Animals are, by law, treated as property, not sentient beings, so one dead bird is nothing in the realm of anthropocentric humanity. If it fulfills the purpose man has given it's enough of a justification not to take animal's wishes as morally relevant.
Do you have a citation for that? As far as I understand it, the nature of animal sentience is a very widely debated subject.
If you define sentience to mean "the ability to feel or perceive," then a wide array of animals are sentient. Look at any pet cat or dog to see a display of feelings like fear, excitement, or curiosity.
If you take a more narrow definition of "being aware of one's own existence," I imagine you would still find a number of animals who fit into the category.
An African Grey Parrot, while learning colors, asked what color his feathers were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot); I would imagine there is a strong likelihood that you would probably see similar levels of self-awareness from other animals if we had a better way of testing for it.
After all, there's nothing so special about Humans and Parrots in particular, is there?
Citation for what? Animals are by law treated as property. I just explained why someone would think of a solution as ridiculous as that. Parent points out that the solution is not practical but it's clearly demonstrated in the video that it is.
Given that the world we live in is focused on human convenience, with gluttony based on non-human animal flesh, it's really hard to be surprised.
When you have engineers making efficient assembly lines for slaughtering chickens, cows, pigs, all sentient, feeling animals, how is using eagles for fetching drones not the same act of dismissing animal's wishes as morally relevant, or starving dogs for finding truffles, or any human centered activity that risks the life and well being of another non-human animal?
Imagine that, and yet here's French police training eagles to fetch drones. Each training session a risk of serious injury. If something happens it obviously wouldn't be considered cruelty.
Animal cruelty is a different matter. For example, lifetime imprisonment of a dairy cow isn't cruelty. Or free-range boxed-in-a-huge-building chickens in the dark isn't cruelty.
Truffle collectors that starve their dogs - also isn't considered cruelty.
Of course not. I'm advocating for humans to stop using sentient feeling beings and risk their lives in their solutions to problems (from diet, clothes, companionship to catching drones). Aren't we more creative than that? Human anthropocentrism at its finest yet I get the scorn.
Good thing that utilitarianism is a well known concept. If I weren't aware of that I'd be living in an absolutist nightmare of a world where everything was made necessary for use and abuse of non-human animals.
Do take in mind that animal testing is an old practice, and there's plenty of evidence that data collected on non-human animals is useless in most cases. So, modern medicine would do a lot to find new ways of testing and making in-vitro or some other models of human biological system.
Animal testing is reasonable for pretty much all medical advances in use today. Simply claiming it is not does not make it so.
Remember, you can't use most vaccines or epinephrine either. Do you carry around a alert bracelet informing EMT's to not revive you should you require epinephrine?
Never claimed it wasn't reasonable. It's not as efficient as one might think. Having an 8% precision is ridiculously low.
Given that all of vaccines and medical treatments are tested on animals it is quite obvious I should not want to use any of them. I thought your initial remark made that point but it seems to me you were looking at the ingredients.
The amount of animals being abused by medicine has dropped significantly, I'm not an absolutist and yes I'd definitely do my best not to require medical attention. Would I be stupid enough to endanger other animals by not vaccinating myself or my children?
Your last remark is a little bit more inventive than the "anti-venom" one but it is still coming from an absolutist framework.
So if we agree it is acceptable to use animals sometimes in order to advance a greater good, who decides where that line is? Doesn't your belief look somewhat like a religious one in this case in that while you adhere to them you certainly cannot ask anyone else as well as they may not hold the same values as you do?
There's quite a clear time when not using or not abusing non-human animals was impossible. It's quite clear from all the data that the effort should go towards better biological models and away from wasteful random variable measuring which physics does so well but medicine does it by abusing billions of animals to show a statistically significant discovery.
Are you really claiming eagles are the last line of defense against drones? That is what I get from your line of reasoning. The only reason why they decided to use eagles is because it is convenient, some idiot came up with it and given that non-human animals don't get the same moral considerations as humans (speciesism alert!) it was acceptable and ignored from the stance of non-human animal cruelty.
So, if a serial killer doesn't hold the same values as I do, I guess it's fine for him to kill? Or is it not fine just because he's killing homo sapiens? What if he was killing homo erectus?
We do share the same values. I'm just making my actions consistent with those values. I'm coming from the same sentiment OP had.
> So, if a serial killer doesn't hold the same values as I do, I guess it's fine for him to kill?
This is why democracy was invented. The people decide what laws they wish to have. You haven't answered my question. Who decides what is right if not the people?
Democracy brought Hitler, yet what he did people did not condone.
If people decide what is right and yet due to convenience act inconsistently it is worthless.
Being born into a world where slavery is convenience didn't make one decide that slavery is right. Just like use of animals or eating their flesh, wearing their skin wasn't one's decision to do it. One was raised in the convenience framework which was some time ago "necessary" and currently isn't. One was nurtured and educated to find it fine but the current values made it inconsistent.
It is not right given our current values. It is now a question of how do people get out of their indoctrination and convenience to stand up for what they believe is right.
What kind of citation? This request is a little bit of a stretch. The majority of people on Earth identify as followers of abrahamic religions. Bunch of them accept the ideas of love, compassion and empathy as a foundation of their religions. You see where the reasoning goes from there.
> That isn't my belief system, hence the disagreement. Do I have to stand up for what you think is right?
Moral relativism really won't help you here. From everything you've written it is very unlikely that you are a consistent speciesist.
As I've said before, you were brought up through convenience, you didn't choose your values, but you interpret them as choice. It is equivalent to people growing up when slavery was acceptable. Even hundreds of years after the war there was still a huge bunch accepting discrimination as a right thing to do.
You are also avoiding the subject.
You are mentioning greater good, last resort methods etc. etc. Eagles aren't last resort, meat every day in your plate, drinking another mammals milk isn't last resort or greater good, raising 60 billions of animals every year, cutting rainforests for soybeans and corn, emitting huge amounts of CO2 and methane for the sake of steak isn't greater good.
I'm not really sure which straw you are reaching for? If you do not care about global warming, about animals (including human animal), if you really do not care, then yes, you are consistent speciesist but that is very unlikely.
Most of the conversations I had people did admit they discriminate because it is convenient and if only this other choice was more convenient they'd do it. They put themselves first. They also saw the hypocrisy and inconsistency of their actions.
Eagles being used for drones, dogs eaten in China, all stem from the speciesism that is indoctrinated through all pillars of growing up.
My point is you happen to feel this way. If everyone felt the way you did, it would be illegal. Thus a great number of people don't feel the way you do or simply don't care. Thus the system is working as intended. The people have spoken.
Cool, so by your definition of right, heterosexual supremacy, male dominance, slavery, racism, are all right because a majority guided by convenience and traditional beliefs thinks it's right.
Similar to the lottery problem and other covering problems.
Let's say lottery has N numbers. Tickets contain K numbers. What is the least amount of tickets M that you need to buy so you guarantee when the winning ticket is pulled that you matched at least R numbers on that winning ticket with your pool of tickets? LP(N, K, R) = M.
LP(N, K, K) = (N choose K), is winning the lottery and for that to be sure we need to buy all tickets.
LP(N, K, 2) is solved, I believe, for many values (theoretically).
There was a paper by Microsoft Research where they find shortest path from one point to another in time equivalent to 5 memory reads + they sped up significantly the precomputation times and lowered memory requirements.
ADHD is a real thing. Maybe not the same as procrastination and lack of self-managment.
I've known ADHD people with extreme self-control (amazing time planning), persistence and will to learn but when they tried concentrating it wouldn't happen. Either something in their brain can't click to grok the subject or they get constantly distracted by their thoughts. The time they put into the subject is huge but they get so little from it.
I've tutored several and am amazed at how well they try to avoid the problem by being better organized but their brain sometimes just can't focus on the important stuff which limits their ability to learn stuff that requires serious attention as quickly as others.
True, what you can do is plant trees and stop cutting trees. Plant trees that suck more CO2.
Amazon rainforest is being cut enormously. About 90% of cut Amazon is solely for beef production and soy exports for USA beef production.
Of course, the enormous convenient life of average USA citizen might need more government control (24/7 AC, cars everywhere, heavy reliance on animal agriculture etc.) and that stuff costs but it is long-term investment. Of course, no one sees 100 years as long-term, 100 years is invisible. Huge amount of forest also cut for palm oil. The new plant oil that ends up everywhere (sunflower oil turned out more expensive in this millenia).
I've heard from many parents that they don't care if their lifestyle habits promote the business-as-usual culture.
Wasn't Amazon forest deemed net producer of CO2 some time ago?
If we get a direction of such a large processes wrong, how the hell are we
so sure that CO2 level is even a source of problem instead of being
a result?
Just use logical first principles. Wood is basically a bunch lignin and cellulose. Those are just a bunch of C, H, and O in different configurations. The more wood that exists somewhere, the more C, H, and O are sequestered in it. All forests are seasonally more trap or sink. Look at global seasonal CO2 concentration maps (if those haven't been taken down from the EPA website). Forests grow and make leaves during some seasons. They tend to have forest fires during others. Finally, many shed leaves and those rot and release CO2 during other seasons. On the net, though, they trap carbon dioxide, which plants specifically consume in addition to water to make glucose during photosynthesis.
And many have been right. The burden is on you to provide counter-evidence. If you have reason to believe he's wrong please post it, otherwise your comment is just spreading FUD.
It still produces less CO2. This will of course not be a fact if fire rate increases.
It's a feedback loop. The warmer it gets more CO2 gets produced, not just by humans but by nature. The melting of ice caps will produce about 100 years of human CO2 equivalent methane (CO2 yearly production of 2016, I believe).
Humans are the source of the problem. They can remove themselves from the equation but it requires a less convenient life for most.
Source for your stats on exports to the US from Brazil for Beef and Soy, and the corresponding deforestation of the Amazon. Far as I can tell Brazil exports less than a tenth of what Australia, Canada and New Zealand do to the US.
>Although the maximum limit of Brazilian beef exported to the US could be 64,508 mt, based on market competition it is very unrealistic to think Brazil would overtake the full quota. Longer term (in 2020) these TRQ’s are scheduled to change, and could give Brazil a higher volume ceiling.
>To put this in perspective, in 2015 the US imported 570,740 mt of beef from Australia, 299,955 mt tons from New Zealand, and 285,036 mt from Canada (to name our top 3 sources) for an annual total of 1.5 million mt.
I'd imagine Asia is the major importer of Brazilian Beef, I could be wrong, but don't think so
Soy. I wrote soy exports. Not "beef production exports".
Brazil (with Argentina) is main soy exporter for most of the worlds livestock.
In the documents below you can find clear numbers of how much hectares is used for pasture, corn, soybean etc. and how much stays forest.
The cause of that deforestation is clear, it is soybean + corn + beef = animal agriculture. Brazil has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
Yep, except again none of these detail the exports of Soy or Beef to the US. You said USA importation was the cause but it appears that Soy beans too are being exported to Asia not the US.
China buys about 60 percent of soybeans traded globally.
In 2011, China accounted for 43% of Brazilian (top destination) and 25% of Argentinean soy exports
Yes, I apologize, my statement refers to 90% of cut Amazon. Not that 90% of it is cut for USA.
As for the beef and soy exports it's not enough to check just the exports number. The most important number is beef consumption. Per capita the US has a pretty small consumption. But compared to EU or China, the US is leading, extremely in absolute amounts.
Above is a nice example. There has been some nice contests with the above problem and the ILP solvers work extremely fast and great and solve them to optimality. Although Staffjoy constraints might have been more general.
Either way you could easily attack any custom problem with an ILP solver. It depends how long it would take to get a feasible solution and then how long to minimize the costs or fit the budget.
In order to speed up the solver you might use ML but that would require previous data. Probably the only way to speed up the solver is to learn it through reinforcement learning on a batch of data. Takes time and time and time. Not to mention that your ILP solver has to be equipped to merge with any ML machinery you are using.
In the old days, everything was a hard constraint. However, free trial users don't always put in problems that are solvable. I would get paged at 4AM about infeasible models, only to discover things like "this employee has zero availability but a minimum of 40 hours per week of work".
So, we turned into more of a "scoring" system where all minimums were soft constraints (e.g. minimum hours per week) whose violations caused a large point decrease [1]. Maximums were a hard constraint. The system made it impossible to input an infeasible model, and worked fairly well.
Splitting the scheduling problem into separate steps (forecast->unassigned shifts, then unassigned->assigned shifts) also sped up the algorithms (and allowed for people to create unassigned shift templates).
But deciding how many nurses to have at what time, based on the probability of how many and what kind of patients and the likelihood of a good medical outcome is a different problem.
It is, but saying it's machine learning hides the combinatorial issues and combinatorial search that has to happen. Machine learning model can't replace the necessity for search.
Scheduling problem (the general one) maps easily to the vehicle routing problem. Vehicles are routed and service customers. On-demand requirements and scheduling are probably easier to conceptualize in that framework (think Uber but with ride-sharing bus sized cars, or team picking up and delivering food from restaurants to locations, or repairmen doing stuff at people homes).
All needs combinatorial search and machine learning is only one little piece of the puzzle.
I usually say it the other way -- optimization is just one part of machine learning.
ML includes optimization/search, dimensionality reduction (aka unsupervised learning), prediction (aka supervised learning), and reinforcement learning. And I'm probably forgetting a category.
ML does not include integer linear programming (nothing learnable there) and similar mathematical optimizations. ML can be a part of it but is not integral to it. Just like finding the shortest paths between two points does not include ML. ML can be used to learn the weights through time (traffic sensitive routing) but the search part is separated from it.
IMO, ML is nowhere close to useful in these problems when most of the clients just use pen and paper. It should be fairly easy to beat that with some simple search heuristics.
+ a huge percentage of people who think global warming is caused by humans and happening do nothing about it. the sales of cars are rising, the gas is being bought, the whole USA is under a 24/7 air conditioning, the gluttony is at its highest, the production and consumption of chicken and beef too, etc.
From my perspective the difference between believers and non-believers is invisible.
Eh, changes like that don't happen at the individual level. Crime is at historic lows not because people decided to be less violent, but because of socioeconomic changes (and possibly the elimination of common sources of lead).
Rivers stopped catching on fire in the US not because individuals decided to stop dumping chemicals into rivers, but because Americans took collective action in the form or regulations and fines to force better behaviour through financial consequences.
The reality is pollution is an externality, and a very invisible one. Individuals are unlikely to make decisions that impact it because they don't directly bear the costs. And the reality is our societies aren't structured to make it easy to avoid polluting. Try living in an average American city without burning gas in a car, or oil/gas to heat or cool your home. It's an impossible ask for a typical middle class family, let alone someone lower on the socioeconomic scale.
There's a reason things like carbon taxes and green subsidies are very attractive: it allows you to incentivize the behaviour we want to see by baking in the cost of those externalities into people's decisions.
A lot of people are demanding it. Heck, some countries like Canada are actively passing things like carbon taxes.
But when a large portion of the populace (and thus elected officials) doesn't believe there's a problem in the first place, it's a little tough to take collective action, which brings us back to the original point.
The only fruit I eat is strawberries because they are the healthiest.