3 ms·

> We do bad things, but we are a net gain in terms of "goodness", whatever your definition of that word is. That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's

by bmitc 4y ago

> We do bad things, but we are a net gain in terms of "goodness", whatever your definition of that word is. That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. > It's so easy to be pessimistic, isn't it? It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. What humanity needs is realization and acceptance of our destructiveness and not apathy or denial. The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. This, any such claims are anthropocentric speculations.

ghusto 4y ago
In the great tradition of arguing with people on the internet for no goddamn reason, I'm going to argue with you some more. > That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. Come on man, be reasonable. Sure, I could come up with a definition that wouldn't fit, like "goodness == dinosaurs", but are we really going there? Let's pin it down to something we can probably both agree on: Goodness = That which is mostly of benefit to most animals. Now you can say I'm "animal-centric", but so what? I'm not into post-modernist nonsense, and we can argue on why I'm calling it nonsense too. > It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. We mostly agree; absolutely, acceptance of reality and the will (and action!) to change is what's important. What I don't agree on though, is shitting on humans and saying we don't do that because you can find some examples of _instances of human_ which don't do that. Zooming out to the bigger picture shows that we do. Even if you found only a single instance in the 8 billion instances, it would still mean humans have at least the capacity. > The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. It's human centric in terms of it being from the perspective of a human, but not in terms of what I'm willing to look at. Even if we "have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals" (which we do^), we _try_ to. Humans try to understand what impact they're having on other animals. Animals other than humans don't. ^ Google search for "animal feeling studies" https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies

by bmitc 4y ago

ghusto 4y ago

In the great tradition of arguing with people on the internet for no goddamn reason, I'm going to argue with you some more. > That needs some backing up, as I highly doubt it's true for any definition of goodness. Come on man, be reasonable. Sure, I could come up with a definition that wouldn't fit, like "goodness == dinosaurs", but are we really going there? Let's pin it down to something we can probably both agree on: Goodness = That which is mostly of benefit to most animals. Now you can say I'm "animal-centric", but so what? I'm not into post-modernist nonsense, and we can argue on why I'm calling it nonsense too. > It isn't about pessimism or misanthropy, which are largely irrelevant to this discussion. Realizing one is a narcissist or an alcoholic or an addict isn't pessimism. It's realization and acceptance of both the reality of the situation and that something needs to change. We mostly agree; absolutely, acceptance of reality and the will (and action!) to change is what's important. What I don't agree on though, is shitting on humans and saying we don't do that because you can find some examples of _instances of human_ which don't do that. Zooming out to the bigger picture shows that we do. Even if you found only a single instance in the 8 billion instances, it would still mean humans have at least the capacity. > The rest of your post is unfortunately hopelessly human-centric. We have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals. It's human centric in terms of it being from the perspective of a human, but not in terms of what I'm willing to look at. Even if we "have no basis or evidence of the feelings or thoughts of other animals" (which we do^), we _try_ to. Humans try to understand what impact they're having on other animals. Animals other than humans don't. ^ Google search for "animal feeling studies" https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies https://www.google.com/search?q=animal%20feeling%20studies