Death or This God-awful threak?

Originally Posted by Valor

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I'm not against vegetarianism as a whole, I just find it funny picking at their justification/reasoning for being vegetarian. Vegetarians, like most people are irrational but don't really realize it, which is why its so fun. I also think its hilarious when vegetarians are militant about it. In the future, if you're vegetarian, just take the "religious reasons" route, it'll make it much easier when you realize your position is more or less indefensible, at least blanket vegetarianism is.
The "religious reasons" to ethical behaviour runs into the same problem; many philosophers (starting w. Aristotle) content that for an action to be moral it has to come about from free choice and understanding of the situation. It is for this reason that religious pronoucements also need to be justified from a traditional ethical standpoint, something that many Theologists did tackle. I don't have much to add to the main debate, as I said earlier I really haven't given animal rights that much thought so I just go with the status quo w. a slight bend towards local or "fair" whatever. A few points: -The idea that meat production takes tremendous ressources and that our (the western world) current level of consumption would at the very least require novative technical accomodations if it was taken up by emerging powers is hopefully not something most disagree with. This doesn't mean that from a purely enviro-utilitarian point of view we should all turn vegan but it does call into question the sustainability of our diet. -Nosu3 is either trolling or doesn't have the slightest notion of how to discuss ethics, aside from a few point he gleamed on webpages or leaflets. When he goes into his "dolphin are people too!!!" diatribe he is merely parroting the idea that "personhood" can, according to many philosophers, be applied to anything meeting a certain level of intellect and self-awareness. We could envision a future where some machines could also be included. This shouldn't strike you as totally surprising as you are all familiar with science-fiction tackling the complex topic of "created beings" and rights/personhood. -You can't dismiss vegan/vegetarians because some groups orchetrated some paint throwing and many cheered. In fact I haven't even seen anyone present argument for/against the paint throwing. Maybe some of them are right or at least can present a coherent argumentation regarding this type of action. -On styleforum the reaction AGAINST Vegans is much more agggressive than anything vegans themselves have said. -Oh and I eat meat, fish and dairies and love wearing leather and even fur.

More than half of America's furs are imported from China. Many furs come from dogs/cats and are mislabeled. Animals are skinned while they are still alive:
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Originally Posted by Fuuma

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aside from a few point he gleamed on webpages or leaflets. When he goes into his "dolphin are people too!!!" diatribe he is merely parroting the idea that "personhood" can, according to many philosophers, be applied to anything meeting a certain level of intellect and self-awareness. We could envision a future where some machines could also be included.
Dolphins being people was not my idea, but a conclusion from scientists based on not only their consciousness, but social networking. What makes humans people? The dolphin killers in Taiji don't even know what dolphins are, they think they are fish.

Vegans who are so for "political" reasons and try to actively convert others to do the same are 100% irritating and obnoxious. I feel sorry for those who need to abstain for health reasons like food allergies especially in countries where it's difficult to do so.

Death bothers me even more. If I had to chose, I'd pick veganism. However, if anyone is insinuating that vegans are across the board healthier due to their diet, I am not convinced.

Pass the bacon, please.

If half the fatties in WAYWT went vegan, their fits would improve greatly.

Originally Posted by Nosu3

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The fishermen killing dolphins in Taiji don't even know what dolphins are. They think they are fish.

Your poasts are very entertaining, as long they are not taken seriously.

Originally Posted by Dragon

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Your poasts are very entertaining, as long they are not taken seriously.
I must have forgotten that some people like to play with words around here when they don't have a good response. Edited.

y'all are a bunch of tedious mfers.

Well, i'd pick a vegan diet over death but..... vegans typical point to the China study as to why their diet choose is the healthiest. After further reviewing the work done by Dr. Campbell in the China study, looks like the vegan diet is not so great after all. I'll have my steak well done. http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/20...a-fiction.html http://www.paleonu.com/ The China Study - Polish a turd and find a diamond? THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010 AT 10:27PM OK, now Richard has got me to emerge yet again from my hermitage. You set out to polish a turd and you find a diamond. What are the chances? To see what I am talking about you simply must read this Denise Minger is a blogger and obviously talented freelance writer from Portland Oregon who writes a raw food blog. Like Lierre Keith, she is an ex-vegan. Having always been on the carnivorous end of the spectrum, when I read Colin Campbell's "China Study" I couldn't really get through it. Sort of like the way Richard Dawkins would have trouble paying attention during a lecture on creationism. The thesis is so stupid and implausible on the face of it, he would not get angry, he would just nod off a lot. Reading The China Study, which asserts that "animal protein" is deadly and causes cancer and heart disease, I just could not muster that much anger. It seemed so totally implausible and full of non-sequiters that I could not take it seriously, any more than one of those "eggs are deadly, eat whole grains" articles on MSN. Sidebar: Quote overheard from the latest jackass on NPR plugging their health book -"...surpisingly, when we looked at increasing egg consumption, it was not linked to diabetes!" Bonus points if you can guess which university spawned this genius... I actually entertained the idea of finding a copy of the monograph that has all the data the China Study book is based on, so I could see for myself how Campbell cherry-picked the stuff he based his assertions on. But then, I must have realized once again that time is finite because I did something else instead. Long time readers know I am old enough to have a bias against wasting my time. Fortunately, in addition to being better looking than me, Ms. Minger is younger and less cynical. Her bias is in a plant-friendly direction, and she took it as a serious matter to see if the propaganda that vegans wave around ad nauseum in support of plants was actually true. So she set out to polish a turd. She expended enormous effort to pore through the raw data that Colin Campbell allegedly based his book on to see if it was really true. Do read her whole article, but here are the salient points: 1) There is actually more evidence to link plant protein to cancer than animal protein, the exact opposite of what Campbell claims She writes: when we actually track down the direct correlation between animal protein and cancer, there is no statistically significant positive trend. None. Looking directly at animal protein intake, we have the following correlations with cancers: Lymphoma: -18 Penis cancer: -16 Rectal cancer: -12 Bladder cancer: -9 Colorectal cancer: -8 Leukemia: -5 Nasopharyngeal: -4 Cervix cancer: -4 Colon cancer: -3 Liver cancer: -3 Oesophageal cancer: +2 Brain cancer: +5 Breast cancer: +12 But what about plant protein? Since plant protein correlates negatively with plasma cholesterol, does that mean plant protein correlates with lower cancer risk? Let’s take a look at the cancer correlations with “plant protein intake”: Nasopharyngeal cancer: -40** Brain cancer: -15 Liver cancer: -14 Penis cancer: -4 Lymphoma: -4 Bladder cancer: -3 Breast cancer: +1 Stomach cancer: +10 Rectal cancer: +12 Cervix cancer: +12 Colon cancer: +13 Leukemia: +15 Oesophageal cancer +18 Colorectal cancer: +19 2) There is no clear evidence for animal protein per se being related to cardiovascular disease 3) The alleged green vegetables benefit is largely confounded by latitude 4) Schistosomiasis confounds the colon cancer data and Hep B confound the liver cancer/cholesterol connection There are many more and her explication of the data is quite sophisticated. Once again, read the whole thing. But my favorite part is this: Perhaps more troubling than the distorted facts in “The China Study” are the details Campbell leaves out. Why does Campbell indict animal foods in cardiovascular disease (correlation of +1 for animal protein and -11 for fish protein), yet fail to mention that wheat flour has a correlation of +67 with heart attacks and coronary heart disease, and plant protein correlates at +25 with these conditions? Speaking of wheat, why doesn’t Campbell also note the astronomical correlations wheat flour has with various diseases: +46 with cervix cancer, +54 with hypertensive heart disease, +47 with stroke, +41 with diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs, and the aforementioned +67 with myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease? (None of these correlations appear to be tangled with any risk-heightening variables, either.) If you didn't spot the diamond, read it again. Can you believe it? Campbell makes a lame case indicting "animal protein" that is easily debunked by examining his own data sources. Simultaneously, he has nothing to say about the strongest food association found in the data. A positive food association. Positive meaning that food is linked to much higher rates of disease. An association between wheat and coronary artery disease of +67! (That's a 67% increase in relative risk the way I read it) These numbers are some of the highest in the data set, apparently. So Ms Minger has approached the ugly task of fact checking that obvious self-aggrandizing fraud Campbell, and with pinched nostrils has found us this nice lovely jewel. She has perhaps found us more evidence suggesting that one of our three neolithic agents is not good for us. In epidemiology, these numbers are huge. It is a crime to ignore these numbers on wheat. Which brings me to my final point, one that Ms Minger did not make. This is all just epidemiology, and epidemiology is bogus. Now, I don't mean it has absolutely no value. It is good for hypothesis generation. It is almost worthless for finding the truth. It is especially worthless the way it is used by hacks like Campbell who are simply trying to sell people a book that tells them what they want to hear. What epidemiology is good for is to use it the way Ms Minger has in her investigation. To say, lets look at these data for associations, and from that generate ideas about what causes what. She seems to have done this in as close to an neutral fashion as is possible To do as Campbell did, or as almost everyone does when they approach epidemiology, and say, "I suspect animal protein is bad, let's see if I can prove that with epidemiology, is quite simply, epistemologically fraudulent. This does not get said often enough or called what it really is. DATA MINING If you sift through thousands of variables and look for associations, you will find them. It is in fact a mathematical certainty that some of these associations will be "statistically significant (SS)". It is a further certainty that some of them will be statistically significant soley by accident. Some of your SS will be real, and some will be spurious. You will not always be able to tell which is which! Let me give two real world examples. The simple one is taken from what I recall from a medical statistics course ( maybe they don't teach this any more?) If you have a panel of laboratory tests done, say a "Chem 12" and there is a normal distribution of test results ( forget about accuracy, precision and bayes' theorem for now) there will be, say, a 5% probability of one of your labs being outside the normal range. When you do 12 such tests at the same time, the probability is very high that at least one of your labs will be outside the normal range, even if you have nothing at all wrong with you, simply as a function of doing so many tests that are independent. It is kind of like flipping an asymmetrically weighted coin 12 times in a row versus just once. Second example: You can check out this book. In the late 90's the Motley Fool website had a whole series of formulaic systems for picking stocks. These systems were all based on logical formulae for evaluating stocks and how they might perform in the future, using earnings growth rates, dividend ratios, etc. These systems could perform amazingly for long periods of time, and sometimes looked foolproof. These systems were arrived at by back-testing. Back testing is simple. You just make up a bunch of stock selecting rules, go back to old stock market data from Value Line, and see how the model would perform from the starting date in the past until now. Then, whichever of the 20 or so models you test performs the best with the lowest volatility, jsut use that one. What could be simpler? Actually, what could be stupider? If you test enough investing models this way, some of them will work very well entirely by accident. There may be some models that may work for real, but you cannot necessarily tell them from the ones that are spurious with statistical techniques. Sidebar: The "dogs of the dow" model is the best known and turned into a dog itself shortly after being popularized. Sheard's models lasted as long as the tech bubble, and then you would have been wiped out. And of course what good is just beating the broad market when the market has gone less than nowhere in 10 years anyway? The reason an investing strategy arrived at through back testing is bogus is the same reason epidemiology is bogus. It may be appropriate to backtest for candidate strategies, but you would then need to prove it prospectively over many years, and even then you could not be certain that it was not a fluke about to wipe out your fortune. Whenever you read papers that talk about linear regressions, think about these back-tested investing strategies. Multivariate linear regression is exactly the same thing. Some of the significant coefficients will be clinically meaningful, and some will be meaningless accidents. Teh numbers alone will not tell you which is which. In the same way as these examples, when Colin Campbell sifts through mountains of data looking for SS associations, and then ignores the ones, (like wheat) that don't fit what he is looking for, we should not be surprised when he finds an association that is SS that support his thesis. The only way to prove convincingly that animal protein is harmful is to do it prospectively in a controlled trial or to make a well reasoned educated guess with laboratory science evolutionary reasoning and common sense. You cannot prove a damned thing with a data-mining exercise alone.

Originally Posted by Sunnydale

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Well, i'd pick a vegan diet over death but..... vegans typical point to the China study as to why their diet choose is the healthiest. After further reviewing the work done by Dr. Campbell in the China study, looks like the vegan diet is not so great after all.


I've never heard of the China study. A 67% increased risk of cancer from using whole wheat doesn't sound right. I'd take articles more seriously than blog posts with titles about fecal matter. The "China study" was probably flawed or wrong in both ways.

Originally Posted by Nosu3

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Dolphins being people was not my idea, but a conclusion from scientists based on not only their consciousness, but social networking. What makes humans people? The dolphin killers in Taiji don't even know what dolphins are, they think they are fish.
Please prove to me you are not a troll but acknowledging you understand what I am about to explain to you. Scientists cannot "prove" that someone or something is "a person", making your affirmation objectively false. Personhood is a philosophical concept and not some natural property like, say, flammability or a respiratory system. Philosophers interested in the question developed some criteria for being a person but these criteria are not agreed on by every one of them, although they tend to concern self-awareness, cognitive abilities etc. Even if they all agreed on the same criteria they might disagree on how you define self-awareness or to what degree something must possess it to be considered a person. What the natural sciences can do, and often do regarding philosophy (keep in mind some philosophers think scientific considerations should almost be entirely removed from their field-Sartre was that way-well I am over-simplifying) is to provide empirical evidence that, using our case as an example, the characteristics agreed upon by philosophers are possessed by various things (say dolphins) at the needed level to be considered "people". So: 1) personhood is a philosophical concept 2) its definition varies from thinker to thinker 3) it usually has to do with possessing certain characteristics at a certain minimum level 4) science can only serve to evaluate who possess those characteristics and at what level, mainly saying who or what qualifies for personhood according to the theories of a particular thinker. If you were a little bit more aware of these issues I would also point out that natural properties are, also, not really verified but that words we created (and their ensuing chain of associations) are judged valid or not according to observations mediated by our senses and restricted by our cultural horizons. Now do you understand what I am explaining to your or not? Do you agree that you were mistaken, that personhood is a philosophical concept and that it is open to discussion?

Just for the record, my gray tabby is convinced she's a person.

Death, it hurts less.

Originally Posted by Nosu3

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More than half of America's furs are imported from China. Many furs come from dogs/cats and are mislabeled. Animals are skinned while they are still alive:

Effectively skinning a live cat would be next to impossible.

Originally Posted by Nosu3

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Dolphins being people was not my idea, but a conclusion from scientists based on not only their consciousness, but social networking.

Scientists dont draw "conclusions" like this. The above is psuedo scientific gibberish.

Originally Posted by Nosu3

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I must have forgotten that some people like to play with words around here when they don't have a good response. Edited.

You usually ignore the main points in my replies anyway, so I didn't think you expected a response.

In response to your post:

The dolphin killers in Taiji don't even know what dolphins are, they think they are fish.

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They think dolphins are dolphins. They do not think dolphins are people, but of course that thought is not limited to the fishermen of Taiji.

Originally Posted by redcaimen

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Effectively skinning a live cat would be next to impossible.
Oh, c'mon, there's even more than one way to do it.