He is? Is this the quote that launched a thousand shits?
He clearly states that it has not yet become a sufficient reason for him to adjust his diet.
He clearly focuses on his concerns for beef, not any other meat.
He clearly does not claim that he would give up other meats simply because of the risks he associates with British beef.
Now, there are areas which the quote leaves unclear: which of the varied common uses of “vegetarian” did he mean? Did he feel other elements of the British livestock industry were also suspect for risky feeds and supplements? Was his disgust so deep that it colored other livestock at a purely emotional level, rather than as an element of risk analysis? Perhaps clarity on those issues might help you in your intense desire to brand a behavior which he has not taken as irrational. Perhaps not. It has been 4 pages since that quote, and it might be a little late to shift your attack away from your faulty understanding of risk assessment and onto the question of whether perceived risk in one industry justifies caution when dealing with related industries.
Too bad. If it was chicken pucky we could apparently turn it into cattle fee.
spoke
Was the post in which I explained why simple assessment of risk was insufficient to declare a reaction irrational invisible to you, too? I really need to have a mod look into this. It is frustrating to find one’s words have vanished into Doperspace. If I really must make it clear:
No, I am not cribbing from Pascal’s flawed wager, but at least Pascal understood that risk cannot be evaluated without consequence. (He failed, however, to include cost. That is one of the classic flaws in his formulation.)
I am also not arguing that a risk analysis for British beef would create any unequivocal result for the general population.
I am also not claiming that eating beef is the “normal” position, which your formulation of “my” wager would require. (Interesting how those little assumptions come to light, isn’t it?)
Anthracite
I don’t see how you can take that position without asserting that all fundamental differences are sufficient to justify causing unnecessary suffering. I think that pldennison’s formulation of Singer’s maxim is quite precise. Read it again. It both asserts that there is a difference between humans and other animals and make an ethical claim about the consequences of that difference.
Only by defining “fundamental difference” in terms of that same ethical consequence can the statement be made ambiguous with respect to jab1’s claim.
Lie! Lie! Lie! This is what I’m talking about with that holier-than-thou attitude.
When I say “no longer a humorous rant” that obviously implies that at one time it was. Since you claim to have thought “precisely that” at the OP, and that was the original post, it is impossible that you could have thought that it was “no longer” humorous. That was the first post and there was no previous one.
Nah, I just figured that when you started off by calling people smug, ignorant, naive, stupid flakes, the thread had nowhere to go but down. Whether you posted in jest or in earnest was not relevant. No prescience there – just common sense.
I called pldennison discourteous, lacking balls, dumb piece of shit, willfully blind, idiot, (twice) and utter fool.
Nowhere did I call him a liar. I mistakenly remembered him saying he is willing to kill people but not animals. I do not see how that can be construed as accusing him of lying. In pld’s response, he called me a liar repeatedly:
Here is what I ACTUALLY said on the other thread you referred to:
Please note that I said “murderers” and not “killers”.
Geez, you’re so dumb, you think I’m a woman. Also, folks, please note that he said fundamentalist Christianity is a stupid belief. Thank you.
No, you made the unproven assertion. You go first. Maybe you could list the stupid beliefs of such people as Stephen Hawking or Cecil Adams or David B or…
You get the idea.
I still want an apology for this. But I checked your profile and you have not been here since yesterday at 12:46 PM PDT, so you have yet to see this message.