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Posts by Obbe
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2018-03-26 at 6:20 PM UTC in How to efficiently overthrow government?Read the Unabombers manifesto:
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE
Introduction
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important. -
2018-03-26 at 3:36 PM UTC in Calming down.You don't have to sit in the lotus position to learn how to quiet your mind.
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2018-03-26 at 11:56 AM UTC in So long, Captain Faggot! Shouldn't have fucked with me! :)Could you post your chat logs with the PI removed?
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2018-03-26 at 11:52 AM UTC in Would You Subjugate to Islamic Law?
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2018-03-23 at 10:46 PM UTC in Caloric deficit, always cold, what can I do?Wear a snug undershirt and long johns with a looser long sleeved shirt and pants over them.
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2018-03-23 at 10:13 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick Erm, I wish I'd waited a minute before hitting "submit" now. As I said in the above post, ants demonstrate self-preservation and they have a social hierarchy, both of which are pretty good indicators that they care about their own lives and their communities. I can't personally verify whether they feel pain, but I don't really need to in order to decide that they probably don't want to be killed, and as I've stated, an animal's interest in its own life is one reasonable way to assign moral agency.
It could be argued that plants also have an interest in their own continued existence, or that creatures like ants are thoughtless automatons who don't have any interests at all and simply driven by their own biological processes. Either way I don't really think it matters, what we consider to be a "moral act" or which organisms to have "moral agency" appears to be relative.
Originally posted by Zanick If you inferred from his argument from ecology the position that we should reduce the human population and preserve animal agriculture as-is, I don't think I can provide anything to convince you of my own.
I don't like the way animals are treated in industrial farms and I do think that should change. I don't think there is anything wrong with eating meat, and I do think there are too many humans on this planet. If there is nothing you can provide to convince me that I have a moral obligation to stop eating meat I conclude that no such obligation exists and that morality is relative. -
2018-03-23 at 7:10 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick Plants aren't trying to defend themselves from caterpillars, as far as I know. Is there a more precise way of articulating that which would tell me about the plant and the mechanism to which you're referring?
I don't think grass screams for help, because it has no conception of the fact that asking other blades to help it would be futile. Intelligent organisms usually don't develop useless methods of communication.
The only drive plants appear to have is to use natural resources in the production of energy so that they can reproduce. I don't recognize them as moral agents because the facts tell me that they aren't in pain, nor do they care whether I eat them.
Couldn't you say that about ants too? Why are they moral agents?
Originally posted by Zanick As for morality, I thought you accepted Jeremus' argument for ecology? That's a reasonable avenue to animal rights, so long as the activists remain pragmatic. I don't see how my forcing you to empathize with creatures you don't already care for would improve this position.
Well I stated that I think it's the best argument put forth thus far but it hasn't convinced me that eating meat is wrong or that I have any moral obligation to do anything. As I said to Falcon, imo the problem isn't eating meat it's that there are too many humans. -
2018-03-23 at 6:23 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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2018-03-23 at 6:18 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by 杀死所有的白魔鬼 Plants don't experience agony according to everything we know. No reason to believe they do beyond conjecture
Sure and I don't even care if Zanick wants to not talk about plants. That would be fine. But he even said that most scientists don't think ants feel pain, so why does he choose to define them as moral agents but not plants? Probably because he just wants to, because his morals are subjective and relative, and therefore none of us have a moral obligation to not eat meat. -
2018-03-23 at 6:10 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meatZanick why do ants running from your feet count as moral agents but plants trying to defend themselves against catiplliers does not?
Did you know the smell of freshly cut grass is their equivalent of an animal screaming in agony? Plants use their chemicals to send signals instead of sounds like us.
Anyway I thought we were going to talk more about the morality aspect of this. -
2018-03-23 at 11:50 AM UTC in I asked out the girl who I thought liked me and she told me she had a boyfriend.Enter will steal her from her boyfriend, make her fall in love with him, and then once he got what he wanted out if her he's gonna dump her on the side of the road like last year's christmas tree.
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2018-03-23 at 11:34 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Jeremus That's not the problem at all. We already have more than enough food to feed literally everyone on earth. In fact, since livestock production is such an insanely land, energy, nutrient and water inefficient process (the amount of shit we put in vs the calories out is incredibly bad), halting meat production and replacing it with food crops and modern farming techniques, not only could we feed everyone but we'd actually be able to feed them like kings, remove the ENORMOUS environmental impact of livestock farming, and a lot of the saved resources could be redirected to benefiting people's lives in other ways.
Now I will grant that it is a societal problem; if you stopped eating meat tomorrow, it wouldn't make an ounce of difference in the global meat industry. But as a society, it's hard to argue that we should stop eating meat, and such societal action would necessarily require you to participate in it.
I guess I'd just rather live in a world with less people and more meat then a world with less meat and more people. -
2018-03-22 at 10:30 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Jeremus I'm going to take that as "yeah, that's a moral negative".
First, let's talk descriptive claims about livestock production: it is the largest and absolute worst contributor towards climate change. The environmental impact of the meat industry is massive. The simple fact is that it's not really so much the factories or the mines or the power plants that are causing the ice caps to melt. It's meat production.
http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/
Long term, as global temperatures rise, it might even lead to the destruction of our own food supplies and the end of humanity as we know it.
Continuing animal agriculture is the single worst thing we can possibly do to humans of the future. It will cause death and displacement, not of a few people but of millions, if not eventually billions. This is not some butterfly effect bullshit that is 10000 degrees of separation from our actions.
To continue to eat meat would thus be a moral wrong for humanity in general, and probably you in specific.
I find this a much better argument than anything I have read in this thread so far. And I think you're right, continuing to go down this path would appear to be disastrous.
But it doesn't really make me feel like I'm doing anything wrong at all. Really it feels like the problem isn't eating meat - the problem seems to be there are too many mouths to feed, and they at currently being fed in an unsustainable way. -
2018-03-22 at 10:06 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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2018-03-22 at 9:50 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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2018-03-22 at 3:45 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick Yeah, I'm starting to realize that plants have found their way in whether I like it or not. In all seriousness, have you read about bivalves? If you want a grey area that my argument can't easily handle, it's not plants, it's fucking bivalves. I have no idea what to do about them, I just don't eat them.
I'll be back on later, guys, I have unfortunate IRL obligations to see to for now.
You and I don't have to talk about plants. I really don't care, I only brought it up because I was interested in how plant consciousness would affect your decision to opt out of eating other lifeforms.
I would like to hear more about my so-called moral obligation though. -
2018-03-22 at 11:49 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick I don't know, maybe I'm salty about salvaging my own arguments now that they've been drowned in a sea of idiots. I thought I had presented my position clearly, is there a specific criticism you'd like to offer, other than that we just should walk away and agree to believe different things?
I don't believe there is a "more correct" way of behaving. I don't believe there is a universal morality. I don't believe the "right thing to do is what I believe would be good if everyone did it too". I believe right and wrong is relative, from person to person and from person to animal to plant to mushroom. It's all just a bunch of stuff happening. Some people feel eating animals is wrong so they don't do it. But nobody has any obligation to do anything at all. If you can convince me why I should believe you I will.
Originally posted by Zanick You have read the arguments I've offered to you, as far as I can tell, which I appreciate. But, if your replies are any indication, I'm pretty sure that you're here to talk about plants. Please, no more about plants. I realize it's a fascinating subject, and there is an overlap, but you've made a successful thread about them already. This is a thread about whether or not to eat meat.
I already stopped talking about plants. But it appears you have started talking about plants again with other posters. Maybe the plant argument actually has something to it?
Originally posted by Zanick For or against, this debate relies upon friendly disagreement. If you don't take a position and dig your heels in, it's not going to be fun for either of us. IRL I also prefer to 'live-and-let-live' but this is a discussion forum, and we're disagreeing for a reason.
If you dont want to talk a out plants lets focus on the morality aspect. As I've stated before I don't believe not eating meat is "more correct" than eating meat. I believe morality is relative. Unless you can convince me of my so-called moral obligation, I don't believe it actually exists. -
2018-03-21 at 11:48 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick Well, this is an internet forum, and I can't make anyone believe something they'd rather not, no matter how right I think I am. As for failing to convince members of my position, you're not wrong. Lanny and CF appear to support animal rights, plus a couple of others, so I wouldn't say you're correct, either. Mostly it sounds as though your mind is made up because I think you prefer to deconstruct ideology, rather than follow it, which is fine.
It's not that I would rather not believe animals shouldn't be eaten - I just don't believe it. If I found your argument convincing then I would believe it. But it doesn't convince me, or at least nothing you have said to me so far has convinced me. I don't think my mind is unchangeable. And is that not why you made this thread? To convince others? To challenge my beliefs with your own? You said yourself, "The entire history of moral causes has been a struggle on the part of some people to convince others that there exists a more correct way of conducting themselves." If your argument is correct, you should be able to convince me and I will agree with it. If you are unable to convince me, maybe it's because my point of view is the correct one. Or maybe they are just different points of view, and we just see the world differently. That's all ok. -
2018-03-21 at 10:05 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick You can say that moral relativism is the truth, but I don't believe that you actually leave anything of your life that matters to you in the universe's hands. You have to decide for yourself which injustices you will or will not tolerate, and if you'd rather abdicate from that choice based on notions of nihilism or spiritual unity, that's your decision. Nothing absolves you of that responsibility, not even when you say it isn't there.
I don't believe we have as much control over our beliefs, intentions and behaviors as we like to think we do. If people would rather eat meat or not eat meat, I believe that is a matter of their preference and that they have no responsibility to do one or the other. You may believe that "nothing absolves us of our responsibility", but you don't appear to have yet convinced anyone here that such a responsibility actually exists, and unless you can convince me otherwise I am left believing these so-called obligations and responsibilities don't actually matter at all. -
2018-03-21 at 11:52 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Zanick Issue313 raised a similar point about moral agency earlier; what it means and how it can be applied varies by philosopher. Animal rights advocates argue that the concept should be extended to include nonhuman moral agents, on the basis that they have an explicit interest in living and they clearly suffer when their lives are threatened. I agree with this argument.
Then I might have to reconsider my plant intake, but I think it's very unlikely.
The prominent moral theory I'm referencing when I speak of the deontological argument is Kant's categorical imperative. Essentially, you do the right thing if you think it would be good that everyone else did it too. This is why we'd rewind movies before returning them to the store, chose not to defecate in the public pool, and started carrying around nondisposable water bottles to reduce pollution. It's also why I don't eat meat. Why wouldn't I advocate you stop eating meat when the whole point of my decision is predicated on the notion that others should too? The entire history of moral causes has been a struggle on the part of some people to convince others that there exists a more correct way of conducting themselves.
Plants can demonstrate an interest in their own continued existence as well. For instance when they sense a catipllier eating them (or even an audio recording of the sound of a catipllier eating a leaf) some plants will produce certain chemicals as a defense mechanism. I don't know if plants or animals can be considered moral agents but I don't know if that matters either. What is unlikely? Why? If you did have to reconsider your plant intake, what would you consume to stay alive? Would you try to stay alive?
I don't believe there is a "more correct" way of behaving. I don't believe there is a universal morality. I don't believe the "right thing to do is what I believe would be good if everyone did it too". I believe right and wrong is relative, from person to person and from person to animal to plant to mushroom. It's all just a bunch of stuff happening. Some people feel eating animals is wrong so they don't do it. But nobody has any obligation to do anything at all. The universe doesn't care one whit about our lives and it's up to us to make of them what we will. Sometimes awful things happen to innocent people or animals, so it goes. Sometimes the most beautiful things happen to awful people, so it goes. Sometimes everything works out just the way we want it to, so it goes.
