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[Max White]

Wait, who isn't chilled? I thought we were all lax here.

[Rose]

Dude, I was chill like liquid hydrogen.

[Max White]

When you can't have the perfect liquid, have a Japa.

[G-Flex]

Partly because it's that fatty meat that allowed humans to evolve into the intelligent creature we are today

I honestly have no idea how this is relevant. Meat being necessary for hunting/gathering humans hundreds of thousands of years ago has little bearing on whether or not it's necessary for us now. Respecting the role meat played/plays in human evolutionary history has nothing to do with whether or not it's currently necessary or ethical.

Protein is what made us sentient creatures. To deny it is to say that you would prefer us to be apes.

Same goes for you, although you're a little less sane about it. Yes, people need protein. No, you don't explicitly need meat to get you that protein. Also, even if meat played a huge role in human evolutionary history, which it undoubtedly did, preferring not to eat it for ethical reasons now does not imply preferring us to be "apes", nor do I think you'll find many vegetarians who think that prehistoric humans should have stayed vegan.

[Blargityblarg]

GamerKnight, are you using those tongue-in-cheek pro-red-meat ads from a couple years back as sources? 'Cause it sure as shit sounds like it.

[Max White]

Well, although meat was important, it has been shown it is less critial to human evolution then first thought. You see it was well known that both brains and guts take a rather large toll on out daily intake needs, and so we couldn't eat enough to feed out entire body, our guts, and our brains... So we just didn't get the brains. It was assumed that when we started to eat more red meat, we were getting a lot more energy in for smaller energy used to digest. This has been just about proven true, as much as you can prove something like that.

However, more recently it has come to light that while eating meat did help, it did not help even nearly as much as pre-digestive processes, better known as cooking. Cooking food partly digested it without using any of our own energy, and provided more then rare food did. So this had a massive influx of energy that we could use to feed our brains, and allowed us to lose the big heavy gut.

Yes, red meat was cooked, so it still played the major roll, but humans could have gotten here without ever eating meat, it would just take longer.

[DJ]

Thing is, we wouldn't have need for bigger brains if we didn't use tools, and virtually all early tools had to do something with hunting. And our brain/body weight ratio is an overkill for a herbivore anyway.

[Max White]

Well, we did home brains, just not as complex as we have now. We could build simple tools, but not build an internet.

And yes, our brain to body ratio is outragouse for a herbivore, and if a vegitarian was caught in a survival situation, the only way they could survive while keeping there vegginess, would be to cook every last meal they ate.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Outsmarting and running down tasty animals is the reason humans aren't cattle. Leaves don't run away from you, or try to hide. All you need to "hunt" leaves is enough brain cells and optical tissue to notice that "that thing's green, eat? EAT!" and plod over to it. Animals run away from something they think is going to eat them, to solve that you need either the intelligence to organize an ambush and surround them, the intelligence to make weapons to kill them, or the raw strength and endurance to run them down and strangle them with your bare hands. Humans did all three. That's why today we can do neat tricks like stand upright, and make vehicles that run on explosions, and weapons that hurl bits of metal at things (with explosions), and lethally powerful electrical currents to run the most trivial of devices (with metals so poisonous that just being near them causes organ failure, which can also be used to make gigantic explosions).

Suggesting that humans shouldn't eat meat because it's "wrong" to kill animals that make a vacuum cleaner look intelligent is intolerably obscene. Humans stand poised on the verge of apotheosis, and yet some suggest that mindless beasts are our equals? They want to give rights that are not secured even for humans to animals that humans created (selective breeding and the utilization of technology to increase populations far beyond natural levels) for the sole purpose of eating? That's just inexcusable, there's no other word for it. You might as well be suggesting that cars, or toasters, or computers, or cartoon characters have rights.

[G-Flex]

Well, we did home brains, just not as complex as we have now. We could build simple tools, but not build an internet.

This has nothing to do with how developed our brains are, or at least that's a really bad example. The reason we can build the Internet now and not thousands of years ago is because we have those thousands of years of progress to build upon. I doubt that humans in the earliest civilizations were significantly less "smart" than we are now. Of course, if we're talking about the origin of Homo Sapiens itself, that's another matter.

And yes, our brain to body ratio is outragouse for a herbivore, and if a vegitarian was caught in a survival situation, the only way they could survive while keeping there vegginess, would be to cook every last meal they ate.

I don't really think most vegetarians would be against eating meat if they seriously were in a situation where they needed to do so or would die. Just saying.

Outsmarting and running down tasty animals is the reason humans aren't cattle. Leaves don't run away from you, or try to hide. All you need to "hunt" leaves is enough brain cells and optical tissue to notice that "that thing's green, eat? EAT!" and plod over to it.

This is a very piss-poor assessment. A lot of human reasoning, intelligence, and memory has always gone into figuring out what is and isn't edible, both in terms of animals and plants. It takes curiosity and intelligence to figure out what's edible and what's poisonous in a new setting, and to pass that information down to your children, and so forth. It's not just a matter of "GREEN? EAT!". If you do it that way, you'll either not get enough nutrition (because you're too stupid to break open nuts or dig up tubers/roots, and so forth) or, more likely, die (because you're too stupid to not poison yourself to death).

One of the reasons humans have been able to spread to so many places has been our ability to figure out how to produce food out of strange things, which strange things are edible, and which parts you can eat without dying. This applies to both animals and plants (although with animals it's usually a little more straightforward). Even in recent centuries, this has been a problem (see: New World plants being introduced to European diets).

A non-human example: There's a certain variety of monkey that eats some form of vegetation (I forget what) as the primary portion of their diet. It's mildly toxic to them, but they get by. Certain groups of these monkeys, however, have learned that eating bits of charcoal left over by the nearby humans can help with this. This isn't just a simple case of conditioned response; it's cultural information. The knowledge is passed on throughout the group via example and observational learning. Just some food for thought, because I think monkeys are interesting. There are better examples of cultural transmission in non-human primates, but the fact is that even monkeys are more clever than to have "IS THIS A PLANT? GUESS I SHOULD EAT IT THEN" as the whole of their modus operandi.

Yes, hunting requires a great deal of organization and intelligence, and the importance of that can't be understated. However, your assessment of herbivorous food gathering is way, way off the mark.

Suggesting that humans shouldn't eat meat because it's "wrong" to kill animals that make a vacuum cleaner look intelligent is intolerably obscene.

Er, which animals are you talking about here? If you think a cow, a pig, or a chicken is less intelligence than a vacuum cleaner, then you seriously don't seem to have any idea how animal psychology works. Roombas aren't exactly intelligent. Now if you were talking about flatworms or something, maybe I'd believe you.

Humans stand poised on the verge of apotheosis, and yet some suggest that mindless beasts are our equals?

I don't think anybody is arguing that. At all.

They want to give rights that are not secured even for humans to animals that humans created (selective breeding and the utilization of technology to increase populations far beyond natural levels) for the sole purpose of eating? That's just inexcusable, there's no other word for it.

Er, what rights are we granting them that humans don't have, exactly?

You might as well be suggesting that cars, or toasters, or computers, or cartoon characters have rights.

I have trouble believing that you're even attempting to be rational here. Toasters can't think and suffer, and cartoon characters don't even exist. It's evident from your tone and the content of your posts that you're coming at this from a very emotional angle. I suggest taking a step back and reconsidering some of what you're saying before posting again.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Outsmarting and running down tasty animals is the reason humans aren't cattle. Leaves don't run away from you, or try to hide. All you need to "hunt" leaves is enough brain cells and optical tissue to notice that "that thing's green, eat? EAT!" and plod over to it.

This is a very piss-poor assessment. A lot of human reasoning, intelligence, and memory has always gone into figuring out what is and isn't edible, both in terms of animals and plants. It takes curiosity and intelligence to figure out what's edible and what's poisonous in a new setting, and to pass that information down to your children, and so forth. It's not just a matter of "GREEN? EAT!". If you do it that way, you'll either not get enough nutrition (because you're too stupid to break open nuts or dig up tubers/roots, and so forth) or, more likely, die (because you're too stupid to not poison yourself to death).

One of the reasons humans have been able to spread to so many places has been our ability to figure out how to produce food out of strange things, which strange things are edible, and which parts you can eat without dying. This applies to both animals and plants (although with animals it's usually a little more straightforward). Even in recent centuries, this has been a problem (see: New World plants being introduced to European diets).

A non-human example: There's a certain variety of monkey that eats some form of vegetation (I forget what) as the primary portion of their diet. It's mildly toxic to them, but they get by. Certain groups of these monkeys, however, have learned that eating bits of charcoal left over by the nearby humans can help with this. This isn't just a simple case of conditioned response; it's cultural information. The knowledge is passed on throughout the group via example and observational learning. Just some food for thought, because I think monkeys are interesting. There are better examples of cultural transmission in non-human primates, but the fact is that even monkeys are more clever than to have "IS THIS A PLANT? GUESS I SHOULD EAT IT THEN" as the whole of their modus operandi.

Yes, hunting requires a great deal of organization and intelligence, and the importance of that can't be understated. However, your assessment of herbivorous food gathering is way, way off the mark.

So because humans, intelligent omnivores, totally used their intelligence to figure out what plants they could eat, herbivores select for intelligence? A cow is the perfect example of an herbivore: a dim creature that chews on green things and runs away from scary things. Human intelligence wouldn't have developed on a solely herbivorous diet, because surviving on plants, as a dull creature adapted to digesting leaves, doesn't benefit from a large, complex brain using up a lot of your all-too-scarce energy, nor does it really benefit from simple tools, of the "smash something's head in with a rock" level of complexity.

Suggesting that humans shouldn't eat meat because it's "wrong" to kill animals that make a vacuum cleaner look intelligent is intolerably obscene.

Er, which animals are you talking about here? If you think a cow, a pig, or a chicken is less intelligence than a vacuum cleaner, then you seriously don't seem to have any idea how animal psychology works. Roombas aren't exactly intelligent. Now if you were talking about flatworms or something, maybe I'd believe you.

You know, I didn't think of Roombas when I wrote that, I just used the first entirely mindless object that popped into my head. It even had the benefit of sucking shit off the ground, just like a cow!

Humans stand poised on the verge of apotheosis, and yet some suggest that mindless beasts are our equals?

I don't think anybody is arguing that. At all.

I quite clearly remember leafsnail, either in this thread or another, saying something like "how can you suggest humans are superior?"

They want to give rights that are not secured even for humans to animals that humans created (selective breeding and the utilization of technology to increase populations far beyond natural levels) for the sole purpose of eating? That's just inexcusable, there's no other word for it.

Er, what rights are we granting them that humans don't have, exactly?

Note that I say "secured," to differentiate from some petty philosopher or such proclaiming that "there are totally like, rights man, and people should like, be happy and shit man, and being mean to people is like, bad and shit." Tradition, philosophy, ethical theories, none of these mean anything if there is nothing to enforce them. Humans suffer, and are slaughtered en masse. Therefore, any rights pertaining to such cannot be said to be secured, when they can quite easily be violated by anyone else. Attempting to extend the theory of such "rights" to mindless beasts who owe their very existence to the fact that humans found their ancestors valuable as food, and thus cultivated them, is ridiculous and obscene.

You might as well be suggesting that cars, or toasters, or computers, or cartoon characters have rights.

I have trouble believing that you're even attempting to be rational here. Toasters can't think and suffer, and cartoon characters don't even exist. It's evident from your tone and the content of your posts that you're coming at this from a very emotional angle. I suggest taking a step back and reconsidering some of what you're saying before posting again.

It is to point out how patently ridiculous the notion of animal rights is. Why should we be concerned with the emotional well-being of beasts raised for food, beyond quality concerns? They exist to eat until we're ready to kill them. If this isn't fully adapted into their schema, why should it be our concern? They're adapted to surviving in the wild, they want to do things which would help them survive and procreate were they in the wild. They are not in the wild, and do not need to engage in the activities they've developed to perform in order to survive. Naturally, they aren't going to be happy with that, since their simple minds believe that they must perform said activities to survive, and understandably become concerned when they are prevented from doing so. There is no reason to be any more concerned with the folly of simple beasts than we are with the well-being of inanimate objects or fictional beings.

[Vector]

Please tone down the vitriol.  You should be able to make your points without it.

[Leafsnail]

I quite clearly remember leafsnail, either in this thread or another, saying something like "how can you suggest humans are superior?"

I have never said that or anything remotely equivalent to that.  I also do not believe that or anything remotely equivalent to that.

It is to point out how patently ridiculous the notion of animal rights is. Why should we be concerned with the emotional well-being of beasts raised for food, beyond quality concerns? They exist to eat until we're ready to kill them. If this isn't fully adapted into their schema, why should it be our concern? They're adapted to surviving in the wild, they want to do things which would help them survive and procreate were they in the wild. They are not in the wild, and do not need to engage in the activities they've developed to perform in order to survive. Naturally, they aren't going to be happy with that, since their simple minds believe that they must perform said activities to survive, and understandably become concerned when they are prevented from doing so. There is no reason to be any more concerned with the folly of simple beasts than we are with the well-being of inanimate objects or fictional beings.

Uh, right.  The reason why it makes it seem ridiculous is because you're comparing it to something completely irrelevant.

Your point just... doesn't work.  If we bred a group of humans purely for food, would that make it ok to not care about their wellbeing?  Sure, you could respond with "Humans are much more intelligent than animals so it's not alright", but then your entire argument becomes circular.

I mean, I'm not actually vegetarian, and I don't think animals are equal.  On the other hand, I don't think their experiences are qualitively different, so we should at least consider their wellbeing.

[Urist is dead tome]

Some monks in the Himalayas believe that murders and the like are reincarnated as vegetarians and vegans.

[Vector]

Some monks in the Himalayas believe that murders and the like are reincarnated as vegetarians and vegans.

Might I ask what the relevance of this is?