"The Rational Vegan" is anything but rational

[EquALLity]

Since when?

You've said very favorable things about it and implied you are one.

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... hist#p6663
"Feminism plays a key role in achieving an anarchist society"

Why would you say that if you aren't an anarchist? That topic wasn't about anarchism.

I just said it because it made sense..

I don't really see how that makes sense, but ok.

It's like if on a non-political topic about veganism, I said, "Veganism is essential to liberalism", and then said I'm not a liberal.

[Red]

You've said very favorable things about it and implied you are one.

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... hist#p6663
"Feminism plays a key role in achieving an anarchist society"

Why would you say that if you aren't an anarchist? That topic wasn't about anarchism.

I just said it because it made sense..

I don't really see how that makes sense, but ok.

It's like if on a non-political topic about veganism, I said, "Veganism is essential to liberalism", and then said I'm not a liberal.

Well I guess that's implied.

[EquALLity]

I just said it because it made sense..

I don't really see how that makes sense, but ok.

It's like if on a non-political topic about veganism, I said, "Veganism is essential to liberalism", and then said I'm not a liberal.

Well I guess that's implied.

Implied that I'm liberal in that situation?
Yeah, and it's implied you're an anarchist when you randomly say something is necessary for anarchism.

If you're not an anarchist though, never mind. I just don't see why you said that though.

[brimstoneSalad]

Brimstone, I've read that you try to stay out of politics multiple times. Why?

It's based on weak evidence, and usually evidence from the "social sciences" which are soft sciences at best, and very often not science at all:

Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instance, by combining the quantitative and qualitative techniques).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science

And politics in general leans on rhetoric more so than anything else, which shuts down critical thinking -- possibly even more so than religion today.

[Jebus]

The problem is that dogmatism/pseudoscience/etc. are so prevalent in veganism, and that it makes veganism look crazy to potential future vegans.

Every team has it's weak players. My point is that vegans as a whole probably have fewer weaker players than most other groups you can think of.

Our weak players are generally those who became and remained vegan because of feelings rather than intellectual reasoning. It would be nice if they shut up and let the rest of us do the talking but that's never going to happen.

[brimstoneSalad]

Every team has it's weak players. My point is that vegans as a whole probably have fewer weaker players than most other groups you can think of.

I think the issue is correlation with conspiracy theories, etc. which is a common delusion for those with higher IQ.

The tendency is to reject mainstream authority, and see patterns others don't (like animal abuse), but then go further to see patterns that aren't even there (bizarre conspiracies).

[Jebus]

I think the issue is correlation with conspiracy theories, etc. which is a common delusion for those with higher IQ.

This sounds very strange. Do you know of any research that backs that up. I would suspect the opposite, namely that people who score low on the analytical aspect of intelligence are more receptive to believe in common conspiracy theories.

[brimstoneSalad]

I would suspect the opposite, namely that people who score low on the analytical aspect of intelligence are more receptive to believe in common conspiracy theories.

I'm not sure if enough research has been done on the types of intelligence involved. I can't find anything good.

Creativity and forming rationalizations and finding patterns seem to be important, however, I'm also sampling from the most vocal advocates of conspiracy theorists so I'm presented with a sampling bias in my own experiences (it could be that the average follower who has been duped by them has a low IQ, and doesn't really think about it much, but these are not the people I've conversed with).
I think it maps similarly with religious Apologists, who themselves tend to be more intelligent than the rest of the flock.

This was kind of interesting, but didn't tell me much: http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... theorists/

[Mr. Purple]

If we found a better system with smaller scale experimentation, we could support its application to larger systems experimentally, then larger ones if those were successful.

It's all well and good to hypothesize. Hypothetically, something like a meritocratic communism may be the best system, but in practice this fails due to corruption and human nature. If it doesn't work, it's not a system we can yet hold up as functional.

Have you looked into Mondragon Coops? Libertarian Socialist\Social Anarchist ideas like democratic worker owned coops seem like the best next step for transitioning out of capitalism. The fact they are doing as well as they are within a surrounding capitalist structure seems impressive.

Worker owned coops like this are running a business closer to the way I think we should run our government, Democratically and with humans as the central concern rather than money. Everyone has a vote in who is hired and put into various positions (or a council of people are elected for this). Direct democracy may be prone to more errors, but it avoids corruption which to me is the much bigger issue.

[brimstoneSalad]

Everyone has a vote in who is hired and put into various positions (or a council of people are elected for this).

This is basically how it works now with a representative democracy.

Direct democracy may be prone to more errors, but it avoids corruption which to me is the much bigger issue.

We may have the technology to start experimenting with more direct democracy on larger scales, but the problem is that with an increase in the population, and broadening of the application, comes a certain insurmountable ignorance.

Democracy works best wherein all of the people are well informed on what they are voting, like in a small company where all of the workers are familiar with all jobs and aspects of operation. This doesn't scale to an entire society, where there's more to be known and understood than most people are capable of or have time for.

Ignorance is the Achilles heel of direct democracy, where corruption is the ultimate flaw in representation. Unfortunately, they both scale with scope of application.

There are some revolutionary ideas, like legislation by jury, where a random selection of citizens are educated on a particular topic over weeks, and then decide. In theory, this overcomes both ignorance (since it's actually possible to educate them on a limited subject) and corruption (since they can be temporarily sequestered). However, there still remains the question of who does the educating. If the citizens are to seek out their own knowledge, then it's no longer immune to corruption because they can't be sequestered.

No system presents without problems, and the only way we can know what works best in practice at the scales we're talking about is to test them.