571–580 of 756 posts
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aren't plants also sentient? Isn't all life sentient? If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?
Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?
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Yeah, we didn't want Iran to have nukes, so we rugpulled the JCPOA and murdered the guy who declared a fatwa against nukes. We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) so we butchered 170 school girls and didn't apologize. We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon and directly induced Iran to close the Stra…
> We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) At least 20,000 according to Amnesty International, other independent sources claim 40,000. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-hap...
I don't Amnesty putting their name behind any of those numbers but even the 20,000 is very hand wavey.
I don't see 40,000 claimed anywhere.
I have no problem that they are doing what they’re doing. Someone was going to do it. But to be so oblivious to it is a problem. One would argue that it’s a national security problem.
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Yeah, we didn't want Iran to have nukes, so we rugpulled the JCPOA and murdered the guy who declared a fatwa against nukes. We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) so we butchered 170 school girls and didn't apologize. We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon and directly induced Iran to close the Stra…
> We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon Consider this hypothetical situation. Iran funds a terrorist group operating in Tijuana to fire rockets across the border into San Diego. Assume the Mexican government is not organized enough to stop the terrorists from firing rockets. What do you think the response of the US Government would be? Please recall what we did after 9/11 befor…
What they do is stop raping and murdering people, settling on their land and then acting shocked that the country they are taking over is reacting in a violent way in response.
Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…
My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is l…
I have no doubt whatsoever that half the people I know and love would have owned slaves or at least defended slavery if they were born into a time where it was commonplace. They easily would have bought into nonsense science or religious arguments about the intelligence or moral value of this race over that, like they do for animals.
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The very first chapter was actually excellent in setting my relationship to the book going forward, because stuff like this twanged against my brain and made me think, "Oh, she just really wanted to be powerful and influential and chased whatever she thought would give her that" > [after surviving a shark attack] why did this happen to me? If I survived against the odds, surely there had to be a reason? [...] After b…
She sounds horrifying.
Sadly, terrifyingly, for every one of her, there are hundreds who might also self-reflect - but >choose< to be comix-book villains.
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>Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent. Not necessarily. I mean, the people who give out an uncomfortable laugh do exhibit signs of cognitive dissonance. I don't have an issue with accepting both statements: factory farming is awful, and I still eat meat. There is no cognitive dissonance. The logic is straightforward: I do not believe that me, an indi…
Basically this boils down to "I don't feel responsible for the meat I eat being factory farmed." Not that I'm in any position to criticize; I'm in the cognitive dissonance camp. Have you considered consuming "ethical" animal products (e.g. free range eggs or whatever?) That doesn't seem like martyrdom; compared to what you want (government mandated livestock welfare) it only costs you marginally more (due to missing…
Aren’t they alive too? What if they were conscious? If they aren’t but still a lifeform, that makes it perfectly okay?
No answers, just makes me wonder at times if common ethics is all it’s cracked up be.
Is eating plants not required for sustenance or nutrition really justifiable? (Chocolate, sugar, spices, …)
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> nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" the country. It's not hard: * They're trying to build nuclear weapons, and they're one of the worlds leading sponsor of terrorism (if not the sole leader). * The country ran out of water, people started to protest their government, and were killed by the thousands (some say tens of thousands potentially more). Water is one of the most…
* Their nuclear program was obliterated in June 2026, says even the White house (1) * The worlds leading sponsor of and spender on terrorism (including financial aid to Hamas) is Israel, by a wide margin (2) * Claims that “thousands” or “tens of thousands” were killed specifically over water protests are not supported by widely accepted evidence Now I'm wondering which country is a bigger threat to us and peace in ge…
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Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?
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Odd flex. Try not to worry so much about what other people think of you. It'll make you a better human.