the most popular vegan-oriented youtuber by far, and she needs to take a step back and think about how to proceed. Videos like this may elicit sympathy from those who are already vegan, but are easy ammunition for those already hostile to the idea. There may very well be a time to set aside the civilised semi-complicit attitiude and bring out the big guns, but a Youtube video that will soon be yesterday's news is hardly the way to do it.
The best vegan channels I've found are the VeganAtheist and Unnatural Vegan. There are some excellent blogs I read too. Sadly veganism has become a gated community where its residents aren't willing to criticize each other (and there is plenty of criticism to go around) because they are blinded by an "us vs them" mentality. It's ridiculous. We're doing this for animals, not each other.
Now I will try to engage other users ITT in a respectful dialogue. Wish me luck.
429
« on: May 08, 2015, 03:42:25 AM »
What's Anarchy?
Something that no longer exists.
What was it when it existed?
430
« on: May 08, 2015, 03:41:07 AM »
What's Anarchy?
431
« on: May 07, 2015, 08:45:13 PM »
432
« on: May 06, 2015, 09:55:45 PM »
Littlefinger's got it in the bag.
433
« on: May 06, 2015, 09:50:37 PM »
If your wife is being raped, for example, I think it's ethically justifiable to kill the fucker who's raping her. Or otherwise incapacitate him. Stopping someone from being raped is... objectively good. This is a good point because it helps to highlight the difference between "moral" and "right" which people are often confused about. When something is right, it is usually uncontested; 1+1=2, for example, and there are no other "right" answers to this equation. Every answer that is not 2 is equally wrong. This is not always true for moral problems simply because they have levels complexity that far exceed straightforward mathematics. With the above rape scenario, for example, killing your wife's rapist may not be most moral course of action to take. But this would require a deep analysis of the variables and weighing of options -- killing the rapist, wounding him and letting the justice system sort him out, etc -- that you probably wouldn't have time for considering your wife is being raped right in front of you. That's not to say there isn't a "right" (as in, most moral) response to the situation, but simply that we often lack the skills required to make them. However, there are actions here that are clearly immoral: choosing to stand by and do nothing, for example, is indisputably wrong. You have to intervene in some way (a moral imperative). And the actions of the rapist himself are clearly immoral as well. This is a huge source of confusion. There are some things that are clearly immoral, but others aren't so easy to figure out, and people take this to be a blemish on the concept of objective morality. But it's nothing of the sort, it simply makes logic and reason paramount to making ethical choices in life.
434
« on: May 06, 2015, 08:35:23 AM »
Morality is a human construct and therefore relative.
Sam Harris makes a good comparison to health. Health is a human construct, but it is still contingent on facts -- facts about physiology, anatomy, nutrition etc. And there are clear objective distinctions between good and bad health.
I've thought about that before, and I believe that objective facts about good shape and solid conditioning apply to all things, whereas morality only applies to beings capable of understanding such thought.
I find moral systems similar to economic schools of thought, in which no one is inherently or entirely right, just some are more right than others based upon a positive outcome for the most affected via the system's implementation.
Economics is only blunt because we lack the interpretive and predictive abilities needed to make perfect economic judgments. That's not to say there aren't right and wrong answers; it's just saying that they are often beyond our grasp.
435
« on: May 06, 2015, 07:06:50 AM »
Morality is a human construct and therefore relative.
Sam Harris makes a good comparison to health. Health is a human construct, but it is still contingent on facts -- facts about physiology, anatomy, nutrition etc. And there are clear objective distinctions between good and bad health.
436
« on: May 06, 2015, 03:47:07 AM »
Not really. I, personally, choose to live and act in the manners that I do because I think I should do my best to make people around me in my personal life happy. Happy is a good feeling, because it makes us feel "good." That's right -- it has qualitative value. There are things that have better and worse qualitative value, which means value is an integral component of conscious experience. And since consciousness is just as much a part of nature as anything else, value is a part of nature, and therefore can be examined objectively. However, that is just my point of view. My point of perception. Another person might not give a shit. Another person might pursue it to a lesser degree. Another person might go the opposite way and make people miserable around them. Yes, but moral realism accounts for difference of opinion by relying on facts about the subjective nature of experience. If you don't want to be stabbed in the foot because it would cause you undesired pain, then stabbing you in the foot would be considered immoral. However, if someone else enjoyed being stabbed in the foot and wanted me to stab them, it would not be considered immoral. Different scenarios, but the same logical process is applied. Good and bad are just words in response to our feelings. Yes, they are descriptors for qualitatively different states of experience. As I said previously, you do not need to believe in a metaphysical or, as you put it, universal conception of "good" and "bad" to accept moral realism. Of course I classify it as "good" because it's a paradigm instilled into me since birth. The specific events, the people who raised me, every single thing in my life that has led up to this point, were absolutely neccessary for me to act and think the in the manner that I do currently, therefore enforcing a set shade of ingrained morality and morals to me. Okay, but that doesn't mean your "ingrained morals" can't be examined to see whether they actually do produce positive outcomes (positive in the sense of the well-being of yourself and/or others). There are many cultures who have (mis)conceptions of morality that are extremely harmful, and these are not based on logic and reason, but rather tradition and emotionally charged beliefs. I'll state again. Our current state of morals and morality? The latest and current trend in human thinking. I would have preferred you to address my points rather than repeat your own, but okay. I'm actually wondering whether you took the time to read and comprehend my response though, because the rest of your post is just a reframing of your previous one, and I already quoted and addressed the arguments you made in it. Not intending to provoke you here, but you did seem to ignore everything I said. Could you please put my points in quote boxes and address them one by one, as I am doing for you? That way we can keep this discussion from spinning its wheels.
437
« on: May 06, 2015, 02:34:13 AM »
This is almost a word for word description of what you get when defining morals. Yes, but that's not really relevant to my point. Personal morals are obviously derived from a conception of morality, but this says nothing about whether the concept itself can be approached with logic and reason, and whether truths can be discovered as a result. They're the same fucking shit, just on different terms. One is personal, one is a concept. A concept that has right and wrong answers independent of personal opinion. The real reality is, there is no morality. It doesn't exist. It's just a social construct and a meme passed around through people because of our way of percieving things. That would only be true if it was not a description of empirical phenomena. I'm not denying it's conceptual. I think this is the kind of confusion I noted above -- failure to distinguish between meta-ethics (the idea that morals are a metaphysical property independent of reason) and practical ethics (the idea that we can use reason to make factual evaluations of conscious experiences). Take a human life in development. A fetus for example. And abort it. Some argue that it's taking a human life. Which it is. Others argue that because its not fully matured yet, that it isn't aware, that it's okay. Yet fundamentally it is still a lifeform. Yes, but that doesn't mean there aren't right and wrong answers to this issue, based on facts about whether the inherent taking of life causes harm/is a deprivation to the life in question etc. I mean, there's a clear difference between having a baby and aborting it; a blunt assessment would simply be that one results in a baby and one does not. That's essentially what an objective conception of morality is: the assessment of different states of being. It doesn't need to prescribe value to things, because when dealing with conscious experience value is already an integral component. (Let me know if you'd like me to elaborate on this.) Morality, and by extension morals, are just wee little tools people designed to bend things in their favor. To mark themselves out and give themselves a perception to adhere to, to adapt to an otherwise meaningless state of living. I respectfully don't agree. The real reality is, that fetus, human or no, mature or no, will die at one point or another. Regardless of what form of life it constitutes as. It will die. Its atomic structure will break down and be recycled into other things, which in turn will eventully die or be destroyed as well. Round and round it goes. That is not relevant to the fact that some of these 'things' are capable of having subjective experiences that have qualitative values (values that they did not choose to have, mind). There are no real absolute morals that are right or wrong. Absolutism and realism are not the same. The former claims that acts are inherently wrong regardless of circumstance. Realism claims that there are right and wrong answers that can be determined case-by-case, by examining the facts of each. Essentially, all you could chalk morality and morals up to is the latest and greatest trend in human thinking.
A bold and rather inflammatory claim. If you admit that conscious experience is, by its nature, a spectrum of qualitative value, then for all intents and purposes you are admitting that there are better and worse answers to how we conduct ourselves in life.
438
« on: May 06, 2015, 01:41:32 AM »
Morality seems to sit on shaky ground. Take a kid. Raise them to kill, tell them hurting people is a good thing, and that will be their morality. Or a person with psychopathic tendencies. A psychopath can still feel pain, but in the world there are people who neither care when they're hurt and inflict self harm on themselves or they harm others.
So, morality is only defined on a singular person's viewpoint. Their experiences, their environment, how they were raised, and how their brain functions, define their respective morality.
As such, morality is limited solely to each individual. And because people are social creatures and spread social constructs and memes amongst each other, morality is only ever truly defined by the rule of majority.
Look at our past. Certain things that were deemed acceptable in those days are deemed unacceptable now.
As such, morality is not objective. It is only defined by people, and people are subject to change, which therefore negates any form of stability to be achieved or an actual, concrete set of laws that are absolutely positive or negative.
Morality and morals are not the same. The former is a concept, latter a set of personal views.
439
« on: May 05, 2015, 11:23:05 PM »
^ And, even if a masochist did want his arms broken, it would simply be a positive value for him; subjective facts are still facts.
440
« on: May 05, 2015, 10:48:26 PM »
Objective. Value judgments are reducible to facts about conscious experiences.
People frequently confuse meta-ethics and practical ethics here.
441
« on: May 05, 2015, 06:20:59 PM »
The gateway argument is the most compelling one against legalization I can think of, but I combatting the drug trade probably takes precedence.
In Colorado where marijuana is legalized recreationally not only has the use of illegal drugs gone down, but their taxation on it has increased their economy.
Interesting.
442
« on: May 05, 2015, 10:45:32 AM »
The gateway argument is the most compelling one against legalization I can think of, but I combatting the drug trade probably takes precedence.
443
« on: May 05, 2015, 10:22:27 AM »
Also you will probably lose marks if that is your essay title.
444
« on: May 05, 2015, 09:02:09 AM »
Is this something from the archives or are you wanting feedback before you submit it?
445
« on: May 02, 2015, 08:23:32 PM »
Go easy on him. He's not as flaky as he used to be.
FRASIER IS THAT YOU?
Yus Nice to see a familiar face around here.
446
« on: May 01, 2015, 08:13:30 PM »
Go easy on him. He's not as flaky as he used to be.
447
« on: May 01, 2015, 07:52:54 PM »
I'd argue it's more rational to place things that affect your and/or humanity's well being on a higher priority, but arguing philosophy has never been one of my strengths.
Maybe so, but that isn't the point. The point is that it's irrational to completely ignore the well-being and interests of others for no demonstrable reason. And if one's belief that humans>animals was based purely on emotion, then it is still irrational. If you don't come to a conclusion through rational, logical inquiry, it is irrational regardless of whether it is right or wrong -- because when judging a person as rational or irrational we are talking about how their mind works/formulates opinions etc. Sorry, but when someone brings up philosophy I can't help myself...
448
« on: May 01, 2015, 07:42:44 PM »
My problem isn't with peoples' concerns for the ecosystem; it's with the motives behind their concerns, because it results in the kind of irrational bias we've seen in this thread -- where people only care about endangered animals and disregard the rest.
I fail to see how it's irrational. Cruelty to animals is cruelty to animals, regardless of whether they are pretty or rare, or neither of these.
It doesn't matter much about the motive in this regard if an animal that would otherwise die out because of our negligence, when it gets to live and expand further because maybe some celebrity endorsed it to make them look good. So what if it isn't compassionate or "true to heart", the endangered animal gets a better chance of living and people who actually care still benefit!
But as this thread has demonstrated, that kind of mentality results in many non-endangered animals being shrugged aside. If people believe it is okay to kill and skin animals that aren't endangered, then those animals will continue to be subjected to harm simply due to the fact that they are unlucky enough to be part of a species that humans don't care about. Instead, we need to cultivate the mentality that animals are not simply means to our ends. They should be recognized -- and respected -- as individuals with interests, regardless of whether they are endangered or not.
449
« on: May 01, 2015, 07:33:17 PM »
Well, I can't seem to really care about, let's say, a typical cow, because we're in no danger of losing the domestic bovine as a resource, and for the most part they're... decently taken care of.
Now domestic pets are a bit of a different issue, and that's got societal conditioning behind it.
Well, all I can really say is that you should expand your circle of compassion beyond what stands to benefit you. Assuming you want to be a rational, reasonable person, that is. And the majority of livestock are not treated anywhere close to decently, but that's another discussion.
450
« on: May 01, 2015, 07:10:03 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to illustrate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
Extinction is bad, mkay? Unless we're talking about Jews, Slavs, gays, blacks, gypsies, Arabs, and the French.
Why is it bad, though?
Man made extinction has a tendency to jack up local ecosystems a decent bit. We should try and avoid that.
Again, why is ecological imbalance an undesirable thing?
I'm trying to get at whether these concerns are genuinely for the animals themselves, or if they are merely means to an end and people are really just worried about how they stand to be affected.
For me? Mostly the later. The group as a whole is far easier to care about than any individual when you're not essentially living with that being.
And I mean, if you've got a slowly regenerative but still finite resource that grows on a parabolic curve, wouldn't it make sense to leave it alone for a while until it's more self-sustaining and you're able to cull some of the population with minimal effects on it's existence?
Okay. That's what I said from the beginning, though -- peoples' concerns for endangered animals are ultimately self-serving and are not the noble, compassionate qualities they are paraded as being.
I'd reckon for the average person it's like that.
Okay, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable. It just means the average person needs to be criticized for their views.
Yes, because worrying about permanent changes to a system that may affect us is ill desired and should not be condoned.
I didn't say that. My problem isn't with peoples' concerns for the ecosystem; it's with the motives behind their concerns, because it results in the kind of irrational bias we've seen in this thread -- where people only care about endangered animals and disregard the rest.
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