flora_explora @ flora_explora @beehaw.org

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622

Joined

2 yr. ago

My point is that it doesn't know for the reasons you gave. It is just hallucinating. So I don't think the answer is trustworthy. Of course, it seems like a reasonable answer, but how do you get to the conclusion that the answer is truthful? It could just be made up because that was what sounded the most likely to the AI.

No, one is an actual answer to a question and the other one is a hallucination without any inherent information to answer the question.

Well, but is this really a truthful answer by the AI or is it just predicting what some human would say?

The dog-poop collecting robot reminded me that in some countries people don't go out with their dogs everyday. Somehow sad to know that there are millions of dogs just living at home with hardly anything to do :(

Thanks for the input. I've actually had debates like this before, too.

But fundamentally I still disagree with you and I don't see the similarities as superficial. People have been treated by the Nazis like animals in this industrial killing process. And they've actually been "harvested". Not sure in how much detail I should go, but at least in some extermination camps the Nazis collected various human Organs, like their hair, their skin, their nails and also all the possessions they've had.

Regarding your argument of animals as protein and generally placing them as an inferior other that has been historically treated as such, you seem to tap into some fallacies. It is never good to base an argument solely on traditional practices. Because then what else has been practiced for thousands of years? Abuse, wars, enslavement and a lot of other very horrendous stuff. Also, isn't this the whole point of discussing how animals should be treated in the first place? That it is ethically wrong. And you seemingly draw a mental line that you don't want to cross, so you refer to traditional practices. But this is exactly how many people justify sexism, racism to themselves. Women shouldn't vote because they're brain isn't capable of it, or biological races exist and thus some people are inferior are similar to animals can't comprehend what's going on and it is therefore ethically acceptable to treat them badly.

I was confused at first, why you kept referring to how bad you think of killing animals. But apparently that's were you've decided to draw the line for yourself. That what we do to animals is killing them and nothing else. I would argue, that the killing is actually a result of structural devaluation of animals that encompasses so much more than just the killing part. And now I could go into critique of capitalism and intersectionality. How people that are made to be powerless cogs in this system seek to have at least some power over others. And how this then breeds all kinds of discriminations, abuse, etc. Also against animals. Or how our understanding of the world is very much informed by false dualities that place woman against man, savage people against the civilized white man, inferior animal against superior human, nature vs culture. (Or have a look at Edward Said's Orientalism, making a similar analysis for oriental against civilized west.) In short, all of this is about power. I would argue that exploitation of animals surely stems from a need for resources but that in our current world it is very much about power as well.

I also disagree that animals aren't sapient. Like, how would you define sapience in the first place? Continued studies over the last decades have shown that animals are pretty much capable of everything we thought would be limited to humans. And we constantly keep searching for the next distinction how animals are fundamentally different from humans, and we keep failing! So no, I don't see a fundamental difference in animals vs humans. Again, this is a false duality. We are animals!

Yes, I agree that this is important and should be standard behavior. I was criticizing you saying "there is only one way" and then only looking at the individual level. My point is that this isn't sufficient, people have to consider and dismantle discrimination on a structural level or we won't get rid of it. The article discusses discrimination on an individual and also structural level. You seemingly disagreed saying that the only way is to not treat people differently. Like I said, this won't be sufficient and is only scratching the surface.

I took treating everyone as a normal human being as granted. This would concern the individual level only. My point was that just saying "I treat everyone equally" completely lacks any understanding of structural discrimination. Like I said, this is similar to the "I don't see color" debate. Or this Pat Parker quote relates to this too, doesn't it?

The first thing you do is to forget that I'm black. Second, you must never forget that I'm black.

84. Do not compare the exploitation of animals to racism. Ever. I’m deadly serious.

Why not? Intersectionality has taught us how interconnected various forms of systemic oppression are. So why not compare (cis-)sexism, racism, antisemitism, ableism and speciesism? I get that racial slurs often work by comparing people to animals and/or by dehumanizing them for example. But isn't this the point of it? That this only works because we have these interlocking systems of oppression in place?

This sounds an awful lot like "I don't see color" and is a pretty ignorant take. How do you prevent treating people differently while there is systemic discrimination giving people power over others and leading to a complicated web of privileges? Saying "don't treat people differently" is ignoring the systemic level of racism (and other forms of discrimination). You don't get absolved about confronting yourself with your own privileges and position of power over others just because you pretend to treat everyone equally. And I'm fact I don't think you can treat all people equally. Think of people you have a relationship with vs strangers for example.

You seem to confuse "someone likes you" with "someone finds you attractive". Maybe someone smiles at you just because you seem like a nice person. I would even argue that this happens much more frequently than someone smiling at you because they find you attractive.

Well, this is aimed at straight dudes in any case, so in this mindset "girls" (!!!) only either are for sex or unimportant.

Wtf? This gives Incel vibes

For everyone else who doesn't get it:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/john-mastodon

Ohh, wow, you solved a long-standing mystery to me! I've been listening to a lot of discworld novels and could not figure out what "treacle mine road" was supposed to translate to. Now that I know the spelling I could finally look it up. Thanks! ❤️

Glad you could something from my comment. Regarding your edit, I think I understand where you are coming from. If one looks at pop-feminism and big companies nowadays having "girl bosses" while simultaneously continuing to exploit people not caring about civil rights, sure it seems like fighting sexism is only a secondary aim after dismantling capitalism. You may want to have a look into intersectional movements then that teach us how intertwined various forms of oppression, environmental exploitation and capitalism are. You cannot dismantle without the other. Capitalism works by oppressing and exploiting people as well as natural resources. We shouldn't argue about what comes first, because all of these struggles are connected. Movements of white, privileged people fighting for more civil rights tend throw others under the bus to gain more power in capitalist society. So do white socialist men fighting against capitalism while forgetting about oppressed people. We should try to work together, take others' struggles seriously and fight for a world free of oppression and masters.

Hm, I totally get how you are frustrated with people using one-dimensional, overly used and in-group accepted answers to respond to very complex questions. Yes, they can feel pretty performative at times. "Capitalism bad" is an easy way to respond to all kinds of problems and not always useful. I guess I can also understand people using "capitalism bad" as an answer because after analyzing capitalism and all the consequences stemming from worldwide capitalist domination, it gets really frustrating always having to answer with a well thought out analysis. So a shorthand like "capitalism bad" can be quite handy.

Regarding your comment, you seem like a person that believes many of the capitalist talking points. (It reads a bit like Sabine Hossenfelder's video on capitalism).

First of all, you talk about inequality and how capitalist societies have higher equality. You realize how nonsensical this is regarding how the most powerful, rich people are coming from the capitalist country that has hardly any healthcare and people living in incredible poverty, right? If you look at a list of inequalities worldwide based on GDP, you can see that the US files on rank C, behind the Philippines, Pakistan, UAE and Russia (just to name a few). And choosing inequality is in itself probably a rather bad measure because rich capitalist countries have been oppressing, exploiting and destroying other countries to maximize their own profits for as long as capitalism exists. And this is were the myth of capitalist countries bettering the lives of people stems from. Of course people of all classes are more wealthy in countries that exploit other countries. Comparing countries in isolation then is like a faulty equation where you leave out how country A is actually robbing country B. And this isn't only true for the US alone, but for the whole Global North. I'm from Germany and this country's riches are solely possible on the backs of slave workers around the world. Classism isn't local, country-based anymore, we have found even lower classes of people to exploit. Colonialism is still running the world, but now in a new design.

Even if we don't stay at global or country level but zoom in a bit you'll find that technology and progress is often made not because but despite of capitalism. Uncontrolled capitalism does not work in favor of people. People have to intervene and contain it all the time. Look at the pharma industry for example. Look at patents, like for important vaccines, agricultural technologies or really anything else. Look at companies giving a shit about their worker's health (or their human rights) or the environment. All of this behavior is rewarded in a capitalist system because it is about maximizing profits and accumulating wealth alone. Sure, there are some light versions of capitalism like social market economy (like in Germany a few decades ago). But again, this is still based on exploiting people and keeping them poor.

And are you serious about the civil rights being a by-product of capitalism? Again, civil rights have happened despite capitalism. It has been grassroot movements and anticapitalists that have been marching in the streets fighting for civil rights for the most time. Capitalism in itself just doesn't care for human rights at all, there is no advantage to them. On the opposite, patriarchy is a by-product of capitalism giving it even more control over people and maximizing the work force. Civil rights in capitalist countries may be more advanced not because of a capitalist system but because these countries are much richer. Again, because they exploit everyone else! People like us in rich countries having civil rights have caused many people in other countries to have no civil or human rights, all the time. Rich countries and companies may have civil rights at home, but they really don't care about supporting dictators, fascist movements or discriminatory practices elsewhere. On the contrary, keeping a dictator in place is much better for maximizing your profits because you have much better control over that country. Our rich countries have an incentive to keep civil and human rights low in other countries because of capitalist logic.

Regarding what you say about capitalism not containing any "dashing revolutionaries or catchy slogans" I partially agree with you. There are certainly people that made themselves comfortable in this niche of glorifying communism or any other revolutionary movement but that secretly do not want to change anything at all. But this is then only a critique of these few people and it adds nothing to the debate at all. It actually seems more like a straw man argument by you to defend capitalism. Who said socialism, anarchy, whatever needed any "dashing revolutionaries or catchy slogans"?

Haha same!

I agree, this seems pretty misleading. And are there any other feathered animals other than on the dinosaur branch? Because if not, how should the feather DNA even end up in mammalian DNA?? Or maybe feathers are produced by very common differently used genes? But in this case this would be even more nonsensical...

I mean, birds being birds, they may actually share this with several members of their family still...

It's not about getting women to work (for others) but to help them be independent in their decisions. Societal pressures have forced most women to be dependent of men (which in itself goes hand in hand with patriarchal violence) as it likewise forced men to be in this detached breadwinner position. Women in relationships with traditional roles have suffered and still suffer immensely from domestic violence, financial dependency and many other problems. Saying "encourage people towards capitalism" makes it sound like you see women in traditional relationships to be somehow less trapped inside capitalistic pressures. If you'd study the history of capitalism and patriarchy a bit more you'd find that this whole concept of heterosexual monogamy and stay at home moms have been a capitalist invention in the first place. In this, women are a free labor force to do the reproductive work at home. So wanting to free women out of this dependent role is an anticapitalist undertaking. Maybe you didn't think this through enough and should read up on a bit of feminist theory?

I think your point is valid that motherhood (and all household, care and reproductive work) is actual real work, too, and there is evidence that in heterosexual couples that identify themselves as "emancipated" the women actually do more work as in couples with traditional roles. This is because men in these "emancipated" relationships tend to not take responsibility and let their partner not only do reproductive work but also wage labor.

Imo what we can learn from this is that we do need to give women the independence to make their own decisions free of societal norms and pressures. But we also need to educate men to do their part and start actually taking responsibility and also do their fair share of reproductive and care work.