Slashdot Mirror
Should Chimps Have Human Rights?
An anonymous reader writes "A Brazilian court has already issued a writ of habeas corpus in the name of a chimp. And now an Austrian court may well decide that a chimpanzee is a 'person' with what up until now have been called human rights." From the story in the Guardian/Observer: "He recognizes himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin. A group of world leading primatologists argue that this is proof enough that Hiasl, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, deserves to be treated like a human. In a test case in Austria, campaigners are seeking to ditch the 'species barrier' and have taken Hiasl's case to court. If Hiasl is granted human status — and the rights that go with it — it will signal a victory for other primate species and unleash a wave of similar cases."
See also: Great Apes Project
I don't know if Chimps should have human rights. I think what we need to do is research that does work to gauge how well chimps could cope in human society when raised in that society and how intelligent they can then become.
Then compare that with the lowest human being and work your way up through the human being scale (if the chimp is better then the lowest human beings we have) until we find a type of human (most likely suffering some form of mental retardation) that is comparable with your average chimp. Then assign chimps the same rights as that human being has.
Unfortunately until now most research has been far too biased or faulty one way or another, and as such we don't know if chimps are equal to some humans. As such, how are we suppose to know if they deserve human rights?
No. Just no.
Animal cruelty is one thing, but writs for Chimps? Seriously now...
Isn't it in the name?
Human rights?
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
OMGCHIMPS!
I'll never give rights to those damn, dirty apes!
hoo! hurr! grr! huuuh! hoooh! hoo!
Not long ago certain former "leader of the free world" took away its citizens' habeas-corpus provision. Every MINUTE a person (in the up-until-now traditional sense) dies of malnutrition or trivially treatable diseases. I'm all for the ethical treatment of animals but we do have more pressing problems.
+Raider of the lost BBS
Noticed the datestamp on this "news".
1 of april, so I guess it is a first april spoof.
creationists will go apeshit!
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
If they get Human Rights, can I get Animal Rights, like flinging my poo at my boss when he annoys me?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
just as soon as he learns how to file his tax return
To all who believe in spanking your monkey, be forewarned.
does no editor look at the fucking date stamp? jeez, this must be the latest april fools i have ever seen. only on slashdot. the real monkey is kdawson.
By that standard, shouldn't people, say, in vegitative states or with extreme cases of metal retardation be legally not human, and therefore eligible for the hot dog machine?
On Penn & Teller's Bullshiat, a show with many many many subtle flaws despite it's many many many good parts, they once had a little bit in the PeTA piece about how if animals have rights, then therefore they should have responsibilities. When I first heard this I thought at first that this was just a bit of flat humor, but then it occurred to me that this was actually a very powerful argument. Fine - if the primate deserves equal protection under law, then he should get equal treatment under law as far as paying taxes, sending his offspring to school, not assaulting people by climbing on them, being hygenic, etc.
So why should it get human rights. The question should be if a chimp should get chimprights.
Should a chimp have the right to an opinion, the right to follow a religion, the right for education, the right for a fair trial, the right to be treated equally (to other chimps and humans?). Those are some of the human rights, and I don't think it applies much to chimps.
Generally Chimpanzees are considered on par with the intellegence of a five year old child. Can you imagine having this discusion about the rights of a five year old child? Would anyone ever consider medical experiments reasonable on a five year old child? Yes they aren't human but genetically they are close. What if we do meet a more intellegent race? Is it okay to experiment on them and detain them simply because they aren't human? Certain rights should be expanded to include both less intellegent species as well as more intelllegent species. Whales, Dolphins and Great Apes should arguably have some basic rights as sentient beings.
As easy as that.
Brazilian judicial system is similar to the U.S. one, each judge has the final say over his jurisdiction. Despite of that, Brazil is ruled by civil law, not common law, so the decision of that judge is completely irrelevant for jurisprudence. There are a lot of judicial activism there too, so it is not rare (but it still weird) that a judge bias can affect the decision, on this case, an animal right defensor judge accepting an animal as a litigant, back in the seventies, a judge acquitted a man that was on trial for murder accepting a witness statement from the dead friend which he had communicated telepathically with a medium.
Despite of those aberrations, judicial system in Brazil is not that ridiculous. It is massively slow and a lot of times unjust, but we are not near to give animals (or companies, for all that matters) full rights of a natural person.
Dennett strikes again!
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Now that the monkey gets habeus corpus, perhaps we could
get apes to campaign for its reintroduction for humans
in the UK!
I, for one, welcome our new simian underlings.
He recognizes himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled.
I have cow-orkers that would struggle with those tasks and I still have to respect their human rights.
No trees were harmed in the posting of this message. However, a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
If they win this case, will the chimp then be liable to pay taxes?
It may also need to be deported, since it doesn't carry a valid human passport.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
At least in Brazil, by the time the chimp gets anything done in court, he will either have moved on to some juicer bananas, or just evolved into politicians to enact laws for it's own benefit.
They're mocking their own legal system instead of using the political way to outlaw that specific activity in their country.
One more reason to vote no. You see where it leads to when you give a chimp too much power.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
FYI there was a proposal in Spain to give to all the non-human Great Apes some very basic rights (they cannot be killed, tortured or keep in captivity).
And the scientific name for Great Apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) is hominids and we have in common more of 97% of our DNA even with the more different of them (this obviously doesn't make them automatically humans).
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
If we go by similarity to humans - we are apes. African apes, to be specific. That means that chimps are closer relatives to us than say orangutans are to chimps.
The intermediate stages from the common ancestor to the human and chimp branches are extinct, but that's just a coincidence, something that could have been the other way around. Looking at it that way the ethical questions become more difficult. When you can't define clear groups, the in-group/out-group ethics becomes difficult to rationalize.
Rather than an ethics based on questionable categories we need one based on functions - especially cognitive capabilities relating to suffering. When it comes to chimpanzees an the other great apes, the answer is very clear - we do need to give them rights. They may not understand it themselves, but neither do human children and we offer them rights and protection. Apes are a trivial problem - it becomes more difficult when you distance yourself further. What about cats, mice or even insects or one-celled organisms?
There are now anthropologists who argue that modern man has been systematically eradicating the other hominids because of our peculiarly aggressive and expansionist nature, and we are now eradicating the other primate species. Is this something to be proud of? We won't even allow chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans a quite small range in which to survive. And we have a depressing tendency for one human group to apply this to other human groups. Not long ago - in fact, until now - some white Americans were arguing that black Americans belonged to an inferior species. It's part of a most unpleasant mindset that has given us genocide and species extinctions, and in a world where growing populations cause more competition for food, air, water and energy, it is something we somehow have to combat if we don't want the last World War to look like an Episcopalian convention by comparison with the wars to come.
Admitting that other large primates deserve the same rights we give ourselves in the West - the right not to be killed because somebody wants our land, the right not to be locked up in a featureless room and gawped at - is not only not unreasonable, it's part of rising above the aggressive little monkey in our own brains and improving our own chance of long terms survival.
Pining for the fjords
Will that mean that he will be able to claim incapacity benefit from the government.
That chimp is clearly disabled for a human, he cannot speak and sit up straight.
Come to think of it, you have a point there, my cat certainly deserves citizenship.
After all, the fuzzy things managed to tame humans, so it kinda says something about where they are in a sorted list by IQ. Plus, you've seen how they're attracted to books you're reading, or to your keyboard. They're natural nerds, I tell you
Second, but probably more important, giving cats a right to vote can't _possibly_ make it any worse. When was the last time you saw a cat torturing another cat for fun, or to scare the other cats into submission? When was the last time you saw a cat go to war? For that matter, when was the last time you saw a cat kill another?
I mean, sure, they fight, but with the natural weapons they have they'd be perfectly capable of taking each other apart if they wanted to. The species however has clear rules of engagement and of signalling "I surrender" or "I'm not a threat, don't attack me". Plus, most of the fights you get to see are either (A) actually playing/training, or (B) because humans force them into situations where the normal conflict resolution mechanisms don't work. E.g., bringing another cat on the territory of another without all the "rituals" (so to speak) normally associated with joining another group, and without the possibility to just go away.
Plus, they have built in mechanisms to avoid needing a war in the first place. Most felines release a number of eggs based on how well fed the mother is. So if the cat can barely feed itself, it will at most give birth to one kitten or two. If it's doing perfectly well, it will do its part for population growth. So it's hard to end up in a situation where they'd need to start a war for resources.
So I have to wonder how much worse it could possibly be if the cats could vote on issues like the stupid war in Iraq. My take is that it couldn't be any worse than letting humans do it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Nothing beats giving a cow a jolly good orking, I say.
As for the original idea of giving chimps human rights... first of all, it's probably a leftover April fools story. Even so, imho, you can't give primates human rights in the same way you can't give primates bowler hats and umbrellas, they just don't fit. Sure, develop primate rights and model them on human rights but blurring this species barrier to this extent is, imho, just plain daft. What next? Equal ops and positive discrimination?
If the slaves captured by UK, had been free only 200 years ago and nobody needs to apologize about that. The chimps must wait another millenium at least.
To live their life according to perverse laws that serve the wealthy
To work 60 hour weeks so that they can afford property
To be forced to pay taxes into a system that keeps them subservient
To slip below the poverty line when their jobs are outsourced
Chimps have it easy right now and they're of a comparable intelligence to the mouth-breathers that make up the god fearing 50% of the US population. Human rights and responsibility, let 'em have it I say; the chimps too.
They're human too!
Did nobody notice the date on that Observer article?
Obviously this is only fair if humans are also given Chimp Rights!
For example, the right to throw poo at our neighbors, the right of adults to wear diapers in public...
I'm 26!
I break into fits of giggles when tickled!
I recognise myself in the mirror!
What does this make me!??
Maybe in this case it would be more beneficial to not give chimps the same rights as humans.... muahahaha, off to the vivisection lab with YOU, curious george!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
> Then compare that with the lowest human being and work your way up through the human being scale (if the chimp is better then the lowest human beings we have) until we find a type of human (most likely suffering some form of mental retardation) that is comparable with your average chimp. Then assign those human beings the same rights as that chimp has. In other words, lock them up in a cage in a zoo and laugh at them.
There, fixed it for you.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
so when we mow down their forest we will be legally obliged to offer them a bedsit in scunthorpe? who is going to cash their dole checks so they can buy bananas?
I do not believe chimps should have human rights, but that we should improve the rights of all animals. It seems us humans see animals as... well animals. We often forget these are things with feelings and emotions just like we do. We should never think of killing another human because "that's wrong" but at the same time we rarely think twice about killing hundreds of animals for the sake of cheap wood or because some stupid reason like "I hate bugs". Basicly we're that asshole kid who runs around hitting everyone and it's about time we faced up to this, we scream and shout about global warming while at the same time completely missing the little picture where we're wiping out entire species of animals because we can't use basic birth control and have an over populated planet in some areas.
I want to point out right now I'am not some nutter who runs around bombing animal testing labs. I accept some things must be done such as conservation and culling of over populations in the animal world. This while not pleasent if something we need to do to keep a balance in wild life, I would not wish to stop it nor would I ever attempt to.
I like muppets.
my dogs? They damn sure recognize themselves in a mirror, they fully understand what a mirror is and play games in the mirror. The make will sit in front of the mirror and look me directly in the eye via the reflection, he likes doing that. And he knows it's a reflection because as I move my hand up behind his head, he can see my hand in the mirror and he'll tip his head back to meet my hand. And he coordinates it perfectly. He really, fully understand what a reflection is and how they work and he enjoys playing mirror games.
They also play hide and seek and are smart enough to anticipate what the other will do and make strategic counter moves to "cut em off at the pass" when playing in the yard.
And they enjoy being petted and tickled, that's obvious to anyone with a brain. And they even have favorite words. Like my puppy, when I call her by her regular name she responds and comes, sits, stays, etc..
But when I call her "wiggly dog" she explodes into a fit of tail wagging like you've never seen, she wags her entire body, like a snake wiggling on the ground. You can tell she takes extreme pleasure in being called "wiggly dog".. The male, his favorite thing is when I call him "big dog", he gets all excited about that just like the puppy.
My dogs are intelligent. I demand they get equal rights too damn it!
[blockquote]Monkey --> Ape --> Gorilla --> Chimpanzee --> Missing Link? --> Man[/blockquote]
This is a common misconception. There's no missing link that shows chimpanzees ever evolved into humans. The "missing link", if found, would demonstrate that both species came from a common ancestor millions of years ago before the two evolutionary paths diverged.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
He failed to recognize himself from his own mistakes, plays monkey-dance in front of human of 120 average-IQ and breaks into chair-throwing fury whenever the word 'Linux' is being mentioned. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin that we choose to deny having relationship with. A group of world smartest nerds argue that this is proof enough that Ballmer, a 51-year-old human, deserves to be treated like a chimp.
In term of genetic phylogeny research has shown (by counting the number of mutation 'distance' between species to assert divergeance and subsequently putting them in a tree) that the chimp is our direct ancestror.
Not some distant cousin. Our direct great-grand-father.
They had some over population problems. The tree got overcrowded. They kicked out some individuals to free space in the tree. 6 millions laters, the kicked out individuals came back with chainsaws to cut the damn tree in a sort of ironic genetic revenge.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As long as you don't mind him "grooming" your wife and daughters when you're not around.
Seriously, why don't we humans just try to grow up and respect other [near-]sentient life forms more, in general, when possible. We could start with not blowing each other up with suicide bombs and JDAMs. Maybe move on to not killing elephants just to saw off their teeth to make jewelery. Work on not killing the other primates for meat and dolphins for sport too.
Our species has a loooong way to go on morality. If we don't sort these things out, we're not going to make it.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Let's say someone is sleeping at night. A cat is meowing loudly outside. The person goes out and beats it to death with a baseball bat. Should they be punished?
That question is something different societies have different laws on, and the debate about it is something that could split political parties, but more importantly, whichever law you enact could have a somewhat fundamental impact on the society.
But let's say you go with a situation where beating a cat to death for waking you when you sleep two nights in a row is illegal. Then should not;
1. Any other animal also have the right to avoid death, sudden or prolonged, including cattle? Such as rabbits in a field that are mangled by the use of treshers? How is killing rabbits in order to help yourself gather corn different from killing a cat that bothered your sleep?
2. Fish also have a similar right? Is fishing with a net anything else than a 'fish holocaust'?
3. And also bacteria? Why set a _size limit_ or _cuddlyness limit_ on what it's allowed to kill?
In all of these cases, a powerful argument could be made for why the activity in question should be illegal, and if delivered by a good speaker and a motivated group could sway at least a number of listeners. The distinction we currently have (cats/sleep no, rabbits/corn yes) has at least some elements of arbitrariness. But much more importantly, a legal decision on each of these would have enormous impacts on most societies. Get the right judge in, and what do you have? A coastal nation that can't fish without catching each individual fish live and euthanising it painlessly? A country that can't farm without the use of hand tools? It just sounds crazy because we are not used to doing it.
Chimps could very well be given 'human rights' and/or be placed inside the Convention of Human Rights, given the right arguments and the right speakers, and the reasons why they don't have elements of arbitraryness, like everything above. But the effects it would have are staggering - in some countries every able person would have to be set in as psychiatric carers at chimp hostels, and bullying chimps that harass other chimps would have to be identified and tried by courts. I trust that humanity's tendency for usually and in most cases pragmatically accepting easy solutions will win out.
Did anybody happen to notice the date on this news story? I call OMGPONIES on this.
'Nuff said.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
The BBC website has a better write up posted 29 March. Not an April Fool.
From the discussions going on I get the feeling that alot of people don't know what the human rights are, so here they are (taken from wikipedia):
- security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre, torture and rape
- liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
- political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
-due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
- equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
- welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of education and protections against severe poverty and starvation
- group rights that provide protection for groups against ethnic genocide and for the ownership by countries of their national territories and resources
Please explain to me how these apply to animals? What we need is animal rights, a set of rules which apply to animals specifically.
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63
There's a discrepancy in how the law is applied to humans and animals. This is because most people don't know what makes us human.
First it's important to note that human rights are not universal. The right to free expression and free assembly, and the most of rest of the rights in the UN charter and US bill of rights are only given to adults. Young humans generally only have the right to life and the right to not be severely abused. Adults are free to subject the young to all sorts of twisted environmental conditions, such as a religious upbringing.
I highly doubt that anyone would seriously consider giving chimps the same rights as adults (the right to trial by a jury of it's peers; it's peers being what? other chimps?) However, I think we should seriously consider treating chimps as well as young children (which sadly isn't that big of a step up from their current status).
You can pretty much legally do whatever you want with a chimpanzee: forcefully train it to do menial tasks, cage it, even dissect it while it's still alive. If anyone did this to a young child, they would be thrown in jail. The only difference between a young child and a chimp is that that child has a slightly greater genetic complexity than the chimp. However, depending on the age of the child, it may be less developmentally complex than the chimp.
We aught to define how human someone is by their developmental complexity. Why shouldn't an adult chimp have the same more more rights than a small child if it is more physically capable, and more importantly, of far greater intelligence than the child? Most people would argue that the chimp cannot have the rights of young humans because kids have the potential to become adult human beings. This argument doesn't hold because few people are willing to universally apply it. A human zygote and fetus have the potential to become fully capable adult humans, yet abortion is legal. Every sperm and egg has the potential to become a human, yet male masturbation and female menstruation are not considered murder. Potential isn't what makes us human. Our ability to perceive our conditions and make rational and ethical decisions defines our humanity.
Religious idiots believe that humans are made different from animals when a "soul" enters their body sometime between conception and adulthood. There is no scientific basis for this. A fully conscious developed brain is what makes us human beings deserving of human rights. Since adult chimps have brains more capable and complex than human infants and toddlers, they aught to have the same or better rights as those kids.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Why do we have to give them human rights? Why not just improve chimp rights?
Example: What if scientists discover that a chimp is able to make the decision about whether or not to drink alcohol at the age of 20, instead of the human age of 21. Why should we say to a chimp 'Well now you have human rights so you have to do everything like a human does'? Humans and chimps are different.
I say give them the rights they deserve, as proven by science, but don't start calling them 'human rights'. They're still chimp rights.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I would imagine that you need to first define what, exactly, these are. There are no absolutes when it comes to morality; rights, laws, and morals depend on the culture in which you define them, and they can be vastly different from what you or I consider them to be.
Isn't this a little strange? For having rights one should be able to lay a claim to this right. As far as I know, a chimp can't.
Animals deserve rights when they can specifically ask for them. The moment a chimp makes a sign on its own asking for equal treatment, I say we give it to them. Until then, it's monkey brains for dinner...
Intelligence is not the basis of human rights. Rather, people justify rights with either:
1) Pragmatism. A sort of common (often somewhat vague) understanding that it will be broadly beneficial if all individuals are granted certain rights (and obligations).
2) Divinity. God did it. (Gave us the rights, that is) The US constitution falls into this category.
Neither 1) nor 2) (unless you have a chimp-centric religion) really justifies giving human rights to chimps. There are no generalizable social benefits from bestowing chimps with human rights.
There are quite a few faulty assumptions regarding human rights and whether animals should have them:
first, there seems to be a confusion between what it means to be a human being as opposed to animal (as a general rule), and what makes humans valuable. It is not because humans can laugh, think, etc. that they are valuable. Else, as soon as you are sedated, you'd stop being human because you wouldn't have those characteristics anymore. Humans are intrinsically valuable (their rights come from natural law), and an animal can never be biologically human.
Second, it is always quite dangerous to start defining what you 'need' to be a human being. Think about slavery, most genocides,etc. What happened is that some people decided to use arbitrarily defined criteria to strip people from their human status. Who says the criteria animal rights activists use are correct?
Third, why do they believe that chimps should have the same rights as humans. It is as logical to say that human beings should have the same rights chimps enjoy presently (i.e. none). The very idea of human rights is based on the premise that there is something intrinsically valuable in human beings, regardless of their mental capacities or physical abilities.
"Rather than an ethics based on questionable categories we need one based on functions - especially cognitive capabilities relating to suffering."
Why? Human rights are broadly beneficial to almost everyone, provided that they are upheld. They are reciprocal - and let's face it, chimps can't give much in return for rights. I don't, in practice, care much for the suffering of most of humanity, much less chimps. The same goes for virtually all semi-honest humans. The "neurological response to pain = rights" is little more than a cringe reaction.
Only the Bonobo chimps are into that sort of thing.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Chimps are our cousins, not our ancestors.
"The only difference between a young child and a chimp is that that child has a slightly greater genetic complexity than the chimp."
One more slight difference: The human is... human. Which makes it much more interesting for other humans to grant rights to that human. Frankly, there's little more than annoyance to be gained from granting broad rights to chimps. The concept of human rights, on the other hand, have greatly improved the lot of most humans. Chimp rights would greatly improve the lot of chimps, of course, but why should I care?
I haven't RTFA but isn't this getting into Planet of the Apes/I Robot territory? Next you will be saying that the clone of myself that I'm growing in a test tube for spare parts should have some sort of rights.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Before the our genetical cousins. Shall we look human rights in IRAQ ? Afganistan? Bosnina ? Karabag ?...
This is madness,
NO
This is
WESTERN CIVILZATION
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Definitely not - Remember what they'll do in the future to us - watch CH in Planet of The Apes.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
Then will we need to deal with Primate Racism?? I think the Simpsons discussed this
I hate every ape I see from chimpan A to chimpanzee.
Now the NASA is going to disclose that all the chimps that they sent to space came back with super-human intelligence
It's not an April Fool. See same story dated March 3rd:
l d-first-great-ape-trial-in-austria/
http://chimprescue.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/a-wor
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Every time I see an 'animal rights' story it always strikes me that the people involved are doing it wrong. They always make an attempt to appeal to the 'awww don't hurt the cute widdle animal' factor and frankly most people don't care. They don't care about the 'cute bunnies' getting their heads sliced open since they're told that the animal dies so a human can live etc etc. You want to champion animal rights? Lobby for factory farm environmental oversight. Point out that these farms destroy waterways and kill the land around them. People get touchy about water supplies.
Similarly, no a chimpanzee is not a human and doing something like this trivializes the problem in the eyes of the public. You want to stop people experimenting on chimps and monkeys and other animals? Convince the public of the fact that the research doesn't hold or that it slows down research. Sometimes that is the end result of the animal research. Aspirin kills a bunch of common testing animals, the original artificial heart worked fine in dogs but the first human to get it died screaming. These sorta things make way more impact than... the conditions these animals live in suck. Most people don't care or feel that the medicine is a greater good. Certainly even in medical testing the situations should be as humane as possible, but I fail to see how this court case makes anything other than a farce of these peoples goals. Oh and stop demonizing the people who do the animal experiments. Most of them are not monsters. I say most simply cause a small percentage of humans in general are just sociopaths and they cover the gamut.
If you can't guess from the semi poorly written screed (it's late) I actually do support a fair bit of the animal rights cause but not for the save the bunny reasons. I'm just sick of people dumping antibiotics into the environment and polluting water ways and doing bad science. And stunts like this just make it harder to be taken seriously. goddamn hippies.
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
> Not long ago certain former "leader of the free world" took away its citizens' habeas-corpus provision.
Ergo... The 'Monkey President' repealed Human Law and introduced 'The Law of the Jungle'
It's usually the non-US countries that actually do these ridulous things? Like when Britain put a dead man on the stand...as if he would answer questions.
But, if 'the world is an accident' and 'there is no right or wrong', I suppose you could get tricked into doing just about anything.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
The guys at PETA are probably having a RAGING party right now, complete with chimpanzee outfits. Human rights for cows too! And seals! Baby seals!
Human rights for chimps, eh. How about human responsibilities? It would be rather naive to elevate chimps to our level then look the other way when, say, they tear apart smaller monkeys for food as they routinely do. We should be humane to animals, yes, and there is an overlap between that "humaneness" and the rights we ascribe to humans, but that does not mean they are the same thing. Not many chimpanzees get tortured compared to human beings, or subjected to mass rape, or blown up in markets, or have the living daylights bombed out of them while they sleep in their habitats. It's looks like some people have their priorities slightly screwed up.
Besides, we still haven't answered the question of whether PETA people should have human rights. The consensus is on the negative from what I'm told.
> Wow, if you think that's as good of a solution as the one I proposed, I pity you. I really do.
Oh, I have doubt that it is a better solution. I think mostly I was just trying to point out how your argument is stupid.
I agree with your point that chimps should be given more rights based on their intelligence and behaviour, but not at all with your methodology. Comparing chimps to disabled humans is dumb and degrading (both to the chimps and the humans).
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Interesting arguement.
This is a smart chimp so it should have human rights.
This suggests human rights are dependent on intelligence.
Logically they should also argue stupid people should NOT have human rights. Unborn children, those in persistent vegetative states are also arguably not worthy of human rights either.
Perhaps even babies aren't smart enough to have human rights either.
Also bestiality couldn't be illegal as marriage is a human right. Or perhaps certain humans aren't deserving of all human rights. Different rights for certain types of people. Maybe some groups shouldn't get to vote, and other groups should be slaves, or simply executed to protect the rest of us?
Human rights are for the human species. Animal rights are for other animals. What's really wrong with that?
> The US has a monkey president ..[/obligatory]
I don't know which is funnier... this comment... or the "+5 Insightful" moderation!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I mean, if chimps get full human rights, does this mean the end of "chilled monkey brains?" Guess I'll need to plan something else for the menu...
> Animals deserve rights when they can specifically ask for them. The moment a chimp makes a sign on its own asking for equal treatment, I say we give it to them. Until then, it's monkey brains for dinner...
Exactly! And the same applies to human babies. I say human rights starts at age 2. It certainly shuts up those anti-abortionists.
Now I have no idea what I would like for dinner, but I'm not that fond of monkeys. They smell of bananas. I'll just look around the house an see if I can find something tasty.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I'm not saying this whole chimp thing is bad. It's just not where we should be focusing.
Kind of like how we should fix democracy at home before we try to spread it to the world. It's not that I don't want, say, a free Iraq -- not that it seems likely -- it's that at least one or two of those billions of dollars we pumped into that enterprise could've been used to, say, roll out some electronic voting that works, or fund better news sources... Or, yes, feed and clothe the hungry and naked. Or, hell, even armor our soldiers properly.
It's not so much that I am against Chimp rights, but that I am for Human rights. I would rather have both, but Human rights is more important to me because we know humans are sentient, but we don't know whether chimps are.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The right to vote chimps into office needs to be abolished!
Ok ok, I was kidding. George Bush is NOT a chimp! My apologies to all chimps out there. A chimp might actually do a better job..
Instead of recognizing other animals to be like human beings, why not recognize that a human being is just an animal like any other?
We are just the dominant specie at this point in time. There have been others in the past and there will be others in the future.
Don't make the mistake to thing that you are so special. Your specie will not survive the test of time like the other species before you.
Really, there are no "vivisection laboratories" in Austria.
How the hell does percentage of similarity of DNA relate to having a soul?
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
Yes, we should be kinder to animals, in general. If we kill them, we should at least have a reason, if not a good one. That is, if you go hunting deer for sport, at least make venison out of them. I have no problem with killing cows for beef, but certainly we should think twice about killing an animal, or an entire ecosystem, just to get some more wood or make room for another supermall.
On the other hand, bugs don't even have brains, as we know them. I'll have to check my sources, but I strongly doubt they could have feelings, as we know them. In fact, I would argue that most insects are only slightly more sophisticated than artificial intelligence currently used in games -- and I don't see anyone up in arms about killing an AI, yet.
I would not have responded except for your comment about "I hate bugs". Well, I do -- and I see nothing wrong with killing a mosquito -- or even a fly, even if it's absolutely no danger to me at all (though I suppose it could be carrying disease). That doesn't mean I go around spraying the wilderness with pesticide, but it does mean that I don't allow so much as a gnat to live in my house.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What order do you want your politicians and leaders to do things in?
1. Assure that not one citizen of this country is murdered.
2. Assure that not one citizen of this country is raped.
Clearly murdering someone is worse than rape. Quite bluntly, yes I agree that we should keep raping people until not one single person is murdered. There are only so many hours in the day. Then once we have solved that, we can start thinking about whether to give citizens basic rights.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Maybe this particular item is an April fools, but this same story has come up several times
The real problem is that we have several things we want to do with human rights to cater for several different types of things - we want to protect those who can suffer, we want to protect those who will become future members of society and we want to protect current members of society. Unfortunately we lump all those groups together as "humans" so when we want to extend the protection from cruelty to chimps we end up giving them voting rights...
"Human Rights" as far as religion, education and all that obviously do not fit the bill but the idea that we can just go stomping into the jungle and do what we please regardless of "who" or "what" lives, eats and shits there already really needs to be consigned to history long before we start stomping on other species' planets and doing it all over again.
Elightenment awaits
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
So now we have non human "people", yet human "non people" (unborn fetus)
What a piece of work this society is.
Only if humans get chimp rights.
I quite fancy having a tea party every afternoon, eating lots of 'nanas.
And being allowed to openly masturbate in public.
echo $SIGNATURE
"So we should only grant rights to those who look and act like us? Since I'm white, I can oppress black people since they aren't like me?"
Well, you *could* - it was a pretty popular option for a long time, no?
"We should grant rights to all beings proportional to their complexity and ethical ability, not their similarity to ourselves."
Why? What's your sales pitch? In the case of humans, my "social good" pitch is pretty clear: If you grant rights to me, I grant rights to you. It's a mutual thing, that can be extended to be non-direct (I.e. intertemporal) using moral commitment. (I.e. people refrain from leveraging momentary advantages to break the "truce" even if they could achieve some advantage by doing so.)
"The young and the non-human may not be able to speak, but we value their complexity enough that we should treat them well."
We value our young because they are genetically far more related to us than chimps, squids of mollusks, and so evolution has coded us to treat children (relatively) well. We do not like children because they are "complex" (Whatever that means? Number of base pairs?). We have some level of instinctual sympathy with chimps, simply because they are cute (I.e. resemble human infants to some degree) and share some behavioral similarities with ourselves. But as long as abuse of chimps is not too open or widespread, that's unlikely to bother most people much.
Rights come with responsibilities as well.
Not in our society. Certain rights are only granted if certain responsibilities are upheld, but even our most despised criminals are granted the right to food, shelter, freedom from torture and so on.
I would grant at least these minimum rights to any animal that can pass the mirror test.
When we have ensured the human rights of women, children and the occasional suspected terrorist, I *might* give a shit about chimps. Until then the discussion does nothing but illustrate how good we are at ignoring the suffering of our fellow man.
If you can ask for freedom, and you have a basic understanding of what you're asking for, you deserve freedom.
That isn't to say that those who don't understand don't deserve, or else 90% of management at my workplace would be stripped of their basic human rights. They do tend to throw their excrement at one another as it is.
These stories are free but worth money.
So would that make our country a banana republic? :O :O
Finally my girlfriend and I can be married Thank you Jesus
You just wait 'til the first time he throws chimp poop in YOUR face - then we'll see if you still think Jerry is a Man ...
That's the black and white and anyone who is intelligent and rational, will not be touching this issue. The fact that this question is even raised says to me that without a doubt, any useful scientists are soon going to be extinct; due to nothing more than politics! The movie Idiocracy comes to mind.
And could you imagine a Chimp on re-entry? A space monkey coming BACK to Earth, wtf! Absurd!
"Other than a strong innate respect for those who look similar to me, why should I care about the rights of my fellow human beings? There's no rational selfish reason for me to do so, especially when it comes to those with only distant genetic relations to me. "
Largely true, although this problem has been partially solved by nature, through the evolution of morality. Now, morality is a fairly (although not infinitely) flexible system, and so can be leveraged to uphold concepts such as "human rights" that greatly reduce conflict and exploitation in society. Generally, I would say that this has been a very successful endeavour, in terms of the general welfare of most people. There is, however, virtually no benefit to including monkeys in the system. Doing so merely strains it further for no gain.
"Moreover, it's against my interests to NOT enslave and plunder weaker minorities. If someone doesn't look like my kin, and I have physical advantages over it, why shouldn't I exploit it? If they can't fight back, why shouldn't I rape them or make them work for me? If I don't, some competitor might, and I'll loose out on food, shelter, or mates."
Religion most likely played a part here, in the origins of human rights - christianity provides a strong rationale for both human rights and emancipation. The problem with that rationale, however, is that it's most likely bogus. The practical rationale (see above) holds, however, but it is true that it is more vulnerable to self-interested "cheating". Howeever, as morality is largely based on consensus, and the consensus currently favors human rights, human rights can presently survive without much of a metaphysical foundation - it runs as a closed system as long as the foundation is not seriously questioned. (Platitudes and soundbites will do nicely for maintenance)
Luckily, on the economic side, slave labor is much less valuable today, as is land - before industrialization, however, slavery and land exploitation (together with wars and pandemics) were perhaps the primary ways of increasing per-capita income, as the world was pretty much stuck in a constant-income Malthusian trap. This in turn reduces incentives to violate the human-rights ceasefire. (Sadly, many never got this memo - Hitler, for instance, was stuck in the land = wealth paradigm)...
Almost 2000 years ago Caligula made his favorite horse a Roman senator.
JAM
If chimps are to be granted human rights then they should also be bound by human responsibilities. Can chimps assume human responsibilities?
Perhaps we should ensure the security of human rights for all humans before we start expanding the list.
I'm not picking on Australia here, it just seemed like a good example in this particular case.
as chimps, and still go around having human rights, yes, chimps should have human rights.
and thats no joke either. there are really many people around only as smart as chimps.
Read radical news here
1) If chimps can have human rights this also means they get to pay taxes.
2) The US will have a labor force that works cheaper than mexico.
3) If a chimp can throw a chair, Microsoft has a new pool to hire from.
4) Just in time for the US presedential elections.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I meant crap like: person A humiliates/tortures/kills/whatever person B, just to make a point to persons X, Y and Z. Innocents get made an example of, just to remind everyone else what their place is, and what can happen if they get ideas above their station.
I can honestly say that I've never seen anything even remotely similar in cats. And, trust me, I grew up with cats around since I was a baby. If cat A has a problem with cat X, it takes it on cat X directly, not on some bystander to make a point.
Oh, they'll make a show of power all right, but then one gives up and that's it. I can't even remember hearing about a cat fight that ended up lethal for one of the combatants.
And I don't think lack of opposable thumbs is what's lacking there to make them lethal. The same cats are perfectly able to tear a larger animal apart. E.g., I've seen cats hunt rabbits or rats larger than their own size. The teeth and claws are perfectly enough to do a _lot_ of damage to another cats, if they wanted to kill each other.
Compare that to some of the genocides the humans did, and I can't help liking cats a lot more. There's stuff we humans do which isn't even about power or territory, but just killing someone else because they're from a different country, race, religion or voted for the opposite party. (See, civil wars.)
Basically: when a cat signals "I give up", that's it, the fighting stops. When a human comes up with his hands up, on the other hand, the others just want to kill and torture him. And then there are the countless cases where people took out their frustration upon non-combatants who didn't fight in the first place. It took millenia and several international conventions and harsh laws to tell everyone to freakin' let go... and as we see in the recent cases in Iraq, they still don't.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Totally agreed. The first thought that went through my mind when I saw this slashdot topic is that, chimpanzees have what I consider a barbaric social system. Males violently dominate other males for the right to reproduce, almost like a harem. The victorious ones also violently dominate the females, and have no qualms about rape. Maybe we can punish ourselves for certain way we hurt them, but it almost sounds like a double standard that they get a free pass for the way they hurt themselves.
Also, I wonder whether they would pass the law on a cousin of the chimpanzee (or other closely related species), the Bonobo. That ape hardly gets any press, and from what I understand, the major difference from the chimpanzee due to a completely different social structure.
Incidentally, I don't want to sound insensitive - one of the reasons why I'm a very strict vegetarian is because I'd like to minimize unnecessary suffering - but this law sounds pretty silly even to someone like me.
George Taylor: The way you humiliated me? All of you? YOU led me around on a LEASH!
Cornelius: That was different. We thought you were inferior.
George Taylor: Now you know better.
Couldn't find any good quotes from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, so this will need to do. For now, reverse the roles, then reverse them again much later.
I don't care if we share 97 or 99% of our DNA with them , they're not human. So what if we evolved from them or a common ancestor? We all evolved from bacteria and we dont think about their rights. Yes I'm being facetious but this is just another example of foolish anthropomorphising but the fwuffy-wuffy animal lovers brigade who seem to think animals should be on a par with humans. No , sorry. Show me any ape or other animal species that has sent some of its number to the moon , sent probes to other planets , composed music , created a work of art, has almost doubled its own lifespan through medicine it invented and so forth.
Yes , treat animals with compasion , but NEVER confuse them with us. They are NOT human and to treat them so is an insult to homo sapiens and all the things we have achieved.
It's not easy ye knoooo, bein the only primate in the village.
PRIMATE RIGHTS!
I assumed it was from the Guardian / Observers' long established April 1st tradition until I saw this (from March 29th):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6505691.stm
So what are you going to do when one monkey violates another monkey's rights ? Are you going to arrest the alpha male for serial-raping, or killing a monkey from another race/tribe ? Or will you allow IT that right ? While punishing humans for violating those ?
It's not symmetrical. Somone who is profoundly handicaped has rights. Those rights do not depend on them respecting or even understanding your rights. You are obliged to respect their rights, though they are not even expected to respect yours. Following your argument would disposess a lot of profoundly handicapped people of their rights. In a sense, the rights we grant to anyone or anything says more about us who grant the rights than on the things that we grant them to.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
(Then again, ideas are great and are what have boosted us humans into the position of power, but big claws and really big teeth can create a more lasting impression. A few million years, I doubt that earlier humans were having this discussion. Tough to have an big ego when being chased across the savannah by a sabertooth tiger. Unless you're having a Guiness.)
I usually have important, intelligent things to say to the posts here (so I think), but all I can think of on this one is WTF?!? Give me an f'ing break!!
Animal rights and strong protection, hell yes. Human rights? What kind of hippie-dung are you smoking? Let's take care of all of our own first (in an enviromentally sound way).
if "they" can recognize them-selves in a mirror, they probablly ought to have extra rights.
Question: does this include dolphin, or AI?
The right question if we do meet a more intelligent race is if it's ok for THEM to experiment on US. Mod me funny if you want, but anyone comfortable with experiments with animals should also be comfortable with the idea of higher species experiment with us.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
No data, no cry
"Just in time for the US presedential elections"
But then the "Bush or chimp" thing won't be as funny.
I still don't know why we were making an insult with that comparison.
Chimps are much better than Bush, and most humans for that matter.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
so if chimps and other animals get human rights based on being able to recognise themselves in a mirror and laugh, maybe we should change the turing test to make it more fair for computers.
also, regarding the monkey - child argument: show me a monkey that has ever grown up to be a thinking reasoning being, and i'll accept your logic.
finally, I'll recognise chimps as deserving of human rights when one makes a sylogism. or laughs at a joke. laughing when tickled is a physical reaction to direct stimulus and shouldn't be treated as a sign of intelligence. have you ever seen an animal act against its nature for some belief? if a caged chicken doesn't want to be in the cage, why doesn't it just stop eating?
I for one welcome our.... ...get your hands off me you damn dirty ape!
-Xen
I was about to write the same thing hahahahahah
Give 'em the vote, and i'll guarantee that we'll finnally have a direct democracy in 2 cycles. Explaining the electoral college to a chimp will most likely result in dislocations at the very least. http://citizenj.wordpress.com/
Yes, and he defeated your rich white guy candidates TWICE.
Yay monkey!
Will the chimps be forced to live by human law?
If a chimp kills another animal, will it be arrested for animal cruelty?
If a chimp kills another chimp, will it be murder? How about if a chimp kills a human?
How about rape, assault, etc?
For one to have human rights, one has to have human responsiblities.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Animals have had responsibilities for ages. Think about workhorses, etc.
Thinking Penn and Teller - the smug idiots - are teh smart is a sign of retardation. Seek medical help.
> We have the same thing in the human world, where some humans don't respect the rights of others.
*All* humans and animals respect the rights of others. We just differ greatly on what is considered right.
Some animals think that killing other animals is OK. Some humans think killing animals OK. Some humans think killing other humans is OK. Most humans think killing animals is OK, but killing humans is not (except sometimes).
In the end it comes down to what the majority think, but this constantly changes with time, and there is no evidence that what we currently think is more 'right' or 'wrong' than in the past and who knows what we will think is 'right' in the future. I think the easiest is to just vote on it, and if we vote that animals have rights, then everyone must give them their rights or else go to jail.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Human rights come with human obligations .... laws, taxs , ...
Anyone ??
Nothing's stopping you from trying:c le_id=44177&in_page_id=2
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_arti
"If Hiasl is granted human status -- and the rights that go with it -- it will signal a victory for other primate species and unleash a wave of similar cases." If Hiasl is granted.... ??? Who is going to grant him/her? Humans? How is it that humans have the right to grant another creature any rights what so ever. Don't confuse my comment: We have the right to protect our race and fend off our enemies just as other creatures have their rights as well. I suppose it's our choice, being the supreme being, to push other creatures into extinction but we don't have any rights -- just power.
If chimps are given human rights, it would mean that society accepts the fact that humans evolved from animals. This is "a little bit" problematic for the religious zealots out there, becuase man was created by god & co.
In other words, I say we let our religious comrades deal with this one.
The saddest poem
You should NOT have to be able to claim to a right in order to have that right.
Infants and the mentally impaired can't lay claim to rights and we grant them rights anyway. This is right and good.
There may be reasons why creatures with more mental capabilities than some humans (again, infants or the mentally impaired) should not be given certain rights, but their inability to ask for them isn't one.
It is becoming more and more clear through research that the main difference between humans and the other animals is one of quantity rather than quality. It seems that most primates, and in particular the apes, have intelligence, personality, self-awareness or whatever else it is we consider makes us humans unique. The same goes for many other mammals and birds, and it seems that even some molluscs - the squids and octopuses - are somewhat sentient. So on that ground animals should be given the same sort of legal protection that humans have.
On the other hand, it also seems clear that most other animals wouldn't fit into our system of rights; perhaps we should develop a set of 'Rights of the Living'.
I have often wondered why it is hard for some to grasp that very few modern creatures have living genetic ancestors.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Give them right, alright. Then, please tell us, who will enroll to be their police, who will prosecute them for murder (if they kill each other in fights, which do happen), who will ensure compulsory education, give them vaccines, and so on. Ehh, why do I even bother, these guys have just found the only thing that gives their lives meaning, we should just mind about ours and let them play.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I can't say what rights are like in other countries, but generally ...
... other than the lack of the ability to communicate with us, I'd say a typical chimp might be similar to a child in the range of 2 to 5 years old. What human rights do we allow children in that age range?
Can a chimp participate in human society? Can he learn to respect our laws? If he were allowed to wander freely, can he be trusted not to attack young children or pets?
Children have human rights, but they are not allowed free exercise of those rights until they reach an age at which we presume them to be mature enough to do so responsibly - and if they later prove that they can not do so then courts can take those rights away. Criminals, insane people, or those unable to act as adults may be restrained, confined, and otherwise have their rights restricted - in some cases, even their right to life.
How does a typical chimpanzee compare to a child? I don't know
By human standards chimps are criminals. Yes, some of them are way smater than public recognizes, but still they don't (and won't) give a flying f**k about so many laws that we'll imprison any of them on sight. I don't think that that is what animal rights activists whant us to do. In this case, better treatment sounds much better than equal treatment to me.
I completely agree and it has taken to long for this to come to the courts. These animals are highly intelligent and sentient in every sense of the word. They have a sense of identity and are able to communicate in complex languages, i.e. sign language. They have feelings and emotions and express them in the same way we do. Just because we are smarter doesn't mean they should be treated poorly. Since most chimps have the mentality of a small child what would you all say if a mentally challenged human who was stuck at the same level was treated the way they are? Just because we can build things and speak does not mean we have the right to treat all other sentient life like it is a toy or disposable.
WTF?
The missing Link is called Anunnaki!
They created us in their image by mixing their seed with the chimps.
Find out more in Zecharia Sitchin!!!
Zecharia Sitchin's key ideas are based on the assumption that ancient myths are not myths but historical and scientific texts. According to Sitchin, ancient Sumerian clay tablets reveal that gods from another planet (Nibiru, which orbits our Sun every 3,600 years) arrived on Earth some 450,000 years ago and created humans by genetic engineering of female apes.
I'd suggest whilst the full range of 'human' rights would not fully be apropriate for monkeys, as they cant cope with the responsibilitys or understand them (although arming chimps WOULD be hilarious at a distance) , we can certainly derive a subset of rights they should be able to expect (the right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right for a human advocate to sue on their behalf for loss of rights, etc) based on the facts at hand.
Chimps are chimps. They don't want to be people, they want to be chimps. The only right we need to grant them is the right to be chimps in peace. It has nothing to do with their capability, that's a red herring. They're chimps. Highly intelligent, self-aware, sentient if you ask me (but don't ask me to define it), and also not human. They're chimps. Anthropomorphizing them and asking if they should be considered "people", or comparing them to disabled humans, is to violate their right to be chimps.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's very clear. We shouldn't be performing medical experiments or capturing or hunting chimps or destroying their habitat (more), but that's it. That's all they need. We just need to start respecting the other life forms on this planet, not dressing them up in suits and expecting them to be people. They won't be, don't want to be, and are just fine as they are.
The enemies of Democracy are
How this is "Science" section, not "stupid idiots" section, or at least, let me see, "YRO" or "Politics"?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
No, the fact that your country has a president put in place purely for the benefit of businesses operating there is what makes it a banana republic
Korea and Austria are considering human rights for robots and apes respectively. Isn't it ironic that this would mean that non-humans in these countries would be treated better than women are treated in many places in the world. Strikes me as terribly misplaced priorities.
[Insert pithy quote here]
As many pointed out, rights go together with responsibilities. Can you hold a chimp responsible for a crime, then? Apparently not. FYI, occasionally chimps kill other apes (bonobos) and eat them. Do you seriously propose that chimps are tried and sent to jail for premeditated murder/bonobo-slaughter/cannibalism-of-some-sort ? Trying to extend what is now human rights to not only apes but all animals (I can see efforts in that direction) leads automatically to paradoxes: animals kill each other all the time, that's the way life is. Believing in so called "animal right to life" implies (in case the person believing in it is consistent and smart, which is seldom the case) automatically that all the predators and omnivores are criminals. Furthermore, many (most?) carnivores cannot possibly survive without eating other animals; so, if the spider kills a fly, it is a criminal, but if you deny the spider its prey it (the spider) will die, so indirectly you become a criminal.
Some common sense is needed to stop the non-sense...
I hail our new chimp overlords!
My other sig is a knife wound.
If Apes/Chimps get "human rights", then what is the age of consent for them going to be?
Don't knock the question, some of you lame slashbots may be able to finally get some from a chimp!
Posted anonymous due to Ape Loving reference...
Let us not forget the profound words of Jay & Silent Bob:
"In this world gone mad we don't spank the monkey, the monkey spanks us"
Yes, the monkey spanks us.
Because in order to have human rights you have to be a HUMAN. This would just cause a HUGE slippery slope.
Why don't give them chimp rights?
If we give chimps human rights, they will continue to ask for more until one day a chimp will become President of the USA!
Oops, never mind!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Does this mean some freak will legally be able to marry a chimp? (shudder)
!sig
So what next, give chimps the right to vote?
a chimpanzee should not have HUMAN rights
YES, a chimpanzee has rights as a living thing and deserves some legal protections. but not, in any way, HUMAN rights
i passed an animal rights activist on the street the other day, and she had a t-shirt that read "animals are people too"
no. never. no way. no how
but her t-shirt does just about sums up the essential disconnect between reality and delusion going on here:
YES, animals deserve some protections from suffering. yes, cruel treatment against ANY life form is incompatible with any sense of morality. yes, yes, yes
but NO: the rights of animals NEVER rise to that of your fellow human beings
that's the line in the sand
the rights if animals are not zero. but the rights of animals also do not rise to the rights of your fellow human beings
that's the only common sense reality on the subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
before they take over the world and ENSLAVE US ALL!
. stm
:S
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2617063
Who knew Bush had anything to teach?
How should we relate to beings who look into mirrors and see themselves as individuals, who mourn companions and may die of grief, who have a consciousness of 'self?' Don't they deserve to be treated with the same sort of consideration we accord to other highly sensitive beings: ourselves?
a sp
- Dr. Jane Goodall
http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/default.
PS For those posters arguing "chimps aren't humans" - no, they're not. That's semantics, it's unrelated to the core issue.
First of all, a chimp doesn't get "human rights" simply because they're not human. If you want to propose a "chimp rights" campaign, go right ahead.
Secondly, babies and the severely retarded are a poor example, because they usually DON'T get the same rights as grown-up, normal humans. Do babies have the right to free speech? Do they have the right to travel wherever they want to go? Do they have the right to vote? Do they have the right to petition their government, or serve in it? Hell no! Mom and Dad are their dictators.
What about someone who is severely retarded (not even capable of speech or understanding "rights," the way chimps are). Odds are they're under strict care of an institution or family members, which means they don't have any meaningful rights either.
Now, if by "rights," you mean simply "the right not to be wantonly abused or killed," then sure. I suspect that's what most people mean when they're talking about chimps. But there are already laws on the books giving those "rights" to most animals (in the U.S. we call them "animal cruelty laws"). That's not to say that it's absolutely illegal to kill animals already, by any means. But generally it must be done under regulation and with minimal cruelty (slaughterhouses are regulated, hunting is strictly controlled, etc.). In the U.S., at least, you can't just walk out into the woods and start killing animals. And (if you're not working in a licensed medical lab) you sure as Hell can't torture animals. Both will get you heavily fined at minimum, thrown in jail at worst.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
This is the hardest thing in the world to explain to anti-evolution advocates. They throw out "If we evolved from apes why are the still apes around?".
It's just impossible for them to grasp that the apes that we evolved from are no longer around, nore are the apes that the modern apes evolved from around, and indeed, there still are apes, and WE are still apes.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If James Brown ate the banana, it's got soul.
Past some arbitrary point intelligence defines value.
There's no missing link ...
Of course not; it's missing.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
I think you know what I meant...
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
This reminds me of Pat Murphy's Nebula Award winning scifi short story called "Rachel in Love" where a scientist imprinted his dying daughter's brain pattern on a chimp. The site where the story's hosted seems to be down for maintenance, but here's the google cache.
Humans are hypocritical and many are dumb asses!!!
It's all about our own convenience and comfort. Anyone who eats meat and calls themselves compassionate, is really fooling themselves!! People talk about world peace and all the goodness, but fail to realize how impossible that will be to achieve until we start making some drastic changes that affect the Earth as a whole and our way of life.
We can argue all day about the DNA sharing, micro-organisms, and what constitutes being "human". But simply judging on the basis that just as you suffer, fear, feel...so do other various life forms, one can discern the obvious truth of the matter.
And nature has a way of taking care of itself (which includes us -- it behooves us to acknowledge and respect it if we are to ensure a certain standard of comfortable living and survival of life on this planet.) I don't see anyone going around hunting people down in China and India due to population growth. But as soon as bunch of deers are treading around your neighborhood, the hunting begins!! At least animals kill for an appropriate reason (more or less) for survival rather than us humans who do it for idiotic reasons!!
Personally, I cannot argue about this without including the idea of ID/HD (intelligent/higher design). Once this concept is introduced, things begin to make much more sense.
Just think about the idea that as many choices you make through your thought process and the "human" things you do, you did not "choose" to be of certain gender, race, creed, or color, let alone be a human!!
Aside from this topic, but worth noting is that most are born into "religions" which they hardly question, have crude understanding of it, and pretty much have blind faith. With the right discrimination, and asking the right questions, one can drive the idea of faith.
Remember, "if things don't make sense, then there's something wrong!!" Question everything until the Truth remains!!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
This is great. They think being selfaware means they should get HUMAN rights? If this is the case then Dolphins should get it too since they have demonstarted a long time ago they are selfaware. Oh wait this only applies to animal life which resembles humans which make it easier for us to personify them and/or identify with them. I find this just as silly as the vegan argument for not eating meat. Sure they aren't killing animals for food. They just slaughtering plantlife for sustinance. Just becasuse the plant can not run away screaming, doesn't look in any way like us, and isn't cute and cuddly doesn't make it any less alive and less deserving of the same protections they want to extend to some memebrs of the animal kingdom. This is a silly argument.
The human species (children and retarded included because they are of the same species) gets human rights because some members of the species become capable of spontaneously asking for them. Each individual doesn't have to ask for them....the many get it once the few want it.
Same for chimps. But they can't simply be trained to make an arbitrary gesture which we then interpret as asking for rights. We must be convinced that they actually understand what they are asking for and genuinely want it for themselves. Once a few chimps do this, then all chimps should get rights.
It's not that hard to understand.
I don't know, but if one would like to submit his paper explaining why to me, I'll gladly give it a read.
Unless there's poo on it.
If only that were so:
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Okay, this might sound like a troll, but hear me out. I'm not interested in getting into a discussion about abortion, but it makes a pertinent example, regardless of whether you are opposed to it or not.
I have a hard time believing that chimps would be granted any rights in today's society, especially considering that roughly half of the population argues in favor of a woman's "right" to have her unborn child killed. If the rights of an unborn human child are so small that they may be outweighed by the convenience of the mother, I fail to see how a chimp's right to life would ever take precedence over the possible value of the medical research obtained.
Abortion doesn't cure disease - in fact, it is, more or less, last-resort birth control. If you can't convince society to respect human life, I doubt you'll be able to convince them that medical research should be halted so that chimps can be spared. After all, at least the medical research has the potential of providing cures for disease someday.
I'm not trying to troll here - you can believe what you want with respect to the merits of abortion. That's not the issue. The issue is that in order to convince people to give animals the same rights as humans, you are going to have to offer a compelling case for doing so. People (sadly) aren't interested in the moral arguments, and the arguments against giving animals rights are strong:
It isn't an easy subject to take on. Granted, we shouldn't ever intentionally inflict pain on living things, but then, how would we eat? There are vitamins and minerals our bodies need which are only present in living things. So without a binding set of moral principles, the debate is going to remain centered around the pragmatic aspects, and I doubt this will result in any action being taken.
After all, the Democrats successfully convinced Americans that it is wrong to "imposing your private view of morality on the general public". Given this is considered evil, how could one convince the general public that your particular moral imperative applies to the public at large? Isn't religion supposed to be a private thing now? (I suppose we could get involved in the related discussion about private versus public morality, and how law reflects the morality of the public at large, for better or for worse.)
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Quite true, and I agree with what you said, but that's no reason for me not to poke holes in your wording and pretend I defeated your argument, even if I technically did. :)
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Robert Heinlein forsaw this over half a century ago.
In related stupidity, people are now calling for human rights for intelligent machines, despite the fact that there is no such thing as a sentient machine and isn't likely to ever be one.
The madness continues. Next up: carnivorism is outlawed!
Duly noted, but still... the fundamental difference is that the mouse is another species.
:P
The humans boil molusks alive (plus other fun ways of killing other kinds of food), the cat plays with a mouse to death. So far both do nasty things to their prey.
The humans torture and kill other humans, the cat doesn't do the same to its own species. That's what I'm talking about.
Electing a cat as president won't change this one bit. While in a metaphorical/fable sense you can say USA = cat, Iraq = mouse, in practice a cat won't think in those terms.
And it would still have to convince its cat-soldiers to go there and actually do that. Because that's basically what it's going to take. For the theoretical cat super-power state to do that to the little state, some cat-infantry would have to go down there and actually kill the population. I'm not sure how they'd get around the interlock they have in the brain against killing each other.
But mostly that's already taking it too seriously. My point was more of a "man, we're worse to each other than wolves are to each other" kind of lament, only in this case with cats. Dissecting into detail exactly what _would_ a cat realistically do in Iraq, well, reading all I wrote above, it seems just about as bad as explaining a joke
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sorry, people, but animals are (or should be treated as) property like shoes, cars, and computers.
You're right that PETA has no traction on their slippery slope (how may bugs died transporting your hummus to the store?) but that's not a reason for your above argument.
If I wanted to open up a store on Times Square where people could come in off the street, plunk down $100 and be issued a pair of Nike's and a soldering iron, after which they would spend the afternoon poking the Nikes with the soldering iron and disfiguring it in any why they pleased, you'd probably be OK with that (rightly shaking your head at the absurdity of it all, no doubt).
But what if I were issuing puppies instead of Nike's? My guess is you'd see that as something different. If not, that's a diagnostic indicator for psychopathy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A female bonobo was arrested in Sao Paolo yesterday for prostitution and lewd behavior in public.
The land shall stone them with the bread of his son.
Chimps people? Chimps, I advise you to decline this "honor".
Alls I have to say is, "Sir, in twenty years, you'll be taxing them."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> I think you've confused "right and wrong" with "legal right" here.
I think that was is legally right is usually the same as what the majority believe is morally right, (after all they voted/campaigned for it). If the majority of people thought smoking cocaine was morally acceptable, it would soon become legally acceptable too.
I don't think that's the way it should be, but I do think it's the way it is today. Maybe you think I'm confused, but more likely, you just disagree with me. That's fine. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
So, you're saying if you trim the tail off a monkey, it becomes a human?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I think these animals deserve special rights. There's no question they're intelligent and I get the sense that most of the higher primates are self-aware, though I'm not a specialist in this area at all, so I can't say for sure.
As someone who works in a lab that designs drugs for cancer research, I'm kind of torn on the whole animal testing thing. Now, for our group specifically, we never do animal testing. We do mostly in vitro work. But when things go beyond our lab, assuming the drugs appear promising, animal testing eventually arises. My hope is that primates are the absolute final step in the drug testing and that it's gone through at least a few other lower life forms and been shown to be safe before it goes into the primates. I don't really know for sure. But this is the question I ask myself in the end: "Do I want them testing this drug on a primate or do I want them testing this drug on my mother?" And that pretty much answers the question for me. It's a harsh reality, but if a few (and yeah, I know it's more than a few) primates are sacrificed to save thousands of lives, I accept that. I'm not happy about it. I'd love to see us arrive at the point where we can model this stuff accurately enough to not need animals, but at this point, we do need them. Our knowledge is simply too incomplete at this point.
If granted rights, could "his children" then sue for child support?
first chimps are given human rights, and then cows/bulls, chickens/roosters, pigs, etc. Before you know it the whole animal kingdom is given human rights and then meat is outlawed. Not that anyone would eat a chimp, but it makes sense to give a chimp the rights first and then the other animals later using the chimp case as a reference for the other cases.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If Australia decided to confer upon a chimpanzee human rights (and I'd argue that the chimpanzee must be aware of what those human rights entail, and to request said rights of his or her own accord), would the chimpanzee be given human rights on the basis of a minor or an adult? Does it have basic human rights such as the right to own property, the right to bear arms, and the right to vote? If it kills, is it put to death as an adult, or spared as a minor? Is the chimpanzee a minor, whereby it has restricted rights, and resides under the protection of a custodial guardian? If so, under what rubric is it decided what rights it does and does not have on account of its minority status?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Someday maybe a chimp will even become Presid... Oh Wait.
Robert Heinlein published a story titled "Jerry Was a Man" with much this plot (legal rights for chimps, although the tribunal I believe was Martian) in 1947. It's included in the Assignment in Eternity collection; the four stories in it are some of his weakest, but still present some interesting ideas.
"Jerry" is still one of the better pieces of SF in the discussion of non-human rights, although Roddenberry's "The Measure of A Man" from ST:TNG is probably the best; "Valentina: Soul in Sapphire" is also worth looking at. (I can think of more discussion of Machine Rights SF than Alien/Animal rights; Heinlein's "Star Beast" is the only one that comes to mind. Probably a residual of the "hard" science bias to SF.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"Get your filthy hands off me you damn dirty ape!"
Do we really need to give them rights, were supposed to make servants out of them first, then they can rise up and take their rights by force. I for one welcome our simian overlords.
All people even children and the mentally retarded have "human rights," such as the right not to be abused.
Adults have additional rights like the right to enter into binding contracts.
Citizens have even more rights, like the right to vote.
Some of these rights are "free" some come with responsibilities attached.
What of other self-aware creatures of various intelligence levels?
You can argue that chips, dogs, and even someday computers are self-aware.
What of species more intelligent than humans, such as possible space aliens or Douglas Adams's dolphins?
What about the rights, if any, that belong to all living creatures. Do individual viruses have rights? Does a particular type or sub-type of virus have the right to not be eradicated? What about cockroaches? What about livestock?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
until the chimp starts marturbating in front of everybody... can blind chimps have human rights?
I'm reminded of the gruesome story about the chimp that mauled a man, chewing his genitals off.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7087194/
If we grant chimps "human rights" then does the chimp get the same due process as humans? How would you try the chimp with a jury of his peers?
What if the chimp wants to marry? What if some guy wants to marry the chimp? Yeah, yeah, these obviously aren't regarded as basic human rights at this time, but you can see what a slippery slope this can become.
Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty apes!
1865: I'm all in favor of ethical treatment of negros, but that doesn't extend to granting them rights that we can't even assure for other whites.
1920: I'm all in favor of ethical treatment of women, but that doesn't extend to granting them rights that we can't even assure for all men.
> Lets bring on the rights for chimps, but with right comes responsibilities.
Exactly. It is intellectual dishonesty to speak of "Rights" for any of the lesser orders (and a non trivial number of humans these days, rant for another day) in the same way as we speak of them for us. Every Right has an equal and opposite set of Obligations, no chimp I have heard of is capable of fulfilling said obligations. At a minimum they must respect the same Rights for fellow citizens. There is a reason we keep em in zoos and other highly supervised environments when they live in human settings.
Stretched to the most extreme a chimp can have similar Rights as a small child, i.e. as a dependent of a full Citizen who assumes responsibility for the actions of a minor child and makes decisions in its name. But even that doesn't make total sense because in the case of a child it is assumed the child will eventually assume all of the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship and those rights are only being held in trust until that time.
If as a society we decide that inflicting medical experiments, etc on em is a bad thing, so be it. But lets recognize that is it is US making the decision and it has nothing whatsoever with any daft notions that semi intelligent species have "Human Rights" because it does not a damned thing for them while the intellectual dishonesty can only lead to a reduction in what the term means for us in the long run.
Besides it is obvious what the real agenda is, get chimps "Rights" and then groups like PETA will use that thin end of the wedge to extend the flawed logic behind it to all animals and then all living things. These days PETA and the US Humane Society (National, not the local unrelated groups doing good works running the local animal shelter) are nothing more than front groups for terrorist groups like ALF anyway, if we ignored and defunded em they would go away.
Democrat delenda est
Your comment sounds like the intention of the destruction of habitats by humans is to destroy certain species that depend on those habitats. I think most people would argue that this destruction is a result of our actions, and not the intention. For example, you use the word "systematic". What is the system and how does it involve specific targeting of primates? How does this system rationalize the destruction of other "non-competing" (or even beneficial) species that depend on the same habitats? If we wanted to destroy a species, human beings are very good at it, usually just by directly killing the species, like the American bison.
All I'm trying to say is that the intention of human beings is "expansion", which could be viewed in very simplistic terms as "self-preservation" or very complex terms as "greed" or "self-gratification", and that this expansion has the results of destruction. The intention is not destruction. There is no common, genetic driving force that makes us view primates as competition that must be eradicated. Humans just care more about themselves than anything else, which is why most of us don't care that we destroy the habitats of other species. The issue is further complicated in that a) there are some of us that, for whatever reasons we have, do NOT want to expand and destroy, and b) for some reason, we hold ourselves to a different standard than animals in that we place all kinds of restrictions on self-preservation (some people would call this "ethics", I suppose, but that's a whole other discussion!).
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2006/12/14/23159/ 956/2#2
if you a kill an animal and:
# of animals alive in species>100,000 = no punishment
100,000># of animals alive in species>10,000 = public chastisement
10,000># of animals alive in species>1,000 = financial punishment
10,000># of animals alive in species>1,000 = short jailtime, steeper fines
1,000># of animals alive in species>100 = longer jailtime
100># of animals alive in species>10 = longest jailtime
10># of animals alive in species>1 = permanent incarceration
# of animals alive in species=1 = execution
conclusion: a human life is worth less than the last living member of a species, but worth more than the life of any other animal member of a species with more than one member
for example, whoever killed the last baiji deserves the death penalty. of ocurse, it's not that simple: the chinese government saw this coming for a long time, and it is their responsibility to manage its lands. it is absolutely inexcuseable that a major, large, culturally, ecologically, and evolutionarily important animal such as the baiji could have been lost to us in only the past 10 years. that the baiji is now extinct, and that that probably happened only in the last few years, is a reprehensible abandonment of responsibility to the world, and to the people it serves, by the chinese government, and serves as a permanent stain on chinese civilization, something the chinese should be ashamed of for generations, and something they should ask forgiveness of to their ancestors for killing off an animal beloved to their ancestors in legend, song, dance, carving, painting, myth, and story. so how do you punish china for this crime? the extinction of the baiji is an act worthy of international condemnation, sanctions, and retribution, economic, and military:
for losing the baiji, i propose all chinese claims to the oil rich spratly islands be denied out of hand by the international community
only then will the chinese government pay attention to its crime and its continuing reponsibilities
only with this kind of attitude towards animal killing can humankind come to grips with and manage its accelerating negative impact on species diversity, which is important to humanity for many reasons: novel biological compounds, knowledge about evolution, simple aesthetics, and yes, cultural nostalgia
for species with very few members, say, the kakapo, where only a handful, about 50, still exist, killing one of them deserves very harsh punishment: permanent incarceration, for example, equivalent to punishment deserving of human murderers
but if you kill a goat? a horse? a cow? if your punishment was motivated by necessity: food, or clothing, for example, then no punishment exists at all. if it was done cruelly and without material reason or benefit, then you deserve some sort of punishment, but not a major one
someone who destroys the pyramids or the taj mahal or the afghan buddhas is certainly deserving of the death penalty. so is it so for he who kills the last of a species
one human life is not worth as much as a cultural treasure or a whole animal species, not even ten or even a hundred human lives
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So if chimps have human rights then they are technically humans, right? so if I am ever in Africa and starving and only have chimp to eat I am really in trouble...... umm baby back chimp ribs..... "GET IN MY BELLY!"
Apes with guns kill people."
/got nuthin' ...
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Douglas Adams says it best.... We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphising animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behaviour was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human. Chimps aren't humans, nor do they want to be; they dont think the way us meatbags do and implying they do is a mistake.
Judging a creature's sentience or intelligence is completely missing the point. Sentience (the ability to feel or perceive) and intelligence (the capacity for learning, reasoning, and understanding) were never considered unique factors that set humanity apart from every other organism on this planet.
No one is debating whether animals are capable of feeling or reasoning, to varying degrees many are.
What is at issue here is Sapience. It is humanity's sapience (ability to act with judgment concerning complex issues) that makes us human, and thus guarantees us rights apart from every other organism on this planet.
A monkey can kill another monkey, and the monkey can use their sentience and intelligence to feel sad that they will now be deprived of the other monkey's company, but a monkey is incapable of using judgment to determine that killing the other monkey was morally wrong.
It is that judgment, between right and wrong, that sets humanity apart.
Ok, so if we give rights to Chimps and they commit a crime like attack a human by sneaking out of their cage like they did at the Wildlife Waystation here in California simply because they wanted their cake and eat it too would we have had to put them on trial? I think it would have been a Kangaroo Court at best.
Specks
Batteries not included
Why don't unborn humans have human rights?
Get your lawyers off me, you damn dirty ape!
Before making any conclusions I'd like to know what this presumably nonexistent soul is, exactly speaking ? What would its physical charasteristics be like, if it existed ? How much would it weight, what would it look like, and how would one determine its presence ?
/. indeed.
Are you folks still discussing on whether a banana has a soul or not?!
This is
The next Democratic Party platform... cross-species marriage. If you don't agree, you're a bigot. You heard it here first!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The question is not whether they "should" have rights but whether they do. You can't legislate the laws of nature.
at least I can form complete sentences.
Two guys with enough money to put up a shitty TV show to tell the world they think global warming is not happening / is not human-caused are idiots. End of story. But hey, at least you buy that shit. Good for you.
Storm
From what I understand, the smartest animals (That is, an intelligent, trained-for-years chimp/dolphin/parrot instead of your average chimp/dolphin/parrot) are on par with an average 2-year old human in terms of intelligence. This means that you can't give the animals any rights that you couldn't give a two-year old. (i.e. you can't kill or torture them, but they can't enter contracts or be considered fully responsible for their actions).
Oh, and I am aware this article is potentially an April Fool's joke. It's still something interesting to discuss.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
That said,
Very much so, but that was sorta the whole point: a cat wouldn't come up with such a plan where hurting the innocents is the whole point. (It's just not wired for that or "smart" enough for that.)
Again, very much so, very insightful, but good luck getting a cat to make that mental substitution. You can't convince a cat that another cat is really a mouse, not a cat.
This time we're more in "yes and no" territory. To you, it may look like the mouse gave up, but to a cat it matters if it gives the correct _cat_ signals or not. It's not as much based on careful reasoning and introspection, nor on philosophical considerations about the mouse's predicament. It's really some signals that are as good as hard-coded. You either give the right "I give up, leave me alone" signal, or you don't.
Basically, when the mouse learns to purr, then it will have a chance. Maybe.
Anyway, to get back to the point, the point is: sure, a cat plays with a _mouse_, but it doesn't play "let's bleed you to death" with another cat. Which is more than I can say about humans.
That was sorta the whole point, actually: that cats don't engage in some of the silly human games.
Presenting the enemy as not even human, i
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Chimps also eat their own poo, and if you piss them off they are not going to be gentle or have any mercy, they'll just give you the smack down. I think it's very foolish of us to give chimps human rights, but deny them to other people in our own species directly.
Ultimately, these types of things (human rights for animals, etc.) come from the bored and / or intellectually lazy. When you're so "well off" as a society that you have no pressing problems of your own (or at least can't see them), boredom creeps and and you somehow must solve these imaginary problems. One doesn't really see this type of thing, say, when your primary concern is how you are going to feed your family for the day, or how you are going to avoid being shot on the street (which to most people, would give an indication of how "important" these things really are). And even when larger problems exists, it seems to become a mental cop-out of sorts to say, in some respects "Those are too hard of problems to solve, let's bake up some to "solve" so we can feel like we are doing something."
One of the basic problems of this type of activity, as documented by scholars, is that the ever increasing broadening of "rights" and how they are defined has parodoxically left us (or some of us, at least) unable to define "rights" in the first place. So the act of defining these types of extended "rights" destroys the intent of having rights in the first place.
Next they'll want the right to arm bears....
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
A brainless (anencephalic, technically) human baby is genetically human 'Genetically human'? What I think people don't really understand about evolution is that speciation is an indiscrete process. Each organism is essentially it's own species; to define a species is to create an arbitrary boundary around a group of individuals that are more similar to each other than they are to other individuals. But within that group there will be divisions and subdivisions that will, in time, grow to be wholly separate groups. So your basic assumption that something either is or isn't human won't hold up in the long term. We still cling to the idea, but it's basically outmoded. This is an extremely hairy issue; our society is based around the idea that the present members and their offspring are part of it, and we gear the society towards their needs. When we start inducting new members, those that have never been part of society, suddenly we have to consider when we throw members out, or what qualifies as a potential member. If chimps, why not monkeys? If monkeys, why not all mammals? Why not all animals? Why not all life? But despite being one writhing biomass in the first place, it's not tenable to give rights to, say, a corn stalk or a mosquito. Hence the drive to name sentience as a reasonable delineating factor; but then you run into your speciation question again. What about those humans who are, effectively, nonsentient? Arguably many humans fall under this aegis - more if you consider it possible for things such as religion to be 'the opiate of the masses' and effectively take free will away. If a mentally challenged 'human' is less mentally aware or capable than a mental maverick... dog, do we give the dog rights and not the human? In conclusion, I recommend that if you have an interest in the subject and have not done so already, read "The Selfish Gene". Until there is a good widespread understanding of the fuzzy nature of the 'species' category I don't think the philosophy will properly catch up.
[Ego]out
of those careerbuilder ads, seems sort of like we should expect a chimp for a boss any day now
Yes and no, on the whole. Basically it wasn't really supposed to be taken literally.
That said, IMHO mostly no when it comes to similarities between cats and lions.
Lions have a group survival strategy, just like wolves do (obviously, a different one, though), cats (as in, Felis Silvestris) simply don't. They evolved and live on prey that just wouldn't work any better, or at all, for a group hunt. They're a lot closer, if you will, to a smaller, and more tolerant of each other, kind of tiger, than to lions. And as a result, group behaviour and dynamics are also a lot more different.
Colonies of feral cats are closer to a group of individuals that tolerates each other, than to anything really resembling a group of lions. And being the "alpha" means a heck of a lot less. Leading the group to war, for a start, is something that wouldn't even work, because the other group members don't have the instinct to hunt as a group, or to follow a leader to hunt.
Being the alpha male also doesn't involve being the one that impregnates all females. Or at least I can't find that documented anywhere. What I do find documented is quite the contrary: that female cats often mate with more than one male when they're in heat, and it's not that uncommon for different kittens in the same litter to have different fathers. It sure doesn't sound like a lion pride situation to me.
Also note the reference to alpha male, rather than the one male and a harem scheme used by lion prides. Feral cat colonies usually include more than one male, and the cat females aren't as "submissive" as lionesses are. Hence, as I was saying, you'd be surprised how much those group dynamics can differ from a pride of lions.
Even, since you mention kittens, the defense of kittens is most usually _not_ entrusted to a lone male, and certainly it wouldn't be the only male in a colony. The females have a far more active role in caring for the kittens, than would be the case with lions. So even _if_ anyone killed _a_ male, they wouldn't end up in a position to kill all kittens with impunity.
Killing kittens... again, you can't really simplify it as being the same as in lions. What we do know is that (A) _some_ cats kill kittens, (B) most actually don't, so it's not a general trait of the species, and (C) actually more killed kittens are killed by females, often their own mother, than by males. I've yet to see any claim that anyone solved that mystery yet. Yes, there is one hypothesis that maybe tomcats act like male lions, but there are other hypothes too. For example, another one is that some cats simply have their hunting instincts tripped by the small squeaky kittens.
We don't really know yet, and there are questions either way. For example the generalization that male cats just acts like male lions misses the crucial point that most actually don't. Or it misses the case of kittens killed by a female, which doesn't really have a parallel in lion prides.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This is a travesty.. WE HUMANS don't even have the benefit of habeas corpus anymore! I am jealous of this chimp.
I'm ok with equal rights for chimps, as long as they pay taxes.
"For one to have human rights, one has to have human responsiblities."
This is absolutely not true. You have humans rights. You have human responsibilities. These do not depend on each other.
Waaay down upon da su-wahneee ribberrrrr...
InANIMALANE.... from the animals' perspectives...
Sorry...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The poster is speaking hypothetically here. The point is to distinguish the relevant and non-relevant factors, not to argue that bugs think (which I hope we all agree that they don't). Are thinking and feeling like us the relevant issues, and if so what constitutes "enough"? I think the simplicity of insects makes it certain they neither think, nor feel as we do; however it is clear they feel in some way; is that enough?
Bugs are a bad example, because they provoke exactly this kind of reaction. It makes more sense to look at several points along a reasonable continuum, such as people, chimps, dogs or cats, insects, jellyfish,Myxozoa, and protists (which are not technically animals but share characteristics).
Now split that set into two subsets, one of which have rights of some kind, and the other of which do not have any rights. How did you choose? Why is that way of choosing right?
Many people include only humans as having rights, because they believe only humans have souls. The problem with this is that its not a very productive line of argument. Buddhists, Hindus and Jains believe that animals have souls too, and animists believe that inanimate objects like rocks or even transient phenomenon like lightning can have souls as well.
Here is the challenge: can you do better than people who say that the "soul" is the relevant thing? If so, does your definition automatically exclude all non-human animals?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ok....people it's simple like this. Animals should have basic rights. Hell, they already do. I mean, you can't abuse an animal or you go to jail. You can't abuse a human or you go to jail. We have animal and human equality there, and that's as far as it should go. Giving humans the ability to sue other humans over an animal that has been "wronged" is retarded. What is the animal going to do with the money from the suit? He can't go buy a new car or anything. Come on people...
I wondering if a chimp would vote for bush.
This sounds familiar. Not sure I want to go on with this. The next part is about revenge.
"If society runs perfectly smoothly because the state murders those considered inferior, under your formulation of rights, that should be sufficient, no?"
Because once you start killing people on too flimsy grounds ("you're a jew"), all social truces start to break down, and society will in all likelyhood turn out extremely badly for most people. Ayrian Germans didn't get a great deal from the Third Reich - on the contrary, their lust for violence filled society with general fear, and consumed themselves in the end, by the millions. Which is one reason why I prefer a peaceful society that respects rights, all consensus-based moral conditioning aside.
"Alright. Then I say we kill all mentally disabled children. There's no danger in them fighting back, so it doesn't effect me in a negative way. And, let's face it, these children are a burden on society. What's the benefit of providing them rights?"
My case against killing mentally disabled children is, again, based on preventing mission creep. Granted, that likelyhood is semi-low in the case of very small children - most western societies have, thanks to advances in medical technology, been able to move infantide to before birth, I.e. abortion. Hell, in the states you have "partial birth abortion", which means, in essence "the head's not out, so we can whack it!".
Still, given plentiful abortion, our affluence (care for the mentally ill takes what, a percent of our aggregated income? If that?) and the risk of a slippery slope meaning ever more disabled people are killed, I would say the case for infanticide is weak. (Although the issue pops up from time to time in, say, Holland). In addition, there is just plain instinctive revulsion in most people when it comes to killing children. People like children, and don't like seeing them killed, or hearing about them killed - especially if they have to feel culpable about it. So, why subject them to that given the extremely slight gain?
Monkeys all have tails. Apes, including gorillas, baboons, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, do not.
No data, no cry
Correction: I should have listed Gibbons instead of Baboons. Baboons are monkeys. Gibbons are apes.
No data, no cry
Once all the chimps get together and finally hammer out the complete works of Shakespeare, then we'll talk.
The "meat" (which I agree, prety much is) you reffer to turns into an entity far beyond chimps comprehension. The knowledge acquired during experiments is vital for human medicine and potentialy for chimps as well. For example potential uplift of the spicies. Or you want to grant them rights which will eventualy make potential benefits of "unethical practices" unavailable? I think Heinlein has something interesting to say on the subject.
Yes. Definitely. As soon as they ask for them.
Rights do come with responsibilities, but that has to be set within the being's cultural framework. When those frameworks differ, the responsibilities differ too. This is a point lost by many colonials.
The most fundamental right is to allow a being (or group of beings) self determination and allowing them to have their own cultures and values.
A chimp's primary right is to be a chimp. A chimp (probably) does not want to be a white city-living American taxpayer. Nope, he just wants to tool around in the forest. Granting a chimp rights basically says that we should respect this and stop taking away his resources.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes No Maybe?
I'm going to be unapologetically logical in this post, so mod me down if you must, but looking at things from a pragmatists perspective...
First we have problems simply enforcing human rights, man is still at heart barbaric because nature is brutal and we have yet to develop the technology that basically makes engaging in barbaric practices and men enslaving men obsolete.
No animals should have human rights unless found to have intelligence that confers man-like civilization, that is: A species who's interest goes beyond mere brute survival and works towards technologically efficient means of controlling and subduing the unstable natural environment.
It bugs me to no end that life forms and species that would otherwise die when the sun blows up should have *rights*. People can cry and whine all they want about animal rights but humans didn't get to be the dominant species by being moral, they did it by being pragmatic in regards to the barbaric harshness of nature or the natural environment, which by all accounts is harsh and unstable (tsunami's, earthquakes, solar flares, storms, hurricanes, virus's, bacteria, organic pollution, etc).
I feel similarly about vegetarians - vegetarianism is useless... Most organisms on the planet do nothing but consume resources until they go extinct and are not intelligent enough to escape death if the solar system goes belly up (as many have in the past). Next living things are nothing more then conglomerations of prior dead animals and plants: That life had to destroy other life in order to exist. There's no getting around it.
Life and most life on this planet is a fleeting thing, it's not something sacred.
That, sir, is an insult to monkeys the world over.
Slashdot Classic
Chimps can learn & understand sign language. Fact right?
Why don't we tell the chimps that if they want equal rights, they have to comunicate to other chimps, teach them sign language, and have them teach their offspring. This way, they can have a propagated way to comunicate across the species barrier with complexity that has never been seen before. Then they can become productive members of society. I think it would be great if we could have the chimps teach us about their society, while we teach them to teach themselves.
It's not fair to say that they are almost human though. Chimps will have to follow our laws or be recognized as a tribe / tribal laws? Do chimps have their own laws? It seems as if they are close enough to consider it, then it's allready good enough to treat them like people. It'll be interesting for sure, but I definately see no reason to be against it.
Don't forget.
If we give them rights, they will have a say in what happens with society. Because if we give them rights, they will be allowed to vote too. Make way for the greener candidates, CAGW (chimps against global warming) will be a new party, and countries will have to stop clear cutting, or set up reservations (which they should be doing anyway.)!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Need I say more?
Well, I will!
I love this! Chimpanzees granting another chimpanzee "rights"!
Bwahahahahahahaha!!!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
So? This sounds like an appeal to emotion.
but you can't take the jungle out of the monkey.
next thing you know, the fucking politicians will be buying votes with bananas and monkeys will be running public works projects and getting elected mayor...
oh wait, there's atlanta
Okay, some people have obviously not thought this through to the logical conclusion...
Giving animals these rights means we don't just protect them from humans, we have to protect them from each other. If a chimp harms another chimp in some way, that crime will have to be investigated and the perpetrator brought to justice.
This can only lead to one thing - another spinoff of CSI.
Please, I beg of you, don't take us down that path.
Ah, lions are lions. I must admit it's my fault for using the language so imprecisely, but I really meant an ordinary house cat (Felis Silvestris) when I was proposing citizenship for my cat. I know the word cat is often used to mean the whole Felidae family, including "the big cats", though, so, as I was saying, I should have been more precise.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They're full of it. You're full of it. Stop making excuses, you brainwashed fool.
The science and critical thinking for global warming has been out there for decades. They are just posing as the masterminds behind revolutionary controversial ideas, sort of remind me of Al Gore. Except that they decided to take the opposing view.
They also pick easy subjects. State the obvious. Things that have been on newspapers and under discussion for years. They are sort of a TV tabloid, one could say.
Lets give chimps human rights and H1B work visas... that way we could REALLY have cheap labor! Microsoft could crank out the next version of Windows by giving a million chimps each a Dell laptop and a crate of bananas.
those pesky genes that make it a human.
A corpse is human as well, just not an alive human.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
themselves superiour than all other species is on the fast track to extinction.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not only can we adapt, we can adapt pre-emptivly.
Our survivability as a species is extremely high. We may go, but only when everything else goes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
See the case of Nim Chimpsky - they set out hoping to replicate the claims of a previous study, and instead the researchers involved became some of the most outspoken debunkers of the whole "chimps can use human language" thing.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
It's a Monty Python song. Chorus goes:
Every sperm is sacred!
Every sperm is great!
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate!
(Sung by a choir...)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...the h1b cap was met in one day. coincidence? i think not.
Thing is, he has a point, and if more people understood it, it might help in the general appreciation of evolution. We tend to think of a "species" as some kind of well-defined entity, but it really is little more than a relatively stable set of common traits in a relatively distinct group, maintained over a relatively long period of time; and those "relativily"-ies get blurred all the time. So, to be truly accurate, those Tree of Life diagrams that high school textbooks are so fond of, would have to extend to the level of individual organisms.
sic transit gloria mundi
Chimps deny human right to you.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Uh, no. Unless it actually belongs to the Human species, it is an animal, and has no rights whatsoever. It is an object, like a coffee mug.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
There are not many things I can think of that are funnier than seeing all these posts from primates discussing whether or not primates should have "human" rights.
I piss off bigots.
One of the responsibilities of a member of today's society (anywhere) is payment of taxes... Can Hiasl do that?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Things that strike me as funny about your post
1) You're wrong but think you're right
2) You're too stupid to understand what the original discussion was about, so you post something moronic and wrong
3) You're lying
4) You're that guy who got owned and you're posting AC to defend your lying self
Read, then reread, then get someone smarter than you to read the OP to you, then have them explain it.
Then shoot yourself in the face because you're too pathetic to live.
LOSER look that up in your OED, and if it doesn't have your picture and name, then throw it away because it's useless.
This is not about proving a fact. It is a moral belief.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
5) I'm a third party, trolling you, who is actually the other guy, doing 4).
Moral beliefs are not something that can be proven or need supporting evidence. And my moral beliefs are as valid as your's (or the lack there of) even if you don't agree with them.
Now if I were expressing a belief about a provable fact then the statement that it was "unfounded and unsupportable" might be true. For example, I believe that you're an asshole and not overly bright. This is not well supported as I don't actually know you. The only evidence that you're not very intelligent is your inability to discern a moral belief and belief in facts. The only evidence that you're an asshole is that you attempt to invalidate the moral beliefs of others.
So you could say that my belief that you're an insensitive moron was "unfounded and unsupportable" however the same can not be said of anyone's moral beliefs. You may disagree with other's moral beliefs and that's okay but it would be necessary to try to invalidate them.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
>> There are 11 types of people in the world, those who know binaries and those who don't.
Hmmnn...
Actually, there are 11 types of people in the world:
Those who know binaries, those who don't, and those who
cannot count in binary...
But I may be mistaken; perhaps there's just 10...
.
- aqk
F U
Every time I see a bunch of blowhard diatribe against PETA, I wonder, "What's the problem here?"
why do people get sooo upset at PETA?
It reminds me of the axe-handle wielding Southern Gentlemen in the 1950s/60s that got so upset with them meddlin' Outsiders tryin' to integrate our schools...
If PETA IS just a bunch of clowns, why are you so upset then?
Do you have... ummm, some sort of problem?
I'm a meat-eater too, but I always wonder why some people go into a rage when certain topics are breached.
http://rockburn.plonque.com/ NOT the vegetarian alternative!
.
- aqk
F U
You really don't get it do you?
If I say "I don't think it is right to kill people." that is expressing one of my moral beliefs. There is no "backing up" of that belief. It's just a belief. Some people may think it is perfectly fine to kill other people and that would be their moral belief.
What I expressed in my earlier posts were some of MY moral beliefs. It's not a cop out it is just the way it is. You obviously don't agree with what I have said and that is your moral belief and that's fine. You have nothing to back up your moral beliefs either.
I believe that there is an absolute right and wrong, you apparently do not. There is no "proving" either position. I really don't think I can explain the abstract concept of morality any better than that. So if you still don't get it that's okay. A lot of people in the world today don't.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Every time I see a bunch of blowhard diatribe against PETA, I wonder, "What's the problem here?"
Yeah, I wondered that too - I figured they were just obnoxious carnivores and they liked winding up Peta, which seemed to be composed of cute but naive teenage girls. But then I saw the Penn and Teller episode and read the wiki pages.
If PETA IS just a bunch of clowns, why are you so upset then?
Did you read what I posted? They supported some ALF psycho who firebombed laboratories that did animal research. My dad worked in a lab, close to one that did animal research. The ALF actually threatened his university, and the police took it sufficiently seriously that they were advised to spend a load of money on increasing security.
Using or threatening violence against civilians to further a political agenda makes them terrorists not clowns.
Do you have... ummm, some sort of problem?
Yeah, I don't like organisations that take money from well meaning but naive people and hand it over to terrorists who target my family. That's kind of an issue to me.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Perhaps you don't know as much as you think you know, actually.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'm sorry; the chimp nation (a land of cows' milk drinkers) have asked me to point you to the following vegan website:
http://tinyurl.com/yu8cq7
They drink milk there. But happily, only 10 kinds of it.
And as we all know, E = MC cubed.
.
- aqk
F U
Perhaps you should concentrate on the different types of binary encoding for your research.
oh, perhaps adding "you fucking idiot" will help you along.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter