Unbelievable! WTF!?

[quote=“imyourbiggestfan”]
But how is it that “instinct” is seldom irrational? Can it simply have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour?[/quote]

Depends on how you define irrational and yes. I’m sorry. What is your position again?

Just think: we are all just one strait away from a baby-eating nation. I guess the Wild West wanderlust thrill-seekers among us would be there in a heartbeat if they could only employ policies of greater freedom or if all the provincial leaders suddenly decided to go warlord and bring back the roaring 20s of China. Then people would start eating babys out of necessity because they are starving.

One thing that makes me sad about all those human rights groups – most of them based in NYC where a cup of coffee costs US$1.00 or more is that they don’t know how to run a country of a billion people any more than Hu Jintao (

I recall reading somewhere that human flesh tastes like pork, which I never liked much anyway.

Funny that Beijing will stand for the eating of babies but not let you stand in the park and wave your arms around and breathe as you feel… More Chinese anti-logic

[quote=“Quirky”]
Oh, and chainsmoker, please feel free to check that “I’m better than English teachers because I have a real job” attitue if you deem necessary.[/quote]

Who says I don’t teach English? I think you misread my post. No attitude there and no jibes at English teachers.

[quote=“chainsmoker”]Depends on how you define irrational and yes. I’m sorry. What is your position again?[/quote] My stance is that it is no more or less immoral to eat farmed human meat than it is to eat farmed cow meat.

The side comment about instinct and rationality does tie in, in a roundabout way. From my reading of his post, Mr T implied that lions “instinctively” do not indulge in cannabalism in the same way that humans “instinctively” perceive cannablism as immoral. But, if instinct is just a lightening-quick form of rational reasoning, then it seems insufficient to reject my stance on “instinct” alone, without outlining the rational argument as to why I am wrong. (The same rational argument that is encoded in our “instinct.”)

[quote=“chainsmoker”][quote=“imyourbiggestfan”]
But how is it that “instinct” is seldom irrational? Can it simply have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour?[/quote]

Depends on how you define irrational and yes[/quote] If you mean, “Yes, it could have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour,” then it would be instructive to hear your reasoning.

[quote=“chainsmoker”][quote=“Quirky”]
Oh, and chainsmoker, please feel free to check that “I’m better than English teachers because I have a real job” attitue if you deem necessary.[/quote]

Who says I don’t teach English? I think you misread my post. No attitude there and no jibes at English teachers.[/quote]

Oh, shit, you caught me before I totally re-edited my post and deleted my criticism of you. Sorry!
P.S. I gave away all my karma for Christmas, but managed to hit double digits even before New Years! Good karma really does go around, doesn’t it?

[quote=“imyourbiggestfan”][quote=“chainsmoker”][quote=“imyourbiggestfan”]
But how is it that “instinct” is seldom irrational? Can it simply have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour?[/quote]

Depends on how you define irrational and yes[/quote] If you mean, “Yes, it could have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour,” then it would be instructive to hear your reasoning.[/quote]

Don’t really see the point. This is a sloppy way to have a discussion. If your position is, “it is no more or less immoral to eat farmed human meat than it is to eat farmed cow meat,” then the burden is on you to first say why. It’s easy to throw out random quadlibets and ask people to answer or justify them, but difficult to first give a well-reasoned justification for your position.

[quote=“chainsmoker”][quote=“imyourbiggestfan”][quote=“chainsmoker”][quote=“imyourbiggestfan”]
But how is it that “instinct” is seldom irrational? Can it simply have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour?[/quote]

Depends on how you define irrational and yes[/quote] If you mean, “Yes, it could have come into being without following some logical, cognitive process to refine such “instinctive” behaviour,” then it would be instructive to hear your reasoning.[/quote]

Don’t really see the point. This is a sloppy way to have a discussion. If your position is, “it is no more or less immoral to eat farmed human meat than it is to eat farmed cow meat,” then the burden is on you to first say why. It’s easy to throw out random quadlibets and ask people to answer or justify them, but difficult to first give a well-reasoned justification for your position.[/quote]

That’s why I had to re-think and delete that post I put earlier explaining imyourbiggestfan’s post to you. I realized you grasped what s/he was implying, but did not attack the position because it was not justified.
Let me add that the next logical argument for im is: not enough people questioned the Holocost to keep it froml happeneing.

[quote=“chainsmoker”]This is a sloppy way to have a discussion. If your position is, “it is no more or less immoral to eat farmed human meat than it is to eat farmed cow meat,” then the burden is on you to first say why. It’s easy to throw out random quadlibets and ask people to answer or justify them.[/quote] Perhaps I was not explicit enough. Let me try again. I believe that eating farmed human meat is no more or less immoral than eating farmed cow meat.

I believe that if it is moral to eat cow and immoral to eat human, then there must be a distinction. But I cannot see what the distinction is. Thus, I invite fellow posters to provide me with the distinction to my satisfaction. In the absence of any valid distinction between the two, I believe there are only two possible stances that are internally logically consistent: 1) Eating all meat is moral; 2) eating all meat is immoral. Thus, I reach the conclusion, as stated above that:

“Eating farmed human meat is no more or less immoral than eating farmed cow meat.”

Some examples of the similarities: they are both sentient species, capable of thought and emotion. There is little to differentiate them except for intelligence (perhaps!) and an opposable thumb. I think both are capable of logical reasoning and behaving rationally in their own self interest. I see no reason to make a distinction between human meat and cow meat simply because one happens to be from your own species.

And because I believe that it is fair to represent instinct (because of its apparent rationality) as the culmination of some sort of cognitive rational process, I think it is insufficient argument to say that we know it is “instinctively wrong,” without being able to cite the rational embedded in this instinct. (Though I admit that this may not have been the original intent of Mr T’s post. Nevertheless, it did not seem to be a big jump to make from what he was saying.)

So, Mr C. what of your contention that instinct can arise without any cognitive process to refine it? It would be interesting to hear your views.

I don’t yet see the connection, but given my extreme position, it may well be there. I would appreciate it if you could supply the logical bridge from my stance to your subsequent claim in this quote.

Not exactly. Some humans do or have rationalized cannibalism. That implies to me that instinct is not involved.

My point was merely that lions do not, AFAIK, rationalize cannibalism, but rather they are driven by instinct to do so. Humans, when ever they partake in cannibalism, whether for the supposed benefits of eating your enemy or to survive when starvation would otherwise result, rationalize the decision to do so.

I personally think human cannibalism disgusting, but as usual, your questions are thought provoking. As the sage once said:

Well, I don’t think of instinct as simply a form of “lightening-quick rational reasoning”.

If I am understanding your position correctly, IYBF, you are saying that if it is moral to eat other animals (I assume you mean animals unless you have some sort of special love for cows), then it is moral to eat humans as well If not, why not. I would love to give you a hard and fast distinction between humans and animals, but I don

[later edit…Ha, my longest most well-thought out post on forumosa and it gets deleted so i look like an idiot. Thanks guys.]

I don’t yet see the connection, but given my extreme position, it may well be there. I would appreciate it if you could supply the logical bridge from my stance to your subsequent claim in this quote.[/quote]

Not the best argument, but you could say that vegitarians are more advanced because they implement cleaner, more efficient use of resources and have overcome the animal instinct of eating things becuase they taste good. Like during Nazi Germany, which is often characterized with the word “barbaric” I might add, a majority of the people involved… oh wait… goll darn it, my argument doesn’t have leg to stand on I just realized! :blush: I was going to say: the majority let the Holocost happen, just like now the majority eat more meat than is needed to sustain themselves, but the Holocost still happened. Supposedly, our civilization has learned from the experience and will not repeat the horror.
Fact is, the Holocost was part of a system of propaganda and levels of authority where but a few knew where the Juden were being taken and even fewer actually did the killing and even fewer gave the orders.
Sorry. I guess I am suffering from desire to post and nothing to say syndrom on this string. Time to move on. :arrow_right:

Its a terrifically difficult question isn’t it? yet, I found you answer extremely interesting and parts of the argument were ingenious. Your starting point surprised me. About preservation of genes and competition for scarce resources:[quote=“chainsmoker”]An animal usually only resorts to cannibalism in cases where it is direct competition with itself or its progeny… It seems to me that a general principle that we can intuit from gene behavior is eat that which is different than you, unless you have no other choice.[/quote] I like this argument - in competition for scarce resources, it makes little sense if I eat my own kind, as that will weaken our group against those animals competing for resources. The only time I do resort to cannabalism is where the main competition comes from my own species.

Then you said:[quote=“chainsmoker”]From an evolutionary perspective I would say that the more similar something is to you the more

Morality and genetics aside, there is a very good reason for the taboo against cannibalism, which is that it often causes death from Kreutzfeld-Jacob syndrome (i.e. the human variety of mad cow disease) in the eater.

(See Google search results for cannibalism kreutzfeld)

I wouldn’t say that CJD or Kuru is “caused” by cannibalism. I would say that CJD can be contracted by eating the flesh (or brain) of a CJD victim. CJD is a very rare problem where one is eating other tribe members. It becomes a large problem when you are eating the flesh of members of your own tribe (particularly the brains). One random person gets CJD and it is eaten by the tribe, some of which get CJD and the cycle continues. This is pretty much how mad cow disease (BSE) started.

So I watched the programme. The picture of the guy eating the dead baby was apparently taken some time ago. Lots of pictures of dead babies. Two guys got the meat and two veg of a guy who had undergone a sex-change operation and made Penis Wine from it with Sichuan Gaoliang and served at a gathering of arty types at a Beijing club / pub. The most interesting part was when a drunk American attacked the film crew shouting obscenities at them. I heard “You’re the f**king outsiders”, which I found suitably bizarre, and then a random stream of swearing. That was the highlight of the evening.

So there you go. Although the influence of the Cultural Revolution was mentioned as giving rise to all this, together with the destruction of old Beijing and its replacement with ugly modern buildings, the presenter didn’t explore the potential link between the moral depths being plumbed by the artists, and the cannibalism of necessity during the famines of the Great Leap Forward, and I would have thought the question was begging to be asked.

I find some of the protests against China’s government somewhat unsatisfactory. In the past, students have demonstrated about the lack of liberalisation, only to take to the streets again when they found that new liberalisation measures meant that they would have to look for a job themselves after graduation, rather than have one assigned.

This performance art appears to suffer from the same thing - a desire to protest but no clear idea what they are protesting about. After all, what has eating babie s got to do with bulldozing old streets in Beijing?

There seems to be something a bit teenager-ish about much protest in China. Many complaints. few constructive alternatives on offer.

If vegetarians are better people, where does that leave Adolf Hitler, which happen to be a vegetarian and teetotaller to boot?