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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • That burden of proof doesn’t fall on me. I was rebutting your claims that relied on nature and on mechanisms, and explained why the reasoning doesn’t hold up. The reason I asked for a study is because if you can’t produce an argument on why we couldn’t feed animals in a vegan manner then a study that showed poor health outcomes would at least require me to explain how those specific hurdles are solvable.

    I completely agree with you that I shouldn’t have a cat because I have not done the research on how to feed a cat in a vegan manner, but that’s something most people have not done because they simply don’t care about feeding a cat in a vegan manner. In my view they should not have cats either.

    As for meat grown in a lab, I am fine with it. But ethics aside ultimately I think we shouldn’t evaluate food on how natural it is but how provably healthy it is. If we can formulate food that gives cats better health outcomes then we should be feeding them more of that. This is anecdotal, but of the dogs I know through family or friends the ones fed way more plain meat have the worst digestion and I wouldn’t be surprised if they died the earliest, but it’s hard to talk people out of these naturalistic positions.


  • When I said study I meant an observational or longitudinal study measuring health outcomes, not a description of the mechanisms at play. Such studies are important to concluding that alternative diets are already nutritional or elucidating the flaws so that they may be addressed.

    Don’t you think such knowledge of cat digestion would be integrated into feeding a cat in a vegan way? We are incredibly good at synthesizing nutrients these days through both chemical processes and modifying microorganisms or plants. We can produce “higher forms” of things such as vitamin A and D without invoking animal biology, these aren’t hypotheticals, such things are already common in the huge supplement and cosmetics industries.


  • Link to studies please.

    Nobody is suggesting we feed cats tofu and spinach. The naturalistic argument and yelling “We don’t know!” a bunch really only works if you are proposing we feed cats only raw meat from fresh kills, what they would eat in the wild. Pet food isn’t a pet’s natural diet, vegan or not, and it all has to be fortified.

    I don’t believe in such a naturalistic argument though. Humans are able (key word, able, most don’t) eat healthier with modern diets. Why would we assume we can’t develop food that is just as healthy or even healthier than an animal’s natural diet?


  • PNG is fine for this. A palletized PNG on max compression would be smaller than the game and totally lossless unlike this. First you gotta take this image and map/quantize it to the original palette though to destroy the JPEG artifacts, which produce colors in between ones that would have existed in the game’s output.



  • This is bullshit because pet food exists where the proteins are denatured because some animals have serious allergies. Animals can build the proteins they need from the constituent parts. There are surely proteins unique to cats, where do you think they get them, cannibalism? Are you saying veterinarians recommending such products are harming animals?

    Also who said I have a cat companion, even if you were 100% correct about what constitutes neglect it would not apply to me. But you’re obviously not engaging in good faith and just want someone to paint as a monster. What’s really monstrous is we have an industry that brutally harvests billions of sentient creatures every year just to feed ourselves and other animals.









  • I’ve had to debunk this myth multiple times in this post already, I’m not sure who started it. Legumes do have all the aminos and in sufficient amounts.

    Also on bioavailability, it is a double edged sword. For example heme uptake is greater than mineral iron, but your body has very little control with inhibiting uptake when you already have adequate levels. With the mineral form your body has various ways to promote or inhibit uptake. The same is true of your example of vitamin A. You can pretty much eat as many carrots as you want and suffer no ill effects, eating too much liver or taking too many liver oil supplements however can lead to poisoning.



  • Not just meat, but veggies as well, would get a huge boost from looking at protein per calorie. In terms of available calories, vegetables are often very protein rich, especially the dark leafy ones, but they are also packed with water and indigestible fiber. Nobody is going to eat 2000 calories of spinach, but when spinach is on your plate you shouldn’t look at it as hurting your protein intake. Also a chart based on calories that had lines down the middle for suggested protein intake and suggested intake for bodybuilding would reveal that most whole foods that aren’t fruit are completely adequate, the only reason you’d ever have to eat a lot of the highest protein per calorie foods is if a large portion of your diet was refined sugars or oils. Supplementing your Oreo addiction with chicken breast is not a good way to think about a balanced diet.





  • I didn’t think it was a choreographed publicity stunt. I just know Altman has used AI fear in the past to keep people from asking rational questions like “What can this actually do?” He obviously stands to gain from people thinking they are on the verge of agi. And someone looking for a new job in the field also has to gain from it.

    As for the software thing, if it’s done by someone it won’t be openai and megacorporations following in its footsteps. They seem insistent at throwing more data (of diminishing quality) and more compute (an impractical amount) at the same style of models hoping they’ll reach some kind of tipping point.