alanwatts

>it is unconscionable that we support the literal mass murder and ill-treatment of billions of animals each year when there are alternatives that require no suffering and no death.

There are ways to put down animals which require no suffering.

And no, there are no alternatives to death. Plants are living things too. Why is it okay to murder a plant but not an animal?

*Psychology and psychiatry I meant to say

>Also there's no such thing as a negative emotion. Everything we feel is a necessary (or at least programmed) reaction to our experience.

Have you ever met someone with emotional issues, i.e. anger management issues? There are indeed many people with habitual "programmed" emotional responses which are detrimental to their well being and are extremely difficult to manage.

You might like to read the works of the evolutionary pyschologist and athropologist Dr. Paul Eckman. He posits that emotions are valuable life saving forces that help us act quickly in critical situations without having to think. However, our emotional habits have also evolved over many thousands of years, and so many of the emotional responses which may have saved our life as a paleolithic hunter gatherers may no longer be relevant and can have the opposite effect in a civilized society.

>This actually is democracy working as designed - people being free to bullshit one another

They aren't free to bullshit one another. Facebook, Google, and co. regularly censor their users.

Ah, my mistake. I misread it as "many more people..."

Fair enough. Though my concern is not for myself, but rather for any potential great leader who could be silently neutralized/blackmailed/extorted by mass surveillance techniques.

Whether the culprits' organizational classification is public or private is of negligible importance.

>Mass surveillance isn't the same as targeted.

Mass surveillance is the first step in the discovery process, targeted surveillance is the second step after a target has been flagged by the dragnet.

>the fact that many people are more worried about marketers than the NSA?

How do you know this is a fact, was a global survey done?

>I am more concerned about A than B" is not a claim that B does not exist, nor is it a claim that "I" am unconcerned about B.

Indeed, however the phrase "100% tinfoil hat mode" does imply being unconcerned about B, and that anyone who is is a lunatic.

When suing in a case like this, punitive damages would be paid out of the governments budget, rather than the personal assets of those personally responsible, correct?

Which is circular logic. To sue an entity which you fund is to indrectly sue yourself.

The terms "foreign" and "domestic" are meaningless in the context of the world wide web.

Neglecting to save millions of lives in order to make some extra money is okay, but killing a dog is not?