James

Sorry, I should have explained myself more clearly. Well yes, that's what all the nonsense about murdering homeless people was in reference to. I would say, though, that although I don't necessarily believe in some mysterious fundamental separation between us and the other animals, I do believe that the degree of consciousness a creature has falls on a scale, and the moral weight of extinguishing a consciousness depends on where it lies on the scale. I don't care a jot about some ants getting squashed, and I think it's probably worse for a chimpanzee to die than a mouse. Of course, the danger of this is that it could imply that the more intelligent a person is, the more they "matter" in moral matters, and conversely, those with some sort of mental impairment are somehow less valuable. These ideas are very distasteful and unpleasant, but is this for a justifiable reason, or simply because of the values instilled in us by our upbringing? I think one can make a reasonable argument that not all lives are "on the same level". Do you care as much about an gnat as a cow? Perhaps you do. I don't know if it's just a matter of being able to relate more to mammals? Me neither, I expect. Maybe it needs to be less almost and more instantaneous? And how exactly does one multiply pain by time? It's always difficult to quantify these sorts of things. Still, I think I'd rather have a moment of extreme pain than an extended period of lesser pain. Or are you referring to the stressful experience of being in the slaughterhouse, separate than the pain? I was intending to address this when I specified that the animal be spared both physical and psychological pain. I saw a programme about a woman who helped design slaughterhouses, and was talking about how she deliberately engineered things such that the cattle (supposedly) had minimal exposure to their surroundings, and were intended to be unaware of what was going on until the moment itself.

I am pretty awesome, aren't I? I'll have you know my willy is a bona-fide genius. Again, speak for yourself. OH I KID. In all seriousness, this is the first forum I've encountered in ages that I had any real inclination to stick to. It's small enough to keep track of and interesting enough to be worth doing so for. Yes. Small and interesting. I'm the king of praise.

I personally am glad I was alerted to the joy of jazzy sliders.

That's not what I meant at all. What I meant was that, if it could be engineered such that an animal could be slaughtered without any pain (including psychological pain, and including the time before the actual act), given that I, as an atheist, don't believe in any sort of eternal essence of a living being -- that the being that was once there, is there no longer -- no suffering has been produced. Death would have to be instantaneous, of course (unless you were going to mess around with drugs or something), but I don't think this is an impossibility. I don't know how animal slaughter is done at the moment, but swift-and-decisive application of metal to the brain should do the trick, I would have thought. Whilst I don't presume to know in any significant detail what the conscious or semi-conscious experience of an animal is like, but I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination at all to suppose that some animals feel pain. What I was stating, rather, was that if this pain could be avoided, so too could the problem. Possibly.

Is it even possible to accurately empathise with another species? What is it like to be a bat?

FIX YOUR REALITY: INJECT VIDEO GAMES INTO YOUR SKULL

The problem with the apostrophe is that it's over-worked. If anything, we should have a second apostrophe. I've read that the apostrophe's use to denote possession has its roots in the misconception that "Bill's dog" is short for "Bill, his dog" or something. Hence, it was originally understood to be just another indication of omission. I think it's helpful to have something that distinguishes possession from plurality, but I also think it'd be helpful to have something that distinguished possession from abbreviation. Theoretically we could have another mark, or, perhaps better, we could have a different suffix for one or the other, making the distinction obvious in speech as well. If, for example, plurals had the suffix "-en", things would be clearer. Of course, this will probably never happen, and certainly not any time soon, so we'll have to make do with the system we have. Ultimately, we could probably get used to any functional writing system, given sufficient time and exposure to it. We become accustomed and attached to a particular form of English, but in another situation it would have been another form. Different writing systems do have different implications, not only for the process of learning, but also for the mode of thinking they foster. At least, they do if Proust and the Squid is to be trusted, which I'm reading at the moment. Tangent: I keep relying on the same few words and phrases. I'm forever saying "ultimately" and "on the other hand" and "anyway" and "of course" and "or something" and so on. It's a struggle to keep things from becoming irredeemably repetitious. So if notice any of that, I know about it.

No, sorry, I wasn't accusing you of being inconsistent. I was accusing myself and the species as a whole of being inconsistent. You know, with all the picking favourites stuff. So we're both doing a poor job of explaining ourselves. Fantastic.

Oh yeah, the challenge rooms in Bionic Commando kind of fucked my vision up for a while after I stopped. I spent a day of playing those and doing very little else. That's a good way to feel worthless in at least two ways. But the scrolling backgrounds made it seem like the whole world was sliding past my eyes. My friend John got obsessed with playing Tetris on his phone once. I was talking to him in a pub garden, and he seemed distant. He was peering over my shoulder. Eventually he explained that he really wanted a T block so that he could slot it between the roofs of the two buildings over the road. I find it's often puzzle games or games with simple repetitive graphics that leave a lasting impression on the mind or the eyes in that sense. On the other hand, my sister, who doesn't play games much, got really into Mario 64, and told me that while walking down the corridors at school she felt as though she could duck and then launch into a long jump in order to get down there quicker, and actually had to restrain herself from jumping on our cats' heads.

You don't have to be correct to be poetic; merely mindful of and creative with language. I have a bit of a history of linguistic pedantry, but I try to restrict it to myself these days, if only because it's particularly embarrassing to have your own errors pointed out after harassing people for so long about theirs. I find the way prints things like "2million" without a space quite jarring, though, I must admit.

Ultrabooks

But if you understand that your concern for the well-being of animals is just an over-extension of the desire to preserve the safety of our fellow humans, and wish to apply intelligence to finding methods for improving the lot of the animals we're responsible for, why is that any more stupid than finding ingenious ways to escape danger? I guess the very fact that I called it an over-extension suggests that I'm making some sort of judgement about its sensibility, but as I said above, all goals are ultimately our own creation, so I don't see why I should approve any less of the desire to avoid unnecessary animal misery than the desire to avoid unnecessary human misery (as long as I also consider human misery, of course). Like I said above, my main problem is when we're inconsistent about things, and I'll readily admit that I'm just as inconsistent as the next man.

Electronic pretending

I guess my point is that while the "desire" of a species to survive (a species of any sort of age, at least) is undeniable and unavoidable, this does not necessarily transfer to the individual. It's a matter of selfish creature versus selfish gene, I suppose. Well, kind of. I don't know. But yes, I would say that it's a description of fact rather than a prescription of what is "good".

To-day I call them "video games", but tomorrow I might call them "video games". To never will I call them "video-games", though. HAR HAR APPALLING JOKE. Actually, I tend to call them "computer games", because I always feel like I'm trying (and failing) to sound American if I call them "video games". But somehow "computer games" seems slightly more pathetic. OH GOD TOO MANY QUOTE MARKS. These things are forever changing, so "correctness" eventually just comes down to a combination of convention and personal preference, I guess. Which isn't to say that there is no such thing as correct and incorrect English; simply that the grey area of stuff that doesn't fall definitively into either category is quite enormous. "Computergames" will never be right, though.

Who says the good of the species has to be our only conscious goal? You could say that, as far as the individual is concerned, there is no point in perpetuating the species, so why would it be so smart to act in a manner conducive to that? As for being motivated by feelings, I'm not really sure it can be any other way. You can apply more logic to your considerations, but ultimately you must have an aim, and I don't think logic can generate one of those. You can aim to prolong the species because you feel affection and kinship to it, or you can aim to prolong your own life because you feel fear of pain and death, or you can aim to eat an awful lot because it feels good at the time, and you fail to consider how rotten you will feel afterwards, but ultimately it all comes down to some sort of goal, and I don't think anything has intrinsic desirability: all desire exists in the mind of the desirer. It sounds obvious, but I think it needs saying. I don't hold much truck with this logic-over-all stuff. Yes, a lot of us could do with taking a more logical and reasoned approach to life, but logic alone can't really give us anything. So while it may serve no evolutionary purpose, some of us do have a feeling of affection or empathy with animals, and I personally don't think it's any worse than any of the other feelings we experience. My main problem with it is that it's often inconsistent. Why do I like cats and dogs on the one hand, and eat cows and sheep on the other? I suppose both are indulgences, in a way.

You're not wrong. It's one of my favourite things on telly. You put "#t=XmXXs" at the end of the URL, where X and XX are substituted for the number of minutes and number of seconds. It, uh, "snaps" to the nearest, well, you know when you're skipping through a video and it will only let you skip to certain bits? You can only start a clip at those.

I can definitely support ethical treatment of animals, or whatever you'd like to call it, but I think it's important to realize the implications of the things we're promoting. If giving animals a better life means changing the way that we consume them, we need to be aware of and discuss this. Also, whether or not eating meat is natural for us does not necessarily have any bearing on whether it's acceptable or good. As you said yourself, we're clever creatures. We could work out a way to do without (and many do). It's also natural for us to live in caves and kill each other, but we've risen above one and make half-hearted attempts at avoiding the other. This may or may not be an example of the naturalistic fallacy. Actually, it looks like "Appeal to nature" would be a less ambiguous term. I'm not saying it's impossible to justify meat-eating, but I don't think the fact that we're physiologically suited to it is particularly compelling. Anyway, I like to follow my stupid thoughts to wherever they take me.

The bit about the Prince of Persia's awful storytelling skills had me stifling hysterics. Unless that's a contradiction, in which case I was just stifling enthusiastic laughter. Wait, that's not how it happened. What I actually said was much more witty. On the subject of the new Prince of Persia, my problem with it is not the difficulty (lack thereof) or the rescue mechanic in particular, but rather the larger feeling of distance from the character and the world he's in. At the risk of being another tit going on about "immersion", I didn't find myself at all invested in the whole experience. Of course, the lack of consequence for any of my actions played into this: if death becomes meaningless, staying alive is similarly less meaningful (like the end of another game I'll try to avoid spoiling, but maybe I already have), but the whole game seemed to have very little interest in getting me involved. The first thing I noticed, and for me the biggest problem, is the environment. It just doesn't make any sense. You could accuse a lot of games of being a sequence of gameplay scenarios with a thin veneer of fictional context thrown over them, but Prince of Persia has passed out of the fairly generous reaches of my suspension of disbelief. Apart from being made from fitting materials, the whole place, other than the occasional pillar or balustrade is just a bunch of meaningless shapes and jump pads. Coupled with the ubiquitous metal hoops and the scratch marks mentioned on the podcast, you're left with a series of very loosely themed obstacle courses. I'm OK fantasy settings, as long as there's some sort of coherent fiction to it. I thought the scenery in the distance was pretty cool. I'm fine with the platforms suspended by balloons and the huge towers balancing on impossibly thin spires of rock; the problem emerges once you get close to things. Sure, the castle in Sands of Time was pretty ridiculous, with all its traps and levers, but at least I could imagine some sort of purpose to some of the stuff. In the new game it all just seems abstract. It felt empty, but not for the lack of enemies. I guess I'd have to call it a soulless environment. I suppose the original Prince of Persia was an unrepentant of collection of platforms and traps, but I think the standards I hold 2D games to must be different than those for 3D games. By analogy, I'm totally OK with Sonic running through loop-the-loops and weird geometric-yet-grassy scenery in 2D, but as soon as you put it in 3D it all seems ridiculous (which isn't to say that realism is a better route for the Sonic games to take by any means). I guess I just think about the two formats differently. As for the gameplay itself, it wasn't so much the easiness as the lack of control that bothered me. On arriving at a juncture, the player takes a quick look around, sees the two or three obvious paths that can be taken, picks one, and from then on pretty much just has to press buttons to keep the prince moving along a pre-defined path. I've heard it being compared to a rhythm game on a couple of occasions, but the window for each button press is far too broad for it to even be that. Which isn't to say that I didn't "die" a lot, but the fact that I did is probably at least as much to do with the fact that nothing in the game really mattered to me as much as anything else. And it's also not to say that I'd rather the game was punishing with its timing; the opposite, in fact. One of the things that was great about the original Prince of Persia was that it operated according to a visible grid, and that after a bit of playing you learnt how far the prince could jump from a standstill, or from a running start, and whether he would land on his feet or grab the ledge with his hands, and as long as you pressed jump within the last square or two before an edge, he would wait until the last second before jumping. The game helped you do things more skilled and impressive-looking than you might otherwise have managed, but it was still you in the driver's seat. In the new game, you pretty much just pick a direction and say "go". I don't really feel like I'm in much control at all. It's like the prince is doing his thing, and I'm shouting "Jump! Grab that ring! Slide down that wall! Don't fall to your death!" from the sidelines, putting me one step further removed from what's actually going on. I, too, would like to enter a room, survey its contents, and work out what I need to do to get where. Also, it might just be me, but the prince seemed to be a little bit too capable, probably because of his claw. While I can't deny the coolness of being able to run along ceilings (something which I think would be a very cool once-or-twice moment in a better game), his ability to jump indefinitely between wall-runs and slide down walls for as long as he liked seemed like too much. I was OK with using banners to descend, so I don't know if it's a matter of realism or constraint or what. It may even be the timing. When I first did a wall-run in the new game, it felt all wrong. I got used to it, but it never had the sense that all that was carrying the prince was pure momentum, and that he might fall down at any moment. The next point wasn't a particularly major deal to me, because I'm used to the writing in games ranging from bad to bizarre, but the pair's banter does a good job at deflating any sense of grandeur or mystery the game might have been trying to develop. I thought I had more to say, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment, so that'll have to be the end of my thrilling rant. Despite all this, I didn't hate the game. I took the time to finish it. I just didn't feel much at all about the whole experience. I may also be romanticizing the older games. Still, I think the essence of what I've said stands. I'd also like to say that hunting for light seeds was one of the better parts of the game for me. It encouraged exploration, and occasionally a small amount of deviation from the very obvious tracks set out for you. Sorry, that was a bit long. Should it have gone in another thread?

Sorry, it wasn't meant as a direct response to what you said; it merely reminded me of something I'd been meaning to say, but forgot about.

Oh, this reminds me of something I forgot to include in my first post: If you are considering the potential life you are denying an animal when you kill it, you also have to consider all other potentials which you are denying by your action or inaction. So if you're not reproducing like a rabbit, you're denying numerous potential humans life. You could say that their quality of life wouldn't be very good, but if that's good enough reason to deny them life, you're basically saying that people with poor quality of life would be better-off dead. In short, when you think about stuff too much it all turns to absurd bullshit. You can, of course, draw a distinction between the consequences of your action and the consequences of your inaction, but I think it's an interesting consideration, nonetheless. If you want to be particularly cynical, you could say that vegetarians are more concerned with keeping their own hands philosophically clean than with the plight of animals. That, of course, would be both unkind and unfair. I guess it's an example of humanity's propensity for sentimentality. We care about things within a particular context, but put other contexts out of our mind. To a certain extent, this is inevitable. The universe has no inclination towards fairness, and allowing ourselves to become concerned with everything that's wrong would probably reduce us to sobbing wrecks. Returning to the fondness for "nature" that we have, the harshness of life in the wild can be reconciled with vegetarianism by defining the goal as being to make minimal impact on the "natural order of things". Of course, the natural order of things is for humans to eat meat, but whatever. I've thought on occasion about whether a world without carnivores or omnivores would be morally preferable. Not that you can hold animals morally responsible for their actions, but if we were able to choose between that and what we have now, would it be the right choice? Would it even be possible? I don't see why not, other than having to somehow prevent carnivores emerging through evolution.

Yeah, I think you're right, it's probably just the seal of approval. Remember that traffic lights thing that was in the news for a while, for how healthy stuff was or whatever? They should just extend that to a more general GOOD/BAD scale, and slap it on everything. And we should take all the GOOD things and grind them into a mush and funnel it into our mouths, and take all the BAD stuff and drop it in a volcano. What?

I think the Soil Association grants things the label "organic" in the UK. And apparently they're very rigorous about it, too. The company I work for started selling leather goods produced by the only organic tannery (according to the UK Soil Association's definition) in the world (or so I'm told). There's only one because every stage of the process is regulated, and the end result is pretty expensive. But hey, you're safe from chemicals and robots.

Fuck organic, I want robots in my cereal.

I'll admit that I skipped through most of this, but I did notice that the program has a "jazzy" slider. My life needs a jazzy slider. Wait, that sounds like a euphemism.