tripu @tripu@qoto.org

Michel de #Montaigne on #rationality (#Essays):

“Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of #reason, to the end we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to the laws common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntary liberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be tyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should have the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange disgust for those propensions that are started in us without the mediation and direction of the judgment.”

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3600/pg3600-images.html#link2HCH0065

@rastinza Except those keep (or even increase) their value after years or decades, don’t they? I’m more sympathetic to that: they’re status and fashion, but also an investment.

I see people nowadays buying ~€1,000 #smartphones, and replacing them every year or two — especially techies and teenagers.

Hear me out: I bought my current smartphone… four years and five months ago. I paid exactly €144,74 for it. It was (and still is) free and unlocked. It is still in good working condition (although getting a bit too slow now).

I am a professional technologist.

What the hell do you need a $1K cell phone every couple of years for?

#consumerism #waste

@amyvdh

I will just say that there is nothing in #rationality that “ignores human aspects”. “lived experience” or “feelings”. That’s a false antagonism you are drawing there, Amy.

My claim is that reason and evidence are the best tools we have for dialogue and progress, and that the scientific method and rational argumentation are useful even to discuss human well-being and cultural issues.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rationality

https://www.britannica.com/topic/rationality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality

@amyvdh

I agree. Expecting feelings from victims and reason from those in power (or vice versa) is simplistic. That was my point.

I was answering to this:

“‘Removing feelings from political matters’ is a age-old attitude […] which neatly maintains unequal status quos. It prioritizes the advantage of those who already benefit […] by dismissing complaints or advocacy for change (‘feelings’) to make them neither heard or valued.”

You are saying that “removing feelings from political matters” benefits “those in power”, or at least that on average it tends to benefit “those in power” more.

But I think that “removing feelings from political matters” benefits… those who have better rational arguments. And that is a good thing. Sometimes a club of millionaires has the best argument, sometimes a prosecuted minority has the best argument.

I discount the value of feelings as valid currency in public debates for all participants (not just minorities).

And I’m sure you do, too:

Nationalists lamenting the arrival of immigrants, nativists longing for the “pure blood” of their race, people against abortion who weep when they think of a 6-week fetus that won’t be born, people who experience profound disgust at the idea of two men getting married… those are feelings, very specific and strong feelings. Why don’t we (you and I) give credence to those strong emotions? Because their arguments are flawed.

@freemo

That’s true. I don’t have that information.

But note that we can’t assume that land reclaimed from animals would have lower caloric output, either.

What we do know is that one unit of land used for crops produces 16.3× as many calories and 6.8× as many proteins than one unit of land used for animals, on average.

Since we currently use more than three times as much land for animals than for plants, even assuming very conservative decreases in production, it seems the switch would be for better (less suffering, less land, less water, fewer antibiotics, less pollution, less CO₂).

I agree that if the vast majority of land used for animals now were pastures that are mostly useless for anything else, then the switch wouldn’t be feasible. But is that the case?

/cc @bonifartius

@amyvdh

OK, I’ll think about that!

Right now, I don’t see that I feel personally uncomfortable or threatened by any of this. It may be a blind spot.

Of course, to the extent that some rights are a zero-sum game, I have something to lose when public attitude or the law change to favour any of my outgroups, even if it’s a small push at the margin. But then, that’s true for everyone.

(Many rights and advances seem purely good for everyone; I’m sure we would be eye to eye about those.)

@amyvdh

I don’t understand that, Amy. Since when are feelings “progressive” and reason “conservative”?

Is there any evidence that social progress happened more often in History when society gave more weight to the feelings and emotions of minorities, thinkers or philanthropists — as opposed to paying more attention to better rational arguments from their part?

@bonifartius

“The madness starts when good meadows are plowed and used for crops. […] I’ve seen this being done to plan corn for bio-gas.”

Agreed. I was referring to food only.

“It may certainly not ‘optimal’ to have ruminants on green land, but they create food from plants humans never could consume.”

But we don’t need to raise ruminants to transform inedible plants into meat and dairy. We can grow edible plants in the first place, using far less resources and polluting less, and still feed everyone with that. That is why the current situation is not optimal (as you admit).

“It also doesn’t make sense to drop one of the most important local protein and fat sources in cold and moderate climates, instead transporting stuff around the globe.”

It makes total sense if the net impact of growing elsewhere + transporting is smaller than growing locally — and that seems to be the case very often.

(Only disadvantage I can think of: food sovereignty, resilience against geopolitical turmoil.)

/cc @freemo

@freemo

“It is quite often the case animals are raised on land explicitly not suitable for crops.”

If 23% of agricultural land currently dedicated to crops provides 83% of necessary calories worldwide, we would need to “reclaim” only an additional 4.7% of land from livestock usage in order to feed everyone only with plants. Even looking at protein sources, only 11.3% of land would have to be reallocated from “animals” to “plants”.

So even if it were “often the case” that land used for animals can’t be used for plants, it looks like we could still do the switch.

/cc @bonifartius

@admitsWrongIfProven

“I would like to improve, but everything feels like fighting windmills. If i recycle, how many rich people commission a ride to space for fun, rendering it useless?”

I encounter that line of reasoning very often and, respectfully, I think it is bogus.

A couple ways to see that:

• When a billionaire wastes a gazillion dollars and tons of CO₂ to have a space walk, he is not “rendering your recycling useless”. Those things don’t cancel each other out. A world with wasteful space walks where @admitsWrongIfProven does not recycle what is sensible to recycle is worse than a world with wasteful space walks — full stop.
• I bet you are “rich”. If you avoid your responsibility, you are providing excuses not to do their part to the next in line (mid-income people, not to mention poor people).
• You would not dare use that argument when talking about big evils. You do not hit your spouse, steal money from your neighbour, throw chemical waste in a river, or torture lizzards — but you know for sure that there are lots and lots of serial killers, child molesters, criminals, war lords, genocidal rulers, etc. You do what is right, because it’s right. Why then should we accept that argument for little evils?

/cc @freemo

@admitsWrongIfProven

I agree that messaging and choice of words are important from a strategic point of view: without ever lying, we can decide to stress one argument or another. And I admit my approach is not the one that would gain more supporters. But I have a tiny reach and PR is not my strength anyway; and I am only moderately confident about all this, so my interest is to gather counterarguments and spark discussion.

“So ‘exactly what we buy and use’ has a weak point: ‘we’ consists of many stressed people. ‘we’ can be manipulated and is manipulated currently. So to me, stopping the actual perpetrators makes much more sense.”

My problem with that is related to what I mentioned above about my not being completely sure about all this: I would not want all farms, fish farms, slaughterhouses, etc banned by law tomorrow. I very much prefer that consumers (and voters) push for them to become gradually irrelevant, extremely expensive, rare, frown upon.

“Truly, mainstream #media is the great Mugger of Reality. Even when its individual stories are rock solid, it promotes a deeply false Big Picture of the world. And unless you have the intellectual steel to constantly remind yourself, ‘This is a horribly misleading perspective,’ consuming media tends to make you believe this deeply false Big Picture.”

— Bryan Caplan

If you are an #English speaker but not a #Spanish speaker, do me a favour:

Imagine that the word you use in your native language for hair that is yellow-ish and for people with that type of hair (“blonde”) were, by sheer chance, identical to the word that the inhabitants of Otherland use to refer, approvingly, to people who like to sodomise babies.

Now, when you are using your language in public settings (on the street, on the internet) with fellow countrypeople , there are often Otherlanders nearby, overhearing what you say or reading your content.

Imagine that many Otherlanders openly expressed shock and disdain every time you used the word “blonde” to refer to someone who happens to have yellow-ish hair. That Otherlanders looked at you as if you were an insensitive monster. That they sometimes even scolded you for using that word in your own language.

Wouldn’t you be annoyed every time that happened? Wouldn’t you feel the urge to say “you don’t know my language, educate yourself!”

Let me introduce you to the Spanish word “negro”, which happens to exists also in English as a loanword which gained different connotations.

“We are so conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unawares.”

https://kentnerburn.com/the-cab-ride-ill-never-forget/

@admitsWrongIfProven

“I am speaking about the people trying to make ends meet - for them, ethical and nutritionally complete (not necessarily healthy) would be mutually exclusive i think.”

Definitely so. I’m happy to cushion my personal exhortations towards (what I think are) more ethical habits (don’t lie; don’t use violence; obey the law by default; favour walking, cycling and public transport over cars; boycott animal products; encrypt; boycott big tech; etc) between all necessary caveats (do all that if you’re in dire straits, oppressed, starving, etc).

“What i would support 100% would be telling the producers that the choices they offer are unethical.”

Point taken. And, at the same time, support 100% reminding consumers (ie, absolutely everybody) that producers make, cheaper in and larger amounts, exactly what we collectively buy and use — and zero of what nobody wants.