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[Sir Pseudonymous]

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.

Woops, that was someone else. Don't know how I confused them with you. Sorry about that.

As far as I'm concerned there are two forms of life on earth, plants and animals.  I really don't see how people manage to convince themselves that humans are a step above.

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?

Yes, from a rational standpoint. You might have a learned revulsion to the idea, but it's just that: learned. You may as well be choosing to believe that's how one should feel, for all it matters to the universe. Of course the idea is against the popular morals of this age, but it's hardly a universal. I don't believe there was ever anything so calculated as that, but it's not a big conceptual gap from the institution of slavery, which existed across all agricultural human civilizations for millenia, in one name or another, until industrial capitalism provided a more horrific and profitable alternative (employees! like slaves, but when they get mangled by your machinery, that just means you don't have to pay them this month's wages, since you didn't make a large investment to pre-purchase their labor!), nor such a difference from institutionalized sacrifice, cannibalism, or bloodsport, all of which are also found across almost all agricultural civilization for smaller but still massive periods of time.

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

You have a very mild conception of "vitriol", don't you? This conversation is positively friendly, as debates go.

[Leafsnail]

Yes, from a rational standpoint. You might have a learned revulsion to the idea, but it's just that: learned. You may as well be choosing to believe that's how one should feel, for all it matters to the universe. Of course the idea is against the popular morals of this age, but it's hardly a universal. I don't believe there was ever anything so calculated as that, but it's not a big conceptual gap from the institution of slavery, which existed across all agricultural human civilizations for millenia, in one name or another, until industrial capitalism provided a more horrific and profitable alternative (employees! like slaves, but when they get mangled by your machinery, that just means you don't have to pay them this month's wages, since you didn't make a large investment to pre-purchase their labor!), nor such a difference from institutionalized sacrifice, cannibalism, or bloodsport, all of which are also found across almost all agricultural civilization for smaller but still massive periods of time.

So, your point is... uh...

No, I can't find it.

[Vector]

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

You have a very mild conception of "vitriol", don't you? This conversation is positively friendly, as debates go.

I feel like the heightened emotional tone of the debate is hindering actual understanding between people.

In fact, I feel this very strongly.

I would like to read this thread and perhaps participate it, but the tone is rather dissuasive.

[Urist is dead tome]

Just throwin' some humor into the mix.

[G-Flex]

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

Plenty of monks around there, even historically, are vegetarians.

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.

Do you even read what other people say? Human beings, when eating plants, did not sit around munching on the same leaves all day. They explored new areas, embarked upon completely unfamiliar continents, and had to figure out for themselves what they can eat, what they can't eat, what parts of certain plants they could safely eat, how to prepare some to make them edible, etc., all through experimentation, inference, and cultural transmission of information. A cow does not do any of that. The comparison is bullshit.

Herbivores greatly vary in intelligence, just like carnivores and everything else. Cows are herbivorous, but so are monkeys for the most part.

Seriously, the thought that herbivorous humans must just sit around and eat the same leaves generation after generation is fucking laughable. For that matter, you could make the same terrible argument about carnivores: Why would you need to learn if you're just hunting the same deer every generation?

Honestly though, please try to think before you type.

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!

In other words, no, you aren't interested in actually making sense. I mean, a cow mostly wanders around and eats stuff off the ground, so it must have the exact same level of intelligence as a thing with a motor in it that knows to turn around when it bumps things... right? Right?!

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.

Does that even answer my question?

Also, how many times are you going to say "mindless" before God himself literally comes onto the forum and calls you out on using shitty nonsense buzzwords?

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?

Except your point hinged on them being mindless, hence the comparison to appliances, not on them being bred for food. You're moving the goalposts. Hell, you're moving them sideways. If your point is that they're as smart as vacuum cleaners and toasters, that's ridiculous, but fine. If your point is that we shouldn't care about them because caring about them doesn't suit our purposes, then fine. Don't mix and match when it becomes convenient.

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.

I think that I and other people have already responded well enough to this that I don't have to say much of anything other than "euuuuuuuuugh".

You might have a learned revulsion to the idea, but it's just that: learned. You may as well be choosing to believe that's how one should feel, for all it matters to the universe.

Pro tip: All those ideas in your head right now, concerning this and every other thing you've ever thought about anything? Yeah. Those are learned too.


Also, I like the part where you literally say that being an employee of a company is worse than being a slave. Wow. That's bad, even from you.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

meat eating heped us evolve our brains to the current point just like war helped us develop technologically, does that mean we should respect war and practice it regularly?

and whether or not you think animals or humans are equal, they suffer, and that's a fact. that deliberately inflicting avoidable suffering is cruel is also a fact. the avoidability of said suffering may be debated, though.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

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.

Do you even read what other people say?

Do you? What does the behavior of humans, already intelligent by that point, have to do with whether or not an herbivorous diet selects for intelligence? With only the rarest of exceptions, animals held up as examples of non-human intelligence are either carnivores or omnivores. Purely herbivorous animals are, with only the rarest of exceptions, dim-witted grazing animals. Therefore it follows that an animal whose diet includes no meat, will in almost every single case be dim-witted (except for, say, strains of originally omnivorous species who've specialized away from eating meat).

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!

In other words, no, you aren't interested in actually making sense. I mean, a cow mostly wanders around and eats stuff off the ground, so it must have the exact same level of intelligence as a thing with a motor in it that knows to turn around when it bumps things... right? Right?!

Are you aware of the rhetorical device known as hyperbole?

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.

Does that even answer my question?

Yes, it does. Third and forth sentences.

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?

Except your point hinged on them being mindless, hence the comparison to appliances, not on them being bred for food. You're moving the goalposts. Hell, you're moving them sideways. If your point is that they're as smart as vacuum cleaners and toasters, that's ridiculous, but fine. If your point is that we shouldn't care about them because caring about them doesn't suit our purposes, then fine. Don't mix and match when it becomes convenient.

Both are valid, though. The first is hyperbole wrapped around a grain of truth, the second is just plainly stated truth. Don't pretend that there isn't more than one angle to approach this from.

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.

I think that I and other people have already responded well enough to this that I don't have to say much of anything other than "euuuuuuuuugh".

By "I and other people", you mean yourself, in the post in which you said this, in response to other sentences from the same paragraph as that? Why did you feel the need to pull it out and comment on how you'd commented on other, similar things from the same post?

You might have a learned revulsion to the idea, but it's just that: learned. You may as well be choosing to believe that's how one should feel, for all it matters to the universe.

Pro tip: All those ideas in your head right now, concerning this and every other thing you've ever thought about anything? Yeah. Those are learned too.

Your point? I was pointing out that certain taboos (in this case, a mixture of slavery and cannibalism) are cultural, rather than instinctive, in the context of commenting on a hypothetical culture that raised humans as livestock.

Also, I like the part where you literally say that being an employee of a company is worse than being a slave. Wow. That's bad, even from you.

Specifically, the industrial capitalism that immediately followed and replaced slavery/de facto slavery (serfdom and whatnot). Slaves (with the exception of those, say, of Aztecs and their ilk) were treated as one would a pet or beast of burden, they were expensive, valuable property in most cases. Employees in early industrial works were subjected to even worse conditions (since, with the exception of slaves used in mines, they were primarily agricultural/service oriented), and were even more expendable (since the owner of the plant hadn't forked over the equivalent of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for each one, and their deaths simply meant they don't have to be paid or fed that month). Hence it was both more profitable, and more inhumane on average, not to mention subjected on a much vaster proportion of the population. That didn't change until the early twentieth century, where regulations and protections were finally jammed into place, forcing businesses to pay living wages and at least try to avoid killing their employees.

Edit: I know that you're going to have some snarky, completely-ignoring-the-context reply to that, so I'll just head you off: that is, obviously not to say that involuntary labor is a desirable system, only to point out that what immediately replaced it was, while more profitable, far more brutal, and a far larger percentage of the population fell prey to it.

[GamerKnight]

Wow... Sir Pseudonymous has got to be my favourite person on this forum. He makes points that I can understand. Good work.

[G-Flex]

Do you? What does the behavior of humans, already intelligent by that point, have to do with whether or not an herbivorous diet selects for intelligence? With only the rarest of exceptions, animals held up as examples of non-human intelligence are either carnivores or omnivores. Purely herbivorous animals are, with only the rarest of exceptions, dim-witted grazing animals. Therefore it follows that an animal whose diet includes no meat, will in almost every single case be dim-witted (except for, say, strains of originally omnivorous species who've specialized away from eating meat).

No, that doesn't even make any sense because humans aren't dim-witted grazing animals even when they eat a vegetarian diet. Why in God's name are you using bizarre statistical arguments when you could be looking at the actual organism involved and how it functions? Many other primates definitely have selected for a capacity to learn and be intelligent, even the ones that are largely herbivorous, and even that doesn't matter because we're talking specifically about humans. You don't have to compare them to goddamn cows because we were never all that similar to cows to begin with.

Also, what makes you think that virtually all herbivores are grazing animals?

At any rate, I've already explained, probably twice now, why intelligence is a positive and influential trait in humans even if they only eat vegetable matter. I've even explained how this can apply to nonhuman animals. Why is it that instead of actually responding to this explanation, you have to repeat some bullshit about how most herbivores are stupid and docile grazing animals, and therefore so must humans? By that logic, most monkeys shouldn't even exist. To be clear, I'm not talking about how modern humans would act, but also their predecessors and about why intelligence can be selected for in general in such a species, and already has been in others.

Are you aware of the rhetorical device known as hyperbole?

Yes. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it completely destroys your point.

Yes, it does. Third and forth sentences.

Right. So what you're saying is that securing animals' right to not suffer at the hands of men is wrong, because we don't even secure that right for ourselves, which is why murder, torture, and assault are legal.

Both are valid, though. The first is hyperbole wrapped around a grain of truth

In other words, a lie. If something relies on hideous exaggeration, it isn't exactly true anymore. After all, if animals really were only as smart as vacuums, you'd have a point. Unfortunately, most of them aren't, so it doesn't hold water.

Edit: I know that you're going to have some snarky, completely-ignoring-the-context reply to that, so I'll just head you off

No, I won't, because if you're talking about capitalism of the early industrial era, then yes, it was pretty terrible. It just wasn't that clear from your post.

[GamerKnight]

A lot of people I know could be likened to grazing animals. I look around the yard at school and its comparable to the African savannah.

[Rose]

This debate is so entertaining to read.

[GamerKnight]

Yes. Yes it is.

[Shade-o]

Love it. It's like one of those Shakespearean plays where everybody kills each other due to a series of misunderstandings. You know which one I mean, right?

[Max White]

Love it. It's like one of those Shakespearean plays where everybody kills each other due to a series of misunderstandings. You know which one I mean, right?

Well that were several that ended that way, including the ever so popular Romeo and Juliet, although in that one everybody killed themselves due to misunderstandings.


I prefer a midsummer night's dream.

[lordcooper]

Anyone who eats meat is a murdering bastard with no respect for the sanctity of life.  They should all be jailed or something.