I wouldn’t even go as far as to group people into tolerant vs intolerant binaries. Everyone is intolerant about something. Everyone has boundaries. You wouldn’t just let someone walk into your house and start using your toothbrush. But that’s not very controversial!

One of the biggest issues with tolerance vs intolerance debates is the unequal burden of tolerance. When it comes to housing, this is reflected in the classic NIMBY vs YIMBY debates. Many many people complain about NIMBYs but are actually NIMBYs themselves: they just want someone else to bear the burden. For example, they may be pro-early-release for a sex offender while not wanting that sex offender to live in their neighbourhood.

This applies to all kinds of issues. People may be pro-immigration but are they pro-giving-up-their-job to a (lower paid) immigrant? Probably not.

We as a society were much more tolerant and welcoming towards immigrants before we put all of our social welfare programs in place. In a society with no minimum wage, no social programs, and few/no regulations to limit housing development, there is no cost to immigration because immigrants have to claw their way up from the very bottom. That was how the big cities in Canada and the U.S. were built: by immigrants who choose to come here (fleeing brutal oppression and lack of opportunity) and make their own fortunes.

The original comment was “insects are not meat.” That’s it! That’s the whole claim you’re trying to defend. It’s like saying “chickens are not meat.” So they’re vegetables then?! It’s a ridiculous claim!

There are different senses (or uses) of the word meat. One sense, the narrowest one which butchers use when they talk about separating whole muscle from skin, bones, and other tissues, is the one which you are insisting is the only true definition. Another sense, the broader dietary one, classifies any product or byproduct from an animal as meat, including the whole unprocessed carcass.

Since the original claim was simply the unqualified statement “insects are not meat”, I am claiming the freedom to use the broader dietary sense of the word to show how ridiculous that statement is. You, by your insistence on the narrower sense of the word, are the one being pedantic.

If I buy a whole chicken at the grocery store, I buy it in the meat section. No one would say “you’re buying a whole chicken, therefore you’re not buying meat.”

With lobster you can extract the meat and eat it. You can also boil the empty shell to make a lobster stock as a base for a seafood soup or a pan sauce. Just as with chicken you don’t eat the bones but you can boil them to make stocks for soup or pan sauces. They’re still classified as meat and the products you make from them are considered meat products.

Sure but why does that make crickets “not meat”?

Why not? Shrimps and prawns are meat. Lobsters are meat.

Wet bugs meat, dry bugs not meat?

What is your routine like? Do you go to work? Volunteer? Have hobbies?

I ask this because going through a breakup — any breakup — involves a grieving process. Part of grieving is about moving on. A big part of doing that is finding new things to do, new people to talk to, and new things to talk about.

Counseling is good, but talking to other friends and family about her can make it very difficult. If you meet someone new — doesn’t have to be romantic, can be any gender, can just be a friend — can give you a person to talk to and topics to discuss that involve you and your interests and have nothing to do with her.

When you’re in a relationship for a long time a lot of your thoughts and even the objects around you in life get tangled up in that so that when she’s gone these things still remind you of her. What you need is to be selfish — grieving is a selfish process — because you need to reorient your mindset around yourself and taking care of yourself.

Lastly, I think it’s also helpful to have a third space where you can focus on stuff completely outside yourself and all that. For me it’s been volunteering as a tutor for high school kids. It gives me a time and a space each week to forget about everything and focus on something else. Helping kids and seeing them learn is a nice bonus for that. That may not be your cup of tea though, but something else may be! If you aren’t already into volunteering I’d encourage you to look into some volunteer organizations near you and try to find one that fits your interests.

• Double Dragon 2 - Final Battle 2
• Final Fantasy III - The Crystal Tower
• The Guardian Legend - Forest Fields (honestly the whole OST is amazing)
• Solstice - Title Theme
• Blaster Master - Area 3
• Mega Man 6 - Wily Fortress (seriously people are sleeping on Mega Man post 2)
• Mega Man 5 - Wily Fortress

Read up on cognitive biases.

People are social animals. We form groups and we stick with them. Some of our cognitive biases are very clearly geared toward preserving the cohesion of the group. The truth is very much secondary to group cohesion.

Individuals vary a lot, however. And some individuals are much more open to changing their mind than others. Groups are stronger when they have a variety of different personalities within them. Different people can have different roles within the group and help it adapt to changes.

But what if you grind the head into sausage? How do they deal with that? I guess the sausage grows into a new head without memories?

They never die! That’s the absurdity of “death isn’t a thing but otherwise nothing else changes.”

Their face is still burned! You’d have to reduce them down to a brain in a vat. But then all they have is the memory of that searing pain.

The claim is no death. That means if you burn someone at the stake their body turns into a charred husk but they’re still alive and now they’re trapped in this state of unimaginable agony forever, unable to die but also totally helpless and in constant searing pain.

Burying someone alive. Or trapping their feet in cement shoes and throwing them into the ocean.

Yes, of course. Health care generates revenue for health care providers, not the state. For the state it’s just another expense on the balance sheet.

The problem with universal health care is that 70% of expenses go to treat 10% of the population. These are often very sick people near the ends of their lives. Frequently the money doesn’t appreciably improve their health or well-being, it merely provides many expensive (and often painful) treatments that extend their lives.

This is the really ugly side of health care that we don’t like to think about because it involves difficult discussions about quality of life and death. We would much rather not think about these things and instead throw more money at the problem. Unfortunately, medical technology has advanced a lot in these areas and so there is an ever-growing array of treatment options to extend life without restoring quality of life.