IceCream wrote:

Ok, i see.

But still, it doesn't really work as an argument imo. If AI and animals are similar, animals and humans are still infinitely more similar. The animal and human neural systems and behaviour are so similar that animals are only "the same as AI only more complex" if humans are also "the same as AI only more complex". In which case, the question is surely not one of denying that animals have conscious experience, but defining when AI does.

Although yes, the argument for animals with different neural systems is less clear, like insects and squid.

My AI thought experiment really isn't really aimed at arguing for or against the killing of animals, though there is some relation. I'm more interested in what trait people are assigning to animals, and by extension, humans as well, that places them in the "Oh no, we can't kill these things because its wrong, but those over there are fine." That is really what most PETA arguments boil down to to my ears and so they have never been really convincing to me.

Again, i think the question that is raised here is one of when AI has conscious experience, not whether animals do.

Can you define what it means to have conscious experience?

nadiatims wrote:

Yes. I'm not exactly earning big bucks myself, nor am I getting any handouts. Thanks to Japan's shitty protectionism I also have to pay 200yen one apple, instead of getting a bag full.

I always assumed it was the reverse. The reason why apples are so expensive is because back in the US the farm industry was subsidized so that fruit was cheaper on the whole. Where as it was true market value in Japan. I have no idea on tariffs for fruit in Japan though, so who knows maybe they are there.

Of course it would. Every company would have immediate incentive to lower its costs to undercut their competitors.

This would be a race to the bottom and simply result in the same situation right now. A price war would break out in some industries and as prices need to go lower and lower, businesses will cut wages more and more. The biggest reason why I don't think it would work out is because most of the market has expectations on the way of life. If min. wage suddenly vanished over night and companies could immediately force workers to take cuts in pay or force being fired; you'd still have cases where rent probably won't go down. Land owners after all will still believe their property is X value, market wages be damned. Really though, you can expand this to many markets as there are loans/debts within the system present from before that will force many to want to keep prices where they are. The people that will be able to undercut the most though will be the corporations with lots of money. This is pretty related to why I think the libertarian wonder land of near-0 govt. and regulation is ridiculous. The economy is already in motion and set, if we were starting from some sort of new slate and trying "to do it right this time." Then sure, maybe it would work. But there are many large forces in the economy now that have an immensely lopsided advantage over others that could move in with their power and money and suppress the market.

It would also make the country more competitive globally bringing back jobs.

Some yes, but many would likely stay overseas. There are still the lax labor laws and environmental protection laws which make third world countries very nice places to set up business.

The only businesses that would salivate for inflation are those that are spoon fed the increases in the money supply through bailouts/subsidies, (ie not the little guys).

As I've always heard it stated. Businesses, and banks in particular, like inflation because it makes investments/loans more profitable in the long term. Where as deflation causes them to lose value in their investments.

Ultimately though, if inflation is a problem then why don't people vote in a party that will stop inflating the money supply?

I get that you are stating this probably more as "Stop printing money to pay bills." but you can also print money for when money within the system gets scarce. Also could inflation not happen in scarcity of money as well? Imagine for a moment that an economy has only 100 bills. The economy grows and more people come and some people start saving those bills instead of using them. The scarcity of the bill drops and as a result the value on the bill rises, people charge more because they need that bill to buy stuff. In this case inflation occurred without more money being printed. But had they printed more money to offset the increase in economic growth, then the inflation wouldn't have necessarily occurred as much. I could be wrong but I think this is generally what people mean when they talk about inflation being tied to capital growth (which is positive inflation as its a win-win for everyone).

I never said the recovery would be easy. It won't be. It's just the inevitable result when the nation has been living on borrowed or printed money for decades. I just hope US citizens are smart enough to work their way out of the hole they've dug for themselves instead of turning to some dictator with easy answers. At this point I wouldn't be surprised to see the rise of a dictator in the US.

The thing with min. wage cuts is that it puts the brunt of the load on the common person where as I think most of the load should be put on the businesses. For instance, I think most of the pending problems in the market wouldn't be there had the US government simply let the banks go bankrupt. Were the govt. also working for the people, I think the govt. wouldn't allow many people to be forced out onto the streets as well (which the banks would want to try to do to save themselves, via foreclosures). Bad loans would be discharged and the economy would have crashed but would have recovered fine. I also think the crash would have helped fix people's exceptions on the world, which are still quite out of proportion IMO.

I think some very foolish lending decisions have been made wrt to student loans and this is likely to cause some big problems down the line, if it isn't already.

I agree with you on this particular part. Student loans are a bubble that no one has wanted to admit to and its just waiting to pop. I wouldn't be surprised if student loans are what cause the next major crash to be honest. With the meaningful employment still low and many grads without decent jobs, many can't make loan payments and that number is rising.

One last thing. You harped on people taking degrees that have no return on investment in terms of jobs, but you need to realize that knowing what degrees will actually provide that is basically reading the future. If you enter college and grab the most common degree of the day that has a booming market, you are likely to find yourself without a job because everyone else did the same thing. See Comp Sci. in the dotcom, see doctors, see nurses, see lawyers, see teachers. Hell, even many engineers and STEM degree people are finding it hard to find employment these days. Many are going back to college for a degree in business or finance, because middle management jobs are really all that exist these days.

Last edited by vix86 (2012 December 03, 9:26 am)

Francesca2207 wrote:

Aijin do you have tips on living a vegan lifestyle other than food? Right now I am just a dietary vegan. I still wear clothes that have leather and buy products that are tested on animals. I know that the clothing industries treat animals horribly and that animal testing has a lot of things wrong with it but I don't know all that much about them.

There's nothing wrong with continuing to use animal products you've already purchased. I still have leather products, like a wallet that I've used for years, and am not going to throw them away and be wasteful. Just don't support those industries with your money in the future, and you're good to go. Animal testing isn't a topic that I'm all that well versed in; I've only seen a couple documentaries and know the basics, but just shop at Whole Foods and you'll be fine. Nearly all their cosmetics and household products are from companies that don't do animal testing. Just check the back of a product and it'll tell you.

For clothes it's pretty easy to avoid leather and fur. Only time leather is tricky is when buying shoes, since you have to look at the tag to make sure the soles aren't leather. Honestly the leather industry is an environmental disaster, so it's not only vegans that should avoid leather, but anyone who cares about their carbon footprint.

Francesca2207 wrote:

I have a culture question. Is protesting just not a thing in Japan? I never hear about activism there. This might be ignorant of me but I get the impression that Japanese generally just live their daily lives and don't get involved in controversial topics or go out and try to make the world a better place with social change. Granted that's how people everywhere are but compared to America it feels nonexistent, lol. How many Japanese have a cause they want to fight for?

America has a much more recent and strong precedent for protesting and activism. The country is practically founded on the principle, with events like the Boston Tea Party (I love how so many people label activists that do direct action rather than stand and hold up signs to no effect as 'terrorists' yet love and support the Boston Tea Party). Just in the past century there have been huge social movements in America for racial and gender equality, the likes of which haven't happened in Japan, so it's no surprise we see a carry over trend of protesting today in America. Protests do definitely happen in Japan, though. This year there have been anti-nuclear protests with tens of thousands of people. You don't see stuff like the Battle in Seattle that happened in 1999, or Occupy Wall Street, or huge activist organizations like there are in the West, but there is some stuff.

Francesca2207 wrote:

I have a culture question. Is protesting just not a thing in Japan? I never hear about activism there. This might be ignorant of me but I get the impression that Japanese generally just live their daily lives and don't get involved in controversial topics or go out and try to make the world a better place with social change. Granted that's how people everywhere are but compared to America it feels nonexistent, lol. How many Japanese have a cause they want to fight for?

Japan used up a century's worth of protest fuel in the 1960s. Riots were epic.

Japan has a long history of protest and social upheaval. It's just that not much happened in the department since the 1960s. Unless you count the anti-nuclear people and anti-base people down in Okinawa.

Personally, I believe the reason for this is that things are simply not that bad in Japan. Japan has an extremely high standard of living with low(ish) inequality, a long lifespan, extremely low crime, and an extensive social net, among other things. There are minority issues but minorities make up such a miniscule percentage of the population compared to the US, it simply never really comes up in national politics.

Last edited by kitakitsune (2012 December 03, 11:09 pm)

Animal testing is a very complex issue, and one that the public is probably the most misinformed about since it gets way less attention than other aspects of veganism. To be perfectly honest, I don't feel comfortable talking about it simply because there's a pretty good chance you'll end up on an FBI watch list before long, haha. Freedom of speech only exists until you say something the Powers That Be don't want to hear, and law enforcement is in the pockets of the pharmaceutical giants.

That said, the necessity of animal testing, and the ethics of it, is really on a case by case basis. I feel a lot of people have this romanticized view of it, where they think "Oh, well this rat is dying, but from the scientific information we get we'll be able to help hundreds of people," when in reality plenty of animal testing yields no information, or the study itself is something ridiculously pointless, or the testing is done even though alternatives exist. There is also plenty of neglect, and outright physical abuse, of lab animals, which never reaches the light of day until undercover investigators get footage of it. Even if you support the use of animal testing, I think we can all agree it's messed up when abuse scandals happen. And these things are illegal, but the universities just pay off the fines and then a bit later another abuse scandal breaks out. The big incident at UCSF last month is a good example: primates were starved of food for weeks, animals died of thirst, no pain medication was given to a monkey and other animals after painful surgeries, and mice had amputations with no anesthesia. Why? Nothing more than sheer neglect (or sociopathic tendencies) on part of the researchers. That's the type of shit that is simply unacceptable.

A famous example I find particularly twisted is Britches, a monkey who at birth was removed from his mother, had his eyes crudely sewn shut, and then had a device placed to his head that played these scary as hell sounds. It was for a sensory deprivation study. The researchers were more or less too lazy to just go to nearby homes and study actual human children with blindness, it was more convenient for them to just sew a monkey's eyes shut. You look at the footage of how hellish that baby monkey's life was before it was rescued, and how happy it is once it can see again and has physical contact, and it can't help but break your heart.



That's the type of research I don't think is beneficial enough to anyone that it warrants the suffering it causes. If we were curing blindness or something great through these studies maybe a "for the greater good" argument can be made, but the ethics hinge on: We have 100+ million animals experimented on annually on one side of morality's scale, and what do we have on the other side? Is there enough benefit gained from those studies to offset it? Was animal testing necessary in the studies that did benefit us in some way? Difficult questions, and goes back to being case-by-case like I said.

There aren't alternatives for every form of animal testing, but we do perform animal testing for lots of pointless crap that has no real transfer to human beings. For things like toothpaste there's no reason not to buy a non-animal tested brand in this day and age. The reason animal testing is so incredibly widespread is more for financial reasons than for effectiveness. Researchers need grants, as do their institutions which get a % of it,  and the grant system in the US favors proposals that use animal testing big time since it allows for a large output of published data. Whether or not the data is actually useful isn't the concern so much as sheer volume. "The more the merrier" as they say.

There are many practical issues with animal testing as well, the major being the obvious fact that we're using species other than humans to try and figure out things about humans. It's very easy to get dramatic results in mice, and no physician or researcher in his right mind would ever just look at an animal study and then apply that data directly to humans. There always has to be testing done on actual humans. Animal testing primarily just shows us causal relationships and things that might be worth investigation in humans. As time passes, we are seeing phasing out of some animal experimentation simply since there are better research methods available now, such as in vitro like VaxDesign's MMIC. I imagine that eventually animal testing as a whole will become replaced by more effective techniques in the next century or two.

But like I said, animal testing isn't really a topic I know in enough detail to argue about much since I ended up in humanities rather than the sciences. Watching a documentary about what aspects animal activists find wrong, or reading up about it and forming your own opinion, will be much more enlightening then arguing with me. I'm sure we have some researchers on this forum too who can give their two cents.

P.S. If you don't hear from me I'm in Guantanamo Bay for posting this response Viva la Patriot Act.

Aijin wrote:

That said, the necessity of animal testing, and the ethics of it, is really on a case by case basis.

I can sort of agree with this, but caution the way many people will think about applying this. Part of the problem with research (and really thats the only kind of animal testing I am thinking of, animal testing of cosmetics and stuff seems stupid to me, but then cosmetics seem kind of stupid to me) is that often the public can't understand the importance of some research. Most research falls into the basic category which to many people often appears to be very....basic...and not needed in their opinion. Yet its basic research which is the foundation for every scientific and technological advance we've had since forever.

I feel a lot of people have this romanticized view of it, where they think "Oh, well this rat is dying, but from the scientific information we get we'll be able to help hundreds of people," when in reality plenty of animal testing yields no information

Unfortunately, this is simply the crux of research, not all research provides results or the results you were expecting. However, much of it is important, and it wouldn't gain clearance for the animal participants were there not some grounds to the research. I worked Psychology research for a time, getting clearance from the universities ethics board for animal testing is difficult; probably more so than you are picturing it.

So unless you are trying to tell us that you are an oracle that can tell us which research will have positive or negative results, the only way to find out is to go about it. And again, see the above point about the general public having no concept of the importance of basic research.

That's the type of shit that is simply unacceptable.

Won't argue that, but its still not an argument against animal testing.

A famous example I find particularly twisted is Britches, a monkey who at birth was removed from his mother, had his eyes crudely sewn shut, and then had a device placed to his head that played these scary as hell sounds. It was for a sensory deprivation study. The researchers were more or less too lazy to just go to nearby homes and study actual human children with blindness, it was more convenient for them to just sew a monkey's eyes shut. You look at the footage of how hellish that baby monkey's life was before it was rescued, and how happy it is once it can see again and has physical contact, and it can't help but break your heart.

I just googled this. It was a sensory deprevation study with whose goal was:
"The experiments were designed to study the behavioral and neural development of monkeys reared with a sensory substitution device."

Without digging around for papers, likely the final part of this research would involve killing the monkeys (which this states) and autopsying the brain to see if there were development abnormalities in the brain. (I would like to note too that recent studies, as in a few months ago, have shown that children raised in socially deprived environments show significant neural development issues.)

As to why the monkeys and not human kids. The wiki states, on the word of the PETA president mind you, that the reason for monkeys was. "performing the study by artificially blinding the monkeys was necessary because there were insufficient numbers of blind human infants within driving distance of Riverside" but then says "The researchers did not want to conduct the study in the homes of blind children because of the difficulty of carrying out the research amid routine household chores, according to Newkirk." So which was it? Not enough children in the area to do the research, or difficult in carrying out testing? And if there was difficulty in carrying out testing, do we even know if maybe the real reason had to do with controlled study variables and environment? (Which is important for having studies accepted...)

That's the type of research I don't think is beneficial enough to anyone that it warrants the suffering it causes.

Is this your opinion from the "but looks its so cute and cuddly!" department, or are you actually an expert in the field of child development?


The fact of the the matter is that animal testing will always be around. Its not going away. Even if you can build some artificial systems which can act like certain body systems, like that MMIC, you are still going to need to test it on a real live human before the FDA will ever OK it for distribution to the public. And before you can test it on those humans; those humans and the ethics board will want to know that you did ample amounts of testing on animals. That way, if drug ZZB just so happens to cause bleeding from your orifices and then death, after taking it for 2 months. Then at least Monkey subjects 1-12 died from it instead of a bunch of humans. Even ignoring drug testing, there is a lot of research into behavior and the effects of stuff, that we can't do on humans, but is still important.

While you might be willing to step back and say you don't really know to much on it. There are plenty of activitists attacking research facilities and freeing animals just for the simple fact that they are caged. Never mind the fact that many of these tards may be freeing and destroying years of research that might save their lives should they need drugs or treatment for a disease/cancer they catch somewhere down the road. Every pill you pop into your mouth for some problem, every treatment you are put through at hospitals for a problem, every machine you climb in to diagnose an issue you have ; you can thank the animals that it was tested on to make sure it wouldn't kill you or maim you. Plus you can thank the animals that came before the treatment which provided hints, clues, findings that led to the treatment. Because there are very few humans that are going to go "You want to inject me with that cocktail, kill me, and then see what my brain matter looks like? Sure no problem!."

Last edited by vix86 (2012 December 04, 6:16 pm)

I was joking about the whipped cream and chocolate syrup but was serious about the rest, lol. Craaaaazy that even condoms have milk in them. We really are such a dairy obsessed country. Just to connect this sex topic back into food, did you see the new study by Harvard that said a diet high in dairy results in low sperm quality? This week I also saw articles about high meat consumption creating erectile dysfunction and lowered sexual vitality because of the effects on arteries. I don't have a penis so I'm not too concerned, lol, but maybe our fast food meat culture does connect to the rise in stuff like Viagra in the same way it has increased so many other diseases. The singer Chaka Khan went vegan lately and it had a huge benefit on her health. She's now off her diabetes medications and lost 60 lbs. I really hope my mom and dad see how much my own health has improved and realize that if they eat less meat and dairy it would have a giant impact on their health problems. Our palettes shouldn't be more important than our lives. I learned from my own experience with diabetes that months of a proper diet is worth more than months of chemicals will ever be.

Salmonella isn't the only thing to worry about with chicken now by the way. In NY we just had a investigation that reported more than half of chicken was contaminated with e.coli. I love the billboards the PCRM put up, lol. "It’s a Crapshoot: Feces Taints 50% of Buffalo Chicken.” with a football fan gobbling down chicken.

Moral absolutism goes out the window when the scenario is personal, doesn't it? Given the option of having a loved one die, or many more strangers die, probably 99.9% of people would pick for the strangers to die. Emotions influence ethics, so no helping that. No way to know what one would do in an extreme scenario without actually being in it, but I don't think I'm the type of person to make a statement with my child's life.

Boycotting medical animal testing is tricky, since there's not exactly alternatives. A doctor isn't going to give you two meds, one tested on animals and another not, and let you pick, it's just all tested on animals. With cosmetics you have options, and you vote with your wallet the same way you vote with your wallet when you choose to buy meat or not, but with medicine you get no choices. So I don't think making a stand by refusing treatment is an effective way of trying to change animal testing. Working legally to increase welfare standards of animals experimented on, strengthening the regulations, and developing new testing methods, is really the only viable solutions.

Francesca2207 wrote:

Just to connect this sex topic back into food, did you see the new study by Harvard that said a diet high in dairy results in low sperm quality?

Okay, this is one of my pet peeves, but research doesn't really work like that. If you look up the actual study, even from just reading the abstract, their conclusion is that "a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, chicken, fish and whole grains may be an inexpensive and safe way to improve at least one measure of semen quality."

What did they compare it to? A diet "characterized by high intake of red and processed meat, refined grains, pizza, snacks, high-energy drinks and sweets." They did the study to see if there was any association between these two diet patterns and semen quality. This doesn't prove that any single factor causes anything; the researchers know and state this but journalists tend to take these things entirely out of context. So suddenly, dairy causes bad sperm. Poof.

Kind of a bad call to make when the big picture includes fast food, (implied) soda, sweets and a lack of vegetables.

This week I also saw articles about high meat consumption creating erectile dysfunction and lowered sexual vitality because of the effects on arteries.

Same problem really; it's too simplistic a conclusion. Sure enough, erectile dysfunction is related to atherosclerosis, which in turn is related to obesity, diabetes and stress. Does this mean that meat alone causes these issues, or is it the overall lifestyle of people who tend to have a high consumption of meat?

The singer Chaka Khan went vegan lately and it had a huge benefit on her health. She's now off her diabetes medications and lost 60 lbs. I really hope my mom and dad see how much my own health has improved and realize that if they eat less meat and dairy it would have a giant impact on their health problems.

Again, you're taking what was most likely a dramatic change in lifestyle and trying to isolate the two factors meat and dairy as being the sole cause of everything.

While I'm all for moderation, I can respect the notion of dropping them completely for ethical/environmental reasons. Part of me wishes I had that motivation myself I just wish people would stop trying to fit every part of the picture into their moral bias.

Do your parents have any other habits they might want to quit, like junk food? Only they can change themselves and if they aren't listening to you, there's not really a lot else you can do.

astendra wrote:

Again, you're taking what was most likely a dramatic change in lifestyle and trying to isolate the two factors meat and dairy as being the sole cause of everything.

I am not trying to isolate them. Nothing in the diet works in isolation. Everything is interconnected. We have to look at how eating lots of meat and dairy influences the rest of our diet. Like Aijin said if we eat a lot of meat and dairy it means our diet does not have as much room for the foods that are truly healthy for us. I've done a lot of research online about diabetes and veganism and there are sooooo many people that experience the same radical change, I'm not some genetic mutant over here that is a special case. Vegan diets are made of lower glycemic index and high fiber foods and are great for losing weight and combating obesity and other risks for diabetes. Exercise does help a lot but even just removing meat and dairy and replacing them with healthy plant foods you can make a huge change in diabetes. I got my diabetes under control just by changing my diet, not by exercising more or anything else. Killing off meat and dairy was all it took.

Diets with a lot of meat and dairy cause obesity more than plant diets because calories of meat and oil (most meat meals are FILLED with oil) don't cause the body to feel full like plant foods do. Since we don't feel full, we keep eating and end up consuming too many calories, leading to our nation's obesity epidemic. If people were eating plants instead of meat and dairy this wouldn't be happening.

400 calories of vegetables is a lot of food, would be about 2-4 lbs of vegetables. 400 calories of grains or legumes definitely makes me feel full, but it depends on one's eating habits. Someone who eats 5 small meals throughout the day can be full on 400 calories, whereas someone who skips breakfast and only has lunch and dinner won't be. High fiber foods do create satiety, and the average American consumes less than half the DV of fiber since the focus is on meat and dairy instead of plant foods.

It's pretty much impossible to become overweight eating lots of vegetables since they are so low in calories. 2000 calories of lettuce is about 20 heads of lettuce, or 20 lbs of portabella mushrooms, just to give an idea.

Of course no one eats 4 lbs of vegetables in a single meal, just like no one would open a bottle of oil and drink 400 calories from it. That picture just shows how certain foods create less satiety per calorie than other foods, not what three different meals would look like. 400 calories of quinoa for lunch is going to make you feel fuller than 400 calories of chicken would, and 400 calories from fruit and a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast will be more filling than 400 calories of bacon and eggs.