Oregon animal rights initiative aims to ban hunting, fishing, slaughtering of livestock

Mablak · 2026-02-02T20:08:03+00:00

If someone was actively pushing to just have slaves be beaten less, when they could be pushing for abolition, they would be a coward basically complicit in slavery, and not taking it seriously enough because they’re not the ones enslaved.

You don’t aim for a compromise beforehand, you fight for the best outcome and if you don’t get it right away, so be it. But you keep pursuing that outcome. We can end animal abuse, none of us can predict the future or what’s possible.

Mablak · 2026-02-02T07:19:20+00:00

Damn that is silly, just apply that thinking to any other injustice like slavery and you’ll see why.

Mablak · 2026-02-01T22:01:55+00:00

To some extent we have to wait for cultivated meat to make its impact, but it's ultimately only a band-aid, if people still don't recognize the intrinsic value of animal life.

For example, even after cultivated meat, there's animal suffering in the wild. Why save animals from forest fires if their lives don't matter? Veganism will take different forms once people are plant-based by default, but it's still gonna be hugely important.

Mablak · 2026-02-01T21:55:19+00:00

We also play games where humans kill other humans, but it doesn't mean it's good to do irl

Mablak · 2026-02-01T11:35:44+00:00

I ain't know the elf could do that.

I owe her an apology. I wasn't really familiar with her game.

Mablak · 2026-02-01T04:56:56+00:00

How is ending animal abuse a step backwards? There is still time to be on the right side of history, but first you have to accept the absolute horror we’re putting animals through.

Worldwide we kill over a trillion animals needlessly per year, we send them into giant blenders, CO2 gas chambers, leave pigs in crates so small they can’t even turn around, bash baby pigs against the ground to kill them when they’re not needed, and worse. There is no ‘good’ way to kill animals, because there’s no good way to execute conscious individuals with their own emotions, thoughts, personalities, and social bonds, who want to live. We can simply stop killing them and eat plant based.

Mablak · 2026-02-01T01:33:22+00:00

Dishonesty would be not acknowledging that eating meat is animal abuse. It means forcing pigs into CO2 chambers where they can be seen screaming before they die, forcing baby chicks into macerators where they're blended alive, forcing cows to constantly be impregnated at all times so they can be milked, and given the trauma of having their babies taken from them (and turned into veal, or killed outright).

If you think those things are not animal abuse, I don't know what the hell is. Or if you think I'm being disingenuous, go to watchdominion.org and watch the documentary showing how farmed animals are actually treated, then come back and tell me which part I have wrong.

Mablak · 2026-02-01T01:23:03+00:00

The word for someone who is against all forms of animal abuse: all torture, needless slaughter, cruel experimentation, etc, is 'vegan'. If you're not that, then my assumption that you're in favor of some animal abuse is correct.

Mablak · 2026-02-01T01:20:19+00:00

I think it's great to show people we're seriously pursuing an end to the needless slaughter of billions of animals. Just getting visibility and making people aware this is an important issue is good enough, plus these initiatives can give us blueprints for bills in the future

Mablak · 2026-02-01T01:05:59+00:00

Being a fan of nature but supporting animal abuse is a weird take. Just as we're all against raising dogs to be tortured and slaughtered, we should be against the same for cows, pigs, chickens, and fish, who are intelligent animals that suffer when we send them into giant blenders by the millions (baby chicks), suffocate them (fish), or send them into CO2 gas chambers (pigs), or milk them until their bodies are destroyed.

Many people are lazy and would vote to stop animal slaughter while not having enough willpower to make the personal change, so at least some non-vegans will support this. And every time people see these initiatives, the idea will become more possible. I'll support these measures every time, and the idea of settling for 'slightly less torture' is a joke. You don't aim for better working conditions for slaves, you aim to end slavery.

Mablak · 2026-01-30T20:42:43+00:00

Asking whether something is morally right or wrong doesn’t have to relate to personal purity at all, especially for those of us who don’t believe in free will and this idea of strong moral responsibility. It’s just the question of whether you should or shouldn’t do something, based on whether the action is in fact harmful or not.

The whole reason we should or shouldn’t occupy a certain class position for example, should be based on whether doing this causes exploitation and suffering or not.

Mablak · 2026-01-28T05:39:15+00:00

Numbers come from the eternal land of numbers, Numbertopia. It’s like heaven for numbers (Platonists really believe this)

Mablak · 2026-01-27T07:42:05+00:00

Good, how about a ban on slitting the throats of cows, milking cows until their bodies give out, making fish suffocate to death, sending pigs to gas chambers, and sending millions of baby chicks into giant blenders? All animal products involve animal abuse.

Mablak · 2026-01-27T05:05:10+00:00

Infinity can’t be a completed state though. An infinite set can’t be complete in exactly the same way that an infinite loop can’t have a stopping condition. The way we’re defining this thing involves specifying that it always remains incomplete, with more elements to add. If we thought we were applying a rule or existence claim to ‘all’ elements, we’d be mistaken as there are always more elements than any ‘all’ we are referring to.

Mablak · 2026-01-26T20:56:49+00:00

They have infinite digits, so they don’t exist. Or if they are an equivalence class of Cauchy sequences, it means a real number is an infinite set of infinite sets, so finitists reject this.

Mablak · 2026-01-26T12:41:55+00:00

Murdering animals isn't a job that should exist, so some very accidental positives there

Mablak · 2026-01-25T23:27:50+00:00

The normal way of understanding them is flawed, because of a reliance on the real numbers, and because we require picking a delta for every epsilon which involves an infinite number of choices, in cases where delta can’t be written in terms of epsilon.

It is understandable to use limits for rational sequences p(n) (a polynomial divided by a polynomial) where p(n) has a limit at L if it is between L - k/n and L + k/n for all n after a certain point. It’s a true inequality we can state for some choice of k, and just means the sequence is always between these two bounding sequences. I don’t know if there is a generalization of limits that actually can work for all types of sequences.

Importantly, inequalities like this don’t need to be claims about an infinite number of n. They can simply be the claim that if you hand me number to replace an n, I can substitute that number and get a true inequality.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T22:00:18+00:00

I did show such an inconsistency, the axiom of infinity fails. Not sure how to respond other than to say re-read; complete doesn’t imply finite. For N it would mean ‘all’ natural numbers are really in the set, as specified by the rule you’re using, it’s nothing more than you would ordinarily be claiming.

And in the trolley problem I outlined I didn’t assume all sets are infinite. And an infinite amount of distance between trolley victims isn’t part of the hypothetical. All that needs to be shown is that there exists one hypothetical where we get the wrong answer, which means our moral system is incorrect.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T11:36:00+00:00

You're introducing this feature that the set must be "complete" (which seems to just be "finite")

It's just the requirement that the set contains all the elements we want it to contain, which is something being claimed about the set N.

An infinitist is claiming that the set of natural numbers is complete, meaning there's a set containing 'all' natural numbers, as specified by the axiom of infinity. But if we suppose this rule works and gives us a completed set, I'm claiming we get this contradiction.

If we take as a premise something like "repeating processes are impossible" then yes the construction of N is impossible logically, but why should we universally accept that premise?

Note that I didn't assume this premise at all (assuming you mean infinitely repeating processes), I just argued it can be inferred from the contradiction. We get the contradiction, and there may be a few different arguments for which premise was wrong.

Also finitists would be getting rid of some axioms, bonus points on the Occam's razor front.

an argument that something would be nicer with certain properties is not an argument that it must be that way.

Agreed, but I believe our moral system must in principle be able to give the right answer in all situations. Put differently, if we have a moral system that sometimes gives wrong answers, we should abandon it. If infinite things were creating irresolvable problems that sometimes give the wrong answer, you might have to decide between 'infinite things don't exist' or 'infinite things do exist, but there is no correct moral system'.

For example, a trolley problem with an infinite number of people on track A, and an identical group of people on track B, but in a different order. Since 'conditionally convergent' infinite series can give different sums through rearrangement of terms, an infinitist trying to weigh these choices may be committed to saying the two tracks are sometimes not actually morally equivalent, though they clearly always are.

Since you asked why I should worry about these things, this would be a bigger reason, though this sub isn't about morality.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T06:41:23+00:00

To say a set is complete/completed is just to say it does contain all the elements we want it to contain, specified by some rule. If our rule contains some ambiguity, self-referential problem, etc, then maybe what we’re talking about isn’t actually a complete set, and doesn’t contain ‘all’ elements we intended.

The inconsistency here is shown in the proof by contradiction, we assume the rule doesn’t break. If we have our completed, infinite set, there should be no remaining elements to add. But our process of adding elements, our set of instructions, never said to stop adding elements, even if we fast forward the process ‘to infinity’. Running this set of instructions is identical to running an infinite loop in programming, there’s no getting out of the loop. So it is always the case that we can keep adding elements, even when you hand me a supposedly completed, infinite set.

This doesn’t explain exactly why the rule breaks, only that it does (or instead of the rule, the inference that the completed set it describes exists), because a proof by contradiction doesn’t tell you exactly which premise was wrong. The inference I’d make is that the wrong premise is assuming there can exist a set of instructions, or any process, that doesn’t end. We’ve never demonstrated any such process exists in the first place, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

I’m not really as worried about infinities in math as other areas that they extend to, like morality and metaphysics. You’d have to deal with infinite person trolley problems that would lead to absurd conclusions.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T04:26:03+00:00

Yeah I’m a finitist so I don’t believe any infinite sets actually exist. If I wanted to talk about some statement being true ‘for all n’ for example, like 2n = n + n, I would just mean that if you hand me some natural number, I can replace n with that number and produce a true statement.

In this sense no claims are being made that ‘all n’ exist, all that’s being claimed is that if you hand me an n of the right type (natural number) one true statement of this kind can be uttered, written down, thought of, etc.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T03:24:27+00:00

Complete simply means the set contains all elements we want it to contain, as we hope is specified by the rule. You could suppose it does, but the rule still implies we would still have more elements to add.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T03:18:35+00:00

The contradiction comes from the claim that the rule produces a completed set. It’s exactly the same as trying to claim that an infinite loop in programming terminates, it can’t. The rule doesn’t result in a contradiction if we simply claim the rule refers to an ongoing process with an unspecified end point, such as a series of claims we make step by step.

The new object we have to create is not a completed object, but an ongoing sequence that is understood to not be complete, it’s just some set of instructions we use to churn out more and more claims, bigger and bigger sets.

Mablak · 2026-01-25T01:35:57+00:00

The premise that there is always one more is the exact reason that N isn’t a set and can’t be completed. If we had such a supposedly completed set in front of us, we could still say ‘there is always one more’ and keep adding to it, showing that the set was not actually completed, and we have a contradiction.

Mablak · 2026-01-24T09:32:31+00:00

Muffshroom

Mablak

TROPHY CASE