Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7d ago
I personally have contempt for people that are too lazy or incompetent to train their dogs and just engage in pointless acts of cruelty directed at an animal that clearly has no idea why they're being hurt. This isn't some Piker-specific position.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7d ago
I think most dogs that are bred to run believe that their role is to run and basically enjoy the activity. I'm sure many dogs were subject to abject cruelty in prior eras for reasons that I would personally find abhorrent and I don't think this is much of a defense of Piker. If the absolute best someone can say is that people were also cruel to dogs in the past, this does not move me one iota from the position that this is degenerate, third-world behavior unbecoming of a decent modern dog owner.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7d ago
every border collie I see in Toronto is autistically fixated on fetch as a replacement for herding, it's sad
This is also my Labrador retriever, but, well, she's literally a retriever so I don't think it's such a bad life for her. For a 7-year old lab, mostly laying around all day, punctuated by sprinting around fetching and indoor games of "find the stuffed animal" seems pretty good.
More broadly, I completely agree with your core point and think the contrary position seems so ridiculous to me that it's hard to see it as anything other than vice signaling. Taking animals that have these deeply engrained personality traits that they're literally bred to perform and forcing them to sit still for the sake of the aesthetic on stream is just obviously the behavior of a cruel moron.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8d ago
I don’t see why “actor” is a less valid vocation for a dog than any of the other myriad tasks we have forced them to do through the years.
It is legitimately impossible for me to believe that this is a sincerely held belief. The dog has no capacity to understand the role of an "actor", this is merely being subject to pointless misery for its entire life. It really seems like you're just trying too hard to lean into how lame it is that people care about dogs.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8d ago
Yes, many cultures are inferior to Western culture in ways that seem obvious to me. I'm glad we're Western and I want Piker held to Western standards. If he wants to be held to third-world standards, there are many options for him.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8d ago
...a dog can find satisfaction in when it knows it is doing its job well.
Some dogs can, but this is highly dependent on the breed. I don't know enough about this breed to comment on the plausibility of it accepting such a role, but this would be cruel for any active breed with high drive. An Australian Shepherd is simply not going to understand the idea that it's tasked with sitting still, it will be frustrated by this life. Piker aside, people should put more thought into what they hope to get from animals that have had selective breeding that has engrained behavior so deeply that it borders on neuroses.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8d ago
No, he's guilty of pointless cruelty directed at an animal that did nothing wrong. It's flatly evil.
The discipline of children is an excellent comparison. There's nothing wrong with the training tool in and of itself, but inflicted on a child for no real reason with no reasonable end goal, it's simply abuse. A man shocking a dog or hitting a child for not instantly complying with his pointless whims is a sinister individual.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
8d ago
There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar.
As a training tool, sure. As a means of forcing an animal to sit still for the sake of being a video prop, it is simply animal abuse by a stunted and pathetic man.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
Have a sentimental, slightly ritual appearance that marks a certain time in my life. I would enjoy it (or think I would) for the same reason that I keep various mementos from my life that have no practical use.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I actually do see my own body pretty frequently, yes.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
I do not currently have a tattoo, but have considered getting one. What I've considered is the outline of an animal that my wife jokingly refers to as my spirit animal and that has other significance to me. If I got that, it would be on my thigh, in a spot that's only publicly visible in short running shorts. I have no idea what it would even mean for such a tattoo to "not work". Would it fail to appeal to others? Not a goal, at all, I'm old, married, and it wouldn't generally be visible. Would I come to dislike it? Probably not.
In contrast, surgeries like this and other cosmetic choices all seem like a product of neurotic navel-gazing where one becomes deeply insecure about a trait that pretty much no one else notices.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
Yes, I think your intuition is basically correct. Neuromuscular coordination and power across a variety of tasks is likely improved by doing a variety of tasks compared to specifically training at the tasks that are moving fixed, specific shapes with predefined appropriate motions. We can see something similar to this in endurance sports, where athletes become specialized at the specific thing they do to a much greater extent than sports that are seemingly similar at a glance - you're not going to see the differences between cross-country skiers, cyclists, and marathoners just from looking at their literal muscle mass and aerobic capacity, but they're differentially efficient at their sports of choice and require less energy to accomplish the same tasks. Compare all of these linear activities to the versatile endurance of a soccer player and they'll all seem mechanistic and rigid by comparison, because that's exactly what they've trained themselves to be. Similarly, the manual laborer that needs to carry shingles up to a roof and nail them down develops a more versatile set of muscle movements than the powerlifter.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
- Football and other spectator sports
- Running/lifting/biking and other participatory sports
- Beer/whiskey/cigars
- Grilling/meats/cooking
- Travel
Perhaps I am simply a normie.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
Sure, I think prison is quite unpleasant. The nitpick here was strictly about the specific number, not the general claim.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
I think you're painting far too rosy a picture of prison, and eliding over massive potentially negative harms (such as the abhorrent 4% chance of rape every year).
Down the rabbit hole a bit, but the actual report cited there doesn't seem like a 4% chance of what I would typically see referred to as "rape":
Approximately 1.1% of prisoners and 0.7% of jail inmates said they were forced or pressured to have nonconsensual sex with another inmate, including manual stimulation and oral, anal, or vaginal penetration. An additional 1.0% of prison inmates and 0.9% of jail inmates said they had experienced one or more abusive sexual contacts only or unwanted touching of specific body parts in a sexual way by another inmate.
An estimated 1.5% of prison inmates and 1.4% of jail inmates reported that they had sex or sexual contact unwillingly with staff as a result of physical force, pressure, or offers of special favors or privileges. An estimated 1.4% of all prison inmates and 0.9% of jail inmates reported they willingly had sex or sexual contact with staff.
Plenty of bad stuff going around, but I think it's unhelpful to put these all in the same category.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
Assuming that these are all generic representations of people that I have not met personally and have no additional ties to:
- 3
- 2
- 3
- 2
- 1
- 1
- -3
- -7
- -7
- -8
The reason for the low valuations on the generic "these are all fine" groups at the top is that I just don't think I owe very much to distant countryman in general. My high levels of care are reserved for people that I have much closer ties to. I wish no ill on the Ethiopian Christian or Saudi Muslim, it's just not my problem how things work out for them in their faraway land.
The negative rankings are somewhat challenging owing to the fact that whatever anti-care is owed diminishes with distance, so some of these numbers reflect distaste rather than a willingness to do anything.
I don't put any meaningful emphasis on race as an element of care. Individual behavior exceeds racial preferences for me in effectively all cases.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
Again, I am not surprised by that view.
To focus on the substance though, I think this is exactly where the whole impasse is coming from:
Explicit lack of caring about others is kind of what makes one a "bad person".
I don't agree with that at all. The extent of care that an individual deserves is contingent on their behavior, it isn't just automatically owed to everyone. Related but probably tangential here is that I also don't think I owe care to all humans around the globe and my level of care is higher or lower based on relative levels of closeness to me. For my wife, infinite care. For the guy yelling obscenities at people on the street, very little care. For the terrorist or brutal murderer, anti-care and explicit wishes for the state to terminate their existence.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
I worded it like that because the OP worded his comment like it was surprising people think these opinions are seen as "bad person" opinions.
No, I'm not surprised by it, I am accustomed to it and acknowledging that I am simply at an impasse with people that differ on this. We have irreconcilable moral intuitions and I'm articulating where I think that comes to a head.
I think if you say "this group of people is annoying, I want them removed by the state and and don't care what happens to them" you've eliminated any possibility of having yourself seen as good, at best you're amoral.
Yeah, obviously I just disagree with this. I consider myself a good person, most people I know consider me a good person, and many other people that both think I'm a good person and see themselves that way agree with my perspective on this matter. I actually don't see my opponents on the issue as intrinsically bad, I understand them to be softhearted people that are unwilling to accept mean solutions to problems. The exception to that would be people that seem to revel in things sucking, that suggest that there's something wrong with people that don't want bums camping in parks, but I actually think this is a pretty small minority view even if it's overrepresented on social media.
Much of what I'm pointing at here is what I see as an actual, real difference in preferences though. You're back to the root cause end of things here with the implication being that the individual I'm referring to is either mentally ill or homeless. As mentioned, that wasn't clear to me at all, and I have certainly encountered individuals that are just aggressive assholes that enjoy bullying other people in public spaces; they would stop if they were forced to stop, this isn't some uncontrollable tic or a product of them not having a nice enough abode in which to blow off steam. I'm fairly confident that there are already statutes that could be enforced against this, there is just a cultural norm of not doing so in blue cities, so everyone gets to enjoy the serenade of belligerence.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
I meant what I said. I have trouble imagining any plausible solution that any modern state has taken to this problem that I would object to as long as it resulted in people not camping in the park, throwing trash on the ground, and yelling obscenities at passersby in the public square. I might have preferences about solutions, but it's hard to imagine proposals that I would consider worse than the status quo on this front. Singaporean harshness would be fine by me. Softhearted liberal utopian visions would also be fine by me. Huge public spending would be fine by me if it actually removes the problem. As long as the problem is solved, I am not that concerned with the exact solution.
Yesterday, I was out for a late morning run, coming up my city's main commercial and restaurant street towards the capitol square. As I approached a stoplight and took a little break in the sweltering heat, a man across the street was blaring music on Bluetooth speakers; mildly annoying, but common enough in the public square. What startled me was another man on the other side of the road who began rapping (for lack of a better description, since it was basically just yelling with a slight match to the cadence) a stream of invective - he was going to kick people's asses, motherfucker this, n-bomb that, people better not fuck with him, and so on.
Reflecting a bit, this made me think of the recent discourse on asylums and what to do, and it occurs to me that I think many people are still missing the actual point. The man I described above didn't show outward signs of any particular mental illness, I have no idea if he uses drugs, and while he did look like a vagrant, I don't know whether he sleeps rough or not. Do any of those things actually matter to me? In some sense, it would matter if there was a serious and treatable mental illness (e.g. schizophrenia), but I don't actually care whether he has diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder or is merely what we would colloquially describe as an asshole. What's to be done if there is no such diagnosis and no drug-induced psychosis, but merely an asshole yelling at people about how he's going to kick their ass? My answer is basically that I want police officers to exercise their discretion to inform him that his options are that he can knock it off, do it elsewhere, or they'll arrest him for disorderly conduct. We don't need to escalate to immediate criminalization, starting with "move along sir" is fine, but no, you don't get to keep yelling at people all day.
So much of the discourse about bums persons experiencing houselessness seems like we're just talking past each other. At the end of the day, I genuinely don't care what the state does with these people, I just want them removed from my neighborhood. This attitude is derided as not solving the problem, but that claim merely highlights that we don't agree on what the problem is. For the people that insist on handling root causes, that part will be up to them, I'm perfectly satisfied with literally any solution that removes the people that throw chicken bones and vodka bottles on the ground in the park. I'm not actually very interested in whether they're addicts, mentally ill, or simply terrible people. The answer from the BeKind crowd seems to be that everyone has the right to behave the way they want to and that I'm a very bad person for wanting these guys removed; this seems like an unsolvable impasse in preferences for how to live.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Yeah, I think that's correct as well.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Yeah, I don't know, chalk it up to small sample size I guess. I only know a couple of these guys and they're both pretty relaxed and have no tattoos at all. I'm obviously aware that plenty of soldiers have tattoos, but I get a completely different impression than I do from the face and knuckle tattoo guys on that front as well.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
The extremely dangerous men of special forces military units have no desire to signal their extreme dangerousness to the general public when they're out for some drinks with the boys. If anything, these guys are less likely to get into stupid fights for no real reason than the average guy because of their ability to easily keep their cool in stressful situations.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
Many men are just as stupid, or worse. OK, obviously this guy's lady friend is a moron, but at least she's emotionally invested in the circumstance and is unable to recognize what absolute garbage this individual is. What excuse does anyone else have? Why would anyone's reaction be anything other than advocating a swift and clean execution?
The longer I'm alive, the more straight up antipathy I feel towards addicts. Some people seem to develop more empathy for them over time, but I am pretty well fresh out of it. Guys like this will predictably make life worse for everyone around them, they're much worse than simply worthless, and it's absurd that they just keep getting to make the world around them worse every day.
Still in complete agreement!
For the sake of completeness though, I think I have undersold just how obsessive our girl is about fetching. This behavior:
That's her when fetching, just completely obsessed with the activity to the extent that she completely ignores other dogs, doesn't want to take even the smallest break, and sprints the ball back as quickly as possible until she's fatigued enough to decide she's had enough. She's an ex-breeder that I think developed some neurotic habits from the confined lifestyle prior to her moving to our home setting, and is also epileptic - there are some neurologic oddities that I think keep her from being entirely normal, so we just kind of roll with that. The finding games at home are a more relaxed, playful activity, but fetching is very serious business.
But yeah, more generally, I know exactly what you mean. I don't understand why people insist on getting these working breeds as city dogs where they're just wildly out of place and obviously have strong drives to do other things. For an old lab, even one that's neurotic about fetching, spending the vast majority of the day laying around is pretty optimal for her, but collies and Aussies and other herding dogs are clearly just losing their minds. I really don't get how their owners look at behavior that is just short of literally chewing on themselves and think it's fine.
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