The Post-topic AfterBurn

[denton]

Alliteration
denton
Yes, you'll have to keep it to yourself. Not a secret but private.
And you know? That's actually what SHOULD be done. I'm keeping my kinks private too. So what?
Do you think homosexuality should be considered complitely normal, like wearing the clothes of a colour you want? If THAT's your freedom, I'd vote against.

according to wikipedia and a poll from 2005, 43.5% of russians believe that homosexual acts between consenting adults should be recrimininalized

Never trust internet polls. I believe there's quite a few people who hate gays this much. But I can assure you that 80-90% of society simply doesn't care, as long as it doesnt touch them personally. On the net people are trying to act cool and mighty and manly, I'd heard a lot of statemens like "If my son were a gay I'd shoot him down and fuck the prison" - statements that doesnt have anythyng close to reality. Actually if you visit russia you'd notice that though we have quite enough jerks, our people en masse are far mor calm and tolerable than in US or EU. All I see is that you view rassians as a bunch of barbarians drinking vodka, shooting each other on the streets, doing drugs and with a scarecrow-Putin in the head of it all.

If I have to keep it to myself, then that is not freedom. Freedom also means freedom of expression. And, yes, homosexuality is completely okay in my opinion (I'd rather not use the term normal as it comes with so, so many problems) and if homo-/hetero-/pan-/trans-/whateverelsetheremightbe-sexuals want to have a parade they should be allowed just the same as people who love techno music were allowed to have the love-parade (obviously within the limits of the law).

I assume that the poll was no internet poll, i just mentioned wikipedia because it is shown there, the actual source of the news (though the poll might have been conducted by someone else) is gayrussia.eu, but that is in russian, so I couldn't check that.

And I'm pretty sure many people don't mean everything they say but i still think that there are many, many people who wouldn't support their son/daughter if they were homosexual. That is obviously not limited to people in Russia.

And my views on russia are a lot more complex than that. I spent considerable part of my time as a teenager on parking lots drinking vodka with friends of mine who were born in Russia and whose parents then came to germany in order to work and a pretty good current friend of mine is from Russia as well. They were all lovely people, although on average more conservative than i am. Sadly, i haven't been to Russia yet, but I bet there are many great and friendly people there, but the country is not without its problems, e.g. corruption, the pseudo-democracy etc. That is not a reflection on any individuals living in the country but just the problems I see as an observer with a certain interest in politics etc.

[Nezhul]

Freedom also means freedom of expression.

YES but freedom is also the right to dislike what someone else is expressing. You are FREE to express that you are a gay - you may make a freaking banner and a T-shirt saying you are a gay - you are free. Consequences - are your own though. Noone ever said that you are to expect acception of your views or lifestyle. You are free to express. The point that most of people do not like it and don't agree with you - it THEIR FREEDOM.
Parades won't change people's view. Gays will NEVER convince straight men that fucking another guy is not sick, because for me a thought of fucking a guy is as disgusting as fucking a dog or something. For many straight people homosexuality is almost physically disgusting, that's where such hatred from. You may say it's natural selection. It's not the problem of how you were brought up. It's on gene level (I could develop this thought but wont for now because seems quite self-explanatory to me)

[Human]

Gays will NEVER convince straight men that fucking another guy is not sick, because for me a thought of fucking a guy is as disgusting as fucking a dog or something. For many straight people homosexuality is almost physically disgusting, that's where such hatred from. You may say it's natural selection. It's not the problem of how you were brought up. It's on gene level (I could develop this thought but wont for now because seems quite self-explanatory to me)

Sayz you. I am straight and have no problem with other dudes boning other dudes.

In fact, I love love LOVE lesbian porn. LOVE IT.

If lesbian sex seems so good, how can gay male sex be sick?

[Nezhul]

I am straight and have no problem with other dudes boning other dudes.

I don't too. I didn't say they disgust me themselves. But tell me - would YOU fuck another guy? For a 100$? handsome one. If there's simply no attraction you maybe would. For me - I wouldn't because that's just too disgusting to do.

If lesbian sex seems so good, how can gay male sex be sick?

You don't associate yourself with two girls, you just watch attractive females pleasure each other. Besides as I heard most women are bisexual. Men are the other thing.
Besides, lesbi don't promote themselves that much. They don't do PARADES. There are a few in each, but far less than men. That with a supposedly bigger number of lesbi than gays.
p.s. If eating cows seems so good, how can eating humans be sick? That's the same kind of statement you make.

[Alliteration]

The main reason is sentience. If a cow could express pain, anguish, creativity, rational thought, emotions, then I have absolutely no doubt in the world that it would be come illegal, and morally outrageous to eat them.

Just a nitpick here, cause I'm bored...but I think the word you're looking for is sapience, not sentience. :P

[Alliteration]

Hmm, and as an afterthought, cause I'm really bored...


There's no strong line between human intelligence and the intelligence of other animals...it's more like a gradient. While it may seem that we're far, far more intelligent than our chimpanzee cousins, the difference isn't actually that great; it just seems so because it's enough that we can build on previous experience as well as use language.

Think about that next time you're considering ape or dolphin for dinner.

[Alliteration]

Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, have rational thought, etc ... if an animal were sentient (and could verbalize), I doubt we would find it nearly so acceptable to kill them for food.

I'm not so sure I'm ok with the "standard" definitions, actually - I think the sentience/sapience line should be drawn at sensory input and physical sensations (such as pain). I also think that saying something like "this animal is sapient" doesn't really give us a complete picture of what's going on inside its brain. Instead, we should talk about how sapient it is, compared to us.

While a cow might not be able to recognize impending danger, it can surely feel something like fear while its being attacked. I don't think this is enough to justify vegetarianism, but I do think it's good enough to argue that cattle should be killed quickly and humanely.

That's true ... the primary difference comes in the form of interaction. It's never been argued that some animals display an amazing cognitive ability - but they are unable to actualize any type of conversation, past basic learned responses.

I think there's two problems here. The first is a hypothetical - what if we encountered aliens that, due to vastly different biology, were unable to communicate with us in any way, despite being intelligent?

The second is...I'm pretty sure some animals far surpass learned responses/mimicry. Heck, I've seen a monkey display what appeared to be jealousy in a controlled environment. It was first daily given a choice between two different treats, and responded about equally to each of them. Then, when a second monkey was given treat number 2, monkey number one also picked treat number 2, every time.

I've even heard of some breeds of dogs being able to combine words they know into sentences, and respond accordingly. They'll learn "throw the ball" and "chew the ring", and be able to respond to "chew the ball" or "throw the ring", for example.

[Alliteration]

Okay, addressing things categorically - first - if we deviate from the standard definitions, your arguments become invalid. Your entire basis for argument with Nez is standard definitions of things - you start altering them, and everything goes out of whack. You could redefine sentience any which way you wanted, to suit your own theories/arguments. Time tested, proven definitions work best, because they give us a standard baseline for which to compare ideas.

Ok...I probably should have cleared this up from the beginning of this whole thing, but I didn't as I felt it was a bit off-topic. But now I have to...

First, going to pull up some quotes from my earlier posts:

If "non-kinky" is having *only* missionary-sex with the intent to procreate, and "kinky" is doing anything else...it's likely that all but the most conservative puritans are kinky. Perhaps we should say that a sex act can only be labeled as kinky if something like a 2/3 majority do not participate?

"Penises" is the most common plural form, but I think "Penii" and "Penes" are both acceptable as well.

Anyway, "normal" in the sense of how prevalent it is...no, such a thing isn't normal. But if we're asking if it's acceptable; then as I stated in the other topic, we should ask if it's healthy.

I think language is descriptive, not prescriptive; and definitions of words are stipulative. What we should do when asking ourselves how best to use a word is to pick a definition that seems most useful. While redefining words is ok, doing so arbitrarily is not. When I say things like:

"Normal" just means "pertaining to a significant majority of society".

what I'm doing behind the scenes is stating that this definition has the most linguistic usefulness. And that's what I've attempted to do with my sentient/sapient distinction - drawing the line at basic thoughts/feelings seems more useful than including any sort of ability to reason in the definition of "sentience". Basically, definitions shouldn't be time-tested, but usefulness-tested.

Second, yes, the animal almost certainly feels *basic* emotions, such as fear. I'm thinking that goes along with basic survival instinct. It *does not* signify intelligence, or cognizance.

I'd say an emotion and an instinct are two different things, the difference being that "instinct" refers to the physical action taken in response to a stimulus, while the "emotion" is merely a subjective mental state. The real question is whether the animal is reacting automatically to a stimulus, or experiencing a mental state. It's quite hard to tell the difference, especially if the two would appear similar to the naked eye. And while it may not point to intelligence as we understand it, I think it points to something. I think that the scared cow isn't scared because of the rational part of its brain, but the emotional part. Given all we know about the cumulative nature of evolution, and given that we know that *we* are not merely acting on instinct (at least not all of the time - we can usually think things through and decide how to act despite feeling afraid), I think something similar is happening in animal brains, although to a lesser extent.

Two problems there. One - was it *actually* jealous, or was it a learned response? It's in a controlled environment (your words), therefore, it's been trained to behave a certain way.

By "controlled environment", I just meant that the experiment was conducted such that it eliminated any possible outside influences, not that the monkeys were trained to prefer treats that other monkeys had. This brings up an interesting question about learned responses though...you and I eat food with silverware, rather than our hands. This is also a learned response (and there are many more), what does that say about us?

True, that doesn't invalidate the natural response - but is jealousy a natural reaction, or a cognizant one?

I'll concede the point here - to be honest, I'm not totally sure. Some emotions seem to be inborn, while others seem to be learned. Fear vs. courage* is a good example, I think. I lean towards jealousy being inborn, though, as human babies (from what I've seen at least) sometimes get jealous without being taught to.

*courage in the sense of making a decision to stand up to someone/something despite being afraid - not self-preservation.

How are they able to do that? Natural ability, or trained response? My bet, trained response. They *learn* the phrases, and respond to what they've heard. Ten bucks says, alter the tone, the wording, or the ordering, and you throw the response off. If they can't adapt readily to changes in stimuli, then the response to the given stimuli is canned.

What's probably going on in their brains when recognizing new commands is actually quite complicated. First, they learn what the individual words mean while being trained, and form a mental dictionary of sorts. Second, they have to have some sort of knowledge of syntax in order to understand the new command. If they were merely responding to a sequence of sounds, their mental dictionary would be treating sentences such as "chase the ball" as a single word. In order to understand the new command (which is just a new sequence of sounds, albeit similar to ones they have heard before), they have to have individual entries for each word and a knowledge of rudimentary parts of speech, such as noun and verb.

[Alliteration]

And on a personal note: Fucking *awesome* chat/debate. I love this kind of stuff, and sadly, it's difficult for me to find someone to have these kinds of arguments with, without it turning into petty bickering. Nice to come across someone with some genuine intelligence now and again. That's what I love about this place - there's some damned intelligent people here.

Thanks!

*bows* Same to you!

[Alliteration]

And that's where you touched on the bigger picture - the difference between the responses in humans, vs. other animals. That's what it really boils down to, isn't it? Because animals can't react like we can, or process like we can, they're considered inferior, and we all know what happens to things when they're judged inferior.

Now for the even bigger picture...


They're inferior by our standards, yes...but what if you were judged by lion standards? You'd fall quite short. Is there any objective reason why being intelligent is better than being strong or fast?

[Incubo]

They're inferior by our standards, yes...but what if you were judged by lion standards? You'd fall quite short. Is there any objective reason why being intelligent is better than being strong or fast?

Ah!
There it is!
I was about to make the same point myself actually.
The rest of the animal kingdom may well be considered inferior by human standards, but then humans determined the standards, so it's not exactly a "fair" comparison. We make the rules. Of course we'd put ourselves on the top of the evolutionary ladder.

[Nezhul]

Why in the world would you assume most women are bisexual?

I heard of it a lot, and I know a lot of girls who feel attraction to other girls. For gods sake, most girls on this forum are the same too. Maybe I'm wrong, that's why my statement originally looked like "I heard that...."

I think that there's probably as many bi sexual/bi curious guys as there are women.

Well, I don't think so, no statistics. But I have heard the view that there are more homosexual\bisexual girls than guys because historically (and genetically already) guys are rivals to each other, and girls are not. Throughout the history guys "fight" each other to win girls (not necessary fist fighting ofc). Something like that.

The only major difference is that a lesbian couple has become more socially accepted than a gay couple, which I think is wrong.

I believe the reason is the difference between men and women. Who's so against gays? The majority of gay-hatred comes from men. Most women don't care that much. I.e. The opinion of the society about homosexuals are formed by the people of the same gender. I heard a lot of guys verbally attacking gays, but I haven't heard a single girl do that. The worst I heard a women say about gays was "What a waste, men shouldn't be like that" - very liberal view in the comparison of what men do say. Some girls are even interested in gay videos and gays and point out that it's easyer to talk to them than to a straight men.
The same way the view lesbians are formed by girls. But women are different from us in many aspects. I believe they are just don't care that much of what other women are and what they are doing. Again in that respect I heard a lot that most women are bisexual so that they don't care or even like the idea. While to most of men homosexuality is a quite disgusting thing to think of, for women it may be simply isn't. That's why the view of lesbians is so mild. I could actually say it's more like non-existent. Everyone knows there are lesbians, but most of us simply don't care.
While at the same time most of men DO care about gays in a very specific faceshooting way. But that - is our nature. The nature of men, I'd say, It's how we build up. We all have some points in our understanding of a world that are build-in, not projected by the society.

You can't have "equal rights", and not be willing to treat them equally.

Equal rightts is the utopia. More over, only stupid people really want them. We are not equal physically and mentally. I don't say that one gender should have less rights than the other. It's just that rights and responsibilities should be different for genders. Besides, women are the weaker gender, should be supported and taken care of. They are also stronger in some aspects of course, but generally they are physically weaker, emotionally more unstable and so on. I think women should ALWAYS have some benefits before men, not because they are "better" (not a femdom related thought at all), but because they are less protected.

If a cow could express pain, anguish, creativity, rational thought, emotions, then I have absolutely no doubt in the world that it would be come illegal, and morally outrageous to eat them.

A view of a man that saw cows only on pictures or in a form of a roast-beef on a plate. They actually DO have all of the above. We eat them nevertheless.

As with everything - the attractiveness makes it more, or less appealing. Cows are ugly, so it's okay to eat them.

You know, actually for me (risking to be called racist though IM NOT) africans and indians and all that dark-skinned people are quite ugly too, or should I say, completely unattractive. And I should point out that not long ago they were treated by all the white community as non-humans. Yet, no one tried to eat them. Even Nazi.
On the other hand I spend a lot of time in the village house in my youth, and I should say cows are actually quite cute and adorable creatures. More cute than negro at least. So what? IMHO your thought is wrong from the start.

Lesbians are pretty, so it's okay to look at them.

Lesbians are pretty TO YOU. You are a man, off course two naked women licking and sucking each other and moaning in pleasure - is the view you like. (though I personally don't find that kind of porn even half as good as straight sex). I know a lot of girls watch gay porn too.

C'mon Nez, you're an intelligent person. You can't honestly believe the innuendo you're spouting, can you?

Well I do.

if an animal were sentient (and could verbalize), I doubt we would find it nearly so acceptable to kill them for food.

I would if they were tasty. We all would. We need to eat meat, if faced with no choice we would eat anyone actually. In modern society YES, there would be people making ruckus in support of poor cows. BUT by that time we'd have thousends of years of history of eating them for dinner.

p.s. So THIS thread is gone to deep off-topic, again with an active support of Indigo. Really, a fantastic view of admin proper behaviour... Instead of creating a separate topic and moving appropriate posts there, you prefer to ruin someone else's discussion and stay here, because you simply don't give a damn.

[Alliteration]

p.s. So THIS thread is gone to deep off-topic, again with an active support of Indigo. Really, a fantastic view of admin proper behaviour... Instead of creating a separate topic and moving appropriate posts there, you prefer to ruin someone else's discussion and stay here, because you simply don't give a damn.

There's a reason he did this. Perhaps you should read through the thread again and try to figure it out. Here's a hint...

Nezhul, this will be my last response to you on this topic.

Why? Because you very clearly have no clue at all what you are talking about

[Human]

I am straight and have no problem with other dudes boning other dudes.

I don't too. I didn't say they disgust me themselves. But tell me - would YOU fuck another guy? For a 100$? handsome one. If there's simply no attraction you maybe would. For me - I wouldn't because that's just too disgusting to do.
.

What a wierd question and I dont follow your line of reasoning. No, in general I would not. Because I am not attracted to men. I would also not bone women to who I am not attracted to. TBH there are certain guys I would bone first before certain unattractive women. For instance, I would rather bone Hugh Jackman than Roseanne. Also, raise the bounty to $10 million, and then sure, I'll bone a (disease free) fat ugly guy.

[Alliteration]

For instance, I would rather bone Hugh Jackman than Roseanne.

I'd prefer Hugh Jackman to a lot of people... *drools*