Not trying to be a troll, but PETA scares me...

[udsuna]

No, because you haven't debated anywhere near intelligently.

I'm done too. Eat all the meat you want. I'm just glad I'm not you.

Really? I always thought the "well, your wrong, here's why. oh, and even if you're not wrong, your still wrong, for this reason" method of debate was pretty effective. It hasn't failed me yet.

Except when faced with other people using similar methods, or someone points out something I've never thought about. In both cases, it weakens my position severly. And, on occasions, I recongnize a flaw in my logic and have been known to completely change my outlook on things.

But regardless, I think my method outdoes your baseless insults and petty sarcasms. And "I'm not having fun, I quit..." is something I thought I'd never have to deal with after graduating highschool...

I want Aeris back, even if I disagree with her, I respect her intelligence and ability. Too bad you both have such closed minds.... but I guess this ends this argument, now....

I'm going to sit here, petting my cat, eating my pepperoni pizza, listening to music and helping human beings who bring problems to this site. Oh, and doing some work that I got recently. I'm quite pleased in being me right about now...


Oh, and back on the original topic: PETA sucks HUGE, HAIRY, JUICY, PULSATING, SWOLLEN, SWEATY, DONKEY BALLS!!! And all their whiny B.S. is only going to make this meal more pleasant for me. Because I dedicate my consumption of flesh to the FREEDOM that allows me to ignore the self-righteous, oppressive bastards who want to rule my life for me and force me to conform to their perversions of morality! In fact, I think I'll go turn on my Braveheart theme music.

*sound of beautiful pipe music rises in the background*

[YukiKiro]

But regardless, I think my method outdoes your baseless insults and petty sarcasms. And "I'm not having fun, I quit..." is something I thought I'd never have to deal with after graduating highschool...

I want Aeris back, even if I disagree with her, I respect her intelligence and ability. Too bad you both have such closed minds.... but I guess this ends this argument, now....

I'm going to sit here, petting my cat, eating my pepperoni pizza, listening to music and helping human beings who bring problems to this site. Oh, and doing some work that I got recently. I'm quite pleased in being me right about now...


Oh, and back on the original topic: PETA sucks HUGE, HAIRY, JUICY, PULSATING, SWOLLEN, SWEATY, DONKEY BALLS!!! And all their whiny B.S. is only going to make this meal more pleasant for me. Because I dedicate my consumption of flesh to the FREEDOM that allows me to ignore the self-righteous, oppressive bastards who want to rule my life for me and force me to conform to their perversions of morality! In fact, I think I'll go turn on my Braveheart theme music.

roflmFao!! how did you come up with that. every word you just said i completely agree with, and Braveheart kicks major arse.

[udsuna]

roflmFao!! how did you come up with that. every word you just said i completely agree with, and Braveheart kicks major arse.

I told you already, I'm a genius. And I won't hesitate to use it for my advantage. And Braveheart made me cry... I can't even listen to the tune without getting teary-eyed. Same with Aeris' (the real one, not Emmy) theme music. And, due in part to the emotions they evoke, I have them both conveniently located on my computer playlist

The part that is so amazing to me: I actually DID have my cat (his name is Gizmo- from the Gremlins movie) sitting in my lap, as I was eating pepperoni pizza. Coincidence bordering on providence, I think. I even fed him some of it... was that evil of me to aid one stupid animal in eating the remains of another stupid animal?

[Leeza]

To say we can live without meat is ok but its really impossible we need both.You don't understand a thing uh emerald aeris.Oh well you'll never know because your too bias anyway and you jump to conclusions pretty fast.

It appears that you're the one that doesn't understand and you're the one that's too biased and jump to conclusions pretty fast. Do you actually know any vegetarians? I do and they're all very healthy. I'm a vegetarian and I'm hardly finding it impossible to live. In fact I'm very healthy and my doctor can attest to that fact. Just like my mother and my grandmother and great-grandmother who were both octogenarians when they passed away. They lived very well and were also very strong women. Do some research please.

Anyway, this thread has gotten way off topic. It is not about vegans or vegetarians. It is about PETA so please get back on topic.

[udsuna]

It appears that you're the one that doesn't understand and you're the one that's too biased and jump to conclusions pretty fast.
Anyway, this thread has gotten way off topic. It is not about vegans or vegetarians. It is about PETA so please get back on topic.

Yep, sorry LB... she's right. You're actually hurting the position by trying to support it... Moreso than anything the oposition is doing, at least. You need to be doing some research, educating yourself better on the topic, and working on your master over the written word, it needs some work Because, right now, you're the best player on their team.

Please... because in all honesty, there is no reason that modern farming couldn't provide all of the nutrition we need to be healthy, strong (and probably less chubby) vegetarians. No doubt exists as to that fact- I just assert that we shouldn't HAVE to go through the trouble in order to protect the lives of creatures that are entirely expendable and not terribly useful or meaningful, aside from as a form of nutrition.

And I think we have started sliding back on topic. Or did my statement go un-noticed? It was in bold font, it was given a pretty good review. I managed to include a good movie, a popular food item, a small rant, and reference to an animal's genetalia. All the ingredients of an excellent and memorable speach.

[Skogs]

And if you think about it, the only reason some animals exist at all are because humans have bred them to be like they are. If we were to stop eating meat, the current livestock levels would be unsustainable and we'd probably have to cull them anyway... It's economics, and if you look at the general principles of economics and of natural selection, they're pretty similar.

As for morality and self awareness, only chimps, possible some of the other great apes and humans have been demonstrated to show self-awareness.

[lordblazer]

It appears that you're the one that doesn't understand and you're the one that's too biased and jump to conclusions pretty fast. Do you actually know any vegetarians? I do and they're all very healthy. I'm a vegetarian and I'm hardly finding it impossible to live. In fact I'm very healthy and my doctor can attest to that fact. Just like my mother and my grandmother and great-grandmother who were both octogenarians when they passed away. They lived very well and were also very strong women. Do some research please.

Anyway, this thread has gotten way off topic. It is not about vegans or vegetarians. It is about PETA so please get back on topic.

Someone hacked my account?LAst itme I was onhere was on Friday.So I guess i was hacked oh well.

[Leeza]

OOC:	Someone hacked my account?LAst itme I was onhere was on Friday.So I guess i was hacked oh well. Or you left yourself logged in.

[Jojee]

Oookay, I realize this is a bit late And a bit off topic, but I decided to post this here anyway because it wouldn't really make sense to start a new topic, as it is more of an argument than anything else.

So I was studying for my Psychology test in an hour and some (studying? I meant cramming. If I kept up with my course I coulda posted this earlier xD) and came across a bit of information. So to udsuna or anyone else that think animals are machines or slaves to their instincts, experimental proof indicates that animals are in fact thinking beings that use higher cognitive thought.

Psychologists perform experiments on an animal's ability to learn. For example, when presented with food, a dog salivates. The food is called the unconditioned stimulus, and the salivation is called the unconditioned response. Scientists start to pair the food with a bell; after a while, when the dog hears the bell, regardless if there is food or not, the dog salivates. The bell is then called the conditioned stimulus.

However, when scientists start to present the unconditioned stimulus (the food) alone again after the animal learns to respond to the conditioned stimulus, the animal starts to respond less to the conditioned stimulus (the bell). I think my textbook puts it better than I,

"Theorists originally assumed that classical conditioning is an automatic, reflexive phenomenon that does not depend at all on higher mental proceses. If that were actually true, then the UCS-alone trials would have no effect on conditioning. However, the ucs-alone trials weakened conditioning. The result suggests that CS signals the occurence of UCS, and that additional trials with the UCS alone weaken the signaling value of CS. What is surprising about these results? Rather than being an automatic, mechanical process, these studies suggest that classical conditioning involves cognitive processes.
...
But does the animal "know" the connection between the response and reinforcer, or is the connection stamped in automatically? That is the crux of the response-outcome relations issue. Evidence suggests that humans and other animals actively try to figure out the contingencies, the relationship between response and outcome.

Why are the signal relations studies in classical conditioning and response-outcome relations studies in operant conditioning surprising and of theoretical importance? These studies indicate that conditioning is not, as assumed earlier, an automatic process but instead depends to a considerable degree on higher mental (cognitive) processes."

There, if anyone still reads this thread >=) At least it helped me study. *runs off to cram some more*

[udsuna]

Ah, yes, the conditioning aspect. The problem is, there's also other issues with conditioning that complicate that matter. If you don't expose a person to any conditioning for a period of time, then the affects of that conditioning wear off, regardless of circumstance. Not so easily comparable in most animals, for most conditioning of animals relies entirely on food.

Now, with HUMANS, you can study conditioned responces without such problems. Take addictions- especially ones such as gambling- studies on those correlate directly to conditioned responces. And if you deny the subject their addiction (stimulus) for long enough, the conditioning (addiction) wears away on it's own. It takes time, but it works that way. So, ultimately, though conditioned responce is more complex than the standard Pavlovian theory- there's still good reason to believe it's a lower brain function needing NO real intelligence. Still a more-or-less mechanical behavior.

[Jojee]

Ah, yes, the conditioning aspect. The problem is, there's also other issues with conditioning that complicate that matter. If you don't expose a person to any conditioning for a period of time, then the affects of that conditioning wear off, regardless of circumstance. Not so easily comparable in most animals, for most conditioning of animals relies entirely on food.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. o_0 Conditioning wearing off is pretty much the same in humans and animals. If in the case of my last post, you start to ring the bell many times at the dog without taking out the food a moment later, the dog will stop salivating at the bell; called extinction. The same goes for a human -- a baby was exposed to a white rat and a loud noise at the same time, and starting attributing the loud noise to the white rat and was scared of it. After being exposed only to the rat without the noise for a while, the baby stopped being scared of it.

Now, with HUMANS, you can study conditioned responces without such problems. Take addictions- especially ones such as gambling- studies on those correlate directly to conditioned responces. And if you deny the subject their addiction (stimulus) for long enough, the conditioning (addiction) wears away on it's own. It takes time, but it works that way. So, ultimately, though conditioned responce is more complex than the standard Pavlovian theory- there's still good reason to believe it's a lower brain function needing NO real intelligence. Still a more-or-less mechanical behavior.

...? Okay. If you shut a human who is addicted to gambling in a cell for a year, then release him, he would probably go and gamble again. That's just speculation, but as I see, so is your argument. Actually, I'm not exactly sure what we're arguing.

Whatever you condition an animal with -- food, loud noises, pleasure, etc. my point is that animals still can be conditioned, and they can distinguish the connection between the response and the reinforcer. I don't think you really addressed the point of my post... which was about how higher thought is needed to distinguish between a UCS and a CS.

[udsuna]

I was pointing out that these things operate at too simplistic a level to measure enough to provide any conclusivity to the claim that animals are mentally advanced because they can tell the difference from UCS and CS. Yes, they CAN tell, but even cockroaches are similarly capable of understanding CS and UCS.

They know to run for cover when you hit a light switch, but if you have roaches who live somewhere, and the lights come on and turn off without anyone present, eventually the roaches will stop running when the lights go on. And you might be able to argue some mammals are smart enough to qualify as more "advanced"- but not insects.

I'm just pointing out that Pavlovian studies only prove that animals and humans have the same situational reaction programs. But they are STILL programs built from a combination of neurochemistry and memory patterns. It's a complex system, but it's still JUST a system, and just a mechanical, albeit advanced, input/output design.

Except for sheep: for some reason, sheep don't appear to have a conditioned responce pattern. Which is why the same sheep can get it's head caught in the same part of the same fence every day for weeks on end- don't say they won't, I've seen them do it. Despite the fear and pain of getting their heads caught, they just don't learn better. Whether they can be conditioned to other situations, I don't know, but they are REALLY dumb about things like survival.

And you're absolutely right: lock a gambler in a cell for a year, then let him go, he'll probably go back to gambling. However, the COMPULSION to gamble will have faded, if not vanished. His return to old behaviors wouldn't be the result of conditioning any longer.