Paris: Animal rights activists seize puppy from homeless man

[Oakvale]

In this thread:

[DavidB.]

This thread:

I love you (no homo), but these kind of posts are probably the reason why people open threads named "Let's talk about darthebearnc".

[Alcon]

Hahahahaha omg, you took the time to dig up a post I made 6 years ago just for a punchline? That's hilarious, if a bit disturbing.

Nah, I just searched your post history for the word "disappointing" and it was the first result.  It took five seconds.  Why put more effort into that burn than you've put into being passably competent in this entire thread?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I guess you guys have a couple new entries for your "Worst posts of modern Atlas" thread.

[Green Line]

Team Alcon!

[/]

This thread:

I love you (no homo), but these kind of posts are probably the reason why people open threads named "Let's talk about darthebearnc".

LOL but it's so true.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I wouldn't refer to PETA as "radical". They are more of an established group of stuntpeople, and they're good at their stated aim: to get attention at any possible situation. There the kind of group that enjoys people disliking them.

PETA workers, in their euthanasia enthusiasm, went to someone's house, took their dog off the porch, and killed the dog. 
At least this group left his pet alive so he might be able to get it back.

A) that's not radical in the sense in using the word. 'Radical' doesn't mean annoying.

B) PETA does a lot of unpleasant stuff that nobody else does. In the case your're referring to the organisation were requested by a landowner to sort out the stray dogs in the area that were mutilating his cows udders. They were told that the trailer park did not allow dogs running free, so sadly they did not consider one of the "strays" was a actually a beloved pet, especially as it lacked a collar etc. the owner of the dog was not home, but other residents were around and gave permission for PETA to do their shenigans. PETA screwed up, sure, and the organisation admitted it. But is the human error of two PETA workers comparable to the very real problem of the proliferation of strays that are created by the pet breeding industry and inadaqute neutering programs. People who are angry because PETA euthanise animals are being sentimental and lack perspective.

It was an instance of human error, sure, but one that arose out of PETAs ethos which combines opposition animal domestication in principle with an emphasis on euthanasia as preferable to any suboptimal conditions of animal life.  PETA actively opposes efforts by other groups to neuter stray animals - they aren't happy unless those strays are dead.

There's nothing wrong with being sentimental. It is why most people oppose animal cruelty at all.  It is better than the sort of warped utilitarianism that PETA promotes that only measures the negative potentialities death better than life for the animals it "rescues."     

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Antonio, why do you bother arguing with some hippie who can't accept basic facts of life?

Humans are omnivorous. Humans have a position in the food chain. Not eating meat goes against those facts of life and we shouldn't leave a small brainless minority too weak to accept the laws of nature transform human alimentation in an unnatural way.

Human alimentation has been in a constant process of transformation over the eons.  The agricultural revolution, and in the far distant past the invention of cooking, are transformations that one might more readily consider "unnatural" than this.   There is no law of nature that says humans must eat meat regardless of the resources of their environment.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yeah, to be clear, I don't think appeal to nature is a valid argument in any circumstance, and I won't use it just because it happens to support my argument in this case.

On the other hand, it is established that the increase in protein consumption generated by the development of the first hunting tools and cooking methods was crucial to the development of the human brain that made us into homo sapiens. So if Alcon's ancestors never ate meat, chances are he wouldn't be here today to scold me.

[Alcon]

Yeah, to be clear, I don't think appeal to nature is a valid argument in any circumstance, and I won't use it just because it happens to support my argument in this case.

On the other hand, it is established that the increase in protein consumption generated by the development of the first hunting tools and cooking methods was crucial to the development of the human brain that made us into homo sapiens. So if Alcon's ancestors never ate meat, chances are he wouldn't be here today to scold me.

yes, and I'm sure my ancestors dealt with annoying impediments by beating them with blunt objects, so you're really lucky I'm more morally evolved than them

[Antonio the Sixth]

And yet, this moral evolution would never have happened without eating meat. I hope the irony isn't entirely lost on you.

[Alcon]

And yet, this moral evolution would never have happened without eating meat. I hope the irony isn't entirely lost on you.

So, I imagine you think it's "ironic" that I'm morally opposed to meat-eating, because it was necessary at one point for us to develop mental faculties: our pre-moral ancestors weren't smart enough to get protein some other way.  But our pre-moral ancestors also weren't smart enough to survive and reproduce, and develop moral reasoning, without doings lots of things we reject as immoral.  Do you think it's "ironic" that you oppose the murder/rape/whatever, even though they were the only way our pre-moral ancestors knew to survive and flourish?

Is it "ironic" we now oppose this stuff as immoral?  Yeah, sure.  Is that ironic in a way that gives any moral insight?  No.  Obviously, you'd be opposed to us doing plenty of stuff that was useful/necessary to our pre-moral ancestors.  You're making no morally relevant point, and you're not saving face by being cute about this.  It's completely shallow and superficially clever.  Seriously, just respond to the substantive arguments or concede the debate.  Don't waste both of our time by playing splashies in the intellectual kiddie pool.

You know what's really ironic?  How your ancestors braved brutal, inhospitable environments and developed advanced cognition so that one day you could lose, and then ungracefully wuss out of, an internet debate.  Talk about a waste of protein.

[Antonio the Sixth]

God, you're such a pain in the ass. Not even able to take a tongue-in-cheek for what it is and instead using it as a pretext for another long-winded rant on how evil those who disagree with you are. It's really sad to witness.

I don't think eating meat is immoral, and considering you were the one who was really pushing forward an argument, you are the one who lost the debate by failing to convince me. I, for one, had no interest in convincing you to start eating meat, since I accept that people have a variety of moral beliefs and resulting lifestyles, and I don't think anyone who differs from mine is a horrible person.

[Alcon]

God, you're such a pain in the ass. Not even able to take a tongue-in-cheek for what it is and instead using it as a pretext for another long-winded rant on how evil those who disagree with you are. It's really sad to witness.

Dude, don't pretend "I hope the irony isn't lost on you" was some friendly, tongue-in-cheek, self-effacing kind of deal.  You were trying to trivialize my argument without addressing it.

I never said anyone is evil.  I said your argument sucks and you've failed to address mine.  Maybe it's because you do things like read what I said as "everyone who disagrees with me is evil," when I never said anything like that.  Oftentimes, reading what's actually written helps.  (I'm being tongue-in-cheek, you see.)

I don't think eating meat is immoral, and considering you were the one who was really pushing forward an argument, you are the one who lost the debate by failing to convince me. I, for one, had no interest in convincing you to start eating meat, since I accept that people have a variety of moral beliefs and resulting lifestyles, and I don't think anyone who differs from mine is a horrible person.

I paraphrased and critiqued your arguments in detail and you declined to respond.  If that's not "losing" a debate, I don't know what is.  By your rationale, you "win" a debate by sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly.

I don't think you're a horrible person.  I don't think people are horrible for having different moral holdings than me.  I don't think most people who've opposed gay marriage, or civil rights, or gender equality have done so because they're sadists.  I think they're usually, in their own ways -- often heavy in tradition, or personal comfort, or "common sense" -- trying to be moral, in fact.  But their arguments don't hold up to logical moral scrutiny.

I think you're smart, and likely a perfectly decent guy, but yours don't either.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Alcon's strange fixation on animal rights is baffling, isn't it? Migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean, literal fascists are on the verge of taking power in municipalities throughout Europe and he chooses to invest his time in discussing the morality of meat. That's all well and good, we all have our interests but I'm not going to be lectured by a man who seems to care more about animals than he cares about immigrants or racial minorities or the poor.

Alcon, your tone is sanctimonious, smug and obnoxious. Antonio has his own issues but I'm choosing to focus on your issues because too many forumites would rather run away from you than make this critique. It's really tiresome arguing with you because it seems that you take perverse pleasure in humiliating people, as evidenced by this thread. Tony's arguments weren't stellar but there was no need to be hostile and needle his own individual actions, which really have no basis in a discussion like this. Seek professional help! I sense a pedant who loves to demonstrate his superiority...

[Alcon]

Alcon's strange fixation on animal rights is baffling, isn't it? Migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean, literal fascists are on the verge of taking power in municipalities throughout Europe and he chooses to invest his time in discussing the morality of meat. That's all well and good, we all have our interests but I'm not going to be lectured by a man who seems to care more about animals than he cares about immigrants or racial minorities or income equality.

Do you post about, or think about, issues in exact proportion to how important you think they are?  No?  Me neither.  Do you sometimes post more about issues you find particularly interesting, or where you find the counter-arguments particularly lacking?  Me too.  For instance, I'd never look at your post history and infer you think immigration in the U.S. is a more serious issue than the crisis than the Sudan.  Why are you doing that with me?

To be clear, I do not think animal rights is an insignificant issue.  There's serious suffering of sentient beings at stake here, and it's on the mass scale.  I would rank it above a decent number of political issues that I post less about, but also below some.  If you want to know how relatively important I think it is, ask.  But, unless your meat consumption is somehow contingent on how important gay marriage is, I'm not sure why it's relevant.

Also, if you genuinely think I'm an unfeeling person who doesn't care about human suffering -- which, man, you actually think that? -- it doesn't matter.  My arguments stand completely independent of what kind of person I am.  That is literally the same crap pulled by people who wouldn't engage arguments about civil rights or gay rights because "distasteful" people were advancing them.  You know that's nonsense, dude.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Alcon's strange fixation on animal rights is baffling, isn't it? Migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean, literal fascists are on the verge of taking power in municipalities throughout Europe and he chooses to invest his time in discussing the morality of meat. That's all well and good, we all have our interests but I'm not going to be lectured by a man who seems to care more about animals than he cares about immigrants or racial minorities or income equality.

Do you post about, or think about, issues in exact proportion to how important you think they are?  No?  Me neither.  Do you sometimes post more about issues you find particularly interesting, or where you find the counter-arguments particularly lacking?  Me too.  For instance, I'd never look at your post history and infer you think immigration in the U.S. is a more serious issue than the crisis than the Sudan.  Why are you doing that with me?

To be clear, I do not think animal rights is an insignificant issue.  There's serious suffering of sentient beings at stake here, and it's on the mass scale.  I would rank it above a decent number of political issues that I post less about, but also below some.  If you want to know how relatively important I think it is, ask.  But, unless your meat consumption is somehow contingent on how important gay marriage is, I'm not sure why it's relevant.

Also, if you genuinely think I'm an unfeeling person who doesn't care about human suffering -- which, man, you actually think that? -- it doesn't matter.  My arguments stand completely independent of what kind of person I am.  That is literally the same crap pulled by people who wouldn't engage arguments about civil rights or gay rights because "distasteful" people were advancing them.  You know that's nonsense, dude.

I cop to the fact that my post is pure garbage and has no value whatsoever. It's just a visceral reaction.

I've thought about animal rights since our discussion and I can't bring myself to care about animal rights. This is a source of frustration for me. I recognize that animals are deserving of some concern and deserve a framework for evaluating their welfare but I cannot convince myself that they deserve rights. This might be because of the relationship between sentiments and morality. I'd argue that most people have some sense that people are intrinsically valuable, that this transcends culture and that this is the root of attempts to forge universal moralities. Do people have the capacity to care for animals in the same way that they care about their fellow man? I'd wager that this is hard to believe. Tony's claim has a basis of truth to it: human evolution was founded upon eating meat. The taste of animal fat lights up the brain, which is why, in times of relative material scarcity, meat has been reserved for important rituals/events. This is part of the human experience. No amount of reason can negate this.

This isn't an appeal to tradition or convention so much as it's an appeal to the human condition. I find it hard to believe that we can ever transcend some aspects of our biology, a key feature of which is meat-eating. I suppose that we could place restraints on this desire so that we can promote about animal welfare but it remains an aspect of being human.

[Alcon]

edit since you added stuff:

Alcon, your tone is sanctimonious, smug and obnoxious. Antonio has his own issues but I'm choosing to focus on your issues because too many forumites would rather run away from you than make this critique. It's really tiresome arguing with you because it seems that you take perverse pleasure in humiliating people, as evidenced by this thread. Tony's arguments weren't stellar but there was no need to be hostile and needle his own individual actions, which really have no basis in a discussion like this. Seek professional help! I sense a pedant who loves to demonstrate his superiority...

Look at my other debates on the forum, including early in this thread, before Ingeman and Antonio ignored the substantive content of my argument in favor of things like "you're just arguing this because you're defensive."  I can be aggressive in debates, but I rarely try to beat on people unless they're being condescending or non-responsive.  Remember that debate we had in that Charles Murray thread?  Was I even slightly mean to you?  No, man.  Even when you got mean-spirited toward me -- because I knew you were frustrated, not being condescendingly dismissive out of the gate.

I like an aggressive debate.  I have fun, in the same way that guys with upper body strength (not me) probably like boxing.  But I would never arbitrarily decide to start beating someone up.  If they take the posture first, I'm game, and yes, sometimes I hit back harder than the first punch.  I also don't like passive-aggressive forms of "let's agree to disagree" and tend to attack them.  But if someone genuinely indicates they're getting upset, I back down the personal sparring.  (I will admit it's really hard to say "this is too much" to someone who's antagonizing you, so sometimes I'm sure I go overboard when I'm having fun.)

And while I appreciate your concern, you can ask pretty much anyone who's met me in person.  I am not a remotely mean-spirited or antagonistic guy

[Alcon]

I cop to the fact that my post is pure garbage and has no value whatsoever. It's just a visceral reaction.

Fair.  I really appreciate how willing you are to talk about your emotional processes when working through ideas, by the way.  A lot of people hide that to avoid admitting any uncertainty, when we all work this way sometimes.

I've thought about animal rights since our discussion and I can't bring myself to care about animal rights. This is a source of frustration for me. I recognize that animals are deserving of some concern and deserve a framework for evaluating their welfare but I cannot convince myself that they deserve rights. This might be because of the relationship between sentiments and morality. I'd argue that most people have some sense that people are intrinsically valuable, that this transcends culture and that this is the root of attempts to forge universal moralities. Do people have the capacity to care for animals in the same way that they care about their fellow man? I'd wager that this is hard to believe.

Tony's claim has a basis of truth to it: human evolution was founded upon eating meat. The taste of animal fat lights up the brain, which is why, in times of relative material scarcity, meat has been reserved for important rituals/events. This is part of the human experience. No amount of reason can negate this.  This isn't an appeal to tradition or convention so much as it's an appeal to the human condition. I find it hard to believe that we can ever transcend some aspects of our biology, a key feature of which is meat-eating. I suppose that we could place restraints on this desire so that we can promote about animal welfare but it remains an aspect of being human.

I'm with you: it's a impulse that's deeply in our instinct.    But there are a lot of other tribalistic impulses that are deeply within our instinct that we've overriden intellectually.

A friend of mine was actually just reading me an article about research relating to abstract thought and racism.  In particular, 100 years ago, when people rarely thought abstractly because it was pointless, you couldn't prompt someone to empathize with a black person by saying "how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow with black skin?"  They'd just dismiss it by saying no such thing happens.  The theoretical exercise was pointless to them because being black and being white are just totally different things, so it made no sense for them to think about how it would feel to become black -- it wasn't sympathy, it was just nonsense, and therefore morally irrelevant.  The ability to sympathize with others of another race (or religion or whatever) has been, in great part, a byproduct of turning sympathy into an abstract exercise: you recognize what purpose sympathy serves (lessening suffering as an abstract principle), and work from there, instead of responding to your intuitive emotional sympathy, which may be driven by shared experiences/traits, and can lead to outcomes like racism.

I'm not saying sympathizing with an animal is the same thing as sympathizing with a person of another race.  I am, however, saying that it's a somewhat unnatural behavior that requires abstract reasoning that only became common pretty recently.  But that ability to remove ourselves from instinct, in-group identification, etc., is a good thing.  Some tendencies of humanity and byproducts of human evolution are bad.  Xenophobia, tribalism, and racism were probably adaptive at some point, and are still to some extent natural, but they're bad.

It's good that we're using our abstract reasoning to limit those human tendencies, because they cause suffering.  We rightfully dismiss those impulses as unevolved and harmful.  We expect those who don't feel that sympathy intuitively to adjust intellectually.  The new generation, who grows up where that sympathy is normal, largely feels it intuitively and doesn't need to intellectualize.  And it's good...there's less suffering.  I see no reason why we can't, or shouldn't, apply the same to animals just because our preference for meat is also instinctual.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I paraphrased and critiqued your arguments in detail and you declined to respond.  If that's not "losing" a debate, I don't know what is.  By your rationale, you "win" a debate by sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly.

Your "critiques" are irrelevant, because they are based on fundamental moral principles different from mine. That's what you don't understand. In discussions on morality, there are no objective facts that everyone can agree on, and which can form the basis for a resolution of the disagreement. If I'm arguing with a social Darwinist, I can bring him data and prove to him that inequalities have increased dramatically in the western world over the past decades, but I will never convince him that that's a bad thing. All I could say is "I think your moral principles are f**ked up" and leave it there. You seem to think that your arguments were factual when (aside from some number-crunching that didn't affect the substance of my argument) they weren't.

[Alcon]

I paraphrased and critiqued your arguments in detail and you declined to respond.  If that's not "losing" a debate, I don't know what is.  By your rationale, you "win" a debate by sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly.

Your "critiques" are irrelevant, because they are based on fundamental moral principles different from mine. That's what you don't understand. In discussions on morality, there are no objective facts that everyone can agree on, and which can form the basis for a resolution of the disagreement. If I'm arguing with a social Darwinist, I can bring him data and prove to him that inequalities have increased dramatically in the western world over the past decades, but I will never convince him that that's a bad thing. All I could say is "I think your moral principles are f**ked up" and leave it there. You seem to think that your arguments were factual when (aside from some number-crunching that didn't affect the substance of my argument) they weren't.

You're right that people often come at moral issues from different fundamental analyses.  But you said you indicated that you're open to an argument about minimizing unnecessary harm.  You terminated the conversation when I asked when unnecessary harm results from unnecessary situations you knowingly allow to occur.  So I'm not sure why you think we're at an impasse.

So you do think you can request a good or service that will knowingly have an immoral outcome, and your hand is clean?  You balked at my bookie example, saying that's different because you hire a bookie instead of purchasing a product from him.  I asked why that distinction matters.  If there a fundamental moral belief that makes you feel entitled to buy as many products as you want, even if they directly and obviously cause harm to others to produce, that explains things...but considering I've seen you bemoan someone's support of sweatshops, color me confused by your moral claims here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...right, see here's where I'm confused: at what point did this become a discussion debate row about the morality of meat eating? The French eat a lot of weird stuff but not dogs.

Anyway, for whatever this is worth, for most of human history most people ate hardly any meat (to simplify grotesquely the fodder crop had to be invented first, so we're mostly looking at a post 18th century thing) and this is still the case in substantial parts of the world.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Ok, first off, I said "needless", not " unnecessary ". I'm not a native speaker, so I might be wrong, but I think there is a slight nuance between the two (with need being a broader concept than nececessity). Second, there is no absolute definition of what constitutes a "need". Maybe you assumed I meant a vital need, but I never actually said that. That's much too strict a condition, and if followed, it would considerably hinder human development. To me, "needless" simply means that animal suffering should be avoided whenever it doesn't serve a legitimate purpose to human beings. To me a legitimate purpose does not include increased profit (at leat not beyond a certain level necessary for workers in the industry to live a comfortable life). It does, however, include having access to a category of food that has proven crucial to human development and is a fundamental source of daily happiness for billions of people. Again, the fact that meat tastes good is not a trivial argument to me.

If your misunderstanding stemmed from a semantic mistake I made, I am ready to admit it and apologize for it (though that doesn't excuse your smug and self-righteous posturing). If you still have something to add after that, it probably means you can't comprehend different moral perspectives.

[Antonio the Sixth]

...right, see here's where I'm confused: at what point did this become a discussion debate row about the morality of meat eating? The French eat a lot of weird stuff but not dogs.

I wouldn't be opposed to trying dog meat. Hell, I never understood the whole freakout about horsemeat a couple years ago. De gustibus et coloribus...

[Alcon]

Ok, first off, I said "needless", not " unnecessary ". I'm not a native speaker, so I might be wrong, but I think there is a slight nuance between the two (with need being a broader concept than nececessity).

Those words are synonyms, as far as I know.

Second, there is no absolute definition of what constitutes a "need". Maybe you assumed I meant a vital need, but I never actually said that. That's much too strict a condition, and if followed, it would considerably hinder human development. To me, "needless" simply means that animal suffering should be avoided whenever it doesn't serve a legitimate purpose to human beings.

How is that any different from what I paraphrased?

To me a legitimate purpose does not include increased profit (at leat not beyond a certain level necessary for workers in the industry to live a comfortable life). It does, however, include having access to a category of food that has proven crucial to human development and is a fundamental source of daily happiness for billions of people. Again, the fact that meat tastes good is not a trivial argument to me.

Why would it be relevant if it has "proven crucial to human development"?  It is no longer crucial.  In fact, you complained when I previously argued against this being relevant, because you said I was taking a tongue-in-cheek comment too seriously.  (Obviously, I was right; it wasn't tongue-in-cheek.)

You ignored this entirely: So you do think you can request a good or service that will knowingly have an immoral outcome, and your hand is clean?  You balked at my bookie example, saying that's different because you hire a bookie instead of purchasing a product from him.  I asked why that distinction matters.  If there a fundamental moral belief that makes you feel entitled to buy as many products as you want, even if they directly and obviously cause harm to others to produce, that explains things...but considering I've seen you bemoan someone's support of sweatshops, color me confused by your moral claims here.

So, that leaves one cogent argument for me to address: you think the value of taste of a meat diet is so much greater than the taste of a vegetarian diet that it justifies whatever suffering is prompted by you eating a non-vegetarian diet, e.g., with T being taste, and S being suffering, Utility(Tmeat - Tveg)>Disutility(Smeat-Sveg).  How much mass animal suffering would be sufficient for you to tolerate consuming vegetarian food, which you apparently hate and removes the joy you take from eating?  When does Utility(Tmeat - Tveg)<Disutility(Smeat-Sveg)?  Can it ever?

If your misunderstanding stemmed from a semantic mistake I made, I am ready to admit it and apologize for it (though that doesn't excuse your smug and self-righteous posturing). If you still have something to add after that, it probably means you can't comprehend different moral perspectives.

Do you really think, having read this topic, that I have any difficulty comprehending and balancing different moral principles?  I know you're trying your hand at being smug and self-righteous, but I have had no problem paraphrasing and critiquing your moral posits.  You're essentially saying "if that answer doesn't satisfy you, than you must just not 'get' it," which is as horsecrap now as the last time you tried it.