The Animal Argument

[Dent]

I don't buy that factory farming has helped to solve hunger in humans, humans could eat grain used to feed livestock, maybe industry in general has.
And if it did, so what.

Also climate change caused by factory farming is likely to wipe out any gains made
(high)tech solutions to ethical problems, not high ethical problems to small ethical provlems

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Dent

I don't buy that factory farming has helped to solve hunger in humans, humans could eat grain used to feed livestock, maybe industry in general has.
And if it did, so what.

Also climate change caused by factory farming is likely to wipe out any gains made
(high)tech solutions to ethical problems, not high ethical problems to small ethical provlems

People against the continued use of factory farms: Dent, Repug, Blonde

I feel like lab-grown meat is a key to the meat-for-food situation. Cheaper and creates more jobs, much less animal suffering and mess and potential for contamination not to mention the ease of suffering on animals. But the meat industry is, as Repug said, by nature predatory/capitalistic. Lot's of lobbying and bullshit politics before significant change.

[Dent]

Agreed on in-vitro meat, political and moral persuasion is hard.
The group i'm with has a policy paper out on the topic and is very closely involved with it's development
https://sentience-politics.org/resea...cultured-meat/

They've done a bunch of panel discussions with the guy who's company devloped the first in-vitro meat which was in the news a few years back.
Panel Discussion - Ending Animal Agriculture Through Cultured Meat?

Panel Discussion - Ending Animal Agriculture Through Cultured Meat? - YouTube

Panel Discussion - Ending Animal Agriculture Through Cultured Meat? - YouTube

"Clean meat" was polled to be a good name for it, but i'm told that there are laws here in the UK what can be labelled as meat, and it's not allowed currently.
"in-vitro meat" is fine afaik.
Also it's further off than i'd like and initially thought, 15-20 years is my guess, maybe more.

[Dent]

I came to the thread to say that Peter Singer is giving a talk on wild animal suffering in a week or so, it's not a topic he would have touched with a barge pole a few years back because of how controversial it is. Progress?

Fall 2016 PEI Faculty Seminar Series: "The Suffering of Wild Animals: Should we do anything about it, and if so, what?" Peter Singer | Princeton Environmental Institute

[Dent]

Peter Singer's talk is now online.

"The Suffering of Wild Animals: Should we do anything about it, and if so, what?" Peter Singer - YouTube

"The Suffering of Wild Animals: Should we do anything about it, and if so, what?" Peter Singer - YouTube

[Dent]

watching this now, Peter Singer drops Oscar Horta's name in at 26:15

[Dent]

https://medium.com/@harrisonnathan/t...517#.v0xd043gp

An Evaluation of Effective Animal Activism

TLDR the community i'm involved with a lot isn't as science based as they pretend to be, making claims like "you can save x animals per x spent" probably isn't a wise thing to do at the moment. Serious research needs doing instead of making shit up and deceiving people because you have a hunch that one path is brighter than another.

Bronski Beat - It Ain't Necessarily So - YouTube

Bronski Beat - It Ain't Necessarily So - YouTube

[Dent]

Firefighters who saved piglets served them up as sausages by grateful farm

The farm was very grateful, we should do this for all life so the ecosystem is grateful.

[Dent]

MY FRIEND DP SAT NEXT TO SAM HARRIS AT A CONFERENCE AND HE ATE SALMON SHOCK HORROR

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Dent

TLDR the community i'm involved with a lot isn't as science based as they pretend to be, making claims like "you can save x animals per x spent" probably isn't a wise thing to do at the moment.

Dent has dined on souls lately, he would fuck over a thousand others for one of his own because he wasn't designed to be impartial.
We aren't nice people and we should probably take our suits off and stop pretending we ain't dirty apes.
Why bother trying to do good when others get all of the social acceptance and rewards by just pretending to do good?

Anyway veganism is booming in the UK and the main problem is that the ideology behind it leads to non-interference in nature.
Your cousins are out there in the wild getting mauled by other extended family we gotta break that shit up

[Beebs]

I'm confused on exactly what you're saying. Some sort of Hegelian synthesis, or just tired of the way certain people in the vegan community act?

[Dent]

Just a general observation that nature hasn't designed us to be impartial, on the Savannah considering caring about anything you couldn't fuck or assist you in some way was maladaptive.
Blondie used to comment that I spent a lot of time moaning about the state of affairs of the world Here i'm just reflecting that i'm a piece of shit too but as someone who is interested in transhumanism I guess it should be taken for granted that i'm not comfortable with the way I am.
An intelligence would consider all first-person states and act accordingly, instead we are ignorant egocentric primitives. Some of us play-pretend that we're altruistic, myself included sometimes, but it's mostly just to feel better than everyone else.

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

No, that barbarian and his gang are coming for you and your wife, sharpen your weapons!

What happens if designer babies are selected for impartiality, non-aggressiveness and so on? The old darwinian order is about to come to an end, and some of the established truths about the human condition are going to go the way of the dodo.

Anyway I got distracted by this


[Today 11:46 AM] Repugnant Abomination: By saying it's just their selfish genes you're removing all responsibility. With that kind of deterministic view of human action you're undercutting your own argument, because nothing you say will, or even can, change their actions.

If consciousness discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical then all and only consciousness has causal efficacy. here are some diagrams that explain the differences nicely.

As Orgazmo has learned recently our conception what we think of as physical stuff might not be as it seems.

Here's what repug is getting at


Here's one way his statement could be wrong



And the real reason why he's wrong, all stemming from a misunderstanding of the nature of the physical.



Nothing can be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causa_sui

[Dent]

I have some friends who fully admit that they are scumbag piece of shits and I prefer them to sneaky southerner holier than though liars.
SALT OF DE ERT

[Dent]

It's pretty perverse that to get people to do stuff that helps others effectively involves stroking the egos of hyper competitive systematizer males.
I'm more generous than you, I can afford to donate almost everything I own and still look after you and the kids!
Big Bill, Buffet and co do more for the world than over emotional non-strategic pet lovers.

[Dent]

Now i'm arguing with people on a bargain finding website, on a roll today.
The guy says it all, "feel like they're doing their bit" people know this when it comes to most things but when it comes to helping they only want warm fuzzies for themselves

Get clever AND feed the hungry - every question you get right, 10 grains of rice will be donated @ Free Rice


Thomas.Richards
31 m ago
Seems like a very ineffective way of helping others

bargain_up_the_wrong_tree
27 m ago
Thomas.Richards3 m ago
Seems like a very ineffective way of helping others


bargain_up_the_wrong_tree
27 m ago
Let's hope that you never run out of rice then...


reindeer333
26 m ago
Thomas.Richards5 m ago
Seems like a very ineffective way of helping others

reindeer333
26 m ago

Seriously? If people cannot afford a donation, then I'm sure they'll feel that they are doing their bit by contributing through this site instead. If 1000 people answer 100 questions correctly (easily done) then that is 100,000 grains!


Thomas.Richards
4 m ago

If people cannot afford a donation they'd be better off doing something so that they can afford a donation than wasting time clicking a button.
In the time it takes 1000 people to answer 100 questions correctly each many other better things could be done.
But I'm sure this makes people feel good.

It's not every little helps there is an opportunity cost.

Derek_Lancelot_Shatwell
20 m ago
Feed the people of the UK first.
^ lol

[Dent]

Scientists are fucking retards.. pulling the same shit.
Isn't it obvious that some lives are not valuable to the owners of the lives?

Why is chicken so cheap? | The Economist - YouTube

Why is chicken so cheap? | The Economist - YouTube

"it's an astonishing achievement that this bird that bla bla only a few bla bla now billions"



“One particularly poor argument in defence of eating meat is that if humans did not eat animals, those animals would not have been brought into existence in the first place. Humans would simply not have bred them in the numbers they do breed them. The claim is that although these animals are killed, this cost to them is outweighed by the benefit to them of having been brought into existence. This is an appalling argument for many reasons. First, the lives of many of these animals are so bad that even if one rejected my argument one would still have to think that they were harmed by being brought into existence. Secondly, those who advance this argument fail to see that it could apply as readily to human babies that are produced only to be eaten. Here we see quite clearly that being brought into existence only to be killed for food is no benefit. It is only because killing animals is thought to be acceptable that the argument is thought to have any force.”

[Dent]

They peddle the ridiculous view that belonging to a species that has a large number of members somehow confers some cosmic benefit on the individuals, even if those individuals spend their lives being tortured

you can take the argument further: imagine if we discovered some underground cavern or hidden planet where there was a huge number of humans that we hadn't known had existed, and they were all living in tremendous poverty or suffering of some kind. According to this view, we should be delighted at this discovery because it would represent greater "success" for our species

[Orgazmo]

I think it's very difficult to try to argue this without being hypocritical. Instead, it's best to just agree that humans prioritize humans over most animals*


*As long as those animals aren't super cute

[Dent]

Prioritising humans doesn't mean treating hundreds of billions of non-humans like holocaust.
One of the problems with prioritising humans is the poor meat eater problem, all these africans that we're saving are only going to increase suffering in the world.
And rightly so, if you're an african eat meat and I wish you the best with your orgasms. for someone that cares about suffering this is a problem.
Also chickens are little shits too.

[Orgazmo]

Well...it depends on how much you want to prioritize humans. It's not a black or white thing. Some people prioritize humans by saying I'd rather a bird die than a human. Others do it by saying I'd rather mass produce chickens and don't give a fuck what they feel like (and reap huge profits) instead of...not reaping huge profits and giving a tiny fuck.


It really is odd, though. On one hand, we have people begging each other to not buy cats and dogs from breeders because there are so many. But we don't eat cats and dogs.


On the other hand, we have people trying to create as many chickens as they can regardless of what the means for the chicken.


Eating more cats and dogs would solve this. But the little bastards are too cute.

[Beebs]

Originally Posted by Dent

Prioritising humans doesn't mean treating hundreds of billions of non-humans like holocaust.
One of the problems with prioritising humans is the poor meat eater problem, all these africans that we're saving are only going to increase suffering in the world.
And rightly so, if you're an african eat meat and I wish you the best with your orgasms. for someone that cares about suffering this is a problem.
Also chickens are little shits too.

In the Sahel you can only really eat meat, the climate can sustain pastoral herding, but not really agriculture.

[Dent]

Technical solutions to ethical problems, the first moon men are going to have some problems eating their greens too.

[Dent]

This sums up the stupidity of vegans that want to promote nature red in tooth and claw

"Many humans look at nature from an aesthetic perspective and think in terms of biodiversity and the health of ecosystems, but forget that the animals that inhabit these ecosystems are individuals and have their own needs. Disease, starvation, predation, *ostracism*, and sexual frustration are endemic in so-called healthy ecosystems. The great taboo in the animal rights movement is that most suffering is due to natural causes."

Nick Bostrom, Golden

[Dent]

Making the human - non-human distinction is just as arbritary as the black-white distinction.

Thought experiments good but nothing like a bit of genetic modification to blur the lines.

Effective altruism - for all sentient beings

[Dent]

Prioritizing humans needs explaining because it doesn't make sense. Do you mean we should have a bias towards humans for no reason or that we shouldn't actually prioritize humans but targeting humans first is the quickest way of maximising utility