Eat Meat for Health: Benefits & Considerations
The Things I’m Thinking About This Week
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This week, my thoughts have been bouncing between ethical eating, the surprising lack of bird-based civilizations, and the delightfully strange inner workings of AI chatbots. Hear’s a collection of articles and ideas that have captured my attention.
Rethinking My Approach to Ethical Eating
I’ve been revisiting my approach to reducing animal product consumption. For a long time, I’ve leaned towards a reducetarian diet - consciously minimizing, but not eliminating, meat and animal products.It feels achievable and lasting for me. Though, I’ve been pondering whether simply reducing isn’t enough, and if I should be exploring more proactive ways to make a positive impact.
Specifically, I’ve been looking into the idea of “negative emissions” in the context of food. The concept, borrowed from climate change mitigation, suggests that rather of solely focusing on reducing harm, we could actively undo some of the harm caused by animal agriculture. This led me to explore the potential of supporting highly effective animal charities. These organizations focus on interventions that directly reduce animal suffering, like advocating for cage-free farming or developing plant-based alternatives.
I worry that offsetting might create a moral hazard, as with people offsetting their carbon emissions and then potentially feeling free to fly more. But it’s worth considering, particularly if you pair it with clear parameters around your reducetarian diet.
Why Don’t Birds Build Rocket Ships?
This Aeon essay answers a question I’ve often wondered about: Why haven’t othre animals – say, birds – developed complex civilizations like we humans have? Why don’t they build rocket ships, argue about economic policy, and play canasta? I’m grateful to the evolutionary biologist who wrote this piece for finally giving me a satisfying answer.
The core argument revolves around the idea that intelligence isn’t enough. It’s the specific kind of intelligence – particularly, our capacity for “cognitive scaffolding” – that allowed for cumulative cultural evolution. Essentially, we’re really good at building on the knowledge and inventions of those who came before us, creating a ratchet effect of progress. Other animals, while clever in their own ways, lack this crucial ability to reliably transmit and improve upon complex knowledge across generations. It’s a fascinating perspective that reframes our understanding of human exceptionalism.
The Hilariously Unsettling World of AI Chatbots
I can’t stop thinking about this post on Tumblr about how AI companies may have designed chatbots to play an underspecified “helpful assistant” character who, due to being underspecified, looks to the internet for examples of how to play that role, finds tons of science fiction about cheesy robots, and thus starts to behave like a cheesy sci-fi robot (ChatGPT will say things like, “Gee, that really tickles my circuits!”).
The post is mega-long, deeply trippy, and worth reading. It highlights the bizarre and frequently enough unpredictable consequences of trying to create artificial intelligence without fully understanding the implications of the training data and the inherent ambiguity of human language. It’s a reminder that these AI systems aren’t truly “thinking” – they’re mimicking patterns they’ve observed, and those patterns can be surprisingly…retro. It’s a compelling look at the potential for unintended consequences in the rapidly evolving world of AI.
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