domain:betonit.substack.com
MartianNight
14hr ago
Sure, let's say, when left to their own devices, people will choose to eat garbage. Is it the government's job to prevent this? If yes, then why single out lab-grown meat, when hot dogs, jellybeans and soda are just as bad? If not, then what is the basis for banning just 1 of 1000 unhealthy foods that people already consume?
distic
22hr ago
I don't think the main point against eating animal meat is the fact that it kills animals, but the impact on environment and the land efficiency. To eat a pound of beef, you need the cow to eat a lot of grass, which takes a lot more land than producing a pound of vegetables. Moreover, cows produce a lot of CO which has a huge climate impact.
MartianNight
13hr ago
I'm just trying to pin down the argument here. If the argument is “the government should ban unhealthy foods in the interest of public health” that's a position that's easy to understand, whether you agree with it or not, but adopting it would imply banning a bunch of traditional foods too.
If the argument is “the government should ban unhealthy foods, but only if they are new” then the logic is less clear: why does it matter if an unhealthy food is new or not? You should be able to defend the “only if they are new” qualifier, unless your real motivation is something different (e.g. irrational hatred of lab-grown meats or the people who advocate for them).
(Note that all of this assumes that lab grown meat is unhealthy as a given, which I certainly don't believe in the strict sense, though I will concede there is some unknown risk associated with it.)
somedude
16hr ago
Oh man I just went back and had a second look at the exchange where you guys supposedly banned him for "single issue posting" a few weeks ago. Turns out @self_made_human didn't realize which parts of the mod system were publicly viewable and the listed reason for the ban was actually:
Jew-posting with a boner so hard that the fig leaf fell. Build off Amadan's recommendation to ban him if he did it again.
But gosh golly gee whiz, I thought he was impartially banned not for the content of his existing posts but for failing to post upon a wide enough variety of subjects? You know, that incredibly important rule about the number of subjects one posts about? The one that totally isn't an excuse to punt people who post about the wrong things.
While I'm at it, here's a reminder of how Zorba phrased it:
Just go post about something every week! Here's a nerd making goat noises! Here's some nerds comparing cards in a game they've never played! Here's another nerd taste-tasting AI-created cocktails! this is not hard
Because I figure we're about halfway to the point where "just post a youtube video about goat noises or something" suddenly becomes "ackshually we have to feel like they're good posts with sufficient effort" or whatever.
curious_straight_ca
1hr ago
My take:
Look I love rolling in shit as much of the next guy, but I think it has to be interesting. Yeah, critical theory gay pedo, I remember watching that video four years ago or whatever, but you can't just say the line for the thousandth time, try to do something new with it.
If jannies had the balls to moderate on QUALITY, and just say "yeah you're irredeemably r-slurred have fun on .win", jannies would be seen as sigma monarch chads and not whining virgins.
This place as a whole doesn't want any of that toxic stuff anyway. I'd say run back to rdrama, but rdrama comments in 2024 are so dull I sympathize with coming here. Try twitter, idk.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3hr ago
Feel free to post quotes and argue about what you think they mean, what they say about some group's intentions.
Other people may choose to engage and express a different view. They may think those same quotes do not say what you think they do.
Discuss. Civilly.
If you just start talking about how you want to throw things because people with different reads are lying gaslighters, yes, eventually that will result in you being banned if you can't control yourself and can't cope with dissenting views.
MartianNight
8hr ago
Yes, I agree that failing to do something useful in the past shouldn't prevent you from doing something useful today, but by that very logic, the government can still ban any number of unhealthy foods if it wanted to.
That's why I don't buy the explanation that the ban on lab-grown meat was motivated by concern for public health, because if that were true, the government would also be banning alcohol, tobacco, sugary drinks, etc. If you want to explain the meat ban in terms of public health concerns, you have to explain why none of the other, much more effective, bans are happening.
Of course, in reality it has nothing to do with public health, but simply waging the culture war. DeSantis is trying to own the libs by banning something that they advocate for. DeSantis himself said as much:
“Today, Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “Our administration will continue to focus on investing in our local farmers and ranchers, and we will save our beef.”
Nowhere does it say that public health concerns were the reason for the ban. Instead, it's all about “fighting the elites” and “saving our beef”. If lab-grown meat was provably more healthy than regular meat, DeSantis would still oppose it for the above reasons.
And of course the whole reasoning is bogus. Having lab-grown meat available as an option does not force anyone to eat it, and it doesn't take away traditional options. The idea that allowing anyone to eat lab-grown meat would result in everyone being forced to eat it is a classic example of a slippery slope fallacy.
MartianNight
14hr ago
So are you arguing that without the extrajudicial home raids, the ban is useless? Because I'm fairly certain home raids aren't part of the current proposal.
curious_straight_ca
17hr ago
I also vaguely remember something like that happening? It might (or might not) have been this. https://time.com/collection-post/6140206/cultivated-meat-passes-the-taste-test/
Again keep in mind that I'm comparing this to shitty meat. I don't even like shitty meat.
Taste is just an engineering problem, though. We understand enough about how cells grow and divide to intervene in the process, and understand the chemicals that cause things to taste like so pretty well. I think you could get lab grown meat that's reasonably indistinguishable in taste from (average store bought, with implied caveats about taste and nutrition) real meat right now if you were willing to pay absurd prices (edit: like, tens of thousands of dollars per pound).
vorpa-glavo
9m ago
Catholic doctrine holds Christ above Mary (right?) but I'm pretty sure most Catholics worship and respect Mary more.
Technically, the Catholic position is to worship (latria) God alone, and to merely respect or venerate (dulia) saints, including Mary. However, because of Mary's special status as the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, she is offered "hyperdulia" the highest form of respect or veneration.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2hr ago
This is a post in itself but a substantial reason why so many work outside the home today, and why women working outside the home is correlated with wealth and technological development, is because having access to labor saving devices heavily shifts the economic calculus in favor of women working outside the home. It requires far fewer hours today to achieve what would have been a full time job providing goods for a household historically. One of the few areas where this is not true is child rearing and i s part of why daycare is so expensive and why people sometimes quit work to care for children. Otherwise we have largely automated the tasks of homemaking, freeing people's labor up for other productive uses. Related to this is the idea of a "gold digger." A woman interested in a man for his wealth but who does not proportionally contribute. It's much harder to proportionally contribute without a job when technology can automate most of the things you're supposed to be contributing!
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
2hr ago
I would ban someone for calling people "stupid paranoid hicks." I would not ban them for claiming "No one is trying to take your guns," even if I think they're wrong and even if I think they're being disingenuous. Which I do not think is the case here - but even if I agreed with you that "People who say vat grown meat isn't an attempt to ban real meat are lying," you're still going to have to argue the issues, not demand that mods ban people who make arguments that cause you emotional distress.
Tenaz
3hr ago
Jesus is the only reason for the "probably," but yes. I can't count the number of Catholics who argued that Mary was greater than Jesus because she was his mother. If I brought up Mary's mother as someone who was therefore even greater than Mary, they didn't have a good response, but I don't think I convinced anyone that way either.
Catholic doctrine holds Christ above Mary (right?) but I'm pretty sure most Catholics worship and respect Mary more.
I'm rethinking it now though--altogether, Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha are probably held in higher esteem.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3hr ago
This is just a pathological level of oversocialization, to have even had these thoughts occur in your mind... Jesus Christ. I wish I knew you, so I could take advantage of you.
This is unnecessary. I'm sure you're a shark among seals, but don't do this.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4hr ago
Calm down, and stop ranting at people and accusing them of lying and making bad faith arguments when there is no evidence of this. (The quote you cite as evidence does not say what you claim, and while you can legitimately argue that that's the actual intent, you cannot legitimately claim that anyone who disagrees is gaslighting you).
AvocadoPanic
4hr ago
Inferior at breast feeding or baby having?
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
4hr ago
We do at least still have beatings and alcohol, and blood letting too, if you're diagnosed with hemochromatosis.
Frankly speaking, while depression might be more prevalent today as a disease exacerbated by modernity, I can't imagine our ancestors weren't anxious or stressed the fuck out.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
4hr ago
It's routine (or at least best practice) to order a whole heap of blood tests when doing a work up for someone with depression. Add on polysomnography too.
Thyroid deficiencies, sleep apnea, neurological issues like Alzheimers or Parkinsons, they all can produce depression, or be comorbid with it.
So while there's no blood test to diagnose depression-in-itself, any decent psychiatrist will figure out if there's something else wrong with the body, and treat accordingly. But in the end, we have no reliable way of pointing an instrument at someone and get DEPRESSED or NOT DEPRESSED back. Hence the whole talking to them and using standardized questionnaires, which does work mind you, even if we don't have anything significantly better once we've ruled out the body fucking with the mind in other ways.
To no one's surprise, Scott has written about this at length and I feel like there's little for me to contribute, yet.
For example, this one https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/15/contra-contra-contra-caplan-on-psych/, though he's written more about it on ACX not that long ago.
curious_straight_ca
5hr ago
Not the kind of comment we're looking for here tbh
To_Mandalay
5hr ago
Is your argument that modern society values motherhood more?
No.
Complementarianism, may be expressed more now, I suspect for much of existence it went without saying, but was no less true.
I don't think so, I think for most of history it has been the standard belief of most men that women are an inferior order.
Of course women have value in traditional societies. More than livestock. But less than men.
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