Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you construct a complete human diet out of fungi (mushrooms, truffles, yeast, etc.)? What about if you add milk and eggs?
Eggs = unborn baby birds.
Not unless they're fertilised.
Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
51–60 of 181 posts
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#52K sooo to (kinda) answer the question: depends. What's your definition of consciousness? Now as for the implication that anesthetics sedating plants has ANYTHING to do with this/whether or not they are conscious: no. No sorry, not buying it. Need more science. This just suggests we may have similar inhibitory biochemical responses to certain organic compounds. That's not surprising since were all made out of hydrocar…
> What's your definition of consciousness? How about - ability to adapt to environment and select good actions depending on situation, learning from reward/loss signals.
So a Roomba is conscious?
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
If my IQ is higher than yours, is this evidence that I suffer more deeply than you? I seriously don't personally like this line of reasoning. At. All.
If IQ measured the depth of emotional understanding, then yes. You don't have to like it, just find another reason to argue against eating people - there are plenty.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I would argue that eating animals is morally superior to cannibalism :) So why can't eating plants be morally superior to eat animals.
I would argue that there are lots of valid reasons to eat lower on the food chain, many of which can be framed as having a moral impetus. But the idea that it is morally superior based on plants being stupid is repugnant to me. It opens the door on questions like "So, is it okay to eat mentally retarded people?" Some moral arguments I can agree with: A mostly plant based diet is less resource intensive. Since most wa…
>There are health benefits to eating less meat.
Are there? To what extent?
I'd very much like to see the science to back up a blanket statement like that.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#55K sooo to (kinda) answer the question: depends. What's your definition of consciousness? Now as for the implication that anesthetics sedating plants has ANYTHING to do with this/whether or not they are conscious: no. No sorry, not buying it. Need more science. This just suggests we may have similar inhibitory biochemical responses to certain organic compounds. That's not surprising since were all made out of hydrocar…
> What's your definition of consciousness? How about - ability to adapt to environment and select good actions depending on situation, learning from reward/loss signals.
Consciousness described as a physical process is different than explaining how you, visarga, are able to experience reality. Understanding how that idea of internal experience, of being, could relate to a plant, seems the revelation here.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that there are lots of valid reasons to eat lower on the food chain, many of which can be framed as having a moral impetus. But the idea that it is morally superior based on plants being stupid is repugnant to me. It opens the door on questions like "So, is it okay to eat mentally retarded people?" Some moral arguments I can agree with: A mostly plant based diet is less resource intensive. Since most wa…
Is war really about scarcity of resources or about conflict over resources, regardless of scarcity?
I think it's about the scarce ones. For example, oil is scarce, and the US goes through great and terrible lengths to ensure we get enough of it.
On the other hand, it's also true that war is often caused by greedy leadership.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Animals that peope eat eat far more plants than people who eat plants eat, so the joke is more "funny" than meaningful.
It's not even funny. It's an attempt to subvert the very legitimate premise of vegetarianism in order to not face the undeniable impacts of non-vegetarian diets.
No. It is mocking the idea that the food choices of vegetarians makes them morally superior and entitled to look down their noses at everyone else and be awful to them.
My dislike of the tendency for vegetarians to be all holier than thou was solidified while I was homeless and being harassed online by a holier than thou vegan* who claimed to be vegan because she couldn't tolerate the suffering of the farm raised animals. Meanwhile, she took glee in adding to my suffering, though I was extremely ill and desperately poor because of it.
I am a big fan of "go pray in your closet." Making food choices because you sincerely believe they are morally right is totes cool. Being an asshole to anyone who doesn't eat like you, not so much.
* To make matters worse, she wasn't really a committed vegan. In cold weather, she happily added cheese to her diet. She just preferred to call herself vegan for the virtue signaling associated with it.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#58Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.
If hearing that choosing to eat plants can cause suffering ruins vegetarianism for you, it should already have been ruined by learning that harvesting land for e.g. wheat causes the death of some small animals. (Mice, rabbits, etc.) The idea that it's a worthy goal to minimize suffering caused through your food choices, however, is unaffected by learning about harvesting deaths or by learning that plants might be ver…
Some make the "minimally conscious" argument about the animals we use as food sources now.
Wonder how deep that rabbit hole will be in 100 years.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
If my IQ is higher than yours, is this evidence that I suffer more deeply than you? I seriously don't personally like this line of reasoning. At. All.
If IQ measured the depth of emotional understanding, then yes. You don't have to like it, just find another reason to argue against eating people - there are plenty.
Plenty of very smart people have terrible social and emotional intelligence.
So, I don't think so.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not even funny. It's an attempt to subvert the very legitimate premise of vegetarianism in order to not face the undeniable impacts of non-vegetarian diets.
No. It is mocking the idea that the food choices of vegetarians makes them morally superior and entitled to look down their noses at everyone else and be awful to them. My dislike of the tendency for vegetarians to be all holier than thou was solidified while I was homeless and being harassed online by a holier than thou vegan* who claimed to be vegan because she couldn't tolerate the suffering of the farm raised ani…
Yes. Basically if your reason to not eat meat is because you want to minimize your carbon footprint then usually you won't attack people for what they eat, but because they have a larger carbon footprint.
Personally I fly a lot (I don't particularly want to), so therefore I could never use that argument. But I have met people who fly as much as I do who try to pull the morally superior diet card and I just move on because they have missed the point entirely.