ZBB member photos, part 5. (Something for the weekend, sir?)

[Pthagnar]

So, as long as you don't do anything useful with the foetus, it's fine.

And this is either a whole other weird argument, or fallacious too:
Isn't it the point of abortion that it adds to your utility?

NE: or at the very least, *somebody's* utility, if you are coerced into procuring or undergoing one.

[faiuwle]

Sometimes it contributes to an actual adult person not being dead. I suppose you could classify that under "utility", since it is "useful" to be alive, in some sense, but...

[Pthagnar]

Sometimes it contributes to an actual adult person not being dead. I suppose you could classify that under "utility", since it is "useful" to be alive, in some sense, but...

Well of *course* that counts as utility. If you didn't count that, then food would not have utility!

[LinguistCat]

What do you think it means, and what is the effect of that on the tone of my post? Hint: Should we argue from nature in the first place? This is your homework for tonight.

Your argument against veganism is fallacious, yes. Very clever?

Arguing whether to eat a specific thing is natural or not at all is fallacious, yes. Which is why considerations like whether it makes you happy, hurts others (directly or indirectly), or any other moral base should be used. Eating arsenic, at least from my view, isn't bad because it's "unnatural" but because it kills you, and avoiding death is (usually) good. Someone who sees suicide as a victimless crime might not see eating arsenic as bad at all. Forcing someone else to eat arsenic would be bad to most people, but some would make an exception for different reasons.

Which is why I added the other arguments. If someone forced Gulliver to eat meat, that would infringe on his happiness, just like forcing me to not eat meat would infringe on my happiness. If the only food around was vegan, I'd rather be unhappy than dead. Some think it's worse to "use" animals, I think it would be worse to leave them to die now that they rely on us.

[Pthagnar]

Arguing whether to eat a specific thing is natural or not at all is fallacious, yes. Which is why considerations like whether it makes you happy, hurts others (directly or indirectly), or any other moral base should be used. Eating arsenic, at least from my view, isn't bad because it's "unnatural" but because it kills you, and avoiding death is (usually) good. Someone who sees suicide as a victimless crime might not see eating arsenic as bad at all. Forcing someone else to eat arsenic would be bad to most people, but some would make an exception for different reasons.

Thanks for clearing that up!

If someone forced Gulliver to eat meat, that would infringe on his happiness, just like forcing me to not eat meat would infringe on my happiness

Yes, just as if you step in to stop somebody from murdering somebody, you likewise infringe on their... HEY WAIT!
If only there were ways to tell why these two arguments are... Oh I see, you are doing it again right -- saying stupid wrong shit on *purpose*! Very clever!!

[faiuwle]

Sometimes it contributes to an actual adult person not being dead. I suppose you could classify that under "utility", since it is "useful" to be alive, in some sense, but...

Well of *course* that counts as utility. If you didn't count that, then food would not have utility!

Normally when you say something is "useful" as opposed to "necessary" it means that there is, in fact, another option. Like how there is another option besides eating meat and/or cheese. If there weren't another option, I doubt vegans would starve themselves out of contrariness, or at least the ones I have known wouldn't.

[finlay]

I've seen honey called Bienenkotze (bee puke) before... And vegetarian girls in middle school usually accused you of eating *nosewrinkling* "dead animal" when you were about to enjoy the steak that was smiling from your plate.

Or eggs are chicken periods.

now come on guys, this isn't an interesting conversation to be having in lieu of photographs.

pthag stfu

[Pthagnar]

Normally when you say something is "useful" as opposed to "necessary" it means that there is, in fact, another option. Like how there is another option besides eating meat and/or cheese. If there weren't another option, I doubt vegans would starve themselves out of contrariness, or at least the ones I have known wouldn't.

That's why I didn't say it was useful-as-opposed-to-necessary -- I said it provided utility, which unites the two concepts. If there is no other option except starvation [which *is* certainly an option, if one of such exceedingly low utility that it is obvious even under the computations of lower neural structures that it is to be avoided compared to any other alternatives[1]], then the utility of, say, a plate of meatballs to vegans becomes much much higher than it normally is, to the extent of outweighing the utility of maintaining vegan conduct. Whether or not the act remains wrong (as separate to something that people will do) as a result of this curious interchange in utility-values depends on your flavour of ethics.

[1] which strikes me as being the beginning of an argument *for* veganism, actually.

[LinguistCat]

If someone forced Gulliver to eat meat, that would infringe on his happiness, just like forcing me to not eat meat would infringe on my happiness

Yes, just as if you step in to stop somebody from murdering somebody, you likewise infringe on their... HEY WAIT!
If only there were ways to tell why these two arguments are... Oh I see, you are doing it again right -- saying stupid wrong shit on *purpose*! Very clever!!

And you snipped out an important part of what I said, or you didn't realize it was there because you saw something you thought you could attack. AKA: CONGRATS! YOU CAN TAKE THINGS OUT OF CONTEXT.

Someone murdering someone is infringing on the other person's right to live, and assuming there's no other information you can get in the situation (did the "victim" attack first, for one), someone's right to live is more important than someone else's happiness, IMO and many other people's, so it's right to stop them. It may even be right to kill the attacker, but it might not be.

[LinguistCat]

Also, I'd post pictures, but I don't have any to show, and I don't think everyone wants to see me sick if I took picks now, as I currently am.

[Pthagnar]

Someone murdering someone is infringing on the other person's right to live, and assuming there's no other information you can get in the situation (did the "victim" attack first, for one), someone's right to live is more important than someone else's happiness, IMO and many other people's, so it's right to stop them. It may even be right to kill the attacker, but it might not be.

Woah woah, you didn't use *rights* at all up until this post! You were arguing entirely from a utilitarian basis of maximising happiness! Avoiding death is good. It is bad to make people dead because this is stopping somebody from doing a good thing, which results in less good, so don't do that. *Then* you argued that it is wrong to force vegans to eat meat because it would make them *unhappy*, and forcing you not to eat meat would make you unhappy, and these are to be avoided because they result in less happiness. All very fine and all very classical utilitarian, and all very flawed.

*Now* apparently you assure me that I snipped out an inconvenient argument you made in which, if I take your last post as a rebuke pointing out something I apparently ignored, used *rights*. Where? You may be implicitly using the idea, but the closest you get to actually *making* an deontological argument is noting the existence of non-utilitarian systems of "moral base[s]", among which I guess deontological systems are included.

NE: I guess your bringing up natural law as a Hilarious Joke counts as a deontological argument, though?

[faiuwle]

Whether or not the act remains wrong (as separate to something that people will do) as a result of this curious interchange in utility-values depends on your flavour of ethics.

Whether it's wrong or not doesn't suddenly change, just your assessment of whether or not it is a necessary evil. But lets not have the we-are-all-sinners-anyway argument again.

I don't really see how "useful" is any different than "having utility", TBH.

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useless               useful/having utility                 necessary

[Pthagnar]

Whether it's wrong or not doesn't suddenly change, just your assessment of whether or not it is a necessary evil. But lets not have the we-are-all-sinners-anyway argument again.

Depending on your system of ethics, as I said, it either does or does not suddenly change. Ones in which it would not suddenly change, given a change of circumstances, would be, i guess, deontological or virtue-ethics ones. Or an *epistemically rational* utilitarian ethical system *with full information*?

With regular utilitarian ethical systems in which a thing is good or bad on imperfect information, a thing can very easily change from being good to being bad. This is very confusing and doesn't really happen very often -- suppose you have a Jew in a box and a Nazi is holding a gun to your head and telling you to press the poison-activating button on the side: it is quite possible that it is a bad thing to press the button. If, however, Ascended Apotheosised Hitler suddenly descends from the sixth astral plane and makes all the Jews in the world dissolve into nothingness, you would have to have a very strange reason to think it is bad to push the button if the Nazi is still going to shoot you for not doing so.

This is where rationality helps if you take a utilitarian ethical system, since by integrating as much true information about the world as you can into your model of the world, the universe is unlikely to pull unfortunate switcharoos like this on you, and you can be much more sure that later-you, or aspects of you, or other entities whose judgement you care about will not think you fucked up.

I don't really see how "useful" is any different than "having utility", TBH

Neither do I, which is why I don't see why the "necessary"/"useful" distinction is... useful.

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useless               useful/having utility                 necessary

What is the point of this diagram? All options in a choice have utility, or at least a change in utility. This can be positive, negative, or zero.

You err in hinting that only stuff in the middle has utility, since in using the line, you suggest geometrically what is suggested analytically in the idea of utility -- an ordered set in which some things have more stuff than others, where things at one side of the line [and so things that have more stuff] have more utility, and things that are at the other side of the line have less stuff/utility.

[NE: out of spite and for the sake of rationality, the jew in the box is Whimemsz]

[LinguistCat]

*Now* apparently you assure me that I snipped out an inconvenient argument you made in which, if I take your last post as a rebuke pointing out something I apparently ignored, used *rights*. Where? You may be implicitly using the idea, but the closest you get to actually *making* an deontological argument is noting the existence of non-utilitarian systems of "moral base[s]", among which I guess deontological systems are included.

If the only food around was vegan, I'd rather be unhappy than dead. Some think it's worse to "use" animals, I think it would be worse to leave them to die now that they rely on us.

Maybe "right" wasn't the best word. But if it is a choice between one person's happiness and another person's life, I choose life as more important. It's actually more complicated to compare one person's happiness to another's or one person's life to another's (in cases where nothing else is at stake).

[Pthagnar]

If the only food around was vegan, I'd rather be unhappy than dead. Some think it's worse to "use" animals, I think it would be worse to leave them to die now that they rely on us.

Your argument, then, if it is indeed a utilitarian one, would seem to rely on the fact that life, animal life specifically, has utility, either to the animal or to other entities -- a utility that is *not* gained by killing them and using their parts to do things [1], but that is gained in feeding them and generally doing stuff to keep them alive.

Even more specifically, this is not just a matter of "people like seeing animals and feeding them, so it's nice to keep some of them around". You specifically say that it is wrong to "leave them to die now that they rely on us". I suppose this means that you think that letting animals continue to breed, despite the apparent futility of this if you are not going to shear them or butcher them or eat their eggs or ride them or use them as beasts of burden or whatever, *also* leads to an increase in utility, and that stopping them from breeding [i.e. letting them die] would be bad because of this decrease in utility. This valuing of animal life in itself leads to problems like it being a good idea to keep as many animals as possible, to continue to selectively breed animals so as to maximise the number of offspring produced, to sanction people who make attempts to restrict animal breeding and to other exciting things like the Repugnant Conclusion. Stupid Catholic bioethics on steroids.

[1] or possibly, as in the case of vegans who think eating honey and, I guess, riding on carts drawn by donkeys etc. is wrong, using animals as slave workers

[Grigor]

Yakkety yakkety blah blah blah

Photos please!

[Pthagnar]

Yakkety yakkety blah blah blah

Photos please!

my god, are permanent bans really that loose?

[Grigor]

Pthug please. What you're not aware of, however, is that the word ban derives from the Neolithic wanderwort *bĤģno- (to halt, fall) which is the ancestor of Basque bunok (to try again), Georgian bkerg'hili (to feel tired), Hungarian avóg (to fear) and might have been borrowed into Old Latin as duenos (originally meant 'bad' but flipped its meaning - cf Spanish bueno, which looks very much like its original form). The Proto-Germanic source of our English word is probably a loanword from this Vasco-Caucasian substrate.

So yes you could say that bans are loose.

[Pthagnar]

that's great, whatever it takes to get you through the day i guess

[LinguistCat]

If the only food around was vegan, I'd rather be unhappy than dead. Some think it's worse to "use" animals, I think it would be worse to leave them to die now that they rely on us.

Your argument, then, if it is indeed a utilitarian one, would seem to rely on the fact that life, animal life specifically, has utility, either to the animal or to other entities -- a utility that is *not* gained by killing them and using their parts to do things [1], but that is gained in feeding them and generally doing stuff to keep them alive.

Even more specifically, this is not just a matter of "people like seeing animals and feeding them, so it's nice to keep some of them around". You specifically say that it is wrong to "leave them to die now that they rely on us". I suppose this means that you think that letting animals continue to breed, despite the apparent futility of this if you are not going to shear them or butcher them or eat their eggs or ride them or use them as beasts of burden or whatever, *also* leads to an increase in utility, and that stopping them from breeding [i.e. letting them die] would be bad because of this decrease in utility. This valuing of animal life in itself leads to problems like it being a good idea to keep as many animals as possible, to continue to selectively breed animals so as to maximise the number of offspring produced, to sanction people who make attempts to restrict animal breeding and to other exciting things like the Repugnant Conclusion. Stupid Catholic bioethics on steroids.

[1] or possibly, as in the case of vegans who think eating honey and, I guess, riding on carts drawn by donkeys etc. is wrong, using animals as slave workers

I'm not even sure where you get this from... Humans are widely and generally more "useful" as you put it when they are alive. Maybe even non-human animals like chimps and dolphins could be more "useful" alive. Non-human animals like cows could be, but that's not necessarily true. Them dying slowly and painfully from exposure isn't "useful" to them or to humans; the best outcome of them being released if every human became vegan would be if they became food for animal predators. And unless you count people who find watching and caring for cows relaxing, and therefor making them less likely to die from stress-induced illnesses, cows just living, eating, pooping and reproducing aren't "useful" either. And at some point, they would run out of food or room, which would make them very unhappy AND "useless".

[Pthagnar]

it is not a choice between eating animals or letting other things eat them/starving them to death. you just stop making as many and the problem with "leaving them to die" if you don't eat them is solved and so you have one less argument against veganism.

NE: like this is obvious, so when you talked about "leaving them to die", i understood you to mean not individual animals, but the continuation of the species of animals in large numbers. This is not an immediately stupid idea since it is a position one could easily take -- plenty of people take the stupid Catholic position on human bioethics, after all, and this is only really more stupid in degree rather than kind, though they don't think of it like that. Because they are stupid.

[LinguistCat]

it is not a choice between eating animals or letting other things eat them/starving them to death. you just stop making as many and the problem with "leaving them to die" if you don't eat them is solved and so you have one less argument against veganism.

This would be a fine middle step, from meat-and-vegetable-eating society to vegetable-eating-only society. In the mean time, a lot of people like steak. Or at least chicken. Or fish.

NE: like this is obvious, so when you talked about "leaving them to die", i understood you to mean not individual animals, but the continuation of the species of animals in large numbers. This is not an immediately stupid idea since it is a position one could easily take -- plenty of people take the stupid Catholic position on human bioethics, after all, and this is only really more stupid in degree rather than kind, though they don't think of it like that. Because they are stupid.

How can there be large numbers of a species without individuals that make up the species? And if, say, humans disappeared and cattle had to cope on their own, even if half figured out how to survive in the wild for the first year, that would be approximately 750,000,000 individual cows that would die from the best estimate on the number of cows in the world. That's assuming about half would live. I don't think they would. Similar would happen if humans released them into the wild and left them to their own devices.

I'm not sure, but I'd think that most vegans would disagree with just killing them. Maybe not all, but most. And all would disagree with killing them for other uses than eating, simply because we would be "using" them. So the other choice is to leave them to their own devices, and to probably die in large numbers all at one time. Or the few that would live would be another food source for things like wolves and wild cats, and from there either out-compete other herbivores, or die out.

[faiuwle]

With regular utilitarian ethical systems in which a thing is good or bad on imperfect information, a thing can very easily change from being good to being bad. This is very confusing and doesn't really happen very often -- suppose you have a Jew in a box and a Nazi is holding a gun to your head and telling you to press the poison-activating button on the side: it is quite possible that it is a bad thing to press the button. If, however, Ascended Apotheosised Hitler suddenly descends from the sixth astral plane and makes all the Jews in the world dissolve into nothingness, you would have to have a very strange reason to think it is bad to push the button if the Nazi is still going to shoot you for not doing so.

Well, yes, whether or not something is right presumably is a function of the consequences of doing it. The consequences of eating meat (viz. supporting the corrupt meat industry in its mistreatment of animals/wastage of resources that could be more efficiently used/whatever your reason for vegetarianism is) do not change when your only option is to eat meat - they just don't effect your decision quite so much.

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useless               useful/having utility                 necessary

What is the point of this diagram? All options in a choice have utility, or at least a change in utility. This can be positive, negative, or zero.

Well, if you use "utility" as some kind of abstract scalar quality, like "redness", but that is not quite the same thing:

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less red                                                       more red

The useless/useful/necessary scale was a scale of the degree to which something is required to accomplish some end - if something is necessary, it is impossible to do whatever it is without that thing, if it is useless then having it has no effect on how easily you can do something, and if it is somewhere in the middle it is possible to do whatever it is without that thing, but more difficult. Meat, for example, helps quite a bit to dispel hunger, but making it more filling (i.e. more useful) does not eventually make it necessary - it is only necessary when nothing but meat is available, and its usefulness mostly becomes independent of how filling it is at the ends of the scale, while linear increases in redness correspond to linear advancement along the scale, no matter where you started. If you have only a hamburger to eat, the hamburger does have some degree of usefulness for satisfying hunger, but what it is no longer matters as far as your choice is concerned.

[Pthagnar]

You just eat all the ones you have up, and stop making anywhere near as many -- the second part is the important one since it is the one you can actually do something about and so the one with the moral component. The animals that are actually alive are going to die eventually anyway and since you shouldn't even think about doing anything stupid like releasing them into the wild, the only solution is to either keep them in farms until they die or to start killing them in great, final megahekatombs. Once you have killed all the farmers, pastoralists etc. to stop them from getting upset about the plan and getting in the way of its implementation, there should be plenty of room left in the concentration camps for animals, anyway.

[LinguistCat]

But, aside from the first line, those actions would be immoral for multiple reasons from my point of view, and if you had actually read my post you should be able to understand why.

Edit: Actually, you thinking that it's "Utilitarianism" might be the flaw between what I mean and what you think I mean.