TED Community » Warren Bowen

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Animals.

An idea worth spreading

Earthlings.
The Venus Project.

Talk to me about

All sorts of crazy jazz! But not jazz.

People don't know that I'm good at

...they still don't.

My TED Story

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh's bonobos had me hooked.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +42.50 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Talk: Israel and Iran: A love story?

  Dec 24 2012: Tao,
  
  Another good source of news is Avaaz. They also help inspire people to take action through petitioning, lettering, phone calls, protests, and donations (they helped to generate thousands of dollars for digital cameras to give to Syrian activists at the beginning of the uprising).
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Arunachalam Muruganantham: How I started a sanitary napkin revolution!

  Nov 14 2012: I love this burgeoning mentality: open source your ingenious so that others less well off can better their lives. The internet becomes a wonderful tool when people like Muruganantham apply their creative compassion.
  
  I wish you all the best in your endeavors to assist! And keep that sense of humor, please.

• A comment on Talk: David Pizarro: The strange politics of disgust

  Nov 9 2012: I really liked this talk, but I think Pizarro has given a caricature of moral evaluations and judgements.
  
  Almost all of his moral scenarios were about judging sex acts, and many ethicists argue that sexual behavior between consensual partners is outside of moral judgements.
  
  Did he ask what people thought about abortion, euthanasia, eating nonhuman animals, waging war, lying to save someone, cheating on your partner, kicking a pig, capital punishment, clear cutting sections of Amazon, or stealing from the elderly, while they sat in a smelly room? I just don't buy that if I saw a picture of poop, smelled vomit, or touched pus moments before being asked if it was ok to hit a crying child that I would change my position. And you can substitute "crying child" for any firmly held moral belief.
  
  And what about moral praise? Am I more likely to praise people morally if I have low levels of disgust?
  
  I think our morals are more informed by nonrational processes than many people like to think, but I don't think that my level of disgust will make me sway position on the death penalty, eating nonhuman animals, theft, cheating, and lying. Reason and evidence will—but poop?

• A reply on Talk: David Pizarro: The strange politics of disgust

  Nov 9 2012: Invalid and unsound.
  
  Invalid because premise 2 could be cause by a lack of confrontation with the immoral. Therefore premise 3 is not logically connected.
  
  Unsound because your first premise is contested: the speaker shows that your moral convictions in many instances are informed by feeling disgusted, not that you feel disgusted when your moral convictions are violated.

• A comment on Talk: Chris Gerdes: The future race car -- 150mph, and no driver

  Jul 24 2012: What does technology like this do for jobs involving drivers: cab drivers, truck drivers, deliverers, bus drivers (eventually conductors too?), etc.?
  
  Is this another example, like automated factories, atms, and phone operators, where technological development and jobs come into tension?
  
  Will policymakers have to mitigate or impede emergent technologies for the sake of (inefficient) livelihoods?
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Megan Kamerick: Women should represent women in media

  Jun 25 2012: I'm disappointed to see the comments section being bombarded by a certain "JM"—sexist in language ("hypocrisy thy name is woman") and tone (almost exclusively referring to women and their role in culture as "fem sexual value"), and bullying ("simpleton").
  
  JM, you don't belong at TED; I've flagged several of the posts for abuse, and I encourage others to do the same.
  
  Sexism and insults are unwelcome, and you, JM, are unwelcome.
• +4

  A comment on Talk: John Hodgman: Design, explained.

  Jun 21 2012: Warning! Warning! Advertisement for Mac products!
  
  A covert use of humor to promote iPhones by the same man featured in Mac commercials. Yippee!
  
  TEDxFail.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything

  May 15 2012: Caleb,
  
  I don't think Sutherland was suggesting, nor do I think his ideas imply, that people lie.
  
  Let's use your silver spoon example. Sutherland wouldn't try to lie about the spoon being silver—but he might raise your doubts as to whether a silver spoon is better than any other. After all, why do you need a spoon to be silver? It's your perception that somehow a silver spoon works or looks better than a nonsilver spoon.
  
  There is a difference between the truth that a spoon is silver and the "truth" that silver spoons are better. One is a fact, the other is a value. It is within our power and integrity to reshape our values.

• A reply on Talk: Jonathan Foley: The other inconvenient truth

  May 5 2012: Trane,
  
  Vitamin B12 from bacteria is bioavailable, that from plants is not (as you say). Hence vegans who have lived decades without B12 deficiencies. A few minutes of nutritional research yields this information. So what I argue is not a "potentially life-threatening logical fallacy".
  
  I haven't confused the problem of factory farming with health at all. I've merely given them as two reasons to abstain from killing animals.
  
  "Life essence." I'm sometimes accused of being sentimental or irrational for respecting the lives of conscious beings, beings who clearly feel pain and pleasure like we do. And yet somehow the argument for potential plant consciousness is given voice as a reasonable justification to kill sentient animals. You see no different in the broken leg of a horse/human/magpie/frog or the broken branch of a tree, I take it?
  
  Plants reacts to things. So do computers, clouds, and thermostats. So do single-celled organisms. So do bodies in comas. Reaction is not synonymous with psychological experience. Mountains and black holes are "complex organizations of of energy", too. And if plants could feel? We kill more by eating animals than by not. Loads more.
  
  You have some callous nerve to compare eating a carrot with the very real suffering of millions of nonhuman animals every single day so that people can eat their bodies.

• A reply on Conversation: Are the western vegetarian and vegan movements food fetishes for the rich?

  Apr 26 2012: Gerald,
  
  I can suffer. Other humans, other mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish do similar things that I do when I suffer, like moan, scream, writhe, run away, tend to a body part, cry, or otherwise become agitated. When I see this, I can empathize, because I don't like suffering, and I assume they are.
  
  For your argument to get off the ground, you need to tell me why it's not "nothing else than superstition" that tells us it's unacceptable to cause the suffering of humans. Otherwise you are arbitrarily assigning worth to perceived human suffering and not nonhuman animal suffering when it is clear they can suffer like we do.
  
  Empathy, and the reasonable extension of it to sensitive beings beyond our family, clan, tribe, village, nation, gender, race, and even species, is not superstitious.
  
  And what wasn't your point, exactly? You implied it's acceptable to abuse animals because we are the direct cause of their existence, and I told you why that callous argument is false.