Temple Grandin and Her Lifestyle

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You, too are part of her evil plan!! (I knew it!!)

If she has been able to do it humanely, then good on her. The slaughter industry in the US needs more people like her to clean up a dirty business.

Is this a truthful statement, or are you joking? "Evil genius"? Very emphatic use of words, I must say.

- Ray M -

I'm not vegetarian anymore, so I can't say I'm bothered that she works in the meat industry. But I do have a problem with how she assumes animals think, and I believe she mistakes sensitivty towards sense data with detail orientation. Not that it isn't impossible for species other than humans to be detail-oriented, but I fail to see how any of her conclusions can follow from the presmises and data she has provided. I also take issue with her blatant disregard for the impact of industrial capitolism has had on small farms, which has led to problems with slaughter houses and has encouraged factory farming in the first place. It isn't "NT" insensitivity that has led to these problems, but the pursuit of profit. There are so many other things that bother me about her as well, but I think I'll save that for a future post in one of these forums.

Now, see! I started to actually think of her in a different light, due to what some people have said. But after I just read your post, I'm starting to take that back. Maybe she is an "evil genius" after all?

- Ray M -

I don't think she's either (she doesn't come off as a genius to me in anything she's written, especially in comparison to actual zoologists and biologists who have much better grasps of mathematics, neurology, genetics, and chemistry), she just happened to grow up in the right family, and possiblly shared most of the same politicsl ideology. I tend to blame the system more than individual people who work within it.

To be fair, I will grant that she has, in a certain way, did give us autistic people a service. When her auto-bio first came out, it demonstrated that we actually do have an inner life, something that many a psychologist back then thought that people with the neurodisorder did not have ("Empty fortress" BS is just one of the many insulting examples). And she has done more for animals in the industrialized agriculture industry than extremist groups like PETA. But other than that, I'd prefer she just shut up now.

It's a free country, she's free to live how she wants, maybe you would have forced William James Sidis to "use his abilities for humanity", I don't believe in enslaving the gifted, neither do I believe in killing all the people some people classified as 'genetic driftwood' in genocide.

Onto other things...

Animal rights... I can't say I agree... animals eat other animals this is a law of nature, in fact if you go far back enough in your family tree, someones slaughtering and eating animals who was responsible for your eventual birth. All matter with living and dying things is exchanged eternally, all organisms are destined to die, except the technologically advanced ones. So what does it matter if it gets slaughtered by a human being, another animal, or some disease or infection from some other organism who would cause it even more pain at death?

That and cow's nor any other animal on the planet will be able to do anything when the sun dies in a couple billion more years, or if the earth has another ice age, of which man was not responsible for. Thing's live, things die. It's a waste of life arguing for animal rights, there are more pressing humanistic, scientific, environmental and global problems. I do not believe in cruelty to animals but at some point survival takes precedence. Also when you feed, house and take care of an animal, you have made a stake of your own resources in it.

Genetic engineering will hopefully will make creating a whole live organism for food unnecessary. But plant's are technically made of cells when you get right down to it and are just as alive as a cow. Also because something acts sentient doesn't mean it experiences the world like a human being. For the first three years of my life I have no experience and memory of living, all the things that I did that my parents took photo's of. My sentience was non-existent, and yet from the outside it sure looked as if I was. I think there is a threshold of sentience that seperates humans from animals and will eventually be discovered. Some animals are simply machines that look and act sentient but are effectively machines, with no soul or memory of their existence.

I'm not talking about enslaving the gifted. What I questioned was the nature of human intelligence. For someone really smart, one would think that he / she would use their intelligence to make the world a better place. People can and should do what they want, sure. Even Albert Einstein, who is said to have had AS, by the way, claimed that he would take back the atomic bomb.

- Ray M -

since I haven't read her books yet, I can't judge her, and I haven't made my mind up whether I should be a vegetarian, but after reading the posts I had a thought that troubled me and it's this: An image of cattle going peacefully to their doom/People in a concentration camp going peacefully to the "showers" to meet their doom. Why am I connecting these things? Is that what they call cognitive dissonance? Something is bothering me and I can't explain it.

If your connecting these things then perhaps you should become a vegetarian. But for me it's pass the bacon and I'll have yours too more bacon is always good.

Ok, you may have the scary bacon!

there is going to be a tv show about her Horzions. The woman who thinks she's a cow.