Watching The Dominion

[Something Funny]

I invite anyone who is interested to watch this documentary on animal abuse and exploitation and then share their thoughts.

I am currently on minute 6 and I can't imagine how huge the balls of the journalists who were filming all that must be.

 

 

[Something Funny]

@numbersinarow @Buck Edwards I dare you to watch the first 20 minutes of this and then talk to me about plants and bacteria.

[Something Funny]

@Buck Edwards can't say that I am surprised.

Why care about truth, love, and consciousness, when you can make your life about eating and shitting.

 

[Something Funny]

3 minutes ago, Marcel said:

What if it’s exactly like that for them too, when they are harvested, uprooted etc. ? 

 

1. I refer you to my comment about how more plants due to animal farming than due to human consumption.
2. My common sense tells me that it's not like that for them too. Do we have any evidence that plant feel pain and suffer in the same way that animals do? With animals we know for a fact that they have pain receptors and we can see pain signals and measure the levels of pain due to brain scans. There is also no reason why plants would evolve the ability to feel pain when they can't do anything about it. Pain is a survival mechanism. Plants have different survival strategies like having thorns and being poisonous.

[Something Funny]

@Marcel But thank you for actually watching it. I appreciate and respect you for that.

[LambdaDelta]

Apparently I've already seen it some years ago. Not a bad idea to get a refresher. There's also another docu 'Lucent' from the same people that focuses solely on pigs. Out of all the farm animals, they're probably treated the worst. And interestingly it's still the most consumed meat in the world despite excluding all the Muslims.

Watching this on a psychedelic would be wild. Your love would grow so much. But it might also traumatize you.

[Something Funny]

@Marcel okay, so a bunch of inconclusive studies with questionable methodology and inconclusive results, and nothing on pain or suffering.

1. electrical conductivity changes in response to a variety of stimuli including emotions or thoughts.

All that tells us is that depending on a stimuli, plant body conducts electricity differently. Which can be said about literally anything. Metals will have different conductivity based on temperature and other environmental factors. There is no evidence that would suggest that plant can make a conscious decision to change it, their material just reacts to environmental conditions.

2. Plants respond to a variety of stimuli, like light, touch, and sound.

Yes, that's pretty self-evident and expected. You put a flower in a dark room and it will die. You touch a gentle plant too much and it will die. Sounds can probably disturb them to, but that's not a plant exclusive thing, it's just a physical phenomenon. Have you ever grown crystal in school? 

This tells us nothing about suffering, or pain.

3. Plants can communicate through chemical signals

Once again, really interesting but irrelevant. One plant releases a chemical cause it's being eaten -> another plants receptors detect it and start releasing it as well. That's not a conscious decision, just like it's not a conscious decision for you to start salivating when you smell tasty food.

4. The kills of the dracena

Very interesting if true, but as it says in the video, probably just flawed methodology.

 

Edited November 17, 2024 by Something Funny

[Something Funny]

@LambdaDelta thanks for sharing I will check it out. Yes, watching it with psychedelics would probably be a life changing experience. I think I might do it in the future.

[Something Funny]

13 minutes ago, Marcel said:

Well, the experiment can be easily replicated and verified or disproven of course, if someone set out to do so. ( Only part of the video I actually cared about, forgot to timestamp it, my apologies )

Not everyone, that's exactly the challenge. You need a controlled environment where you know that no other factor influence its electric conductivity. How do you that? Maybe that who killed the other plant was sweating heavily, or was sick, or was on her period, used some cosmetics product, etc., etc.

And even if you do it perfectly, all you are left with is the knowledge that plant's conductivity changes. What does a change in conductivity mean?

15 minutes ago, Marcel said:

Lets face it. We, at a very large scale do not understand plants or how they may or may not perceive or feel pain etc.

The idea plants could be conscious or can feel pain similar to humans or animals is a very radical paradigm shift. 

Yes.

But here is another paradigm shift:

There is a huge difference in how cruel and desensitised a person needs to be to pick a flower and to kill an animal.
There is a huge difference in how you will feel emotionally if you kill an animal with your own hands and if you pick up a carrot and eat it. 

Why is that? Have you ever thought about it?

[Whitney Edwards]

2 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

There is a huge difference in how cruel and desensitised a person needs to be to pick a flower and to kill an animal.
There is a huge difference in how you will feel emotionally if you kill an animal with your own hands and if you pick up a carrot and eat it. 

Why is that? Have you ever thought about it?

The difference is only in perception and social conditioning. 

[Something Funny]

Just now, Buck Edwards said:

The difference is only in perception and social conditioning. 

You got it in the wrong order. Feelings dictate social conditioning. How come society has evolved to see this as a bad thing?

And perception is literally the only thing that there is for you. In a world where there are no objective moral values and ethics, all you have to guide you are your feelings and perceptions.

[Whitney Edwards]

26 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

You got it in the wrong order. Feelings dictate social conditioning. How come society has evolved to see this as a bad thing?

And perception is literally the only thing that there is for you. In a world where there are no objective moral values and ethics, all you have to guide you are your feelings and perceptions.

You're only proving my point further. If your morality is based on your feelings, then fuck feelings and fuck morality. Why should your feelings be more important than someone else's? 

Also if you are so into being a vegan and preaching others against eating meat and how their lives are only about eating and shitting then Leo should be the last person you should support or his platform. Because Leo is not a vegan but I know you won't have a problem with that since he is the founder of the forum. You will only use your shame tactics on other people because that's easier, hypocrisy much. It reminds me of people (especially celebrities) who say they stand  against animal cruelty and then wear handbags made of crocodile skin. Supporting Leo is like supporting a brand that makes handbags out of crocodile skin. But you won't have a problem with it since you are of such pure conscience that you stand against animal cruelty. 

Edited November 17, 2024 by Buck Edwards

[Something Funny]

@Buck Edwards I am sorry, I really tried talking to but I just can't.

I have said multiple time how I am not vegan, yet you write "if you are so into being vegan".

I've said multiple time how nothing is objectively good or bad, and how morality is subjective, and yet you once again ask me why should my feelings be more important than anyone else's.

It's just not possible to have a conversation with you. It's like you don't even read what another person writes, you just keep talking to your self. 

Edited November 17, 2024 by Something Funny

[Something Funny]

12 minutes ago, Marcel said:

The problem is perception ( including, culture, conditioning etc. ) The emotional reaction or lack of one is dependent on how someone views an animal or plant. 

 

Yes, but why are those culture, conditioning, etc., one way and not the other? I think that everyone kind of intuitively recognises how killing an animal is not the best thing in the world to do. It's just that when survival, and food, and money, and sex, come into play it's very easy to ignore this intuition and rationalise it away. 

13 minutes ago, Marcel said:

A farmer that kicks animals ( or worse ) like in the documentary you shared doesn’t have much of a reaction anymore, or even enjoys  it! Like the guys hunting wild boar.

 

Because he is probably completely desensitised and estranged from himself. Just imagine what working in that hell must be like. If you kept your emotions there you would just go insane and kill yourself in a week. It's like people who dissociate when something traumatic happens to them.

Hunting is different. I believe there is a natural hunting instinct in us that makes people enjoy it. But I wonder how they would feel about what they did if they actually sat down, allowed their hormones to chill out and contemplated their actions. Because it seems to me that anyone who does that will start feeling bad about hunting and killing.

This was not a boar btw, just a wild pig. Like they said, those are just pigs that people brought on ships with them in the past and let loose. A wild boar would fuck them all up so bad it's not even funny.

[Something Funny]

Just now, Marcel said:

And yes. If they allowed themselves to reflect or practice genuine compassion it would hurt bitterly in retrospect.

That's what I am trying to say. Sure many people avoid thinking about things to deeply, are detached from their emotions, or are cruel. Some literally have no empathy due to how their brain works. But most people, with healthy, neurotypical brain, when fully conscious of what they are doing, would feel bad about killing an animal.

[Something Funny]

@Marcel another point. Why is it that every meat product that has an animal on its packaging show a happy, healthy, animal, often drawn in cartoonish cute way? Why not show them bloody, tortured, and abused?

Because the vast majority of people would be repulsed by it and not by the product. This tells me that most people see animal suffering as a bad thing when confronted with it face to face.

[Scholar]

5 hours ago, Marcel said:

What if it’s exactly like that for them too, when they are harvested, uprooted etc. ? 

 

It's not. The function of pain is to have an immediate reactivity to a stimulus, namely to move away from it.

There is no point in an experience of suffering or torment if an organism does not interact with the world in an immediate, decision based way. An animal is reactive to dozens of stimulus as it navigates the world. There is one decision center which must at any given point decide which action is best to be taken on the basis of several feeds of information: Temperature, location, pain, hunger, social dynamics, threat recognition etc

All of these feeds have to, at all points, be taken into account to evaluate what action you should take. For example, you might feel pain and hunger at the same time. Maybe you need to do something painful to be able to clench your hunger? How do you know which one of those actions is appropriate to take? Well, it depends on the amount of pain you feel. Damaging the body, by falling down a cliff or eating yourself, is not worth it to eat something that does not provide you a lot of calories.

This kind of balancing act is what individuated consciousness is. Plants have absolutely zero necessity for such an individuated consciousness. They do not have to make complex decisions in real time that are contextually sensitive. Rather, they can simply act according to basic reactivity to immediate stimulus.

 

In simple ways, there is no reason for a plant to feel pain when you cut it, because it cannot take any action to avoid that stimulus. The reason why you feel pain when you put your hand on a hot stove is because you can instantly pull back your hand.

 

 

There is a profound ignorance in people who compare plant consciousness to animal consciousness, as the above described things should be immediately obvious if you think about the topic for more than a few seconds.

[Scholar]

On 18.11.2024 at 1:29 PM, Marcel said:

Animal and plant consciousness, if such a thing as plant consciousness even exists, would or could be completely different. 

To quote Leo: “Nothing is obvious” 

I wouldn’t be so quick to say that I understand something on a deep level just because I have thought about for a few seconds like you seem to do.

Everything you listed is not a proof of anything. It’s a bunch of assumptions. 

What if there was more to pain then “the impulse of moving away from it” ? How can you definitively know a plant couldn’t be “suffering” or experiencing some version of pain? Would pain, if plants do experience it,  work the same way as in humans or animals?  What if it works entirely different and does not serve the function you described and fulfils a completely different one?

Just because a plant cannot take or  “does not have the necessity” to take action does not mean it couldn’t be conscious. Very faulty logic. 

Why does consciousness necessitate action?

Why does consciousness necessitate reactivity?

Why does consciousness necessitate decision making? 

If plants are conscious or not, experience pain or not, is not nearly as obvious as you make it out be. 

 

 

I explained to you why the reasoning is laughable. Anything could be the case. Maybe each one of your skin cells suffers when they die. Maybe your liver is having a depression. Maybe different parts of your brain have their own conscious experience.

All of these would make more sense than plants feeling pain and fear in response to being uprooted.

 

You are conflating existence with pain. Pain is a very particular substance with a very particular function. To remove substances of mind from their function simply shows how naive your view of consciousness is.

Edited November 19, 2024 by Scholar

[dddddddddd33]

@Something Funny I agree that the vast majority of people already value animal life over plant life instinctively. I always use the example that if faced with saving an animal or houseplant from a burning building, there would be no question for most people (unless it was an insect or something like that). Those types of situations are easy though because they don’t involve having to give up anything. People will readily agree that suffering is bad and should be minimized. When the prospects of pleasure, comfort and convenience come in, all of a sudden animal suffering and abuse is more ‘complicated’. That’s when you start to see all sorts of excuses and mental gymnastics like plants could feel pain or crop deaths. So yes people recognize animal suffering as bad when they do not benefit from it but pleasure and self-interest are often much more powerful drivers of choice. It’s hard to overstate how much pleasure some people get from a cheeseburger lol

[Scholar]

13 hours ago, Marcel said:

Well that’s the thing, how can you definitively know what’s the case? 

Look. I’m not naive. I just don’t pretend I know stuff, when I truly don’t. All I’m doing is staying radically open minded. 

It’s not like I subscribe to everything I wrote.

I’m just open to actually question it and not have completely stuck and inflexible conclusions.

You are ignorant and think you have everything figured out. Ultimately you don’t know and assume. 

 

You have to have some sort of reasonable underlying causal theory for why things are the way they are. We don't randomly feel pain. Pain obviously has an evolutionary function. It's not like these things are just inherent to actions.

You don't understand how naive this understanding of experience is. Cutting a human will cause them pain, and then you think because cutting causes pain, therefore cutting any living being will cause pain. But it's not the cutting that causes the pain, but the brain that creates the experience of pain as a result of the cutting, to motivate an individuated consciousness to act a certain way.

 

Also, guess what every animal that humans eat, eats? They all eat plants. cows eat so many grass-blades, or other foods. This is all an absurd argument, given that animal agriculture causes more plant death than agriculture would if we simply ate the plants in the first place.