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When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

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71–80 of 215 posts

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#72
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? There's not actually any real problem with eating mechanically separated meat, it just makes for good TV to say that it isn't real food. For style points, make a show of how bad it is the week before doing an episode on pâté.

Your inclusion of the statement regarding "mak[ing] use of all of an animal" is to show hypocrisy between respect for efficient use of animals by indigenous people and distaste for some industrial food processing practices. This is sloppy or disingenuous as they're different domains: one is efficient use of the animal for any purpose and the other is efficient use of the animal for food. Similarly here you bring up m…

The pâté comment is not loaded; pâté is literally any meat paste (or maybe even not meat). Are you thinking of foie gras or something?

Anyway, to try to be clearer: What's the difference between making efficient use of an animal and making efficient use of an animal?

Are you just complaining that traditional cultures didn't know how to mechanically separate meat? Are you making a claim about what they would have been likely to do if they possessed such knowledge?

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would nature care?

Cannibalism seriously threatens a species' survival. Risk of disease from eating same-species meat is a good way to stop it.

Nature cares not a whit about "species".

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#74
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your inclusion of the statement regarding "mak[ing] use of all of an animal" is to show hypocrisy between respect for efficient use of animals by indigenous people and distaste for some industrial food processing practices. This is sloppy or disingenuous as they're different domains: one is efficient use of the animal for any purpose and the other is efficient use of the animal for food. Similarly here you bring up m…

The pâté comment is not loaded; pâté is literally any meat paste (or maybe even not meat). Are you thinking of foie gras or something? Anyway, to try to be clearer: What's the difference between making efficient use of an animal and making efficient use of an animal? Are you just complaining that traditional cultures didn't know how to mechanically separate meat? Are you making a claim about what they would have been…

Indeed, I was thinking of foie gras. Thank you for the correction.

Given that I've twice expressed quite explicitly the point I was making, I fear we're talking past each other. I wish you a good day.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#76
post #50

This article make me unwell. Just thinking of the cannibalism makes me wanna throw up.

Let me accelerate that then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_Was_the_End

Wow, that book seems like a load of bollocks and a half. Makes Truthers look like the picture of sanity by contrast...

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically if you've got a prion disease it's just a matter of time before they end you. Unless you had a mind backup and a second body ready. Which, I think, all medicine ultimately aims, should aim, for; Why bother learning how to repair the single same body over and over (which won't help in unexpected catastrophic failures aka fatal accidents anyway) when you can just grow and jump into a new one?

While we have thousands of years of cultural belief that mind and body are distinct, I'm not aware of any scientific evidence for that. And there is a lot of evidence that the mind is directly dependent on the state of the body--change the body (drugs, injury, etc) and inevitably the state of mind changes too. So I don't know of any reason to think that it's even possible to separate a mind from a body, let alone mov…

There's an head transplant scheduled for this year with some major luck we'll soon know more about what's consciousness.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#78
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pâté comment is not loaded; pâté is literally any meat paste (or maybe even not meat). Are you thinking of foie gras or something? Anyway, to try to be clearer: What's the difference between making efficient use of an animal and making efficient use of an animal? Are you just complaining that traditional cultures didn't know how to mechanically separate meat? Are you making a claim about what they would have been…

Indeed, I was thinking of foie gras. Thank you for the correction. Given that I've twice expressed quite explicitly the point I was making, I fear we're talking past each other. I wish you a good day.

I understand full well that you are expressing that there is some difference between eating and other uses.

You've done little to argue why this difference is substantial (hence my just restating the position I started with, where they are conflated).

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would put bacteria in that role and call them green goo. One thing I find interesting is that gray goo would have to compete with bacteria for resources. I'm not sure that it would necessarily be easy.

Prions are not alive and therefore do not need to compete for resources to further their existence.

If "not alive" => "doesn't need resources", then "needs resources" => "alive". That doesn't seem right to me.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannibalism seriously threatens a species' survival. Risk of disease from eating same-species meat is a good way to stop it.

Nature cares not a whit about "species".

Personification of "nature" is a shorthand. No one actually thinks "nature" is an intelligent entity making independent decisions about the biology of creatures (when people refer to that, they call it "God").

Rather, they mean "Could this be the way that the species' internal biological and evolutionary processes are involved in preventing cannibalism?" Personally, I think "nature's way" is a highly preferable and convenient shorthand. :)

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