[wincy]

I’m not so sure that’s the case though, as for example Talmudic law prohibits castrating animals. A gelded oxen is much calmer and easier to work with than a bull. I think it certainly varies from society to society, but ancient agrarian traditions also respect animals in ways you might not expect.

[dTal]

What is interesting is that Talmudic law goes to the trouble. There's no point prohibiting something that people wouldn't do anyway. There must have been considerable pressure to castrate animals, and some corresponding spiritual dismay at the lack of respect for them this entailed. So I wonder if it doesn't confirm the premise, rather than refute it - the Talmudic authorities may have been trying to preserve earlier value systems against a changing society.

[colordrops]

Humans aren't perfect economic machines. A single example doesn't necessarily refute the claim. And even then there might be some other advantage to not castrating oxen that isn't being considered.

[an_opabinia]

> And even then there might be some other advantage to not castrating oxen that isn't being considered.

I supposed you could come up with one. Your OP basically gave you a really knowledgeable counterexample, rooted in a rich field of study in anthropology (treatment of animals), in societies that long predated capitalism.

This is actually a pretty common pattern in HN.

When the HNers hear something like: "According to this book that the recipient of the information (the HNers) didn't read, here's an illustrative example of how rich the study is."

They respond: "But capitalism."

You've adopted a world-explaining model (capitalism) that works most of the time (that "single examples don't necessarily refute") not because it's powerful, but because it requires extremely little knowledge. That's really why derivatives of this line of thinking (think LessWrong/singularity/Paul Graham worship) are so widely adopted. Not because the ideas are right. It's that the ideas work for people who don't read, or are just really god damned rich, or who don't really know anything, or think they 'know enough,' like true hacks would say.

The downside is that when someone tells you this fascinating tidbit of Talmudic law, instead of typing in "anthropology of the treatment of animals in historic societies," the reaction is, "Well fuck this guy's knowledge."

One name for this phenomenon is "first principles." A great, positive spin on knowing nothing! This forum's discourse has declined exactly because of first principles, and others have observed the same (characterizing their criticism as a criticism of "first principles thinking.")

[perl4ever]

How is it you equate the assertion that "Humans aren't perfect economic machines" with "But capitalism."?

The usual criticism of acolytes of capitalism is that they do (unjustifiably) think humans are "perfect economic machines". You seem to be inverting the normal attack and I can't make sense of it.

[fao_]

If I understand it right (it's 4:30am so my ability to phrase this might also be shoddy):

You removed the context from the thread. The context was that humans have an capitalist-economic focus (as in, distinguished from other economic systems like gift economies, marxist economies, etc.) on animals-as-use, and thus this influences your ability to reason about them as animals. The viewpoint is inherently capitalistic because it assumes that animals have become a good to be sold, and that it was more advantageous for humans to see it as such. Your (or whomevers') assertion "humans aren't perfect economic machines" was inherently an argument for the arguments for the capitalist viewpoint, which the person you were responding to was calling unfounded.

> You seem to be inverting the normal attack and I can't make sense of it

Capitalism doesn't assume that humans are perfect economic machines, indeed, it relies on them not being that. Otherwise, accumulation of capital would probably either be impossible for any single person to do, or it would be much more evenly distributed than it currently is. Indeed, the entire industry of stock-trading assumes that you can 'beat the average', which under the axioms laid out, is not what a logical, perfectly rational machine would do.