valgor

Go vegan. You will no longer be apart of horrific animal abuse, the leading cause of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and if done correctly, will likely improve your health. You won't be able to get so much good from doing one thing.

The threat of bird flu is so insane to me. It exists because we farm birds to eat. We are gambling with so many people's lives just so we can continue eating birds when we could instead just eat something else. I know cultivated meat will help, but that is a ways away.

The birds are dying anyway. So instead of their bodies being used for profit to continue the industry, they will die with hopefully little to no government bailouts, forcing farmers to change what they do for a living.

As an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement. As chicken farms become unprofitable due to all the birds dying, prices will go up. This gives people like me an edge to talk about alternatives. We already do this with egg alternatives due to the increases in egg prices. Hopefully companies like JUST Egg can capitalize on this.

Curious what projects you use rust on for crypto?

I love the idea of computational experiments that replace testing on animals. Reading about what we do to animals in the name of science is heart breaking, but learning there are computational models and experiments being developed to take place of animal cruelty is exciting. However, such projects feel overwhelming given I know next to nothing about biology, and I'm not sure spending the time learning is worth the payout given my age and other areas of expertise.

Came here to say this. Money is a tool to make the world a better place. He could be funding schools, scholarships, research projects, new start ups, and so much more. This is what I have been doing, and it has given my life so much more meaning than anything else I have done. I work to donate because that is how I have the biggest impact.

As a vegan of four and a half year, I can confidently say being vegan is not similar to killing oneself.

I completely agree with you. HN is very anti-vegan, so mentioning not eating meat always comes with a torrent of downvotes. I imagine any self-sustainable colony would not have meat in their diet because there is no need for it.

Including those that work directly on cultivated meat? There are literally companies out there selling cultivated meat right now. Regressive countries like Italy and conservative states in the US like Florida and Alabama have banned the sell of cultivated meat. Did they buy into the fantasy? Or are they scared cultivated meat will impact traditional animal farming?

I like thinking about space colonization. Whether it be a the first colony on Mars or a robust space station orbiting Jupiter, what do you think their food is like? Do you think they have farms growing cows and pigs and dogs? Or do they have a bioreactor that uses substantially less water and organic inputs to output whatever meat they want without fear of zoonotic diseases and PETA?

I'm willing to bet Star Trek rings true here in that there are no farms on spaceships growing animals, therefore, this is the future we should be working for. Why waste time tearing down the rain forest to make room for cattle and the soybeans the cows will eat when we could instead use our resources to bring about cultivated meat faster? Few people say cultivated meat is impossible. It is only a matter of research which means time and money. But given the benefits, we should be all in on this research.

Funny enough, I mentioned not eating meat on another hackernews thread today and someone told me I'm going to get an autoimmune disease.

Processed red meat is a class one carcinogen and red meat is a class two. Smoking is a class one. What this means is there is a direct, provable correlation to consuming these products to cancer. Sure, a cigarette may not cause the same level of harm as one steak, but they both cause cancer. So, if you goal is to reduce as far and wide as possible your chances of cancer, meat should be off the plate. The "balance" approach is only to be practical, so I find it odd we never say to have a balanced approach with smoking, but we will with red meat.

I know they are trying to be practical with "reduce meat intake" and "drink less", but meat and alcohol is on par with smoking and they say "don't smoke". I hope we get to a point where we can say "don't eat meat or drink alcohol" just like we say "don't smoke". If the point is to stop cancer from happening, not doing any of those things is huge.

I highly recommend Ultralearning [1]. It does not talk about hours required to learn something, but how to define your goal, plan out the study, and then immerse yourself into the task.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/ultralearning/

Look up Blue Zone groups. Researchers study groups of people that live the longest and how they live. Of course diet and exercise is a big component, but a reason to live is another. There are other interesting factors as well.

I started writing about animal ethics at the end of last year. This is mostly a clearing house for my thoughts, but I have found some people enjoy reading it.

https://joshbaldwin.substack.com/

What does being male or female matter? It is about adding to suffering in the world instead of removing suffering.

Imagine it being 2023 and you are asking for more animals to torture. We should be demanding advancements in computational chemistry and biology, in vitro methods, and synthetic biology. Minor scientific advancements should not come at the expense of sentient creatures.

Do whatever you are interested in. You want to help students or animals or prison reform groups, etc. Find organizations, look at their volunteer needs or email them. Then get to work. Otherwise, work in common tools.

And this is why if one are interested in huma rights then one should work for prisoners rights. They are the most vulnerable humans to get shit on. If we can treat our criminals with dignity then maybe we can treat everyone else with dignity too.

You are living in a dream world. Those animals exist for research and profit. Why would anyone walk them? Complete waste of time, and not to mention potentially damaging the research by contamination.

That is how slaughterhouses work, at least in the US. Poor migrate workers get to work on the killing floor for low wages and dangerous work. Keeps it out of sight and minds of the more affluent people that eat those animals.

Careful, one false step and your behavior will align with your morals.

People like that don't rationalize it. You cannot win the ethical argument against eating animals. One simply ignores morals or does not care. And I don't mean this in an attacking way because we all do this to some extent.

I took it a step further by starting on sheets of paper, second draft goes into a notebook, then the three draft gets typed on the computer. This really helped me not be afraid to write crap since I will toss the paper if it is bad. And the iterative draft process really forces me to pick out what ideas are best.

This is very true. Ideas are pretty cheap to come by. Implementing, building, teasing them out into a practical scenario is hard.

CO2 is not the only molecule that causes the greenhouse effect. Methane is far more effective at heating up the atmosphere despite its short half life. That is why it is so dangerous.