Wouldn’t cannibalism be an equally horrific thing to come up with? … human on a petri dish.
I would not have any problems with eating human-on-a-petri-dish, as long as it never had any neurons. The problem with cannibalism is eating a person, not some cells with the wrong DNA. And cells in a petri dish are not a person.
If a group of people donated their bodies to cannibalism when they die for a group of cannibals to then consume them, I would have no problem with that. (I submit myself as an example of someone with moderate rather than extremely liberal views.)
I think the moral repugnance only comes in when people might be killed for food: the value of life and person-hood is so much greater than the value of an immediate meal.
Someone speculated earlier about a civilization of humans that had nothing to consume but other humans. Has it been mentioned yet that this population would shrink exponentially, because humans are heterotrophs, and there’s something like only 10% efficiency from one step in the food chain to the next?
That’s what was disappointing about The Matrix. If the aliens wanted to generate energy there would have been more efficient ways to do so (say, one which actually generated more energy than it required). I pretend the aliens were just farming CPU and the director got it wrong.
I think the moral repugnance only comes in when people might be killed for food: the value of life and person-hood is so much greater than the value of an immediate meal.
We already have moral repugnance towards the act of killing itself. I suspect that any feelings towards already-dead bodies exist independently of this. They may be rooted in feelings of disgust which evolved in part to protect from contamination (recently dead bodies can spread disease and also provide breeding ground for flies and parasites).
I don’t locate feelings of disgust. Perhaps we are just genetically or culturally different with respect to this sensitivity?
I recall when my parakeet died, I felt a sense of awe while holding the body; and a moral obligation to be respectful and careful with its body. I suppose I wouldn’t have enjoyed eating him, but only because I identified him as more of a person than food. If I thought he would have wanted me to eat him, I would. Except then I would worry about parasites, so I would have to weigh my wishes to make a symbolic gesture verses my wishes to stay healthy.
That was me who discussed a civilization that had nothing to consume but other humans. Thanks for bringing it up, but I had already dealt with that in the stories as soon as someone pointed out that problem when I was much younger (turned out to be easier to fix that I thought), but telling what the solution is would give away too much, and since I might actually be able to get these published now that cannibalism is not nearly so taboo as it was back in the 80s when I first tried to submit them (Zombie movies were not nearly so prevalent then as now). Once the solution is revealed… It makes for another grim and, some have said, twisted surprise.
I too have wondered about the whole matrix thing. There are some very good arguments against it, which I tend to give more weight to than the arguments in favor. Yet, the arguments in favor did not take into account the waste generated by the humans being used to support the generation of power, nor did they take into account any possible superconducting tech the AIs may have had. I cannot recall if any of them took into account that the AIs were also not using every human farmed as a battery, but were using many of the farmed humans as food for the living humans. There is also some evidence from the games that the AIs were also using algae as a supplement for the human batteries.
Also, on the point about people donating their bodies to cannibals when they die… I have often thought that it would be a horrible joke for some cranky rich old guy to play on his heirs to make them eat him if they wished to inherit any of his fortune.
Sod that, start a religion in which people have to symbolically eat your body and drink your blood once a week. Better yet, tell them that when they do it, it magically becomes the real thing!
I would love to stop caring. It is indeed a wonderful suggestion.
However, many of those people who would be offended by such things, also get offended by many, much less offensive things, things which often may cause a loss of liberty to others… And they vote.
I do think it would behoove me to maybe turn up my apathy just a bit, as my near term future will have a lot more to say about my survival and ultimate value than worrying about a bunch of human cattle who like to get all bothered about things as trivial as the shape of the moon (absurd example)
Most of the general population is incensed about most things, most of the time. I’ve stopped caring. Why don’t you?
I would love to stop caring. It is indeed a wonderful suggestion.
However, many of those people who would be offended by such things, also get offended by many, much less offensive things, things which often may cause a loss of liberty to others… And they vote.
Does your worrying about and discussing what other people believe contribute more to changing the outcome of their voting, or to other things, like personal payoff of social interaction while having the discussions about people of lower status according to this metric? Overestimating importance of personally discussing politics for policy formation is a classical mistake.
“Though it’s a side issue, what’s even more… interesting.… is the way that our brains simply haven’t updated to their diminished power in a super-Dunbarian world. We just go on debating politics, feverishly applying our valuable brain time to finding better ways to run the world, with just the same fervent intensity that would be appropriate if we were in a small tribe where we could persuade people to change things.”
I see that I may be caught up in this mistake a bit. Some of my discussing is simply to gather information about what a typical person of a demographic might believe. It’s mostly confirming what I might have read about in a poll, or that data from a website shows.
Some times the discussion gets to the point where I try to change an attitude, and I keep tripping over myself when I do this, as few people will change their attitudes, political and/or religious without some form of emotional connection with the reason to change.
This is sort of why I am here. I wish to stop using my valuable brain time to convince people of things which I haven’t a hope of changing, and do something else which may contribute to the good of society in a more direct way.
I am a mess of paranoid contradictions gathered from a mis-spent youth, and I wish to untangle some of that irrationality, as it is an intellectual drag on my progress.
I would not have any problems with eating human-on-a-petri-dish, as long as it never had any neurons. The problem with cannibalism is eating a person, not some cells with the wrong DNA. And cells in a petri dish are not a person.
The other problem with cannibalism is that you can get diseases that way far more easily than you can from eating non-human meat.
I know that, and you know that… But, what would the general population say about eating meat that was the product of Human DNA?
It seems to me that some of the general population would be horribly incensed about it.
Most of the general population is incensed about most things, most of the time. I’ve stopped caring. Why don’t you?
If a group of people donated their bodies to cannibalism when they die for a group of cannibals to then consume them, I would have no problem with that. (I submit myself as an example of someone with moderate rather than extremely liberal views.)
I think the moral repugnance only comes in when people might be killed for food: the value of life and person-hood is so much greater than the value of an immediate meal.
Someone speculated earlier about a civilization of humans that had nothing to consume but other humans. Has it been mentioned yet that this population would shrink exponentially, because humans are heterotrophs, and there’s something like only 10% efficiency from one step in the food chain to the next?
That’s what was disappointing about The Matrix. If the aliens wanted to generate energy there would have been more efficient ways to do so (say, one which actually generated more energy than it required). I pretend the aliens were just farming CPU and the director got it wrong.
We already have moral repugnance towards the act of killing itself. I suspect that any feelings towards already-dead bodies exist independently of this. They may be rooted in feelings of disgust which evolved in part to protect from contamination (recently dead bodies can spread disease and also provide breeding ground for flies and parasites).
I don’t locate feelings of disgust. Perhaps we are just genetically or culturally different with respect to this sensitivity?
I recall when my parakeet died, I felt a sense of awe while holding the body; and a moral obligation to be respectful and careful with its body. I suppose I wouldn’t have enjoyed eating him, but only because I identified him as more of a person than food. If I thought he would have wanted me to eat him, I would. Except then I would worry about parasites, so I would have to weigh my wishes to make a symbolic gesture verses my wishes to stay healthy.
That was me who discussed a civilization that had nothing to consume but other humans. Thanks for bringing it up, but I had already dealt with that in the stories as soon as someone pointed out that problem when I was much younger (turned out to be easier to fix that I thought), but telling what the solution is would give away too much, and since I might actually be able to get these published now that cannibalism is not nearly so taboo as it was back in the 80s when I first tried to submit them (Zombie movies were not nearly so prevalent then as now). Once the solution is revealed… It makes for another grim and, some have said, twisted surprise.
I too have wondered about the whole matrix thing. There are some very good arguments against it, which I tend to give more weight to than the arguments in favor. Yet, the arguments in favor did not take into account the waste generated by the humans being used to support the generation of power, nor did they take into account any possible superconducting tech the AIs may have had. I cannot recall if any of them took into account that the AIs were also not using every human farmed as a battery, but were using many of the farmed humans as food for the living humans. There is also some evidence from the games that the AIs were also using algae as a supplement for the human batteries.
Also, on the point about people donating their bodies to cannibals when they die… I have often thought that it would be a horrible joke for some cranky rich old guy to play on his heirs to make them eat him if they wished to inherit any of his fortune.
Sod that, start a religion in which people have to symbolically eat your body and drink your blood once a week. Better yet, tell them that when they do it, it magically becomes the real thing!
I would love to stop caring. It is indeed a wonderful suggestion.
However, many of those people who would be offended by such things, also get offended by many, much less offensive things, things which often may cause a loss of liberty to others… And they vote.
I do think it would behoove me to maybe turn up my apathy just a bit, as my near term future will have a lot more to say about my survival and ultimate value than worrying about a bunch of human cattle who like to get all bothered about things as trivial as the shape of the moon (absurd example)
Does your worrying about and discussing what other people believe contribute more to changing the outcome of their voting, or to other things, like personal payoff of social interaction while having the discussions about people of lower status according to this metric? Overestimating importance of personally discussing politics for policy formation is a classical mistake.
See also: Dunbar’s Function
I see that I may be caught up in this mistake a bit. Some of my discussing is simply to gather information about what a typical person of a demographic might believe. It’s mostly confirming what I might have read about in a poll, or that data from a website shows.
Some times the discussion gets to the point where I try to change an attitude, and I keep tripping over myself when I do this, as few people will change their attitudes, political and/or religious without some form of emotional connection with the reason to change.
This is sort of why I am here. I wish to stop using my valuable brain time to convince people of things which I haven’t a hope of changing, and do something else which may contribute to the good of society in a more direct way.
I am a mess of paranoid contradictions gathered from a mis-spent youth, and I wish to untangle some of that irrationality, as it is an intellectual drag on my progress.