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When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

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Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#171

Post by Clownshoesms »

menacingly wrote: post #166
Clownshoesms wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here I am teetering on the edge of vegetarianism, and people are talking about blowing meat chunks off spines to extract that last bit of cash, and workers inhaling aerosolized pig brains. Might be the push I needed!

It's easy for conversations like this to unintentionally turn elitist, but that "last bit of cash" is also more accurately depicted as just not throwing away protein. Pro/Anti-meat aside, there is a huge segment of the population for whom "just eat steaks" is not actionable advice. They've already killed the animal. Why not be efficient?

Yes fair enough, maximizing what we do with the carcass once the animal is dead is only fair. I guess I was leaning more towards the lengths we've gone to, for something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place (i.e. we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out).

Although in this case getting parts of the spinal cord/fluid/brain in with sausages also sounds like a hazard.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#172

Post by Clownshoesms »

ergothus wrote: post #131
Clownshoesms wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here I am teetering on the edge of vegetarianism, and people are talking about blowing meat chunks off spines to extract that last bit of cash, and workers inhaling aerosolized pig brains. Might be the push I needed!

I've been vegetarian for a bit over a decade (no fish, but dairy and eggs okay) - If you live in the right area, and have the right tastes, it's downright easy. In other areas, it's quite difficult. My personal tips & notes: * If you otherwise enjoy meat, there are a lot of meat-substitutes out there and more being developed. These tend to do a great job of mimicking processed meats and a terrible job of mimicking "r…

Thanks for the information, I'll have a closer read later. I think I'll take it in steps, losing beef/chicken/etc stock will be a blow to my recipes. Cheese will be hard if it comes to it.

It's interesting the defensiveness aspect, I've been guilty of that in the past, although sometimes just for reasons of wanting to debate it... generally a topic I'll let someone else raise first though. I guess people get very passionate about it one way or the other and that complicates having a rational discussion about it.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#173

Post by bitexploder »

ethbro wrote: post #139
ergothus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been vegetarian for a bit over a decade (no fish, but dairy and eggs okay) - If you live in the right area, and have the right tastes, it's downright easy. In other areas, it's quite difficult. My personal tips & notes: * If you otherwise enjoy meat, there are a lot of meat-substitutes out there and more being developed. These tend to do a great job of mimicking processed meats and a terrible job of mimicking "r…

As a, for lack of a better term, total vegetarian, do you have any moral thoughts on different types of animals? Was the herbavore vs omnivore vs carnivore thing a consideration? Did you debate mammal protein vs fish? Curious how people arrive at "their" vegetarianism.

Flirted with stints of vegetarianism. Still eat far less meat than "average" and can go many days without meat.

I am okay eating animals, they are tasty. They think, they die, they go to my tummy. I try to eat grass fed and "humane" local stuff these days precisely to avoid issues that occur at mass produced meat factories (antibiotic needs, etc.). This makes meat cost more, which makes me eat less.

The central reason for me comes down to sustainability. Eggs and milk are still not the most humane things to me, but they are sustainable and quite a bit better than killing the animals they come from. They cost way less to produce and eggs/cheese/dairy make a lot of tasty stuff I am less willing to give up than meat.

We can probably sustain the planet if everyone eats a light to moderate amount of dairy/eggs, but based on what I have read we really can't do that with the amount of meat consumption in America (and other places that are meat heavy in their culture.)

Not only that but Americans are used to cheap meats and are very very slowly becoming used to paying for meat at prices where it can be raised more healthily (legitimate free range, zero antibiotics due to much lower animal density, etc.)

tl;dr save the planet, and maybe because I occasionally feel bad animals die for me to live a more convenient life.

edit: also, regarding the fish only "vegans"...honestly... it is hard enough to safely define one thinking meat from another. I think people do a lot of mental twists and turns and narrative building to convince themselves that something like say, fish, are "lesser" thinking meats. Insects? Fungi? Bacteria? How do you define your thinking meat? The philosophy of this is actually fiendishly difficult if you take it seriously and don't just stop when your brain has convinced you that you have it figured out. I also don't think it is even subjective, even though it is a very passionate subject. At some level if you eat animals you have to accept the consequence and can't just rationalize away you are eating the muscles and fats of an animal that had its own thing going on. I just never felt strongly convinced by the whole strict vegan argument given the amount of energy required to live that way (it is actually hard and difficult to be a really strict Vegan, in my opinion that time can be better spent reducing misery of actual humans in a lot of cases)

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#174

Post by computerphage »

DiThi wrote: post #90
computerphage wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's a deductive fallacy. Alive things need resources, but things that need resources are not necessarily alive.

It's not a fallacy. The truth table for implication and its contrapositive are the same.

    A | B | A => B | ¬B => ¬A
    T | T |   T    |    T
    T | F |   F    |    F
    F | T |   T    |    T
    F | F |   T    |    T
My original point was that my parent was implicitly claiming that only living things need resources. That seemed absurd to me because of things like viruses, companies, governments, etc.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#175

Post by computerphage »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #84
computerphage wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's... not how logic works.

Yes... it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#176

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

Clownshoesms wrote: post #171
menacingly wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy for conversations like this to unintentionally turn elitist, but that "last bit of cash" is also more accurately depicted as just not throwing away protein. Pro/Anti-meat aside, there is a huge segment of the population for whom "just eat steaks" is not actionable advice. They've already killed the animal. Why not be efficient?

Yes fair enough, maximizing what we do with the carcass once the animal is dead is only fair. I guess I was leaning more towards the lengths we've gone to, for something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place (i.e. we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out). Although in this case getting parts of the spinal cord/fluid/brain in with sausages also sounds like a hazard.

> we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out

Is this true? Plenty of humans are reaping the benefits of this industry existing. While beef, dairy et al may be disturbing from multiple points of view, few industries are as subsidized as the corn industry in the united states.

If there was a single vulnerability to be used as an entry point to tear apart the elaborate farming empires and thoroughly tackle waste with respect to output, it'd be corn. It just doesn't make sense, irrespective of animals.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#177

Post by Razengan »

cyanotic wrote: post #161
Razengan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying a disk does in no way require simulating each atom of the disk, though? • We can already clone mammalian bodies. • I'll assume that "growing" an adult human body, with a "blank" or "default" brain, isn't too inconceivable. • Your real, natural brain can access the information within itself. • At the moment of "copying", we figure some way to biologically link the two brains together, and write some biological…

Okay, come on, Razengan. This thought experiment is not a difficult one. I invent a machine that "scans" your body in such a way that I'm able to create a perfect replica of the state your body was in, nearly to the atom. Molecule, by molecule, the machine can rebuild your body, within a near infinitesimal margin of error. I put you inside this machine, and scan your replica file, and then I save it to a massive stor…

There is some fiction that touches on exactly that dilemma, and I love it. SOMA [0] being a prominent example.

As I said in other comments, once such technology is available, our laws and ethics will have to adapt to it one way or the other.

[0] http://store.steampowered.com/app/282140/

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#178

Post by duncan_bayne »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #141
mseebach wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've killed the animal, don't you owe it to eat as much as possible of it? Isn't it a bigger sin to throw away edible meat for aesthetic reasons?

Yes - and given that's the situation with meat consumption, it's no wonder some of us decide on throwing out the whole premise and going vegetarian :)

Have you carefully examined how the dairy industry works?

I'm not convinced that a vegetarian diet that includes factory farmed dairy involves much less cruelty than an omnivorous diet. Maybe more, if the omnivore were to avoid factory farmed meat and dairy.

That said, I'm not a vegetarian myself, because I don't believe it's in my rational self-interest.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#179

Post by Razengan »

scythe wrote: post #145
Razengan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying a disk does in no way require simulating each atom of the disk, though? • We can already clone mammalian bodies. • I'll assume that "growing" an adult human body, with a "blank" or "default" brain, isn't too inconceivable. • Your real, natural brain can access the information within itself. • At the moment of "copying", we figure some way to biologically link the two brains together, and write some biological…

The disk is designed to be copyable. The brain is not. See e.g. this evolved circuit: https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ The brain is, as far as we can tell, more like that circuit than a disk. Information is encoded within the structure of the processor itself, rather than being one of 2^N easily defined conformations of a memory device. As such, there is no way to copy the memories of brain…

Well then. If copying's out of the question (for now), then I propose Plan B:

A single brain, in a secure location, remotely controlling multiple bodies (one at a time, but able to switch between them.)

• Identify all the points of contact – the I/O pins – between the brain and body.

• Identify the medium and format of communication between brain/body/senses. I think most of this has already been achieved.

• Grow a body, a shell, without a brain.

• Take your brain out and keep it alive in a vat.

• Put wireless transceivers at each I/O point on the controlling brain and the shell body/bodies.

Will anything like this be remotely (You'd have to get used to lag but in the case of a fatal accident/violence* and most diseases your brain would be safe and able to switch to a new body..

I expect something like that would be very valuable to soldiers and workers in hazardous environments, like space.

Re: When People Ate People, a Strange Disease Emerged

#180

Post by godmodus »

Clownshoesms wrote: post #171
menacingly wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy for conversations like this to unintentionally turn elitist, but that "last bit of cash" is also more accurately depicted as just not throwing away protein. Pro/Anti-meat aside, there is a huge segment of the population for whom "just eat steaks" is not actionable advice. They've already killed the animal. Why not be efficient?

Yes fair enough, maximizing what we do with the carcass once the animal is dead is only fair. I guess I was leaning more towards the lengths we've gone to, for something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the first place (i.e. we waste more on the animals' inputs than we get out). Although in this case getting parts of the spinal cord/fluid/brain in with sausages also sounds like a hazard.

part of that optimization is also disease prevetion, if we maximize "product" but produce more expenses in the form of diseases, we'd be losing money, not making any.

the meat industry is a horror show, tbh, and they don't maximize product extraction because they want to save every last piece of protien, they do it for the cash.

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