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AfterEpictetus
1d ago
this anthropomorphising of animals is and pretty much always will be extremely suspect
I agree in general, but moral judgement does seem like the one area where this could be justifiable, at least for some moral frameworks.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
A decent plan is to buy solid, growing companies during macro noise/sell-off events, such as the dates I mentioned.
It's very unlikely that the market uncovered terrible upcoming fundamental news about the specific company at the exact same date as the market wide fear and liquidity need.
pbmonster
1d ago
True, but this was in response to a man who's 6'2" (and as such scratching the 2σ barrier) and questioning his BMI.
Waist-to-height ratio is arguably even easier: easier to measure, easier to calculate, more reliable.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
1d ago
My take on this is that the US is somewhat unique in being a nation founded on a proposition rather than blood, soil, or some historical what-have-you
This depends on whether you consider the UK and USSR to be nation-states, or whether you think they are multinational proposition-states. The process of creating a "British" identity on top of the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Protestant Irish national identities (all of which are conventional land-ethnicity-and-culture national identities) in the 18th century was deeply propositional, with anti-Catholicism being the most normie-friendly part of the proposition at the time. Likewise the only thing that makes Lithuanians, Khazaks, Russians etc. "Soviets" is a (mostly fake) shared commitment to Communism.
My experience is that most normie Brits call England, Scotland and Wales "nations" and "countries" and call the UK a "country" but not a "nation". "National" normally implies UK-wide though. We are confused about the issue. The question "Are you an English ethno-nationalist, a British ethno-nationalist, or a British civic nationalist?" is mild kryptonite to nationalists in England. (British nationalists in Wales and Scotland are either unassimilated English migrants or uncomplicatedly civic nationalists)
The unusual thing about the US is that there isn't a set of subordinate ethnic-national identities that the civic identity is built on top of - the only state that is plausibly a nation is Texas. So civic nationalism is the only American nationalism that makes sense.
Another corner case is France - at the point it became necessary to turn Bretons, Gascons, Provencals etc. into Frenchmen quickly in order to get them to fight together, some but not all of the way Napoleon did it was propositional - France isn't just the land of baguettes and Moliere, it is also the land of liberte, egalite and fraternite.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I find that for most things having a reasonable for normal people and easy to use system is better. I can plug my height and weight into an online calculator and get my BMI. And unless you’re dealing with someone outside the 1σ of height or muscle mass BMI is good enough. And people that BMI doesn’t work for will be high level NCAA D1 athletes, pro athletes, or extremely tall people and they and their health providers can understand where BMI is wrong and do something else or correct for it.
For most people, an excessively complex measurement doesn’t work because they won’t use it.
RenOS
something is wrong
2d ago
If you don't distribute the aid in an orderly manner, and make sure that it does not get horded by a small number of people, you will also get starvation quite reliably though. I'm pretty confident that if the IDF didn't enforce order, they'd be harangued by international media that obviously they wanted to cause starvation - they just let bandits get away with all the food, how is that supposed to help anyone? Of course they will just eat some part themselves, hord another, and then sell only a sliver at excessive rates! Probably there would be some conspiracy theory how the IDF is secretly sponsoring and working together with these bandits, too, and/or even profiting off of them.
Israel always gets this super-agency where even if they help distribute aid among an hostile populace they need to make sure that everything goes perfect and if not it's obviously their fault, while palestinians get zero agency assigned, where even if roving bands actively try to steal aid it's just desperate people who can't be expected to behave any other way. The only thing which seems to be allowed is to stand by while hamas-sympathizing groups get to distribute god-knows-what (including aid) to hamas centers, which then distribute it further to their own supporters.
And it's not even that I particular like or trust the IDF or the Israelis. Settlers getting away with blatantly illegal conduct is really shitty. But no, obviously, if you try to steal while enemy military distribute aid to your own civilians you're gonna get shot. That's just common sense. Hell, you're probably also getting shot if your own military is distributing aid to its own population and you try to steal.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I think another way to move the needle is to make eating vegan convenient enough that the average person can eat vegan without too much added effort— no need to scour the ingredient list for obscure ingredients that are derived from animals, restaurants having multiple options that are specifically vegan and are not salad or steamed veggies. As it is now, the choice to be vegan specifically comes with a lot of extra cognitive load. You have to constantly look at ingredients, you have to call ahead or visit the website of restaurants to see if they have a vegan option and be grateful if one exists even if you don’t want that, it’s the only place nearby you can go eat with your friends and not have to bring in food.
This is how gluten-free took off. Until a person could actually have bread products, pastas, desserts, and common foods, being gluten-free was only done if you couldn’t process gluten properly and had no choice. No one else chose to make do with only meat veggies and potatoes, never ever having a dessert. Now, there are gluten free pizzas, cakes, cupcakes, muffins, breads, and a fair assortment of processed convenience foods that don’t have gluten. It’s a bit more expensive, but you aren’t feeling deprived by it.
Thoroughly unbased, you don't need a moral excuse to order Peking duck. It's delicious! I would eat a human if it tasted like Peking duck.
Still, I think the point stands - animals can't be anthropomorphised so easily, and behaviour that's aesthetically displeasing to us as humans can't necessarily be judged as immoral within its context.
FtttG
2d ago
Do mallards deserve death for this?
I don't know, but it makes me feel a whole lot better about ordering the Peking duck.
RenOS
something is wrong
2d ago
Eh. Species have been dying out (and splitting off) since forever, and our technology to re-breed them gets ever better, especially for those we have non-ancient samples. Especially since the majority of endangered species are just small variations of very similar, non-endangered species that is simply more competitive, sometimes even so closely that they can crossbreed.
Corvos
2d ago
I like 最凶 better - you get the pun on さいきょう and also the slightly evil connotation.
The term that JP net culture uses for these sorts of videos is MAD
Good to know, I thought the M stood for music and it was the same as an AMV.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
To my way of thinking elephants are rarer than rats and so killing one should be a much higher bar to clear, but there isn’t a moral problem with shooting a depredating elephant from a helicopter in the same way that there isn’t a moral problem with setting a rat trap.
I think I disagree. There's a point of rarity, or even just majesty, at which I'm more upset by the death of an animal than the death of a human.
I'd consider it worse to kill a critically endangered species than to kill a random human. Because killing the endangered species gets closer to robbing and harming every human forever (leaving aside scifi Jurassic park stuff) while the death of any individual human probably doesn't.
Where exactly I draw that line, I'm not sure. Definitely when a critically endangered species population is almost unviable, every kill is one step closer to extinction.
But examining my feelings, I'd probably also be more upset by a dead bald eagle than a dead person, depending on the person, for purely symbolic patriotic reasons.
HereAndGone
2d ago
What the general population of Israel may or may not want is one thing. What the Israeli government is doing is quite another, and since they're the ones sending in the IDF to shoot people looking for food and water on the grounds of "desperate people didn't patiently form orderly queues and that threatened us with our arms and armour", they're the ones who hold the responsibility as Israelis.
HereAndGone
2d ago
Yeah, that was probably it. Same as with Rotherham - in some instances the police tended to go "well these are trashy little slappers anyway, how can you say they're being abused when they probably ran off with their older Indian/Pakistani boyfriend of their own free will?"
HereAndGone
2d ago
Yeah, I can see the prosecution problem (is this prostitution? so are we gonna charge a 15 year old schoolgirl for being a prostitute? that's not gonna fly with the public) but it's also the kind of thing where if a father learns what some guy has been doing with his 15 year old daughter, at the very least someone's nose is gonna get broken.
Epstein was probably smart enough to get the kind of girls that were already into sex with boyfriends, even if underage, and drugs and the rest of it - that's why he used them to recruit other girls as in the Jane Doe anecdote. He wasn't out there debauching nice respectable girls by getting them drunk/high, he was targeting the kind of girls who were already colouring outside the lines, as it were. That's what gave his lawyers the edge in digging up dirt to discredit the victims and witnesses - after all, the girl had already tried to claim that the $300 was drug money, how could she be any kind of credible witness or complainant?
Still sleazy as hell, but it doesn't automatically mean he was running a literal paedophile ring. I think if he scoped out some potential partygoers were also interested in 14 and 15 year olds, he'd have been happy to hook them up (and record all the blackmail material) but I don't think he was doing that as a full-time service, too risky in the long run (as it turned out anyway). Plausible deniability would have been the name of the game: parties and events that were must-attend attractions for high society where he hosted attractive young women (the girls enticed in with promises of getting them started on modelling careers, and he had legit connections there with the Victoria's Secret CEO: "Epstein often attended Victoria's Secret fashion shows, and hosted the models at his New York City home, as well as helping aspiring models get work with the company") who may have been on the young side but were assumed to be of legal age, and if they were happy to be friendly with the attendees, and maybe if a pretty girl and a rich guy hit it off and they got intimate, well sex is no longer confined to marriage only and that's their own business, right?
HereAndGone
2d ago
French-Mexican fusion food
Vive L'Empereur Maximilian!
HereAndGone
2d ago
if a Tasmanian devil could talk, it might prefer to stay in the sanctuary, where it has safe and clean places to sleep, has food provided at regular intervals for minimal effort on its part, and even has breeding opportunities orchestrated for it
Do humans want to stay in prison, even "Club Med" type prison? Or institutions like mental hospitals and detox clinics? A wild animal might prefer a life in the wild, the same way that even the nicest prison would not suit a lot of people. Heck, we even have homeless people refusing to go into shelters not just because of the dangers and restrictions, but because they prefer living their own lives even on the streets.
HereAndGone
2d ago
"The rabbit has a pleasant face,
His private life is a disgrace
I really could not tell to you
The awful things that rabbits do."
What will make vegetarianism/veganism more widespread among ordinary people is not all the preaching in the world, it's the price of meat. Meat has gone up in price very fast here in Ireland, to the point that a morning radio show had butchers(!) on telling people how to make it go further, to buy (relatively) cheaper cuts, bulk meals out with lentils etc.
People may not give a damn about the moral worth of a cow or a pig, but if beef and bacon are too dear to buy the usual cuts and instead they're eating mince bulked out with lentils in stews and so forth for family meals, it's a lot easier to move towards "more veggies, less meat" in ordinary diet.
Anthropomorphising animals is natural, it’s probably fundamental to the way humans see and comprehend the world around us, it far predates civilization.
It's certainly natural, but that doesn't mean it's accurate. We developed psychological projection to help us assess the states of other humans, and even then it kind of sucks as a tool. I for one believe we have already met aliens, and coexisted with them for 200,000 years straight. There might be one in your living room right now.
Animism is natural. It's an outgrowth of our tendency to anthropomorphise everything, including natural phenomena. Is it immoral to offend the river spirits? You can't assert a harm you don't know exists.
those ‘closer’ to us intellectually (dolphins, elephants) and both intellectually and physically (great apes) have greater moral valence because we know that they have greater reasoning faculty, and therefore that the kind of moral standards we apply to young or intellectually impaired humans might begin to apply. ... With greater reasoning ability comes more understanding of consequence and empathy, which is seems likely many of these animals have in some form.
I don't see how a species having intelligence and reasoning faculty means human morality suddenly becomes applicable to it though. Human empathy and morality is not universal and is a consequence of our specific evolutionary trajectory, and you can't reason yourself into your most base-level moral principles or your emotional reactions to things, they just are. There is no reason why every intelligent animal should share it. I'm almost certain you've heard of the orthogonality thesis before (given that you're here), quite obviously this does not just have to apply to AI; it can apply to any agent at all.
I've long spoken about presentism and the projection of current moral values onto the past when it comes to historical analysis. When it comes to animals who barely even share the most basic of cognitive characteristics with us, I reject any attempt to moralise whatsoever. How can you even begin to judge something as a moral violation when it is not clear that the supposed aggrieved party would even consider it as a violation either, morally or emotionally? The range of possible minds is likely vast beyond belief, and all of humanity exists in a very tiny corner of that possibility-space.
2rafa
2d ago
It’s not about consigning them to death; I don’t believe we know enough about the natural world to morally eliminate a species unless humanity itself is threatened, in which case one’s first duty to one’s own kind applies. But it is about how we relate our own moral narratives to the animal world.
Corvos
2d ago
See e.g. the British Corn Laws. Those lined up very clearly with the aristocrats (who owned the land) and the farmers (who worked it) in favour of tarriffs on imported grain, with merchants / importers / speculators and urban industrial workers against.
Self-interest, life experiences and priorities often line up along familial, tribal and ethnic lines.
2rafa
2d ago
Anthropomorphising animals is natural, it’s probably fundamental to the way humans see and comprehend the world around us, it far predates civilization. We are animals and they exist in the context of our shared environment.
In the same way that we assign some moral value to human strangers far away (even if it is less than we assign to ourselves, our families, etc), we assign some moral value to non-human animals too.
Just as with people, their behavior is obviously part of this. Even independently from their interactions with humans (a dog that bites vs a dog that doesn’t), those ‘closer’ to us intellectually (dolphins, elephants) and both intellectually and physically (great apes) have greater moral valence because we know that they have greater reasoning faculty, and therefore that the kind of moral standards we apply to young or intellectually impaired humans might begin to apply.
General free will debate acknowledged, it is fairer to describe a chimpanzee as ‘cruel’ than a mallard. The dismissive might say that each is acting within its nature when it does something nasty, but the same is true of humans. With greater reasoning ability comes more understanding of consequence and empathy, which is seems likely many of these animals have in some form.
MadMonzer
Pedo! Pedo! Pedo! Out! Out! Out!
2d ago
827.04 Contributing to the delinquency of a minor seems to apply to dirty old men offering teenage girls cash for sex-adjacent acts.
ControlsFreak
2d ago
home-cooked French-Mexican fusion food made with wild game
I would like to humbly submit a request for you to share a recipe at some point.
If you believe in objective morality, or at least morality provided by something external (probably god), that's not automatically a problem.
In fact, the fact that they wouldn't share these moral sentiments would be a pretty good case that they are not honorable
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