A discussion on TFES forum

[brimstoneSalad]

So, do you think you aren't justified to love your parents just because you didn't choose them?

There are many reasons to love one's parents, but accident of birth isn't one.

You may love them because they love you, because you have found that they are kind, and have a relationship with them (attachment hormones), etc.
Your country doesn't love you, you're a number to it.

Well, my parents tell me that it is easier to get a good job if you are a patriot. And their arguments are quite convincing. On television, none of those who have good jobs say anything against Croatia.

You don't have to speak against Croatia. Just keep your mouth shut, and play along. There's no reason to believe these people are actually patriotic, many of them are probably pretending.

It's up to scientists and economists to determine consequences.

How does that matter, if they don't test it against the reality?

The models are tested. They have proven predictive power.

But hasn't that been debunked many times?

No. You're probably confusing it with something else. There's compelling evidence that Omega 3:6 ratios are probably meaningful, and particular at least a minimum amount of Omega 3.

The problem with vegetarians of past decades is that they ate too much Omega 6, which seems to be linked to heart disease without adequate Omega 3 or DHA. And they ate substantial amounts of trans fats. This is something still being studied; it's not clearly how much Omega 3 is ideal, or what ratio is. We have a pretty good idea of how harmful trans fats are; they currently being banned.

Link between Omega 3 and DHA and lower risk of heart disease was assumed because of some flawed old study showing that Inuit, who eat a lot of fish, which contains those nutrients, had a lower risk of heart disease.

I don't know where you're getting this.

Read Norris' article here for a summary of some of the research: http://veganhealth.org/articles/omega3
It's not very clear yet how large the benefit is yet.

I mentioned trans fats too.

They were trying to test it by supplementing fish oil to various people and it lead to no results, study after study. Later, it turned out that Inuit didn't have lower risk of heart disease after all. But the urban myth continued to exist.

That may or may not be one of the studies people reference, but it has little to do with what I'm talking about. There's been much more significant and methodologically sound research.
Fish are more controversial, and may not be as helpful, particularly since amounts vary, and they also tend to come with heavy metals.

I usually recommend people eat Walnuts.

If, on average, they're living 3-4 years longer, then you are likely to live longer than you would have otherwise by 3-4 years. Maybe more, maybe less, but probably 3-4.

Are you sure you aren't confusing the average and the median?

I was just referencing what you said.

Yeah! I think that many vegans and vegetarians overestimate the effect of the diet to their body. It's only around 30% less risk of heart disease. It's very unlikely to actually affect your life. Vegetarians, according to those studies, live, on average, 3-4 years longer.

Average means mean. Median is not a useful value to quote; nobody would be referencing that.

[teo123]

Just keep your mouth shut, and play along.There's no reason to believe these people are actually patriotic, many of them are probably pretending.

I find this a bit insulting. I realize that they have some motivation to lie about their feelings about Croatia, but that doesn't mean they are actually lying. NASA has motivation to make us think that the Earth is round, but that doesn't mean it's actually lying. Besides, Croatian artists before Croatia got independent didn't have any interest to be patriotic, they were persecuted because of that.
So, if I love my country, why shouldn't I talk about it?

I don't know where you're getting this.

I took that from some vegan bloggers. But Wikipedia seems to confirm what they say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Health_effects

Average means mean. Median is not a useful value to quote; nobody would be referencing that.

I don't understand. Suppose you study 10 people. 9, who get heart disease, live 70 years, but 1, who doesn't get heart disease, lives 85 years. The average life-span is then 71.5. The median life-span is 70. If you are in the group studied, you are more likely to live 70 years, which is the median, than to live 71.5 years, which is the average.

[inator]

Well, my parents tell me that it is easier to get a good job if you are a patriot. And their arguments are quite convincing. On television, none of those who have good jobs say anything against Croatia.

Well yes, of course, since the conservative government is firing critical journalists from public service channels and cutting off funds for independent cultural bodies. It has also alienated the Jewish and Serbian minorities and has tried to infuse the school curriculum with nationalist propaganda.
Try to get some information about what's going on in your country from outside sources too. They have a much better chance of being objective than the local news.

Patriotism can be a good thing if it means being concerned with the growth and flourishing of the community you call home. Since the government just imploded and the economy is not much better than Greece's, patriotism in Croatia's case should mean a struggle against poverty and corruption. Pointing out the country's weaknesses and trying to fix them, not trying to shut up the critics.

I find this a bit insulting. I realize that they have some motivation to lie about their feelings about Croatia, but that doesn't mean they are actually lying.

Some are nationalists, others are just holding on to their jobs.

[brimstoneSalad]

Patriotism can be a good thing if it means being concerned with the growth and flourishing of the community you call home. Since the government just imploded and the economy is not much better than Greece's, patriotism in Croatia's case should mean a struggle against poverty and corruption. Pointing out the country's weaknesses and trying to fix them, not trying to shut up the critics.

That was beautifully said.

Mindless obedience is not love. A good analogy might be a family member who is a drug addict and is ruining his or her life: if you love this person, that means trying to help, not enabling the behavior.

Truly loving Croatia probably means hating its corrupt government. There's a fairly popular saying in English, "Proud of my country, ashamed of my government" -- that may sum up the appropriate attitude to have here.

I find this a bit insulting. I realize that they have some motivation to lie about their feelings about Croatia, but that doesn't mean they are actually lying. NASA has motivation to make us think that the Earth is round, but that doesn't mean it's actually lying.

It's much easier for an individual to lie about his or her true opinions: this doesn't require a conspiracy, and people do it regularly (Do I look fat in this dress?). Lying about something externally verifyable is completely different, as is a huge organization lying: that's a conspiracy, and as I showed, would be impossible for NASA to pull off.

Besides, Croatian artists before Croatia got independent didn't have any interest to be patriotic, they were persecuted because of that.

At that time, their feeling were more likely sincere. Now you can't trust it since they are pressured into it.

So, if I love my country, why shouldn't I talk about it?

If you truly love your country, you should hate its government, be critical of the problems, and work to change the situation.
I recommend you shut up about it so you won't be oppressed by your corrupt government: just pretend, like others are doing.

It's up to you, though.

I took that from some vegan bloggers. But Wikipedia seems to confirm what they say.

On a small part of a not very complete article. The article I linked you to by Norris is better.

I don't understand. Suppose you study 10 people. 9, who get heart disease, live 70 years, but 1, who doesn't get heart disease, lives 85 years. The average life-span is then 71.5. The median life-span is 70. If you are in the group studied, you are more likely to live 70 years, which is the median, than to live 71.5 years, which is the average.

That would be an outlier (85).
You don't understand statistics well enough to assume something like that.

Try reversing it:
If you play Russian roulette with an eight chambered gun, you have a 7/8ths chance of living, and about a 1/8th chance of dying.
Does that mean you can discount the 1/8th chance of dying and call the game safe?

IF the studies involve outliers, statisticians have probably already accounted for them, but you still can't ignore it if it's statistically significant.
Going vegan would still be good in the same kind of way playing Russian roulette is bad. The important point is that on average you're better off going vegan, and worse off playing Russian roulette.

[teo123]

Eh, some guy on TFES forum insisted that sapience is all that matters morally and that little children matter only because they are going to become sapient one day. I said that the animals are also sapient because of the Moravec's paradox, which says that, in fact, it takes more intelligence to walk and recognize things around you than to, let's say, solve differential equations. It seems as though it finally shut him up. Do you think that was a good argument?

[brimstoneSalad]

Eh, some guy on TFES forum insisted that sapience is all that matters morally and that little children matter only because they are going to become sapient one day.

Even if that were true (which it isn't) it doesn't follow that a child would matter because of one day possibly becoming "sapient".

1. They will never become sapient if you kill them before they're sapient. So, whether you kill them or not, you're in the clear.
The only wrong possible would be torturing them without killing them in such a way that they would remember it and it would psychologically trouble them once they became sapient.
So, child sex slavery is still OK as long as you kill them before they're old enough to do math or whatever bullshit metric he wants to assign.

2. If you use "potential" sapience as a metric, to say you can't kill children because they might become sapient in the future if they survive, then condoms and masturbation are all wrong, because that sperm could have fertilized an egg and become sapient. It's an absurd argument. On the other side, even menstruation would be wrong, because the egg could have been fertilized -- a woman saying no to a man to have sex and give the egg the chance to be fertilized would be unethical.

I said that the animals are also sapient because of the Moravec's paradox, which says that, in fact, it takes more intelligence to walk and recognize things around you than to, let's say, solve differential equations. It seems as though it finally shut him up. Do you think that was a good argument?

Very nice! I'm impressed. That was a pretty good point.

Yes, being able to just walk around and engage in basic learning (like recognizing others, or operant conditioning) takes an extremely large amount of cognitive power. Computers, even a simple calculator, can do math, and they aren't regarded as morally relevant.

It might also be useful to question what he thinks "sapience" even means, and why it's important. We know sentient animals feel, think, learn, understand their environments, have a sense of self -- they have wants, goals, likes, dislikes. It's hard to identify anything else as being morally relevant.

[teo123]

So, what do you think about me posting this on the thread about veganism:

It's actually funny that so many people suggest that humans are distinct from other animals by sapience, that is, higher cognitive functions. I think that this is, more than anything else, our culture of carnism that makes us assume such things, and that that's why Moravec's paradox is even called a paradox. Brains are like computers, and, for a computer, it takes way more intelligence to walk and recognize things around them than to do the math and logic. And one of the reasons we assume that other animals don't think about those things is because they don't communicate about them. Well, do you know how much more computing power is needed for a computer to communicate the basic math than to do it? If you program in some low-level programming language like Assembly language or a machine language, you will have a much harder time printing "2+2=4" on the screen (even if using high-level functions or BIOS interrupts) than to making the processor (ALU) add those two numbers. It is also way harder to make speakers pronounce the sentence "Two plus two equals four.". And is it even possible for today's computers to articulate that sentence using the speech organs? And do you have any idea how hard it is for a computer to understand what "10*(11+12)" means, and how easy it is for it calculate that once it understands that? I have made an entire thread on that:
https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=66603.0
And is it even possible for today's computers to understand the question "Quanti bis terni sunt?"?
The question that could be asked is whether the animal brains are actually Turing-complete. Well, human brain obviously is, we can simulate simple Turing machines in our heads. As for the brains of other animals, look, what's the probability that such complicated systems aren't Turing-complete? I think that the burden of proof is definitely on one who claims that animal brains aren't Turing-complete (and therefore being capable of thinking about whatever other computers, including human brains, can think about), but, anyway, here is an example of a neural network of only a few neurons, far less than most of the animals have, simulating Turing-machine.
http://stackoverflow.com/a/28852111
So, my suggestion is, take everything you think you know about sapience and throw it away! Sentience is what matters morally.

I think I will go vegan when I grow up. I've been on some forum with vegans and they told me what wasn't so pleasant to hear. You know those diagrams that show that milk and eggs are better for the environment and more humane than meat? Well, they are entirely misleading because they don't account for the byproducts: new animals. No need to talk about the incidences of cows being raped when arguing for veganism, as some people do, and as I was doing before. And if we don't eat meat, those animals, truly, won't be slaughtered. But, you know what they do in India with old cows? They set those animals free and they starve to death. I mean, that's how grazing animals die in nature, they starve because their teeth get ill, but why not to just relieve them of that entire miserable existence by not breeding them? I was expressing worries that if we free those animals we will produce less plant food, because we are not feeding them, so that plant food will become more expensive. Well, actually, "Carum est quod rarum est." isn't true. This is the example they gave me: there is less shit than food, yet shit is not expensive at all, because it's not valuable. What will happen if entire world goes vegan is that the food will become less expensive because we will reuse the old machinery, now having to use less land. Oh, BTW, those vegans knew how to answer my puzzle about physiology.

I don't think I'll post here any more.

[brimstoneSalad]

So, what do you think about me posting this on the thread about veganism:

That's pretty good. The computer science examples are a great way to understand the brain as hardware (or wetware) and the mind as an artifact of information processing. If information processing is valuable, we can say a bigger computer with twice the processing power may be twice as valuable as a smaller one with half the processing power, but we can't say that the smaller one has no value.

Focusing on the difference between children and adults is also very important. Young children lack a fully formed "theory of mind", only being capable of fully understanding subjective experiences of others from around the ages of four or five. Do children lack moral value?
Do people with Autism have any moral value at all? Because many lack a mature theory of mind as well.

"Language" is unfortunately poorly defined, and many Linguists engage in the pastime of goalpost moving, and arbitrarily defining language with such rigidity and strict requirements as to be intentionally constructed to exclude animal language (even though many humans fail to have language based on these severe definitions as well). Animals an recognize abstract sounds and connect them with meaning, even when not trained to do so, and they certainly communicate with each other verbally and non-verbally in the wild.

Theory of mind is ultimately a more useful and objective exploration of cognitive ability, but it's quite a stretch to imply three or four year old children have no moral value because they don't quite grasp what most adults do.

The discussion of Turing completeness is interesting, and a very compelling argument.

[teo123]

Well, guess what, I've tried to use that argument with my father and it didn't work. He denied that comparing brains with computers is valid. When I tried to explain him the basics of artificial neural networks, he said that it takes a lunatic to explain cognitive processes completely mechanically. And he said that I mix the virtual world for the real world and that a programmer can make a virtual apple but that we can't eat them in the real world. I tried to explain him that that's a wrong analogy, but he, as far as I remember, just switched the topic. When I explained him about Turing machines, he said he would like to see a physical proof for all those statements I was making. He has also told me that I am delusional if I think that I count as a programmer when I am still just a high-school student, and we have informatics only the first year. He is also worried that I spend a lot of time studying for being a programmer, when it could all be just a fantasy, and I might not be talented for it at all. When I told him about my successes on competitions and what actual programmers told me, he told me that he should know better because he is a philosopher and he helped many students find their potentials. Namely, he noticed that I put a lot of effort into making computer games and programs and don't get what he considers a satisfying result, although I myself often think it is. When I told him that it's like asking a mathematician to do something in the real world and that informatics is like mathematics, he told me that he knows what informatics is and that it is more about engineering things in the real world than discovering math. He also told me that the Moravec's paradox is nothing new, that it's a well-known thing that it is harder to make a needle than to make a steam engine, and that it's sad that people who are experts in informatics and not in logic talk about paradoxes. And, needless to say, he constantly ascribes various terms from pathological psychology to me. Not only to me, but to people in general. Even after I, and some others, criticize him for not being an expert at the topic at all. I think that he also has some of the symptoms, the most important being talking incoherently about his own past (for example, the number of times he has been in jail, in his tellings to me it varies from zero to eleven, seriously!), but I am not brave enough to tell him that in the face. Yet, weirdly, people seem to accept him. OK, he is at least not as crazy as my mother is.
Another argument I think I may come across is that since we perceive thinking about some things as requiring effort, that means that the ability to think about that is evolutionary new and therefore probably not shared by other animals. I think that a valid response is that it's very unlikely for that small turing-complete neural network not existing in an animal brain with by orders of magnitude more neurons.

[brimstoneSalad]

Well, guess what, I've tried to use that argument with my father and it didn't work. He denied that comparing brains with computers is valid. When I tried to explain him the basics of artificial neural networks, he said that it takes a lunatic to explain cognitive processes completely mechanically.

Well, he's kind of a lunatic who denies realism. Your father is a very arrogant exception. Comparison to computers is a great way to understand cognition.
You should study artificial neural networks more. Some advanced neural networks even seem to have low level sentience, like insects. It's a great way to understand ethics by understanding learning and interests. Exciting stuff.

And he said that I mix the virtual world for the real world and that a programmer can make a virtual apple but that we can't eat them in the real world.

It's like those obsessive fundamentalist parents who think that computer games are Satan worship, and don't understand a thing about how they work.

He is also worried that I spend a lot of time studying for being a programmer, when it could all be just a fantasy, and I might not be talented for it at all.

I'm glad you are, it's a great career path, and if you enjoy it, it will be a rewarding career that you will get very good at.
Your father doesn't know what he's talking about.

Namely, he noticed that I put a lot of effort into making computer games and programs

Nice, what did you make? The best way to learn programming is doing, I think. Can you post some pictures of some of your games?

He also told me that the Moravec's paradox is nothing new, that it's a well-known thing that it is harder to make a needle than to make a steam engine,

That's insane. It's very easy to make a needle. Your father seems like the embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Sorry you have to deal with that.

I think that he also has some of the symptoms, the most important being talking incoherently about his own past (for example, the number of times he has been in jail, in his tellings to me it varies from zero to eleven, seriously!), but I am not brave enough to tell him that in the face. Yet, weirdly, people seem to accept him. OK, he is at least not as crazy as my mother is.

It's really weird. Well, you'll be grown up and able to move out in a few years. I would just try my best to ignore it and avoid those conversations with him.

Another argument I think I may come across is that since we perceive thinking about some things as requiring effort, that means that the ability to think about that is evolutionary new and therefore probably not shared by other animals.

The ability to think isn't new.

Actually, evolution is why animals are intelligent, except very simple ones like oysters and small insects.
In order to have a pre-programmed response to every situation it would take an impossibly long time to evolve (programmed by evolution) in anything but very small organisms (since each iteration is a generation).
As soon as the right behavior did evolve, the environment would have already changed, making it useless. So, instead, the animal has flexible intelligence that allows it to come up with a response by learning. We only have pre-programmed responses to a few very simple things (our reflexes). Aside from that, intelligence is much more efficient because it's multi-purpose, adapts in a lifetime rather than taking millions of years to solve a single problem.

Imagine trying to program every possible action of, for example, a deer to be optimal for every situation. Impossible to get anything resembling useful behavior. It's like how stupid enemies in video games are. But, if you use a neural network that learns and only has some base instincts providing drive and wants, you can get intelligent and robust behavior from very little programming (so it can evolve easily).