You asked for some in the last decade, I gave some.
I asked for evidence to persuade me that option (a) banning testing, is preferable to (b) living with the amount of violations that would otherwise be expected to occur. I expect advocates to present what they think would be their most persuasive case considering the time they have decided to spend presenting a case.
An advocate of banning telling me that she and third party investigators do not have direct access increases how representative her single example is, since it is chosen from a smaller pool of examples than someone with access would have. You certainly subconsciously realize the importance of this as you led with it.
It took me about 2 minutes to find this article.
This is very relevant. The less time it took you to find a serious violation, the more prevalent violations probably are.
there are alternatives to the testing.
You are doing exactly what you should be doing considering I am weighing options (a) and (b) , you're telling me that (a) is not as bad as I might have thought and that (b) is worse than I might have thought.
You are perfectly excellent at arguing for a point, like most humans, and using evidence correctly. However, at this site an enormous, excessive by many people's standards, amount of time is spent trying to understand how evidence works. I am saying explicitly that at finding, determining, and using the most relevant evidence you are basically just as skilled as I am because I want to distinguish it from one skill at which I think you are not as strong. that skill is understanding why you make the correct choices you do when arguing about things.
So when you are arguing for the point you know exactly what is and isn't valid evidence. But in the special case of describing the relationship of evidence to conclusions, I don't think you know how to describe it well. Your arguments about how the evidence you present should be interpreted and the extent to which it is strong I basically think are wrong, unlike your arguments directly about chimp testing and indirectly about why your arguments are relevant. As an analogy: like a master carpenter who doesn't know how to build a hammer very well because non-wood is such a major component in it.
According to my understanding of evidence, "That was the point of the link." isn't true - at least, you have correctly understood one point of the link but I argue that the exclusivity implied by "the point of" isn't true. I think the link has several points, and the piece of evidence I am attempting to assimilate is not and should not be "the link" alone. It is rather (1) that an advocate of (a) over (b) (2) took a short time to find a (3) leaked case of (4) violations that led to chimps escaping.
Factors (1) and (4) make the piece of evidence - your presenting that article when and how you did - more something that supports (b) for me. Factors (2) and (3) make it more something that supports (a) for me.
That was the point, right? So there is an example from today.
Whether it's actually a good idea or not (according to any individual's preferences, which generally include both animals not being harmed and medical research not being hampered, and relevantly here, my preferences, which value both things) has nothing to do with how clumsily I may have phrased a request for more information. Of course, interpretations of my requests must be factored in when people present evidence to me.
The difficulty of finding cases of serious violations, the absence of evidence for the suggestingon that serious violations occur, is evidence violations do not occur to the extent to which were there violations, there would be less difficulty of finding cases of serious violations. If information is hard to get, then the difficulty of finding cases of serious violations is reconciled with the possibility many violations occur by the secrecy. Subconsciously you certainly understand this, which is why you brought up difficulty of access. What that means is that my original question was extremely important, and you have a suitable answer.
It is difficult to remember to, but important, to always be in "truth seeking" mode rather than "seeker of evidence that supports my conclusion" mode. The question "where are the cases?" is the sort people temporarily (both modes are temporary, though the first is always best) in the latter mode fail to see, even (because) when they have an answer to the question.
I didn't intend my comments as attacks and hope they aren't interpreted that way.
Welcome to LW if you choose to comment more or lurk!
Yes, I am an advocate. I was googling and came across this blog and I stopped and read it and read all the comments and found that I needed to say something on behalf of those that cannot.
Thanks for your feedback on making my point clear and educated. I will need it on my journey.
One Love and Peace.
The October 2011 Scientific American has an editorial from its board of editors called "Ban chimp testing", that says: "In our view, the time has come to end biomedical experimentation on chimpanzees... Chimps should be used only in studies of major diseases and only when there is no other option." Much of the knowledge described in Luke's recent post on the cognitive science of rationality would have been impossible to acquire under such a ban.
I encourage you to write to Scientific American in favor of chimp testing. Some points that I plan to make:
I also encourage you to adopt a tone of moral outrage. Rather than taking the usual apologetic "we're so sorry, but we have to do this awful things in the name of science" tone, get indignant at the editors who intend to harm uncountable numbers of innocent people. For advanced writers, get indignant not just about harm, but about lost potential, pointing out the ways that our knowledge about how brains work can make our lives better, not just save us from disease.
You can comment on this here, but comments are AFAIK not printed in later issues as letters to the editor. Actual letters, or at least email, probably have more impact. You can't submit a letter to the editor through the website, because letters are magically different from things submitted on a website.
ADDED: Many people responded by claiming that banning chimp experimentation occupies some moral high ground. That is logically impossible.
To behave morally, you have to do two things:
1. Figure out, inherit, or otherwise acquire a set of moral goals are - let's say, for example, to maximize the sum over all individuals i of all species s of ws*[pleasure(s,i)-pain(s,i)].
2. Act in a way directed by those moral goals.
If you really cared about the suffering of sentient beings, you would also care about the suffering of humans, and you would realize that there's a tradeoff between the suffering of those experimented on, and of those who benefit, which is different for every experiment. That's what a moral decision is—deciding how to make a tradeoff of help and harm. People who call for a ban on chimp testing are really demanding we forbid (other) people from making moral judgements and taking moral actions. There are a wide range of laws and positions that could be argued to be moral. But just saying "We are incapable of making moral decisions, so we will ban moral decision-making" is not one of them.