Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[Kaelik]

...wait, does that mean some vegans would be perfectly fine with animals dosed with happy pills prior to slaughter?

As previously established, veganism is about consent. And since cows can't consent, you can never eat them or the milk they produce. (Neither can grass, but fuck consistency.)

However, since humans can consent, it is perfectly acceptable to drink the milk/piss/semen they produce, provided they consent.

It has nothing to do with how happy the animals are when being slaughtered (or how happy they are to be milked, or how happy they are to lay eggs). It has to do with the consent they cannot provide.

[RobbyPants]

Why is it that when the sun is just rising, the ambient light outside appears to be white, but any light cast directly on walls through windows appears orange/pink?

[koz]

Spinning off from Kaelik's statement - are animals sentient? What, if anything, is the definition of 'sentience'?

[violence in the media]

Why is it that when the sun is just rising, the ambient light outside appears to be white, but any light cast directly on walls through windows appears orange/pink?

Tyndall Effect and Rayleigh Scattering

[angelfromanotherpin]

'The ability to feel, perceive, be conscious; to have subjective experiences.'

Yeah, most of what we think of as animals definitely are that, though it probably wouldn't be hard to find examples of animalia (especially the very small ones) where it's at least questionable. But dogs, cats, chickens, cows, monkeys, etc? Totally sentient.

[Kaelik]

'The ability to feel, perceive, be conscious; to have subjective experiences.'

Yeah, most of what we think of as animals definitely are that, though it probably wouldn't be hard to find examples of animalia (especially the very small ones) where it's at least questionable. But dogs, cats, chickens, cows, monkeys, etc? Totally sentient.

Okay, but under that definition, how are plants not sentient?

[RobbyPants]

'The ability to feel, perceive, be conscious; to have subjective experiences.'

Yeah, most of what we think of as animals definitely are that, though it probably wouldn't be hard to find examples of animalia (especially the very small ones) where it's at least questionable. But dogs, cats, chickens, cows, monkeys, etc? Totally sentient.

Okay, but under that definition, how are plants not sentient?

Consciousness?

[Kaelik]

Consciousness?

Okay, First, I'm not sure that consciousness is an essential element to that definition, IE, if something feels perceives and has subjective experiences, it seems like "has subjective experiences" is just a definition of consciousness. Which leads to:

What the fuck does consciousness mean?

1a) the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself

1b) the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact

2) the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought

Which of those do you expect me to believe of animals but not plants?

As far as I can tell, all definitions in consciousness are just an exercise question begging to reach the conclusion you decided you wanted in advance. Especially because concepts like "violation" and "thought" are actually concepts that don't really exist, describing a series of process that are not actually related, and excluding the operation of that same series of processes in other circumstances for no good reason.

[DSMatticus]

While it's true that consciousness is basically the stupidest most meaningless word ever and is almost impossible to pin down or define, it is obvious that there exists a difference between plants and (most) animals in terms of sentience. That difference correlates to a collection of complicated biological processes that are simply happening in one and not in the other. And even if we can't fully enumerate all the features and distinctions, we can still invoke those distinctions because they are self-evident even to our imperfect knowledge.

So if for some reason you feel the need to place arbitrary value on a handful of biological processes that correspond to higher level sentience/thought, you can do that without being inconsistent. There are going to be some gray areas in simple animals where you genuinely don't know due to the haziness of your definition, but it's not hard to see that there exists a classifying boundary between plants and animals on the matter.

[Kaelik]

but it's not hard to see that there exists a classifying boundary between plants and animals on the matter.

It's not hard to see that there exist several classifying barriers between plants and animals. It is not clear that any of them have anything to do with sentience unless sentience means "animalness."

Plants demonstrably do different things depending on the stimuli. Plants demonstrably feel and perceive their environment and react to it. The only things that plants don't do is "be animals" and that's the point, I see no distinct difference that anyone has ever pointed to between your average starfish and your average tree with respect to anything that is actually meaningful.

We know that trees feel about as hard starfishes do, and react to their environment about as much as starfishes do.

As far as I can tell, the only difference between the sentience of trees and the sentience of starfish is that sentience is apparently a three part test.

1) Perceives
2) Reacts to Perceptions.
3) Does it really fast like an animal.

And 3 is fundamentally bullshit.

Now, sentience would be a meaningful term if used in that old fashioned homo sapiens form to indicate a particular method of cognition that abstractly generates a conception of the self. But since no one can reliably demonstrate that the average cow has this quality, that would still not create a plant/animal distinction, just a human (maybe some other apes and dolphins)/everything else distinction.

[DSMatticus]

We know that trees feel about as hard starfishes do, and react to their environment about as much as starfishes do.

Most vegetarians/vegans aren't actually out not eating the starfishes the vast majority of the world already doesn't eat, they're out not eating the cows and chickens people actually do. There are things in the animal kingdom which barely have nervous systems at all, and vegetarians/vegans probably have inconsistent positions on them because people in general are stupid, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

So simple question: rocks, apple trees, cattle, and humans. What distinguishes each of these from the others?

If you're going to exclude rocks by:

1) Perceives
2) Reacts to Perceptions.

You should probably understand that perception is a purely mechanical process governed by elementary physics. Light hits a cow's eye, imparting energy into specially shaped rods/cones, which cause some part of them to move and generate an electrical signal which travels along a conveniently placed wire. From a physics standpoint, there is nothing privileged about perception with respect to say, kicking a rock. Yet we don't say rocks perceive being kicked, nor do we say they react to it, even though they do; by moving.

The only real difference between any of them is the complexity of the systems involved and the range of displayed behaviors, and you're correctly distinguishing humans from the other three by using one of those displayed behaviors. Yet when it comes time to look for differences between plants and cows, you decide to shut your fucking brain down and intentionally draw a blank. I know you don't actually think plants and cattle are behaviorally comparable, because that would be retarded. Why are you taking something that is actually an obvious continuous graduation and pretending you only get to make one binary comparison on it just below people?

[RobbyPants]

Soooo, perhaps part of the distinction vegans tend to make is based on whether it's an animal or a plant?

[DSMatticus]

Soooo, perhaps part of the distinction vegans tend to make is based on whether it's an animal or a plant?

The difference between animal and plant is more than in name. It's not an arbitrary naming scheme assigned by scientists because one is greener than the other. They correlate to different evolutionary paths, and one of those evolutionary paths lead to animals who have markedly different neurobiology. In structure and outputs.

Kaelik has so far mentioned the two breakpoints, "if it accepts and responds to input," and "if it has a concept of the abstract self." Those two questions do not even begin to adequately describe all the different graduations of complex intelligences. It is trivial to see that you can set your 'vegan slider' somewhere below people and above plants and not at all be inconsistent with yourself, and that difference would correspond to actual observable facts in the organisms as opposed to arbitrary 'cats are cute, or plants don't scream when you hurt them.'

[fectin]

How the hell does the Arc Reactor in Iron Man even theoretically work? It's supposed to be this bright, shiny, clean new energy source, but it's never really explained (because the vast majority of viewers would find that boring).

Is it possible that it uses radioisotope decay in some manner?

Originally it worked by "TRANSISTORS!" Yes, that was the explanation.

Now, it's not even that well explained, though previously it used paladium, and after the second Iron Man movie it used "a new element". Sooo... magnets?

[Kaelik]

I know you don't actually think plants and cattle are behaviorally comparable, because that would be retarded. Why are you taking something that is actually an obvious continuous graduation and pretending you only get to make one binary comparison on it just below people?

So... you are kind of retarded, so apparently I have to spell this out.

1) No, I don't see any relevant behavioral differences between cows and plants. One of them moves faster. That's not relevant. One of them moves around. That's not relevant. One of them reacts to others of it's own species. That's not relevant. Perhaps someone who actually studies cow psychology could talk about things cows do beyond eat and move around to eat. But fuck if I know about or can see any of these behaviors.

It's not an obvious graduation at all, it looks like most things just kind of exist and do the same shit.

Now if you want to define a specific behavior and argue that it is relevant, go right ahead, but that's the kind of thing reasonable people do when having a conversation, so you won't do it.

Instead, you'll keep telling me about the mysterious undefinables that are so obvious to everyone who pays attention just like religious people tell me about the mysterious undefinables that prove god's existence.

2) Yes, Perception is just the operation of Physics. So is cognition, what's your point. Rocks obviously don't meat part 2, so you can argue all day about if they meet part one, I don't give a shit.

But yes, everything is an operation of physics, so the fact that perception is also the operation of physics isn't really going to cause me to discount it.

3) When it comes to whether or not to eat something, I'm fine with eating people, it's just the killing them first part that I object to, and I don't see any way in which any behavior any cow has ever demonstrated is a viable objection to just murdering the shit out of them for no reason.

[Prak]

Ok, so consent and distress. So, really, vegans, at least some, would be pacified by the genetic engineering of The Meat from H2G2?

[DSMatticus]

It's not an obvious graduation at all, it looks like most things just kind of exist and do the same shit.

Are you fucking retarded? You realize we're talking about living things which have been created by the process of evolution? As in, there exists some component of the human brain which is 'most recent,' and there exists some ancestor which did not have that component but had all the others, and repeat ad-fucking-infinitum all the way back to no brain at all?

You are looking at the products of a system whose foundational principle is accumulated gradual change and you can't fucking buy that they actually are graduated?

Now if you want to define a specific behavior and argue that it is relevant, go right ahead, but that's the kind of thing reasonable people do when having a conversation, so you won't do it.

Instead, you'll keep telling me about the mysterious undefinables that are so obvious to everyone who pays attention just like religious people tell me about the mysterious undefinables that prove god's existence.

No, there are no mysterious undefinables. There is 1) the presence of a more complicated central nervous system, and 2) the presence of remarkably more complex behaviors, and 3) every other fucking that entails, which is a huge set of things that are somewhat hazily defined and difficult to enumerate and obvious. And you fucking listed some of them (like the ability to recognize that other organisms are other organisms) and then discarded them because they are arbitrarily not important to you!

2) Yes, Perception is just the operation of Physics. So is cognition, what's your point. Rocks obviously don't meat part 2, so you can argue all day about if they meet part one, I don't give a shit.

Yes, rocks do react when you kick them. By moving away from the kick. In the same way plants react to light by moving towards it. The only difference is the complexity of the systems involved. Which is my point; plants have different responses and different behaviors than rocks. And plants, again, have different responses and different behaviors than cattle. Again, you started listing them. Then discounting them, because apparently differences aren't actually differences when they don't make Kaelik's point.

[Kaelik]

You are looking at the products of a system whose foundational principle is accumulated gradual change and you can't fucking buy that they actually are graduated?

Cows didn't come after modern trees. Cows came at the same time as modern trees. The gradual change that occurs from past species does not give you license to declare present species to be past species.

For the same reason that ants are not "less evolved" than humans, you would have to actually demonstrate that cows evolved some specific (relevant) thing and additionally that no plant species has evolved that similar capacity since the last common ancestor of trees and cows.

Now, you could probably prove a whole host of differences, but you will in fact miss the relevant part pretty hard. Because of course, trees have also developed a bunch of shit cows haven't, but none of those things justify treating trees much differently than cows.

No, there are no mysterious undefinables. There is 1) the presence of a more complicated central nervous system, and 2) the presence of remarkably more complex behaviors, and 3) every other fucking that entails, which is a huge set of things that are somewhat hazily defined and difficult to enumerate and obvious. And you fucking listed some of them (like the ability to recognize that other organisms are other organisms) and then discarded them because they are arbitrarily not important to you!

A) Oh, so they have a more complicated central nervous system. So to be clear, if we ever run into any species that builds spaceships and flies the stars, but their nervous system is not central, we should treat them like plants, and murder the shit out of them just because we can and eat them. Because only central nervous systems count, not distributed ones.

Repeat the whole thing for a network of information transference that doesn't involve nerves.

Once you realize that whether a nervous system is central, or whether it is made of nerves or something else, on what grounds do you assert the claim that a cows perception/reaction mechanisms are more complex than plants.

I'm going to be it's because you notice when they react, and you don't notice when trees react. Because stupid trees are slow.

B) Please describe these remarkably more complex behaviors. I understand that you believe eating is a more complex behavior than photosynthesis because you think animals are really worth something and plants are shit, but aside from your antiplant bias, what behaviors do cows exhibit that are "more complex."

C) I never claimed that cows recognize other organisms are other organisms or that trees don't. Because I can't prove either of those. Maybe some biologist who does a lot of cow neurobiology could present that argument, all I said was that cows react differently to other cows than they do to non cows. I mean, for all I know, trees react differently to other trees than non trees.

Yes, rocks do react when you kick them. By moving away from the kick. In the same way plants react to light by moving towards it. The only difference is the complexity of the systems involved. Which is my point; plants have different responses and different behaviors than rocks. And plants, again, have different responses and different behaviors than cattle. Again, you started listing them. Then discounting them, because apparently differences aren't actually differences when they don't make Kaelik's point.

1) Awh, that's cute. When you take a word with multiple definitions, and replace the one I'm using with a completely different definition I'm not using, then Rocks react, and you get to make fun of me. Get back to me when you want to have a serious conversation where you don't deliberately conflate different definitions of the word react.

2) No, differences aren't relevant differences when they are irrelevant. I mean, I knew you were too stupid to understand what I was obviously saying without emphasis, so I went ahead and bolded the most important word that I knew you would ignore, and you still fucking ignored it. How can you expect anyone to ever give a shit about anything you ever say if you miss the bolded words.

[...You Lost Me]

How the hell does the Arc Reactor in Iron Man even theoretically work? It's supposed to be this bright, shiny, clean new energy source, but it's never really explained (because the vast majority of viewers would find that boring).

Is it possible that it uses radioisotope decay in some manner?

Originally it worked by "TRANSISTORS!" Yes, that was the explanation.

Now, it's not even that well explained, though previously it used paladium, and after the second Iron Man movie it used "a new element". Sooo... magnets?

I was thinking it was something along the lines of cold fusion--slow nuclear reactions that would remove the mass of the palladium without causing a nuke. That's the only thing I can think of that would actually make big energy.

One of the things I noticed was that Palladium is a noble metal (it's highly unreactive), and that the "new element" had its protons and neutrons inexplicably designed in a crystalline spherical structure, which could confer some sort of awesome stability. So perhaps it has something to do with the electrochemistry of the element?

[DSMatticus]

Cows didn't come after modern trees. Cows came at the same time as modern trees. The gradual change that occurs from past species does not give you license to declare present species to be past species.

That would matter at all if I had said that. They are obviously the result of divergent paths, which is not at all inconsistent with anything I said, except that I oversimplified by turning a multi-dimensional problem where every path of divergence is its own graduating scale into a one-dimensional problem. The existence of any change at all makes my point; reminding me I undersold it does not help your case.

Because of course, trees have also developed a bunch of shit cows haven't, but none of those things justify treating trees much differently than cows.

Are you trying to move goalposts? Quote me when I brought up justifications; oh, that's right. You can't, because I didn't. Fuck you.

This isn't an ethics discussion, this is a discussion on whether there is a reasonable classifier which distinguishes between plants and animals on the basis of intelligence and behaviors. Your position is that there is not one. And that's stupid. You are seriously saying trees and cattle are so functionally similar in the range of their behaviors and the functions of their intelligence as to be indistinguishable on that basis. It's an argument which sounds stupid, and it gets even stupider when you understand the evolutionary history of plants and animals and recognize that they can't have anything but bare bones in common neurobiologically, because nothing before that split had any complex neurobiology! The difference between them is as concrete as it gets. You can point at it on a tree diagram and say "there it is! That's where they stopped being the same!"

You're claiming, "hey, despite different needs, different habitat roles, and all in all having hundreds of millions of years between them, it turns out plants and animals evolved neurological systems which are functionally identical in every way you'd care about." That's a claim with a non-zero burden of proof, I think.

Because only central nervous systems count, not distributed ones.

This is a half-valid complaint, except it misses the point in order to jerk itself off over semantics. In the context of Earth's evolutionary history, a central nervous system is the only nervous system with certain properties. There is also a limited vocabulary to use here and it is very biased to things we have observed and very bad at describing things which have not been observed because there is no demonstrable need to.

But even beyond that: keep in mind that central nervous systems are central in two ways:
1) Central in terms of space occupied.
2) Central in terms of information density. I.e., there exists some subset of 'nerves' (see below) which are significantly more interconnected. Even if we took your brain and spread it out over a square mile, the inter-connectedness of it would be higher than any part of your body. This kind of central is arguably necessary for any kind of complex behaviors (because the number of connections increases the number of states they can represent).

Repeat the whole thing for a network of information transference that doesn't involve nerves.

This is a piss-poor useless remark. You should have just posed the hypothetical, "hey, what if their nerves are made out of cotton candy?"
Please don't waste my god damn time by asking me if I would also apply my argument to "cotton candy nerves which transfer information," or "silicon nerves which transfer information," or "some other chemical receptor which functions like a nerve." It's just semantical bitching. There is no actual word that I am aware of for "all of the various types, found and imagined, of internal communication structures that may be used in living organisms." And even if I'd said that, you could have bitched "robots aren't living, you fucking robot murderer."

So, yeah. I'm just going to cut you off and ask you stop saying useless fucking things on the basis of semantics. I think it's obvious that nervous system actually means in this case a system for communicating information within some sort of organism.

1) Awh, that's cute. When you take a word with multiple definitions, and replace the one I'm using with a completely different definition I'm not using, then Rocks react, and you get to make fun of me. Get back to me when you want to have a serious conversation where you don't deliberately conflate different definitions of the word react.

Okay, you are aware that nervous systems are not magic, yes? They are systems with physical inputs and physical outputs. There is exactly zero voodoo involved. The only difference is the structures that occur between input and output. That is fucking it. Nothing else.

You are also obviously aware that rock's have a different structure in that input-output process than plants or animals. And you also seem to be aware that humans have a different structure in that input-output process than plants or animals. But you are unwilling to concieve that plants, who are actually more evolutionary distinct from pigs than human beings are, are sufficiently different in a meaningful way?

[Ted the Flayer]

My stance on this debate is that plants creep me right the fuck out. Beings with no central nervous system have no right to react to stimuli and communicate with other plants the way they do. It really weirds me out...

I have a serious question if I may: I got demoted at work recently. One of the reasons given was my size(muscle mass, not fat). They said if I "lost my temper" that no one in the department I was in could stop me. Which is bull, because everyone in that department have seen me take abuse from custies and retain professionalism in ways they themselves couldn't do.

Isn't that something I can contest? Not to quote Princess Bride, but it's honestly not my fault I'm as strong as I am, I actually don't exercise other than the 3 mile walk to and from work every day and lifting the occasional D20, at any other time I'm on the couch playing vidjya games...

Or maybe is it something I should just leave alone...

[angelfromanotherpin]

Isn't that something I can contest?

That reason is indeed...



...and probably actionable (I don't know where you work, so I can't say for sure). My suspicion is that it's to cover for the actual reason, whatever that might be (Politics? Nepotism?).

Whether or not you should do anything about it is a different story. On principle, I would make a stink about it for no reason other than it is bullshit. But I don't need my current job super-badly (I have some savings and would just get a different crappy job); someone who was living paycheck to paycheck might not be in the position to jeopardize their living.

[Ted the Flayer]

Whether or not you should do anything about it is a different story. On principle, I would make a stink about it for no reason other than it is bullshit. But I don't need my current job super-badly (I have some savings and would just get a different crappy job); someone who was living paycheck to paycheck might not be in the position to jeopardize their living.

Indeed, that is my point. I'm not complaining, but right now the student loan jerkasses are leaning on me pretty hard, and I kind of need SOMETHING.

[sabs]

I must say though, they've given you a perfect way to quit when the time comes Since they've already labeled you as Too Big to Trust :0

[violence in the media]

Ask them if you should start looking for work more suited to your physique? Like knocking over buildings or rounding up troublemakers in the Thieves' Forest?