[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

I didn't say anything about Kant himself (Kant also thought that non-human animals were basically just "things" without rationality or self-consciousness, which is however in direct conflict with the current scientific consensus. Kant still argued in favour of treating animals "humanely", just not for their own sake). Anyway, some well-known and well-respected contemporary philosophers who argue(d) from a Kantian perspective in favour of animal rights include e.g. Christine Korsgaard or Tom Regan, and many lesser known philosophers (see e.g. here for a recent example). I also see no indication that these types of arguments as a whole are supposedly "thoroughly rebutted" (not that serious philosophy really works like that anyway). Some other philosophers disagree with some of their arguments, of course (this is normal in philosophy), and many don't subscribe to Kantianism in the first place, but afaik most of them tend to take issue with how Kantian ethics is applied (or that it is applied) moreso than that they're trying to defend animal exploitation as such. Either way, none of that changes the fact that ethicists have been using Kantian ethics (among many other meta-ethical frameworks, as I said before) to argue in favour of animal rights, and that there aren't really many arguments in defense of killing animals for food (in particular in the context of factory farming) that find widespread support (among moral philosophers, that is).

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

I didn’t think the had an official organized statement

There sort of is. The term "vegan" was coined by some members of the Vegetarian Society of the UK in the 1940s (at the time veganism and vegan diet were mostly referred to by terms such as "strict vegetarianism" or "no animal food" etc.), who shortly after founded the Vegan Society [of the UK]. The latter has an "official" definition of veganism:

"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

Of course individual vegans may have slightly different definitions, and may interpret them differently, but as a whole this seems to be a fairly accurate definition for many vegans (although there are some exceptions, e.g. people who adopt plant-based diets for (percieved or actual) health benefits, or religious reasons, sometimes (but not always) also refer to themselves as "vegans").

As to the "literally right" part (I assume the OP was referring to veganism in general, not the specific issue of the thread), it mostly boils down to whether or not we think the statement "it is (morally) wrong to unnecessarily cause harm to animals" is correct. Since most people (with perhaps the exception of some with rare medical conditions) can survive just fine on a diet free of animal products (same goes for clothing etc.), we can conclude that it is at least unnecessary to use animal products. Thus, if we agree with the rest of the statement (i.e. that exploiting animals for their meat or other products causes them harm) we should also agree with veganism as an ethical stance. Naturally this could be discussed in much more detail and with many caveats, but for me this is more or less the core of the argument. And as it turns out, a lot of moral philosophers from different meta-ethical schools (such as utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or virtue ethics) seem to agree at the very least that the arguments in favour of veganism are much stronger than those in defense of eating meat (and particularly those in defense of factory farming). Some further reading for those interested:

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

That takes something from being completely unreasonable to be understandable.

Why would taxing a gross income of above a billion US$ by ~66% be "completely unreasonable"? Imo taxes for such incomes should generally be higher if anything.

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

A big paper with only three authors?!

That part isn't so unusual, especially in condensed matter, where labs can be relatively small. For example, the paper announcing the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in 1986 only had two authors (Bednorz & Müller).

I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find the lab from which it has been published.

For those who didn't look into the paper: They seem to work for a company called "Quantum Energy Research Centre, Inc.", which does sound a bit... woo-y to me. At least the third author seems to work at Korea University, which, according to Wikipedia, is relatively prestigious. Who knows, maybe the authors just can't be bothered to use Latex and didn't choose the name of the company or didn't put too much thought into it, but for the moment I'm also rather skeptical.

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

According to Wikipedia, it's not even by Mel Gibson, but by some Mexican guy named Alejandro Gómez Monteverde. Apparently, Mel Gibson endorsed it and the lead actor previously played Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, but that seems to be the limit of that connection.

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah that’s what woke is. It’s believing what Americans have always said about our country and demanding it do that.

I'm afraid that the word has long since transcended the borders of your country. In fact it has even transcended the English language and found its way into the language of right-wing culture warriors all over the world.

Also, while I think I know what you're trying to say, "traditional American values like the idea that all people are created equal" sounds a bit funny considering that your country expressly allowed slavery upon its foundation.

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As a non colorblind person, I would like to understand how this image could have been modified to include our colorblind brethren.

In general it is a good idea to use colour gradients that monotonically increase (or decrease) in brightness in addition to (or instead of) hue (see here for an in-depth comparison of different colour maps. It's from a Python package, but it shows some interesting plots comparing different colour maps when it comes to brightness vs. hue). This isn't just useful for colour blind people, but also helpful when printing in black-and-white.

If you absolutely have to use a diverging colour map, you might reach most people by using blue as a major component of one, but only one of the two branches (the map in the OP uses blue as a major component of both branches, which is why red/green colour blind people can have a problem with it). That way most colour blind people should be able to distinguish the branches, since blue colour blindness (Tritanopia/Tritanomaly) is much rarer than red (Protanopia/Protanomaly) or green (Deuteranopia/Deuteranomaly) colour blindness.

Apart from that it is also possible to mark information visually in other ways than by colour, e.g. by shapes and patterns, like dotted or dashed lines for line graphs, shaded or dotted areas for bar and area graphs, or different geometric shapes like crosses, diamonds, and circles when plotting individual data points, but that is probably more useful when different sets of data are plotted in the same graph.

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

In what world is a country with billionaires and an autocratic ruling class in which the workers decidedly do not control the means of production, "socialist"?

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's from a longer quote in "A Brief, Incomplete and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages" about the language Haskell:

1990 - A committee formed by Simon Peyton-Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, Ashton Kutcher, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals creates Haskell, a pure, non-strict, functional language. Haskell gets some resistance due to the complexity of using monads to control side effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"

Some other languages like e.g. Rust also use monads. The point I was trying to make humorously was that many programming languages sometimes do use math concepts, sometimes even very abstract maths (like monads), and while it's not maths per se, programming and computer science in general can have quite a bit to do with maths sometimes.

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

coding has nothing to do with math

A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?

[-] 4ce@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Emmerich is also just an old-fashioned German name. I would assume that the name Amerigo is derived from the name Emmerich, not the town Emmerich.

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4ce

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