Gary Francione and Anna Charlton have picked a subject they cannot defend. Clearly a case of “Publish or Perish”........
Canids have been living with humans for tens of thousands of years. The interaction was initiated by the canids.
I say listening to Rutgers law professors is a form of torture, and should not be endured by me or my pet dog.
I therefore call for all Rutgers law professors to be freed out into the wild, away from the terrible responsibilities of teaching and paychecks, and spend the rest of their lives eating little berries, chewing on leaves and drinking out of what puddles they can find.
That might be too good for them, but I am a kind-hearted person.
The assault on natural rights includes the detachment of the concept of rights from the human species altogether. Rights are moral rules enjoining persuasion as against coercion, and there is no way to applying morality to the amoral or persuasion to the non-conceptual. An animal needs no validation of its behavior; it does not act by right or by permission; it perceives objects, then simply reacts as it must. In dealing with such organisms, there is no applicable law, but the law of the jungle, the law of force against force.
By its nature and throughout the animal kingdom life survives by feeding on life. In a rational morality man's life is the standard of value. To demand that man sacrifice the requirements of his life to the "rights" of animals is to deprive man himself of the right to his life.This is extreme irrational altruism in action.
His only job, which he doesn't realize is a job, is to growl at strangers walking by the house and bark (he's got a 60 lb bark on a 20 lb dog) and go berserk if a stranger comes to the door. It's fun to watch them ring the bell and then hurry back down to the bottom of the steps. Also, to bark when he hears those deer hooves on the drive.
Damn! What a cushy slave life. Let him run free and the damn coyotes will eat him. In the winter he would have to deal with a couple feet of snow and -20 temps. If he could talk and I asked him, "Slave or free?" He would pick "slave" every time.
Wouldn’t his plan require killing all domesticated animals to extinction? Captive animals like giraffes could be released into the wild, but that doesn’t always turn out well either. What about dogs, cats, pigs, chickens? How would their world, or ours, be improved by letting them run wild?
The Intellectual Yet Idiot medium.com ^ | 9/16/2016 | Nassim Nicholas Taleb Posted on
9/19/2016, 12:45:55 PM by Darnright
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us
1) what to do,
2) what to eat,
3) how to speak,
4) how to think… and
5) who to vote for.
But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.
With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time.
People are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons. Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking.
They cant tell science from scientism — in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types — those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior — much of what they would classify as “rational” or “irrational” (or some such categories indicating deviation from a desired or prescribed protocol) comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP).
The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities — most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI. Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry. The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”.
What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences.
While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club. More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI).
Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.
The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science”, that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism. Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains.
In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.
The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba; he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.
He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation. But a much easier marker: he doesn’t deadlift. Postscript From the reactions to this piece, I discovered that the IYI has difficulty, when reading, in differentiating between the satirical and the literal. PostPostscript The IYI thinks this criticism of IYIs means “everybody is an idiot”, not realizing that their group represents, as we said, a tiny minority — but they don’t like their sense of entitlement to be challenged and although they treat the rest of humans as inferiors, they don’t like it when the waterhose is turned to the opposite direction (what the French call arroseur arrosé).
(For instance, Richard Thaler, partner of the dangerous GMO advocate Übernudger Cass Sunstein, interpreted this piece as saying that “there are not many non-idiots not called Taleb”, not realizing that people like him are < 1% or even .1% of the population.)
... My dog has better health care than I do. Most dog’s food is inspected better than food for human consumption. My dog wants for nothing.
He rules the house. He considers everything ‘his’ -— best seat in the car, has a BarcaLounger, takes up most of my bed, spreads his little stuffed toys all over the house, goes to the groomer and gets an oatmeal bath once a month, eats treats all day, has his own Roadtrek camper 2016 ————— now how in the 7734 is that slavery ... Stupid Educated Idiots in your ivory towers ?
True to the extent that some malevolent owner keeps a dog chained to a stake 24/7. Otherwise demonstrably false.
What do I DO?...I’m hungry and starving!
I stopped eating animals because you told me to, now you tell me plants have feelings and they talk to each other.
.......and NOW you say plants and animals are OFFENDED when I look at them in hunger.
Ok, OK...I’ma be an Air Fern until you tell me that offends whatever.
Leftist professors speaking their inane thoughts was once considered “news” ... now, it’s just conversation among fools.
Mt two cats come and go as they please. They will come to me to flee a mean neighbor cat, get fed or sit on my keyboard and annoy me.
I am a slave to my 3 dogs. This guy is a moron.
If we set dogs ‘free’ they would die... This is a guy who has chosen to express his hatred of traditional Americans in a way that will also get him lots of attention.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2
All jokes aside—
This mentality is parallel to, and the precursor of, an acceptance of bestiality. It’s one more example of Bible trashing.
They’re coming out of the closet to declare that the Biblical truth of human dominion over the creatures is tantamount to slavery. It is Biblically based “oppression” that must be abolished; if you believe that dominion stuff, you’re on the wrong side of history.
Animals must be elevated and humans brought down. The result will be “justice” and “equality.”
If we’re all equal, then their logic naturally follows that inter-species sex is ok, as long as it’s “consensual” and nobody gets hurt. Same as pedophilia.
Animals really want sex with people. Animals, in fact, often initiate it (just like children do.)
So say the underground publications of these freaks.
Seriously. That’s where this is going.
Nothing funny about it.
The natural environment is being destroyed by governments fighting wars. Millions of animals are dieng and this clown could care less. We keep pets to keep the animals safe from the government sociopaths.
Next up: animal reparations.