A newly discovered body part changes our understanding of the brain (2016)

eg., there is a level of abstraction at which an ape "alerting" another ape is the same as an chemical "alerting" a cell

My point is that these things are only equivalent to these abstractions in a very narrow kind of activity (cognition).

A concept in the brain-body of an ape is a means for coordinating itself with respect to its environment: coordinating its eye, its hand, and latterly, its mind (, emotions, thought patterns, etc.). (NB. political correctness is here just a regulation on how we socially coordinate).

That's just what we use concepts for.

They also play a purely cognitive role in the sense that "circle" is both a guide to the motion of my hand in drawing a circle, and also a "Form" to which cognition can be purely and abstractly directed (ie., a shape with various properties...).

But this cognitive role is derivative of their non-cognitive origins in, quite literally, structuring the meat of our bodies. It is this structuring process which is how we "conceptualise" the world.

A dog is replete with many concepts; it is the dumb cognitive illusion of apes lacking self-awareness to think their linguistic cognition is where "concepts" lie. This is a cognitive shadow of how every animal navigates its environment.

Your "AGI" remark indicates to me that you may take this cognitive view. I think this is the consequence of a mathematical discipline (computer science) being "let into the room" -- it should be thrown back out.

Mathematics hasn't much to say about intelligence. The dumb walnut we call a frontal lobe possesses no models of how it actually works, and only the shadow of concepts it calls "abstractions". It is a delusional Cartesian place with little to offer self-understanding.

Everything important for the development of intelligence, etc. will come from the non-cognitive (, bodily) aspects of mental function which will require building animals. Cognitive ai systems cannot conceptualise, they only automate the walnut.

First, one of the reasons humans consume beef (as well as certain other kinds of meat) is that cows can convert grass to protein, something humans cannot do. So in savannas, eating animals that convert the grass to protein is one of the ways humans make life work at all.

Second, much of the world's beef supply is not grass fed. It is corn fed.

This gets done in part because it makes the beef fattier and thus makes it more profitable. It also makes it less healthy to eat and much more land intensive and wastes the thing that historically made cows valuable to humans.

In a scenario where we raise products like corn -- that the human body can already use for its protein content -- and feed it to cattle to produce beef, yes, that's hugely, hugely wasteful. It's also problematic that we ship so much beef long distances because of the energy costs involved.

If you work on moving towards grass fed beef and local consumption, you begin to dramatically reduce the resources involved in consuming beef.

Additionally, I am not advocating for the entire world to move to a 100 percent beef diet. That's crazy talk on the face of it.

Most religions advocate for a vegetarian or semi-vegetarian diet. Religion tends to contain historic wisdom concerning what works well for humans based on firsthand observation.

But there is plenty of room for the occasional human "carnivore" as well as for some people continuing to eat beef regularly. We don't need to vilify the consumption of meat in order to pursue environmental goals.

If eating beef helps eliminate health issues in some people, then letting those people eat beef is likely to be less resource intensive than insisting they eat a vegetarian diet and take a boatload of drugs.

This is a problem space I've thought about a whole lot. I have a serious medical condition that I control with diet and lifestyle. I wanted to be vegetarian and I tend to eat less meat most of the time than most Americans, but I also sometimes eat beef for medicinal purposes and I eat bacon somewhat regularly because bacon fat is one of the fats I tolerate well. My body misprocesses fats and there is a somewhat long list of plant oils I actively avoid.

I am supposed to be on thousands of dollars of drugs every month even when I'm not actively sick, just as "maintenance," and more when I'm actually sick. If the dollar value of the drugs I'm supposed to be taking is any measure at all of their environmental impact, then eating some meat is vastly less environmental burden than the drugs I am supposed to be on.

No one but you is saying "We should all just eat like carnivores" and you said it sarcastically. That extremist scenario is nothing anyone is genuinely advocating for.

I am all for making it easier and "cooler" for most Americans to eat less meat on average than they currently do. I am also for letting a small number of weirdos peaceably coexist with the rest of us who choose to eat nothing but meat because they find it beneficial to stubborn health issues that doctors don't know how to fix.

The way you lower our aggregate carbon footprint with regards to diet is you make it easier to find good vegetarian options. I don't eat hamburgers. Finding some source of protein at a fast food joint that isn't a fucking hamburger can be challenging.

Fortunately, affordable and convenient vegetarian options are somewhat easier for me to find than they used to be, such as vegetarian pizza and bean burritos. So my life works better than it used to because it's so much easier than it used to be to find something cheap and readily available wherever I go that isn't a fucking hamburger.

Hamburgers tend to be pretty goddamned disgusting, in part because we typically use the lowest quality beef to make them on the theory that we can just grind it up and turn it into a patty and la la la not listening on that detail of "garbage in, garbage out."

There is a reason why transhumance (moving cattle to high places for the summer to eat mountain grass and grow fat on it) has been practised since before civilization. Ötzi, the famous dead from the Tyrolean glacier, was probably a transhumanc-practicing pastoralist, 4000 years ago.

But for the assertion here that "ketogenic diet helps with schizophrenia," neither a ketogenic diet nor schizophrenia are subtle things.

And that last tip of separate things by X hours? That's actually a generally useful thing that applies to a number of things.

Calcium and iron interfere with each other, which is likely why a kosher diet has edicts against consuming beef and (I think) cheese/milk products together in the same diet. I try to separate them by at least 30 minutes, especially if I am specifically trying to treat anemia or a need for calcium. (But I generally try to separate them because consuming them together amounts to wasting the nutritional resources they represent.)

Zithromax (plus related drugs, I think) and magnesium are supposed to be consumed separately. They use the same attachment sites on a cell and actively interfere with each other's absorption. So consuming them together means you don't get the magnesium you need and you are undermining the effectiveness of the drug you are on.

In the opposite direction, some things need to be consumed together for best effect. This is the principle advocated for in the book Diet for a Small Planet that promotes protein complementarity as a means for vegetarians to get enough protein.

In later writing, she says she regrets making it sound so challenging. Most historically vegetarian ethnic diets already use ingredients in the appropriate ratios, so many traditional dishes already fit the model she advocates for.

The book also has a few really excellent recipes in it, so it's worth having even if you skip the first half of the book which is a political work outlining how beef contributes to civil war and starvation globally and proving that all countries, even poor countries, can feed their people on traditional locally sourced diets. What we can't do is sell imported beef to peasants and expect them to be able to afford it as a staple and a lot of starvation is due to war (often civil war) cutting people off from food access.

It's more complicated than that and if you want a stronger argument for promoting vegetarianism as the practical choice for reducing some of the problems in this world, it's got some excellent information in it, better than a lot of the BS scare tactics and high-handed moralizing that is all too common. But you can just flip to the back of the book and look up Complementary Pie (a bean and rice quiche dish) or Mjeddra and happily go to town cooking.