[quote]Socrastein wrote:
As for the relationship between how many people treat children and my point on the majority of farms not prioritizing ethical treatment of their animals, I thought it was a pretty clear and simple point. You quoted the relevant text so I think it would be unnecessary to repeat it.
Perhaps I can phrase it more succinctly: if most people still don’t have a problem hitting human children, they probably don’t have a problem hurting livestock. You can clearly see this is not an anecdotal claim but merely an observation and extrapolation of how we as a culture treat animals, including the young human animal. [/quote]
Again: How many kids do you raise?
The answer to that question will dictate the way I respond to your “observation”.
No this isn’t a “brewing fallacy” (see you toss your own quips so you can can that as well), it is relevant information that will in fact determine what course my questions and comments take.
It’s known as “poisoning the well”, a popular variant of the ad hominem fallacy (attacking the man). Essentially, rather than address someone’s proposition and attempt to prove or disprove their claim(s), one resorts to attacking features of the person making the claim, as though refuting the person themselves somehow vicariously refutes their claims, which of course is an error in reasoning.
As an example, someone says “Low intensity aerobic exercise isn’t very good for fat loss” and someone responds along the lines of “Oh yeah skinny? Just how much weight have you lost yourself?” as if the experience of the person making the claim has any relevance to the validity of said claim.
If you can’t respond to the statement itself without digging for information to attack about the person making the statement, how can your potential response be anything other than fallacious?
[quote]pushharder wrote:
It’s been my observation the last 10 years I’ve been here on TN that the folks without kids invariably think they know more about raising kids than the ones who actually have had 'em.
It’s uncanny.
Just an observation.[/quote]
To be fair, it can also be said that many people think simply having a child somehow bestows knowledge and understanding of human development without actually having to educate themselves in the matter. If all one needed to understand how to effectively raise a human was to spawn a human, then there would be no such thing as shitty parents… no?
It’s known as “poisoning the well”, a popular variant of the ad hominem fallacy (attacking the man). Essentially, rather than address someone’s proposition and attempt to prove or disprove their claim(s), one resorts to attacking features of the person making the claim, as though refuting the person themselves somehow vicariously refutes their claims, which of course is an error in reasoning.
As an example, someone says “Low intensity aerobic exercise isn’t very good for fat loss” and someone responds along the lines of “Oh yeah skinny? Just how much weight have you lost yourself?” as if the experience of the person making the claim has any relevance to the validity of said claim.
If you can’t respond to the statement itself without digging for information to attack about the person making the statement, how can your potential response be anything other than fallacious? [/quote]
It’s known as “assuming” a popular variant of the Ass of Yourself making. Essentially, rather than address someone’s question and attempt to have a conversation, one resorts to judgmental posts which are themselves badly veiled personal attacks themselves used to avoid the obvious.
I know what a fallacy is, I know what poisoning the well is.
I can’t respond to your statement without knowing how many kids you’ve raised because the answer will, again, determine my responses to you. If you don’t have kids I have to use language and examples that differ from those that I would use if you did. It really is simple.
It is obvious you aren’t going to answer this question, because you pretty much painted yourself into an Ad Verecundiam box earlier in the thread so you’re kind of stuck here. It’s okay, I’ll wait, or come back another day when you’re ready.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
It’s been my observation the last 10 years I’ve been here on TN that the folks without kids invariably think they know more about raising kids than the ones who actually have had 'em.
It’s uncanny.
Just an observation.[/quote]
To be fair, it can also be said that many people think simply having a child somehow bestows knowledge and understanding of human development without actually having to educate themselves in the matter. If all one needed to understand how to effectively raise a human was to spawn a human, then there would be no such thing as shitty parents… no?[/quote]
You are totally missing his point, which leads me to believe the amount of kids you have raised is zero… no?
While I hate to play your game Beans, and I still don’t see the relevance to my point, I have one boy. 7 years old. I’m from Idaho and, well, we start pretty young there. That also means I have a lot of experience with, and observation of, parents hitting their children. Not exactly “vast experience” compared to say, a Catholic 40-something with 9 kids under his belt who is also a child psychologist, but my point wasn’t one that draws from personal experience anyway (as I mentioned).
Now what the fuck does that have to do with the seemingly uncontroversial statement that most farmers don’t give a shit about ethical treatment of their animals given that they can rationalize hitting a child to instill obedience???
If my point is wrong, explain how someone might think it’s okay to smack a defenseless child but would feel obligated to never inflict pain on a chicken. If it’s not wrong, are you just pissed that I implied people who hit their children don’t need to and that it is a shortcoming of our culture that most of us find it acceptable, some even arguing it’s necessary?
The only assumption I’ve made is that farmers think children and their feelings are more important than pigs and their feelings. I don’t think that’s the kind of assumption that puts me in danger of making an ass out of myself.
There is no assumption in saying you’re getting ready to poison the well if you can’t rebut my statement without first gathering personal information about me and bringing it into the discussion. That’s the very essence of the term.
As for arguments from authority, I don’t think having a kid makes ANYONE an authority. Hell having 18 kids doesn’t make someone an authority. Maybe a few hundred years ago, before we had social sciences and numerous studies on children, there was no other type of authority than personal experience. But these days we have research, psychology, evolution, child development, and other fields that anyone can study and learn a great deal about children, including what kind of outcomes various reward/punishment techniques can be expected to have, what kinds of things children do/don’t understand at various ages, what types of behavior young homo sapiens evolved to exhibit, etc. etc.
I don’t think it’s much different than a personal trainer who has worked with 100 clients but might still be an idiot if he doesn’t, you know, read books. If a trainer says back squats on a BOSU ball are great for maximum strength development, I don’t care how much experience he’s drawing from. I’m going to point to research that says he’s an idiot. I happen to be a coach myself, but even if I wasn’t, I would STILL be right, with or without personal experience to draw from.
The truth of a claim is not contingent upon any feature of the person making said claim. I’m shocked out just how often I find myself pointing this out to people.
It’s still culturally acceptable to smack a small child when it misbehaves [/quote]
And then you say this:
[quote]Socrastein wrote:
if most people still don’t have a problem hitting human children, they probably don’t have a problem hurting livestock.
[/quote]
Now it is obvious that physical punishment of a child that is acceptable culturally, and that the vast majority of people don’t have a problem with is relatively minor. A slap across the face, bar of soap in the mouth or a well timed slap of the ass isn’t going to harm even the softest of souls. As a father, you’ve seen how durable and creative a child can be.
But whether or not you think kids should be spanked isn’t what I take exception to in your observation.
What I take exception to is how you can connect the life of a child with that of food. And how, implied in your post, that livestock should be seen on the same level as a child, that an animal is equal to a human. Not only is this absurd but then you go on to equate mild physical punishment, because abuse is not acceptable in any circumstance, to the “hurting” of livestock after a couple posts that read like PETA leaflets.
So in short, your observation is rubbish. One situation has nothing to do with the other, and the two actions have zero causation or correlation what-so-ever.
[quote]Socrastein wrote:
While I hate to play your game Beans, and I still don’t see the relevance to my point, I have one boy. 7 years old. I’m from Idaho and, well, we start pretty young there. That also means I have a lot of experience with, and observation of, parents hitting their children. Not exactly “vast experience” compared to say, a Catholic 40-something with 9 kids under his belt who is also a child psychologist, but my point wasn’t one that draws from personal experience anyway (as I mentioned).
Now what the fuck does that have to do with the seemingly uncontroversial statement that most farmers don’t give a shit about ethical treatment of their animals given that they can rationalize hitting a child to instill obedience???
If my point is wrong, explain how someone might think it’s okay to smack a defenseless child but would feel obligated to never inflict pain on a chicken. If it’s not wrong, are you just pissed that I implied people who hit their children don’t need to and that it is a shortcoming of our culture that most of us find it acceptable, some even arguing it’s necessary?
The only assumption I’ve made is that farmers think children and their feelings are more important than pigs and their feelings. I don’t think that’s the kind of assumption that puts me in danger of making an ass out of myself.
There is no assumption in saying you’re getting ready to poison the well if you can’t rebut my statement without first gathering personal information about me and bringing it into the discussion. That’s the very essence of the term. [/quote]
I understand your point with farmers, but disagree as it pertains to activists. I’ve seen too many high minded idealists get violent with other people to believe that there aren’t people out there who would beat their children but not inflict pain on an animal. In fact, I can think of two people in particular who are ethical vegans but have beaten the shit out of their kids repeatedly and from a young age.
[quote]Socrastein wrote:
The truth of a claim is not contingent upon any feature of the person making said claim. I’m shocked out just how often I find myself pointing this out to people. [/quote]
You can keep saying I’m doing this over and over again, and still won’t be true the 13th time to say, nor will it be true the 100th time you say it.
Also you’ve missed the boat on your own defense. Reading a book in a vacuum, or many books, does not an authority figure make either.
I understand your point with farmers, but disagree as it pertains to activists. I’ve seen too many high minded idealists get violent with other people to believe that there aren’t people out there who would beat their children but not inflict pain on an animal. In fact, I can think of two people in particular who are ethical vegans but have beaten the shit out of their kids repeatedly and from a young age.
[/quote]
Like I said, one has absolutely zero to do with the other.
If my point is wrong, explain how someone might think it’s okay to smack a defenseless child but would feel obligated to never inflict pain on a chicken.[/quote]
Your point is wrong, because one situation has zero to do with the other.
Your point is the equivalent of saying: “Jordan was a great basketball player, so people should golf more.”
Hey look, another assumption, amazes me how often I have to point these out to people.
Um no, you assumed I didn’t know what an Ad Hominem was and felt the need to write, yet another in a long line of patronizing posts.
Holy shit. The fact you have a kid saved me like 3 paragraphs of typing, which after you dodging the question ended up a net zero for me in the long run.
Skyzyk, I don’t disagree that there are plenty of animal rights activists that are nevertheless violent. However I don’t believe the exception makes the rule, and my own observations and what I regard as common sense would suggest that this is the exception. Just as there are no doubt many people who would never hit their child for any reason but might strangle a puppy to death for kicks, but again, these would be outliers.
Countingbeans I didn’t imply that children and animals are equal or deserve equal moral consideration. In fact I explicitly stated that my assumption is that most people regard animals as less deserving of ethical considerations than children.
“The only assumption I’ve made is that farmers think children and their feelings are more important than pigs and their feelings. I don’t think that’s the kind of assumption that puts me in danger of making an ass out of myself.”
If I knew that a farmer was forcibly putting bars of soap in the mouths of their pigs, for instance, I wouldn’t consider that farm to be one that is raising their livestock in a humane manner. Recall that the original context of my statement was related to the idea that most farms treat their animals like crap, and that any farm/farmer that goes out of its way to avoid pain and suffering in its animals is the exception.
As for the idea that striking a child or shoving a bar of nasty chemicals in its mouth by force does no harm, that’s a pretty absurd rationalization and one that I think many authorities on child development would contest. There’s a damn good reason no child psychologist worth a damn would advise a parent to force soap into a child’s mouth against their will as an effective way to curb behavior. I’d love to smack you in the face and then tell you not to retaliate or hold it against me because, you know, no harm done I’m just trying to teach you not to say stupid things and you’ll get over it. Surely you’re aware that a young child doesn’t see the world the way a cognitively developed adult does. They don’t have the capacity to reason “Well that was unpleasant but ultimately it was in my best interest”. If they’re young enough that you’re washing their mouth out with soap, they’re young enough that they don’t reason at all in any meaningful sense. They FEEL. You know what it feels like to have someone forcibly hold your mouth open and pin your hands as you fight to keep from eating a mouth of synthetic chemicals and lipids? It feels awful. It makes you feel completely terrified, and out of control, and insignificant. It makes you feel like making a mistake bears terrible consequences. If your mouth is washed out because you said a “swear word” then it imprints the ridiculous notion that certain strings of syllables have magically offensive properties and must not be uttered onto your young impressionable psyche. That kind of thing sticks with a kid. You’re kidding yourself if you pretend it doesn’t.
I never said that reading books makes someone an authority either. I said a true statement is a true statement, regardless of experience. I said that if science directly and uncontestedly contradicts a claim (unstable surface training for maximum strength development) then I don’t care how much experience the person making the claim has.
You make a hell of a lot of assumptions when attempting to bolster your points.
[quote]Socrastein wrote:
Skyzyk, I don’t disagree that there are plenty of animal rights activists that are nevertheless violent. However I don’t believe the exception makes the rule, and my own observations and what I regard as common sense would suggest that this is the exception. Just as there are no doubt many people who would never hit their child for any reason but might strangle a puppy to death for kicks, but again, these would be outliers.
[/quote]
How many times have you heard of animal rights activists splashing paint on people wearing fur, or breaking into labs that carry out testing on animals and destroying the place? Even in the article posted, the protesters were banging on the windows of the courthouse.
These are all acts of violation, whether of property or person, which are pretty common. I don’t see any great leap at all from those types of acts to direct and outright violence against another person.
As for the ad hom, your totes right that I assumed you didn’t know what it was. I assume the same for everyone, nothing personal. As someone who seems to be versed in logic (even throwing around the latin terms above) you probably know full well that very, very few people know much about even basic fallacies. Wasn’t meant to be offensive, just a “hey you probably don’t know what this is so just in case, please don’t do it” kind of thing.
And your rebuttal, that the two cases of how we treat children and how farmers treat livestock *are different, is a perfectly fine rebuttal whether I have a kid or not. While I’m curious what you would have said if I didn’t have a kid (3 paragraphs?) I still stand by the idea that you can, should, and in fact DID, rebut my point without having to reference any particular fact about my person.