Basman

Yeah, it's like one thing to work till 70 but another to be actually employable at that age. If you fall off the train in your 60s, what are you supposed to even do? I can easily see there being a welfare class of older people who can't get a job but are too young to get a pension in the future. The dastardly thing about it is that it potentially saves on paying out pensions to people who reasonably are too old to work.

People who's job is a singular task are at most risk at getting automated, like spray painting cars at the assembly line, unless you underbid your work to the point that its cheaper to hire you than it is to build the infrastructure needed to automate your job (for the time being), like sweat shops or the ladies that sort crabs at the crab factory. You can't underbid AI though if you work exclusively in the digital space. Quality holds AI back however as well as creative collaboration. AI can't build a creative vision for you (that is good).

AI and by extension machines don't automate jobs but specific tasks. A windmill isn't the automation of being a grain farmer but of milling specifically. AI can do programming specifically but it can't effectively go to meetings, make important business decisions, etc. This is why the jobs most affected by AI currently are jobs that deal in media and information. Being an illustrator is essentially a single task whereas a low-skill manual labor job consists of various different tasks but also require infrastructure to be physically built in order to be automated which costs more than an AI model producing content endlessly in the digital space, which only requires the computers that are already in place. Counter-intuitively, it's to a certain extent harder to automate manual labor than it is creative jobs like writing or art. To that effect, I think it is more likely that AI will undermine job security depending on the brevity of responsibilities you have if looked at pessimistically. AI could also boost productivity on the other hand. The fact that you need in demand skills hasn't changed nonetheless.

They are not antithetical to each other at all, but most people don't need to be broadly knowledgeable so they aren't. Even if its relatively accessible. There's also something to be said about a lack of education. If people aren't taught to be rational they are less likely to critically think about their beliefs or consider their assumptions. The survival value of their ideology is greater than their intellectual rigor and curiosity.

It's admittedly an exaggeration. They smell as well...

You got it backwards. Ignorance doesn't need an excuse. It's the default state. If anything, you need a real good reason to bother reading a bunch of books, philosophize, etc. For the people on this forum I wager it is a mix of curiosity and ambition. You can appreciate that those are relatively rare qualities. Survival comes first for the majority of people and their beliefs are there to facilitate that. It's not the point that it is true necessarily but that it works to maintain their identity, which is itself an attempt at surviving certain conditions.

How would you know? How do you know this isn't just an assumption on your part? This is what I really meant by "equal rights to humans". Obviously, animals can't participate in society as civilians. You didn't really give any justification for why humans shouldn't eat animals. That was perhaps a bad point on reflection. This is categorically a strawman on your part. You constantly accuse people instead of just focusing on the quality of their arguments. It's really unpleasant and your making this forum worse for it. Stop it. It's insulting. I have no interest in justifying my beliefs. I'm just curious about about the philosophical merits of veganism. I have at no point actually said that veganism is bad. I don't take any pleasure in paying anyone out but it's just so obnoxious with how your mostly preoccupied with just defending your beliefs and winning debates. I don't think I'm going to be engaging with your posts anymore. Too annoying.

Reminds me that apparently there are wild panther's in the province of Ontario, Canada. Some exotic pet owner or illegal price hunt went awry at some point and these leopards escaped into the wild. A school had to hold an indoor recess once due to a sighting.

These kind of frequent battles seem to be a cultural cornerstone, enabled by the relative inefficiency of how they fight. Fighting like they do allows them some reprieve from an otherwise harsh life and have some purpose, bit like an annual festival. If any one side became more proficient and smashed the stalemate, this "war culture" would immediately shatter.

This battle took place in West Papua in 1964. It's part of the movie Dead Birds by Robert Gardner, which is about the Hubula people in Niew Guinea (now Indonesia). This kind of fighting was already outdated back in the Mesopotamia days of the Sumerian civilization, 4000-6000 years ago. It doesn't get any more primitive than this. Literally just sticks and stones. It's so inefficient that the actual battle is mostly just a bunch of chest beating and hollering and Westerners can calmly record the whole affair from a safe distance. They can hardly wound each other. It is also surprisingly formal, with agreed upon breaks during the battle and when and where it should take place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI4uirwxx1Y (The video can't be embedded because YT is a skunk)

This implies a binary of either you care about animals or you don't. It's a false dichotomy. You could care about general animal well-being but not see them as equivalent to humans, not adopting the utilitarian framing all together. You could love animals and raise them for meat on a farm, for example. This is how many farmers operate. You could care about dogs and cats but not so much for cows and pigs. This is how many suburban folk operate. It's a pretty big jump in logic if you think about it. Why does it follow that caring about animals then means that they are entitled to the same rights as humans? This is wrong. The best way is to commit seppuku and seize to exist. The best thing for ecology would be for humanity to go completely extinct over night. It is an inherent contradiction within an ideology that is all about self-denial for the sake of preservation to draw the line anywhere. Any line will necessarily be partial and reductive.

Yeah, Amsterdam is quiet dense. It's always crowded, especially in the summer. Many of the roads where built for horse carriages. It's quaint and lively. You are mostly sheltered from the strong winds that tend to blow in NL inside the city as well, which matters when you cycle about, trust me. I spoke mostly Dutch but that is because I know Dutch. You can get around speaking English just fine though but certain government websites will be in Dutch I believe (can't remember exactly) but that could have been changed since. The Dutch are very accommodating lingually and don't mind speaking English for you. Fun fact, Dutch pronounce their "O's" with a lower pitch like how you would pronounce the word "oh". You can check if someone has a Dutch accent by making them say "bottle" and they should pronounce it like "b-oh-ttehl".

This whole conflict was a mess from the very start.

You can eat meat for more reasons than just pleasure. This kind of framing is quiet reductive and antagonizing and reflects the broader misanthropy of veganism, as being omnivores is part of our natural biology and culture. You could for example care about animal welfare and still eat meat with the distinction that you don't see animals as equivalent to humans. You have to be ideologically inclined to at all consider veganism as it hinges on egalitarianism, which is inherently a tall order when speaking in generals, like what is healthy and right for people. I think there's a certain degree of entitlement to these vegan debates when it turns into "being right" metaphysically as a vegan. You could just disagree. You could also point out veganism still relies on destroying plant life in order to live. Arguably, to be truly vegan you have to photosynthesize.

I lived with my dad so 0- but I did pay for my own insurance and food. I lived in centrum by the way, but I wouldn't do that again if I where to move back. It's too busy with way too many tourists.

@MarkKol It's easier to own a car if you live in the suburbs. North Amsterdam is a small suburban ethnic paradise very close to the city center but split by the river. You can take the free ferry across an be down town in about 20 minutes but still have more space for cars and probably cheaper rent.

I have lived in Amsterdam for a couple of years. I'd generally recommend not to live in the city center as it is more expensive and less accommodating for your apparent car needs. There are too many tourists too. Amsterdam is actually not that big so you could easily cycle/take the tram into town fairly quickly and easily. The Netherlands is quiet flat overall and easy to get around with the best road infrastructure in the world. You can just cycle from the city to the coast in about 1.5-2 hours. In that time, you can reach most places in the country with the car. Public transport is expensive but you can get around fine with just a bike in my experience. Another thing is that it is mandatory to pay for health insurance in NL. The cheapest available are about 80-100 euro per month when I lived there but it might have risen since COVID. If you have specific health needs you'll probably have to pay more in insurance.

One's diet is more than just about health for the majority of people. Since a vegan diet sacrifices so much convenience, culture and taste and is primarily driven by intrinsic values, it is unlikely for many people to go vegan when an omnivorous diet is sufficiently healthy. Especially if they don't share the egalitarian values of vegans. You could argue that people are actually vegan because they don't actually like the prospect of animals getting hurt but it's quiet normal for people to hold contradictory views. Everyone agrees on paying taxes, especially taxing rich people, but nobody actually likes to pay taxes and they celebrate when they get a tax refund from the state once a year. People might not like animals getting hurt but they are content not thinking about it as they buy another frozen pizza. They like animals but they like hot dogs more.

The need to breed. Unlike a bunch of women I know, there's zero sexual tension between me and a horse.

Your probably not actually on a "higher level". Only maybe comparatively in a relative sense but you probably haven't studied psychology and epistemology sufficiently to understand how lower perspectives work. Everyone overestimates their level of development, maturity, intellect, etc.

I'd recommend you just get a tattoo artist to tattoo you instead. Not only will they give you exactly what you want, it will be hygienic and safe. You don't want to risk getting a gnarly skin infection. You can still draw your own design.

Isn't that mad expensive though? Also, two of your steaks are green dude.

Maybe your conflating faith with confidence a bit (which I define as surviving failure). You don't need to have confidence to have faith, but I digress. In my personal experience, having a very clear picture of what you want and moving towards your goals is essentially what life is all about. Once you have clear and strong goals, it should be simple. It's important to have faith in yourself if nothing else, I'd say. Perhaps just in your ability to handle what life throws at you. If you fall down you just get up.

It's not even a question that excluding animal products is more nutritionally challenging from a purely health perspective, but the point of veganism isn't health first and foremost but taking a moral stance. If health was the first priority then including animal products in your diet is a no brainer. They are highly effective, assuming you make healthy choices.

Look forward to the fakest ever, most sugary and salty Mcnuggets that are 3D printed to look like a minion or whatever kids movie character that is out. Your kids will cry if you don't get them the Spider-man nuggets with strawberry flavor. Lab meat is really the final frontier of junk food.