ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:44 pm
We are pretty intelligent. I know that this is a common "last resource" by the existentialists, doubting our intellect yet, this discussion is taking place between several people that are located thousands of kilometers away from each other, simply because our intelligence and our ability to manipulate tiny electrons allows us to send our thoughts and ideas basically everywhere around the world. In less than 2,000 years, the dream of telepathy has been achieved tenfold. We cannot only send our thoughts, we can send what we see and what we hear. Somewhere beyond Pluto, a little box the size of a piano travels onwards, sending us images and data from billions of miles away. Not too shabby.
... And anyone can provide thousands of examples of how we use our so-called 'intelligence' for harmful means.
Yes, we have this wacky internet thing. But the internet has also produced a huge increase in the sexual exploitation of children, in youth suicides, it has helped terrorists recruit members... and on and on it goes.
The internet also spreads nonsense and lies more rapidly and to a much wider audience than ever before.
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end... We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate…. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.” - Henry Thoreau
It's so easy to isolate the positives of something - such as human intelligence - and neglect to mention the massive negatives associated with it, for the purpose of furthering an agenda.
You cannot isolate 'positive intelligence' from 'negative intelligence'. The fact is that human intelligence is responsible for many wonderful things. And it is also responsible for many negative and tragic things - because the intelligence is intertwined with selfishness, greed, and insecurity.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:44 pm
All this ties to the fact that we started to eat meat. The correlation is uncanny: Homo Erectus, with a cranial cavity of about 300CC, started to eat meat. Cranial cavities have expanded ever since, although right now they are decreasing a bit. You also only have to look at meso-American and Andean populations, with very little meat in their diets, and see their weights and sizes compared to African or Asia-European stock. The sizes are much more favorable to the meat/lactose eating groups.
^ This is a tired and typical argument of meat eaters - that it is healthier to eat meat than not to. There are millions of very healthy vegetarians on the planet - just as there are millions of unhealthy meat eaters. And you can point to studies which claim to 'prove' that meat eaters are healthier... And I can point to at least as many studies which 'prove' that vegetarians are healthier...
Yawn...
Maybe we'll have to decide this on the tennis court - you and I... We're about the same age, and we've both been playing for a long while. We have to set it up for a neutral location, where the weather does not advantage either one of us... and just play until one of us drops. This will then prove to the entire world which diet is healthiest.
"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle." - Henry Thoreau
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:44 pm
One issue that vegetarians miss is simple: those same animals that Bernard Shaw is so sensitive about would have been killed by another carnivore. It is the fate of all animals in nature, "red in tooth and claw". With extremely few exceptions, until very recently every animal would die either by the claws and teeth of a bigger animal, or would be weakened by disease and, again, would die in the mouth of some other creature.
Another point that non-meat-eaters miss is that the animals that "accepted" domestication made a trade: their "domesticated" genes are in no danger of extinction because attaching yourself to that bipedal primate gave those same genes protection. Bovines, equines, canines and felines (the small ones) are under no risk of fading away, courtesy of their liaison with H. Sapiens. Zebras, basically impossible to domesticate, pale in numbers when compared to horses, domesticated a long time ago. Industrial agriculture is just one spoke of the wheel upon which our civilization rides.
^ I don't think non meat eaters 'miss' anything - and I find that rather condescending on your part.
Animals kill other animals for survival. It is pure instinct. Humans (today) kill other animals for pleasure and financial profit. The pleasure is to the palate.
Human intelligence (speaking of which) has figured out how to survive without consuming animals. And so, it cannot be said that consuming animals is necessary for human survival. Not at all.
And, as mentioned, the manners in which we exploit and treat animals today is far worse than in yesteryear. There is no longer a respect for the animal. Industrial farming treats animals as inanimate objects, while they abuse and torture them, making them suffer horribly before the final kill. Because this is the most financially expedient way. Money - not respect or compassion - makes every decision in industrial farming.
And I refuse to contribute to that, simply.
Human beings love to deceive themselves. The huge majority buy their meat with the same lack of consciousness as they buy a box of crackers. Were people made to watch the entire process of how their meat got to the neatly packaged container they buy at the grocery store, they would have second thoughts. It's like garbage collection - people put their garbage out to the curb where a magic truck comes to take it away to nevernever land - as if it simply vanishes into thin air. No thought of landfills killing the planet, etc. Out of sight, out of mind - just like factory farming. But if people had to bury their garbage
in their own back yard, you can bet your ass that people would produce much, much less garbage.
This self-deception, which humans are experts at, is a prime example of 'negative intelligence'.
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." - Paul McCartney.
While I don't believe that everyone would be vegetarian if the ugly realities of slaughterhouses and factory farms were inescapable, I do believe that a large majority would be. Because I believe that compassion is an inherent human trait. I have seen many meat eaters literally run away, or become sick, when viewing what happens in a typical slaughterhouse. When not conveniently escaping the reality, and facing it instead, the majority of people - including the majority of meat eaters - are disgusted. Because of human compassion. This is precisely why they train themselves to not think about it; to deceive themselves to believe a pretty illusionary comfort rather than the ugly truth.
I view being a vegetarian or vegan as simply living consciously, with this intrinsic human compassion - without the self-deception of conveniently fooling ourselves that what is truly occurring in industrial animal farming isn't really happening, and without deceiving ourselves that we are somehow not complicit in what is happening in industrialized animal farming today.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 11:44 pm
Off Topic
It boils down to that simple question posed by Pinker: if you could chose what time and era you would be born, but not be able to chose the place, you would chose now. Every single civilization and culture of the 21st century is better off than any same group 200 years ago. Are we in nirvana? Of course not. But progress does not work that way. A few steps forward (or the graph inching upwards) maybe one back (the graph dips). But over the last 500 years, our progress has been phenomenal.
Yep, we are not that dumb. We are so smart, actually, that we can discuss the things that we do wrong, and take corrective actions. We have been getting better at that for a few centuries now. No need to throw everything overboard.
^ Not me. I'd have much preferred to live a few hundred years ago. While my life may have been shorter, and there would be far fewer conveniences, the overall quality of life would have been better in my view.
Yes, the human population is thriving. It’s too bad that the planet can’t support this many humans, though. Because, as the human population increases, the destruction of the planet also increases, proportionally. Our human ‘progress’, so called, comes at a huge cost.
As humans have taken more and more space on the planet, today, over 1 million plant and animal species are currently at severe risk of extinction.
Since 1970, the populations of birds, mammals, and reptiles have been reduced by 60%.
Extinction is now happening 100 times faster than the natural evolutionary rate.
And this all has severe consequences for every living thing - including us. But, of course, most humans voluntarily close their eyes to it, because it's uncomfortable to contemplate. And because we are complicit.
In any event, this is a silly "What if", as the question proposed by Pinker inherently attempts to slant the response in favour of the author's agenda.