Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Dec 12, 2013 4:48 pm

Are there examples of non-human animals that purposely protect prey species that are not part of their family/tribe/species from predators for the abstract purpose of depriving predators of a meal?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Dec 12, 2013 4:49 pm

there are some ants that keep lice to milk as stock, that what you mean or do you mean simple:"i don't like him, but i like you less so i protect him so you don't get him" asshattery?
because if so, what do you think sheep-dog do?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Dec 12, 2013 11:58 pm

radthemad4 wrote:How do you minimize the total amount of sleep you need to get in a day while still feeling awake and alert the rest of the time?

Amphetamines of course!

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 12:14 am

hard. work. you can hack your brain into accepting as little as 15 minutes to be enough for going 8 hours . .
if you can do it. if you do it wrong, you could maybe go a bit crazy from that.
i tried it once, the results were not pretty x.x

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 4:13 pm

Here's something that's been bothering me lately. I'm against bestiality, using the whole inability to truly consent as the definition of rape. However, I'm not necessarily against eating meat; despite the fact I can't seem to see a real difference between them that would allow one but not the other.

Related to this, if you think about it more, it's complicated by the fact the meat industry commits bestiality (jacking off turkeys since they can't mate naturally) as part of its business. Going off of meat doesn't necessarily seem to solve the moral issue, because slave wages and various human rights violations surround the food industry (free trade chocolate is a thing).

I'm trying to think of how to handle these moral quandaries without ending up as a terrible hypocrite.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 4:45 pm

Stahlseele wrote:there are some ants that keep lice to milk as stock, that what you mean or do you mean simple:"i don't like him, but i like you less so i protect him so you don't get him" asshattery?
because if so, what do you think sheep-dog do?

Lago can clarify, but I read it as the latter...but I also thought he meant as a natural behavior; while sheepdogs do that, they don't do it naturally...they are trained by humans to do it. That's like somebody asking for an animal species that balances on its forelegs, and getting the answer "circus elephants".

Here's something that's been bothering me lately. I'm against bestiality, using the whole inability to truly consent as the definition of rape. However, I'm not necessarily against eating meat; despite the fact I can't seem to see a real difference between them that would allow one but not the other.

Related to this, if you think about it more, it's complicated by the fact the meat industry commits bestiality (jacking off turkeys since they can't mate naturally) as part of its business. Going off of meat doesn't necessarily seem to solve the moral issue, because slave wages and various human rights violations surround the food industry (free trade chocolate is a thing).

I'm trying to think of how to handle these moral quandaries without ending up as a terrible hypocrite.

Hmm...interesting. Does artificial insemination of cows/horses count as rape? If you shoved a sperm injector into a non-consenting woman, I'd sure call that rape.

I personally see hypocrisy in being a meat-eater who is also anti-bestiality, regardless of turkey-jacking or cow-impregnating. Because chopping a turkey's head off and eating his flesh is worse than jerking his dick.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:00 pm

Technically, by now, certain races of these sheep dogs do it naturally.
It's been bred into them so much that this behaviour has become instinctive and gets passed down to the next generations.
On that one "documentation" earth without humans/after humans in one episode they claimed that free roaming sheep would be growing in numbers as long as there was a pack of these dogs around to survive with them.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:01 pm

Killing isn't wrong. Sex isn't wrong. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong.

Killing is only murder if it isn't justified. Killing to survive is justified and not murder. Sex is only rape if the partner didn't consent. There is no "I was really hungry" exemption for rape, but there is one for murder.

It's actually not super complicated. It's the same reason that beating a pig all the way to death and then eating it is moral, but beating it halfway to death and then wandering off is immoral. It's an essential part of nature that animals must kill to live, but there's no excuse for senseless torture of a sentient creature.

-Username17

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:26 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Killing isn't wrong. Sex isn't wrong. Murder is wrong. Rape is wrong.

Killing is only murder if it isn't justified. Killing to survive is justified and not murder. Sex is only rape if the partner didn't consent. There is no "I was really hungry" exemption for rape, but there is one for murder.

It's actually not super complicated. It's the same reason that beating a pig all the way to death and then eating it is moral, but beating it halfway to death and then wandering off is immoral. It's an essential part of nature that animals must kill to live, but there's no excuse for senseless torture of a sentient creature.

-Username17

Technically, beating a pig to death would be considered immoral if you have a quicker method that isn't significantly more painful, or a less painful method that isn't significantly slower.

This is part of what I love about the Den, that sort of side point can just slide without being used in bad faith as part of an actual rebuttal.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:39 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Killing is only murder if it isn't justified. Killing to survive is justified and not murder. Sex is only rape if the partner didn't consent. There is no "I was really hungry" exemption for rape, but there is one for murder.

But killing to eat when there's a bean salad (or other non-killing meal alternative) is murder.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:43 pm

Why? We're omnivores, and while it may have been cooked grains more than meat that got us to the brain functioning we're at today, the current anthropological thinking is that we evolved from arboreal insectivores (before primates), so at pretty much every point in our "recent" evolutionary history, we have been a creature that evolved to subsist on other animals. If it's immoral for a human to eat a boar rather than a bean salad, how is it not immoral for a lion to do so?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:52 pm

omegonthesane wrote:Technically, beating a pig to death would be considered immoral if you have a quicker method that isn't significantly more painful, or a less painful method that isn't significantly slower.

Yes, definitely. It is also immoral to voluntarily use a more painful method of slaughter when a less painful method is available. Subject of course to further to caveats about hygiene and efficiency of meat collection. Obviously you wouldn't be expected to slaughter livestock with a bazooka or a deadly poison no matter how painless it happened to be.

virgil wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Killing is only murder if it isn't justified. Killing to survive is justified and not murder. Sex is only rape if the partner didn't consent. There is no "I was really hungry" exemption for rape, but there is one for murder.
But killing to eat when there's a bean salad (or other non-killing meal alternative) is murder.

Bean salad also requires killing.

We value the lives of pigs more than the lives of garbanzos, but they are still lives. We have to kill to eat, and we have to eat to live. That is not negotiable. We have further taboos against cannibalism, which I think are justified as much by prions as by anything.

So killing a human for meat is wrong because the meat is unsafe. So it's only acceptable to kill a human for meat in such circumstances that there are truly not other options. Like a plane crash in the Andes or whatever.

There's no specific reason why it would be a priori wrong to kill and eat sapient aliens, but that's a purely hypothetical scenario at this point and we'd almost certainly institute a treaty where we treated each other as if we were the same kind of species and then it would be "not OK" to eat Klingons either.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:52 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:If it's immoral for a human to eat a boar rather than a bean salad, how is it not immoral for a lion to do so?

Lions are obligate carnivores, making non-meat alternatives nonexistant. Also, they are animals and do not have the cognitive capacity to make moral judgement to begin with. Using animal behavior as a moral guideline justifies killing for fun (house cats) and nonconsensual sex (dolphins) as morally acceptable behaviors; which is not an acceptable outcome for a variety of reasons.

FrankTrollman wrote:Bean salad also requires killing.

We value the lives of pigs more than the lives of garbanzos, but they are still lives. We have to kill to eat, and we have to eat to live. That is not negotiable. We have further taboos against cannibalism, which I think are justified as much by prions as by anything.

Just like it's immoral to voluntarily use a more painful method of slaughter, isn't it immoral to kill a higher value lifeform (human>animal>plant) to survive when the lower value one is available?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:03 pm

@Virgil: Eh, fair. Lion's kind of the go to. I'd change to "chimp and lizard" but you do have further points.

@Frank: Aren't prions primarily a concern if you eat the brain matter? Or is it all nerve tissue and thus basically a fool's errand to try to "avoid" them?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:38 pm

virgil wrote:Just like it's immoral to voluntarily use a more painful method of slaughter, isn't it immoral to kill a higher value lifeform (human>animal>plant) to survive when the lower value one is available?

And what's the moral or scientific basis to say that a lifeform is "higher" than another? Beans, cows, bacteria and every other life form existing today has being evolving for about the same time.

If the measure is "intelligence", then eating pigs is wronger than eating dogs. So what's the enlightened metric that decides which beings we consume?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:43 pm

virgil wrote:Just like it's immoral to voluntarily use a more painful method of slaughter, isn't it immoral to kill a higher value lifeform (human>animal>plant) to survive when the lower value one is available?

Are animals higher value?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:46 pm

nockermensch wrote:If the measure is "intelligence", then eating pigs is wronger than eating dogs. So what's the enlightened metric that decides which beings we consume?

I actually have no objection to eating dogs over pigs, so using the "intelligence" metric is a fine alternative. I don't see the point in placing great moral concern on minor differences in intelligence, especially in context of the greater scale of rock to bacteria to animal to human.

RobbyPants wrote:
virgil wrote:Just like it's immoral to voluntarily use a more painful method of slaughter, isn't it immoral to kill a higher value lifeform (human>animal>plant) to survive when the lower value one is available?
Are animals higher value?

So long as humans are higher value than animals, yes. The only real differentiation between humans and animals is intelligence, therefore that trait holds priority and would likewise carry over and allow for animals to hold greater value over plants.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 7:39 pm

Stupid Argument:
1. Murder is only acceptable to prevent further murders.
2. Eating someone who is already dead is acceptable to preserve your own life.
3. Plants are incapable of murder, by virtue of being immobile.
4. From 1 and 3, it is unacceptable to kill any plant.
5. From 1 and 4, it is acceptable to kill herbivores.
6. From 1 and 5, it is unacceptable to kill carnivores.
7. Thus, the only acceptable food sources are those that can be harvested non-lethally (milk, blood, leaves, the non-seed parts of fruit, etc.) and herbivore meat.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 7:56 pm

@Grek:
Aren't there (semi)mobile plants?
And there are Plants that trap, kill and eat insects.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 8:09 pm

Those count as carnivores for the purposes of the argument. Obviously, the terms used do not adhere strictly to taxonomy.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 9:04 pm

Ah, i see. . .

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 9:11 pm

Stahlseele wrote:@Grek:
Aren't there (semi)mobile plants?
And there are Plants that trap, kill and eat insects.

Moreover, aren't there plants that manufacture poison to kill off creatures that would eat them?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 9:36 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:@Frank: Aren't prions primarily a concern if you eat the brain matter? Or is it all nerve tissue and thus basically a fool's errand to try to "avoid" them?

Prion transmission can happen any time you ingest a damaged protein. There happens to be a known prion (kuru) that transmits the deadly and incurable condition of spongiform encephalopathy which is found in nerve tissue. But your chances of discovering a new horrible prion disease are almost infinity times higher by consuming any human flesh than they are drinking a glass of orange juice.

For a prion to cause a cascading effect, it needs to have access to undamaged proteins with the same amino acid sequence as itself. Obviously, this is much more likely when infecting the same species as its origin - because creatures of the same species have almost all of the same proteins with the same amino acid sequences. Of course, all life on Earth has common ancestry and there are conserved amino acid sequences shared between any two living things. Which is why you can catch vCJD from cows with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. But eating things farther from you on the tree of life is objectively safer.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:10 pm

Maj wrote:
Stahlseele wrote:@Grek:
Aren't there (semi)mobile plants?
And there are Plants that trap, kill and eat insects.
Moreover, aren't there plants that manufacture poison to kill off creatures that would eat them?

can't think of any better form of self defence . . in theory . . in practice, since the plant dies before the poison stops the creature from eating it, it's technically the worst kind of eye for an eye revenge scheme in nature . .

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:15 pm

Why did the Transformers Movie kill off a lot of the original Autobots in order to have a narrative justification for selling new toys instead of, oh:

[*] Concluding the story, start a new series from there? You know, the strategy they used for future incarnations of the franchise?

[*] Just let the roster bloat and sag with new Autobots and Decepticons, accept that some of the new ones will catch fire and/or that people will care less about some of the old ones? You know, the strategy they use for Pokemon?

[*] Introduce a bunch of ridiculous upgrades for the Autobots/Decepticons that would require kids to nag their parents for new toys? I don't think anyone would've minded, say, an Optimus Prime upgrade to, say, a Space Shuttle/Super OP. Or if they introduced an alt. Iron Hide that could be folded into a set of external armor.