Ask armati a question

[mrswdk]

Okay new question: would you rim your sexual partner:
a) out of choice, because you enjoy it
b) out of choice, but only because you think she will enjoy it
c) only if she asked you to
d) only if she asked you to and it was very important you keep her happy at that point
e) never

I added another option.

[Metsfanmax]

Sometimes mets ignores what he considers irrelevant in an argument, to focus on what he thinks is the important part. That can sometimes be very annoying, I agree, but it is NOT dishonest.

Well I think the important part of this conversation is that 10 billion farm animals are being killed in the United States every single year to provide food for our dinner tables. Almost every single one of them is raised under the most inhumane conditions. If there's some part of the issue that you think is more important than that, please let me know.

ITT: Mets 'proudly states his obstinate views on various subjects'

Hey man look at the thread title. Go get your own if you want to talk about what's important to you.

[mrswdk]

Just saying. You calling me obstinate is a classic case of pots and kettles.

Anyways, this is a thread for us to question you. ANSA MA QUESTIONZ

[Metsfanmax]

Just saying. You calling me obstinate is a classic case of pots and kettles.

What is it about my stance that makes it obstinate?

[mrswdk]

In the last set of posts I quoted, you tacitly acknowledged that you will ignore parts of a debate you don't want to have in order to pursue whichever point you're trying to make.

Now answer my question about rimming.

[Metsfanmax]

In the last set of posts I quoted, you tacitly acknowledged that you will ignore parts of a debate you don't want to have in order to pursue whichever point you're trying to make.

I acknowledged no such thing. I am not granting Dukasaur's premise. I was observing that even if I did grant Dukasaur's premise, the thing I was talking about would still be the most important part of the debate. As I have gone to great lengths in this thread and in others to explain my moral views and how it relates to eating animals, I find it rather obvious that I am not afraid to engage in deep conversations on this subject that can go off on tangents from the issue itself. I don't believe there is any point in the current discussion which I have ignored, but you're welcome to try and find one, and if I missed something, I can answer it now.

Re: rimming. This is the "ask Metsfanmax a question" thread, not necessarily the "get an answer from Metsfanmax" thread. Sorry to disappoint.

[hotfire]

sentient= able to feel, see, hear, smell, or taste; aware. By that definition a crow is clearly sentient
https://youtu.be/AVaITA7eBZE

[Endgame422]

But mets,its 100 percent legal to slaughter cows for food(or just for the hell of it because they are property)
Your answering to some higher moral authority here,why leave that out when i asked earlier?
What moral authority are you answering to thats "more moral" then the law?

[Metsfanmax]

sentient= able to feel, see, hear, smell, or taste; aware. By that definition a crow is clearly sentient
https://youtu.be/AVaITA7eBZE

In the philosophical literature, sentience usually means something a little different, in particular the ability to feel pain or pleasure. That is the standard I am using. And yes, by that standard, a crow is clearly sentient and its interests matter.

But mets,its 100 percent legal to slaughter cows for food(or just for the hell of it because they are property)

Yes, and not too long ago in the US it was 100 percent legal to whip your slaves to make them do things for you, and if it wasn't strictly legal to kill them, no one really gave a shit if you did. That didn't make it right.

Your answering to some higher moral authority here,why leave that out when i asked earlier?
What moral authority are you answering to thats "more moral" then the law?

There is no "moral authority" that I am answering to. I am talking about what I think is right and what I think is wrong. It doesn't come from some arbiter, but rather is determined through rational debate and discussion, and through the acceptance of certain key principles that define what it is about humans and other animals that makes them worthy of being moral subjects. Indeed, I reject the whole concept of a "moral authority" and I have no interest in moral systems that exist because "X said so."

[Army of GOD]

who is your favorite physics professor at Stony Brook?


hard mode: I have to have had a class with them

[mrswdk]

ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU TURD

[Metsfanmax]

who is your favorite physics professor at Stony Brook?

My advisor, obviously.

ANSWER THE QUESTION YOU TURD

I have no interest in rimming but I can't completely rule out the possibility.

[mrswdk]

What sort of stuff do you usually cook for dinner?

[Army of GOD]

WHOS YOUR ADVISOR

[Endgame422]

Im not here to argue the values of vegetarian diets with you im just trying to get inside your head a bit.
Your making life choices based on a set of principles that are above the standard of the rule of law i asked about earlier. Its not illegal to eat chicken that were not free range(or chicken at all),yet you CHOOSE not to do so based on some kind of morality.
What are the principles of that morality your following?
Should your set of principles(your ideology) become the rule of law?

[Metsfanmax]

Im not here to argue the values of vegetarian diets with you im just trying to get inside your head a bit.
Your making life choices based on a set of principles that are above the standard of the rule of law i asked about earlier. Its not illegal to eat chicken that were not free range(or chicken at all),yet you CHOOSE not to do so based on some kind of morality.
What are the principles of that morality your following?

I've been explaining that as part of my posts. The basic principle is universalization: we should act by those principles which we would universalize, e.g. because I do not want to be harmed, I should not harm others. I would not want someone to eat me because they like the taste of my flesh, so I should not do that to someone else.

This principle is not "above" the standard of the rule of law; laws are, or at least ought to be, an attempt to put into practice penalties and incentives to get people to act morally. However, sometimes law lags our moral understanding, and we are right now living in one of those times. A consistent legal structure would have at least some legal rights for at least some non-human animals, but we haven't yet collectively developed the right language and understanding for it. But we're getting very near to that point.

Should your set of principles(your ideology) become the rule of law?

This is not about my ideology. The reasons why we should not eat animals are already lived by virtually everyone in our society (i.e. the belief that we should not harm innocent people). It is just that many people are not fully living up to that belief, nor is the law doing what it should to protect those who need protection.

[mrswdk]

I would actually quite like to know what sort of stuff you eat given your diet is (I assume) completely free of animal products

[Metsfanmax]

I would actually quite like to know what sort of stuff you eat given your diet is (I assume) completely free of animal products

I eat basically whatever it is I was eating before I stopped eating animal products. Pizza, ice cream, salad, pasta, pie, fruit, rice, beans, tofu, whatever. I just eat replacement products that don't use dairy, eggs, etc. Quite delectable indeed.

I haven't eaten meat since I was about 11 but I didn't really enjoy it even before then, so I never felt a need to replace it. Sometimes I eat things like meat-alternative hot dogs, not because I liked hot dogs, but because they're tasty on their own merits.

[mrswdk]

Isn't sourcing dairy/egg-free pizza, pasta and pie an enormous pain in the ass?

I mean, I know you'd say it's worth it, I'm just wondering how difficult it is.

[mrswdk]

Linda McCartney sausages are awesome and are totally meat-free. I can happily eat those.

[nietzsche]

I don't think subtleknifewield (or me for that matter) was ever denying that animals suffered. Yet you made it look like he did, and constructed your arguments in that direction. Is this again another example of you being dishonest in order to win a debate?

Sometimes mets ignores what he considers irrelevant in an argument, to focus on what he thinks is the important part. That can sometimes be very annoying, I agree, but it is NOT dishonest.

I will decide what's dishonest and what's not, mr.

[Metsfanmax]

Isn't sourcing dairy/egg-free pizza, pasta and pie an enormous pain in the ass?

I mean, I know you'd say it's worth it, I'm just wondering how difficult it is.

Really depends on where you live. I live on Long Island, a very dense suburban area relatively close to New York City. It is fairly easy to find these products nowadays at a variety of my local supermarkets. And over the last few years I've seen it become true even in more rural locations, that their local supermarket carries these.

[mrswdk]

This is why Chinese food is superior to Western food. It is very easy to make animal-free Asian food, and indeed a lot of it is totally animal product free in the first place. No searching required.

When Agent Smith said humanity is a virus, he was actually talking specifically about white people. Asian people are like the good bacteria that gets put in Yakult and Danone.

[Metsfanmax]

This is why Chinese food is superior to Western food. It is very easy to make animal-free Asian food, and indeed a lot of it is totally animal product free in the first place. No searching required.

One of the very best vegan places I've eaten at is this Asian fusion joint called Franchia near Penn Station in NYC.

[Dukasaur]

Sometimes mets ignores what he considers irrelevant in an argument, to focus on what he thinks is the important part. That can sometimes be very annoying, I agree, but it is NOT dishonest.

Well I think the important part of this conversation is that 10 billion farm animals are being killed in the United States every single year to provide food for our dinner tables. Almost every single one of them is raised under the most inhumane conditions. If there's some part of the issue that you think is more important than that, please let me know.

I was speaking in the general sense. I'm not going to speak for subtleknife and assume I can express what was the salient point that he thought you cut of his statement, but it obviously annoyed him that you did that, and I can certainly sympathize because I've been annoyed by similar things in the past. My only point was to defend you from nietzche's claim that this tendency of yours is "dishonest". I don't think it is dishonest, but to give a balanced opinion I had to acknowledge that it is infuriating at times.

I think people are bored with hearing my opinion on the whole carnivore thing, but if you want me to address it, I will. I acknowledge that farm animals suffer immensely, but I don't think that there is anything I can do to change that.

First, I believe that pain and suffering are hard-coded into the fabric of the universe, and while you might alleviate suffering at point A, it will be compensated at point B. We live in a universe where the entropy of a system always increase. This makes it literally impossible to live without killing or to create without destroying. We make our lives possible by capturing the decay products from the death of cows; the cows live by capturing the decay products from the death of plants; the plants live by capturing the decay products from the death of our star; our star was born by capturing the decay products from other, older and more beautiful stars of long ago. At each step a smaller and uglier thing is kept alive by the death of something bigger and grander. When we die we will feed slimy little fungi. Death always outpaces life, destruction always outpaces creation, in the end evil will always triumph. That's the big picture.

Second, we address the point of whether farming for meat increases net suffering. I won't pretend to know the answer. My instinctive suspicion is "no." Animals in the wild don't spend their time frolicking about in Disney fashion. Most animals die prematurely. They starve to death, they freeze to death, they are torn apart by predators, they suffer diseases and there's nobody around to feed them antibiotics. A cow lives a demeaning and unpleasant life on a farm, and then it goes to a painful and undignified end, but I'm not sure if this is necessarily worse than what its life would be like in the wild. While neuroscientists are close to an empirical definition of suffering, I think they're still a long ways away from being able to quantitatively assess suffering on a mass scale.

I honestly don't know which is worse, but here's a thought experiment for you. Which of the following fates would you choose:

1. You can go live in the wild. No tools, no technology, no antibiotics, no hope of resupply from civilization, just your naked body and the assistance of other naked people who choose the same fate and are under the same restrictions. You will eat what you find; you will almost certainly be hungry most of the time except for a brief period in the summer. You will cut yourself on thorns and the wounds will get infected, you will have no meaningful way to address the infection, you will be stung by wasps and feasted on by deer flies and gnats, you will drink water containing the fecal matter of your companions and will be tormented by intestinal parasites. If you beat the odds and live more than a few weeks, you will suffer gnawing cold in the winter. Arthritis will set in and be your constant companion. In the end, a wolf or a bear will bring you down, and he will start feasting on your soft parts while you are still alive. Or,
2. You can go live in a concentration camp. You will live in a filthy overcrowded cell, covered by your own feces most of the time except on hosing-down day, when the guards will rinse you with a cold hose. Nonetheless, most of the time you will be warm and dry. You will be well-fed; fed to excess, in fact, and allowed to get as gloriously fat and lazy as you wish. Medical care and antibiotics will protect you from most diseases. If it's time to move to a different cell the guards may kick you or give you electric shocks, but that kind of thing will be rare, and most of the time your worst enemy will be boredom. In the end you will be killed, and it will be painful and terrifying, but probably not more so than being eaten by a bear.

Furthermore, I think vegetarians and vegans are largely in a state of denial about the suffering caused by the growing of crops. Rabbits have to be killed so that they don't eat your carrots, deer have to be killed so that they don't eat your corn. Even if they are not actually shot or poisoned but just kept out by fences, they still die a slow death by starvation, standing outside on the indigestible sagebrush and looking at the delicious crop of corn inside that you won't let them touch.

Third, about the issue of whether I personally, could do anything to change this. I believe the economics is such that I personally could not. If I choose to deprive myself of the pleasure of eating meat, I would stop bidding up the price of meat in the marketplace. The price would go down, those people who continued to eat meat would get it cheaper, and they would therefore eat more of it. That is the macroeconomic view. The only way that not eating meat would reduce the consumption of meat would be if it was such a large reduction in demand that even at the reduced price the remaining meat-eaters could not absorb the excess.

Even then, a vastly larger shift would be required to make the business unsustainable. I just don't see such a shift happening. Vegetarianism has been around as long as I can remember, and in all that time it grows a bit, shrinks a bit, grows a bit, shrinks a bit. There's always delusional talk about how it's a growing movement, but I don't see that. Like other marginal philosophies, it's a case of adherents clinging to false hope whenever there's a little uptick in the numbers, and closing their eyes when there's a downtick.

I do what little I can. I'm kind to the animals that I own. When I drove chicken truck I occasionally stole some chickens from their crates and released them in the wild. Of course that was an empty gesture. An obese, diabetic farm-raised chicken has as much chance of surviving in the wild as I would in a school of sharks. Still, my compassionate impulses were somewhat assuaged.

When I was young we lived on a farm and slaughtered all our own meat. All our animals were killed as humanely as possible, the birds with a single blow from a very sharp axe and the four-legged beasts with a single shot from a heavy military rifle. (I've described elsewhere in this forum the one horrific time that we deviated from that rule.) Until the day of their death, they all roamed mostly free. There were some poorly-maintained fences that somewhat limited movement, but for the most part everything was unfenced and animals returned to the barn mainly of their own free will because that's where the tasty treats were.

That's my view. I sympathize with the suffering of animals, but beyond being good to animals that I personally own, I don't think I can realistically influence things.

Fourth, and finally, about your idea that if we can't change the world with moral suasion or economic boycott, it can be done through law enforcement. The ruling classes don't even give a shit about their own species; what makes you think they will care about others? Alexander the Great had 150,000 people arbitrarily killed because his best friend died and he thought everyone in the country should feel as bad as he did. 100,000 were killed in Iraq just to force up the spot price of oil so the Bush Family's cronies could cash in their oil futures and make a tidy profit. Shaka Zulu had 6,000 people killed because he couldn't get an erection, and it was important to blame it on the witches so he wouldn't have to admit that he was getting old.

After a brief period of improvement toward the end of the 20th century, the 21st has started out on a sour note, with a rapid increase in violence, extralegal imprisonment, torture, and generally totalitarian behaviour from governments. Essentially, the proletariat is just another type of livestock to the ruling classes. If they won't improve the living conditions of livestock of their own species, what persuades you they'll do something for livestock of other species?

So now I've wasted 3 hours typing a discourse on a subject I really didn't intend to get involved in. I only came in to this thread for one purpose: because I saw nietzche accuse you of dishonesty, and that outraged me. Whatever your annoying qualities, dishonesty is not among them, and I felt a need to jump in and defend you. In our little community of sophists, integrity means something, or at least I hope it does. I consider you a friend, although I know you're an automaton who feels no need for human connection, and next time you disagree with me you'll still talk to me like I'm a disposable asswipe. But that's okay. When I think someone or something deserves to be defended, I will defend it. It's not predicated on reciprocation.