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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Almost every time I get into a discussion about veganism, nutrition is brought up. People claim that it’s hard to be healthy, get enough protein, or not be deficient in key minerals on a vegan diet. As an accomplished runner, and 4- year vegan, this always baffles me. In my time as a vegan, I’ve set PRs in the 10k (30:49), 5k (14:56), Marathon (2:36), mile swim (19:00), bench, and squat (they’re embarrassing, I’m a runner). I spend about $50 less on groceries a week than I used to (non-processed meat is expensive yo),my acne has cleared up, and I generally feel better. An my success is one story among the millions of vegans and hundreds of millions of vegetarians that lead healthy lives. But that’s all anecdotal. What I want to show in this post is that it's not actually that hard to get all the nutrients one needs on a vegan diet.

Protein

Let’s start with protein. I’m 150 pounds, and with the recommended RDA of 0.8 g/kg body weight for protein intake a day, I only need 55g of protein. If I ate nothing but white flour (3g protein per 100 calories), I would exceed this amount (60g). There is the issue of grains (i.e. bread) having low protein bioavailability (closer to 40-50%), but this can be partially remedied by eating something like sourdough, or just not something absurdly stupid like getting all your calories from bread. Protein deficiency is so absurdly rare that it’s almost impossible to have it without calorie restricting, even on a shitty Western diet. However, the average American is either some kind of athlete or has aspirations to be one. RDA for athletes is up to double this amount: 1.6 g/ kg body weight, or 110 G protein for me. I can hit this if I try, but my daily consumption is usually around 100g protein, at least during the times I’ve tracked intake. While protein intake has not been demonized like the other two macronutrient groups, research suggests that high-protein intake is actually negatively associated with longevity. People also bring up complete proteins, but I also think this is a non-issue on a balanced diet. Soy beans contain all nine essential amino acids, and rice and beans together also make up a complete protein. There's also the issue of Methionine/BCAA consumption: they seem to be associated with decreased lifespan, but they also are necessary for muscular anabolism so it's sort of a win some you lose some situation. Animal proteins are richer in BCAAs, but I'm not sure if this a good or bad thing.

Vitamin D

Ideally you should be getting this from UV exposure. However that isn’t possible for 3–6 months during the year in locales above 30 N or below 30 S. I supplement during the winter. Animal products like milk and meat have appreciable amounts of vitamin D, but these are either added later (milk) or supplemented in the animal feed. If you insist on a vegan dietary source, mushrooms with UV exposure or sunlight exposure before cooking have enough vitamin D to meet the RDA.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

There are three types of Omega-3 fatty acids: ALA, DHA and EPA. DHA and EPA can pretty much only be found in marine sources (algae or fish). ALA is common in plant foods such as flax and chia. I personally take an algae DHA supplement daily, but this may not be necessary because I consume about 7g of ALA from plant sources, including Chia and Flax. The RDA for DHA+EPA combined is between 250–500 mg. Assuming middle of the range 5% conversion between ALA and DHA (source), I still get enough omega-3s without the supplement. Flax and chia are super cheap and super easy to add as a garnish to salads, overnight oats, baked goods (although this destroys the omega-3s), and the famous chia pudding.

B12

This is fortified in soy milk and nutritional yeast. This is supplemented in most animal products as well, either in animal feed or post production. If you really want a natural source of b12, duckweed has 750% of the RDA per 100g. I've also started homebrewing Kombucha, which by my own TLC (thin-layer chromatography) analysis has plenty of b12. I'm sure this is true for other fermented foods as well.

Iron

Anecdotally my serum ferritin and hemoglobin levels increased when I became vegan, probably because of dropping dairy. My tracking app says I get plenty more than the RDA of 18 mg of iron (which is already 2x what is needed for males). Main sources are dark chocolate, sea-weed and dark, leafy vegetables. Yes, plant iron is less bioavailable, but heme iron (animal iron) is a carcinogen, and you can increase iron availability by eating iron rich foods together with vitamin C. Oftentimes these two nutrients are in the same food.

Calcium

Again this is supplemented in soy milk, but even without that I get more than enough calcium to exceed the RDA of 1g from a variety of sources including and not limited to nuts, leafy greens, flax, chia, oranges, kiwi fruit, and sea weed. There is a range of bioavailability from these foods, but the main non-vegan source of calcium (milk) is around 30% of bioavailability, which is the upper middle range of plant foods. Dairy is not a health food for a variety of other reasons, so I don’t think this is an entirely fair comparison.

Iodine

I cook with iodized salt, but also eat seaweed. Iodine is also available from plant sources, but the yield varies wildly depending on the iodine content of the soil.

Other Nutrients

Some people also claim vegans suffer from vitamin A, vitamin K and zinc deficiencies. Vitamin A can easily be found in spinach and carrots. Vitamin K in kale, kiwi and chia, and zinc in beans, flax and small amounts in pretty much every other food. Zinc is in nuts and seeds, but I also eat oysters (not sentient and are sustainable), which are almost too rich in Zinc and other essential metals. Plant K2 can only be found in natto, but again the conversion rate isn't that low, and is probably upregulated if you don't intake enough vitamin K2 from your diet.

I’m not claiming that a vegan diet is optimal, but it seems pretty clear from both research and my anecdotal experience that is possible to be successful athletically on a vegan diet. Considering that American levels of meat consumption are unsustainable environmentally (we would need 8 earths if everyone ate as much meat as Americans), and generally seem to result in poor health outcomes, it seems that moving closer to a vegan diet would be better for all of us. While regenerative grazing can generate meat in a sustainable manner, it cannot do so on the scale of factory farming, and thus cannot satisfy the insane American demand for meat. There’s also the issue of ethics to consider: cognitive research has shown that many farm animals (cows, sheep, chickens come to mind) show many signs of intelligence similar to young children and pet animals. I've become much more open to the idea of small-scale animal farming, where animals are treated humanely, but still ultimately killed and eaten, but this still entails eating far less meat. Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

i mostly enjoyed reading this. it's uncommon and well-argued except the end. i think you hurt it by ending with a barb.

i agree with the ultimate goal of minimizing potential suffering, but i don't believe cows or chickens possess a meaningful capacity to suffer. pigs probably suffer more but still not at the level i would agree with an ethical obligation to make broad changes. i am also wary of the wealthy and powerful pushing vegetarianism and veganism by ethical or climate arguments while they have no intention of changing their diets.

but i'll say again, i agree with the ultimate goal. when it is possible and price-competitive to industrialize lab-grown meat, and so we no longer need factory farming to fill consumer demand, at that point i believe we will be ethically obligated to end such practices, but not until that point.

in short, i believe humans have the right to consume meat because i do not believe animals experience meaningful suffering, but when it becomes widely practicable to replace factory-slaughtered meat consumption with lab-grown meat consumption then we will be obligated to do so.

i don't believe cows or chickens possess a meaningful capacity to suffer. pigs probably suffer more

How does this work on the substrate level? You may like pigs more or whatever but they're clearly organisms on the same level of sophistication as cows. (Naturally humans are not far off from either)

pigs are probably more intelligent than cows. if they are, and if cows do experience meaningful suffering in the environment of a factory farm, pigs subject to comparable conditions would suffer more. greater intelligence, greater awareness, greater experience of suffering.

if they're not, then i'd just strike "pigs probably suffer more." though i strike that already now, as i don't believe any common meat livestock has an internal observer capable of experiencing suffering.

While, as an omnivore, I can't really disagree with you in practice, the word "meaningful" seems to do a lot of work. What is the difference between meaningful suffering and meaningless suffering?

that, for example, chickens are meat automatons; that no chicken possess an even-for-a-chicken subjective experience of being. a free-range chicken might be far healthier than a tightly caged chicken, its diet better and its environmentally-caused pain and aggregate stress minimized so its meat and eggs are better quality than the other, but because there is nothing inside its head it's meaningless to say the free-range chicken has "experienced a better life" than a tightly caged chicken. neither are capable of experiencing life. i'm mostly sure of the same of cows, but the only beef i buy i know the supply chain and those cows certainly had "good" lives. same for the pork.

i was thinking on how certain i'd say i am, but i realized there's a contradiction in my argument. i'm sure enough right now animals can't suffer we shouldn't change anything, but when lab-grown meat is commonly available the possibility animals have been suffering is enough to demand action? that would mean my argument in truth is "animals are probably suffering, but what are you gonna do, go vegan?" that doesn't hold ethically.

but i'm sure there's nothing wrong with consuming slaughtered meat right now . . . just as i'm sure it will be wrong to consume slaughtered meat when lab-grown is commonly available. i guess it's necessity. when we don't have to bring chickens and cows and pigs into this world to get their meat, then it will be wrong to, and i guess i can square this all by extending that to any slaughtered meat. even in the future of "artisanal" free-range chicken and lovingly raised cows and pigs. if chicken thighs and steak and bacon can be acquired through kill-free processes, that will be the only ethical way to consume meat, at least for those with the true economic choice.

that, for example, chickens are meat automatons; that no chicken possess an even-for-a-chicken subjective experience of being... i'm mostly sure of the same of cows... same for the pork.

On what grounds? As far as I know, the physiology of pain responses is not significantly different between humans and non-human vertebrates, and a subjective experience of pain explains their behavior in response to harm at least as well as the alternative. We can't of course know for a fact what goes on in the head of other species, but that goes for humans as well.

i'm sure enough right now animals can't suffer we shouldn't change anything, but when lab-grown meat is commonly available the possibility animals have been suffering is enough to demand action? that would mean my argument in truth is "animals are probably suffering, but what are you gonna do, go vegan?" that doesn't hold ethically.

It doesn't seem all that contradictory to me. You can very well say that eating animal meat is justified if (Utility of eating animals - utility of not eating animals) > (harm of eating animals - harm of not eating animals) * probability of that harm occurring (to cover the possibility that you're right about animal suffering). Widespread availability of lab-grown meat will increase the utility of not eating animals by providing a hopefully satisfactory alternative, thus decreasing the relative value of eating them, while the harm would be unchanged.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

Same reason I'm not teetotal or abstinent from sex before marriage, or any of the other completely arbitrary restrictions from pleasure that humans place on themselves in order to act smug to others about: There is simply no sadder thing than a life unlived.

Religious people, I can at least understand are kneecapping their worldly pleasures on the promise of some mythical afterlife of eternal bliss. It's a silly reason, but it is a reason. But you? You're just making your life harder and yourself more miserable for essentially no reason at all. I can only have the utmost contempt for your position; doubly so because you evangelise it, and triply if you would force your lifestyle on me if you were able.

Religious people, I can at least understand are kneecapping their worldly pleasures on the promise of some mythical afterlife of eternal bliss. It's a silly reason, but it is a reason. But you? You're just making your life harder and yourself more miserable for essentially no reason at all.

Is one's personal gain the only admissible reason to ever do something?

In your one and only chance at life? Probably, yeah.

Is not wanting to murder what I think are sentient creatures not a reason? Is going without animal flesh such a sacrifice that you really think I'm miserable?

No, because like you, I am treating my morals as self-evident, universal, and unimpeachable.

And yes, because you're banging on about it to people who aren't interested instead of just doing it by yourself. Misery craves company.

Nutritional points aside, I don't get why vegans never seem to actually grapple with the morality of the fact that industrial agriculture kills millions of rodents, birds, and other animals all the time in the course of harvesting their crops. Unless you're getting all your vegetables from backyard farms, you're going to be killing animals in the course of harvesting your kale. This isn't a meme argument, if you have qualms about killing animals, why do you vegan?

I'm not a vegan but there does seem to be a moral difference between killing something intentionally and it being an unavoidable aspect (even if it can be improved upon) of staying alive.

Certain hunter-gatherer groups might satisfy the latter when killing animals but for the rest of us eating meat is a matter of convenience and pleasure.

What is the alternative? It's not like those animals are not killed in the production of the regular omnivorous diet. If you are interested in animal welfare, it makes sense to go with the diet that kills the fewest possible animals even if the number is not zero. (Growing all of one's own food? I'm not sure you can get all the range of nutrients with your own work, and you are still going to kill the soil microfauna and plant parasites.Vat-growing food seems the ideal, but it will take a while before that is enough to fully support a human body.)

Commensurably more are killed in the extra vegetable production required for a vegan diet, so there could be some inflection point where killing animals directly provides enough calories that it means fewer dead animals in total compared to the sheer volume of rodents killed.

I don't know if this is necessarily true; meat and dairy animals also require plenty of plant food, so an omnivorous diet still requires a lot of agriculture in addition to direct human food production. Granted, many such animals are raised on pasture land that could not be farmed in the first place, and even the ones fed with crops are given cellulose-rich material that humans could not digest, but factory farming still has a pretty large agricultural footprint.

If someone is to the point of caring about the soil bacteria, wouldn't vat-grown food still be wrong? It's living... sort of... and the nutrients that compose it come from somewhere. Wouldn't all existence be basically impossible?

I was thinking more of insects and earthworms. No, if you add bacteria to the moral calculus then one's immunitary system is a worse atrocity than any ever devised by humans, and that's indeed not a very practical principle.

Commensurably more are killed in the extra vegetable production required for a vegan diet, so there could be some inflection point where killing animals directly provides enough calories that it means fewer dead animals in total compared to the sheer volume of rodents killed. This assumes that vegans treat all animals as morally equivalent (1 cow=1 mouse).

Isn't one of the vegan arguments about the amount of crops grown purely to feed animals and that the same land could be used to just directly grow more calories than are produced by the feed crops once converted into meat?

Main issues I could see with this:

  1. Marginal land used for grazing not suitable for crops / feed crops more resilient + able to grow where the human consumption equivalents cannot (know this is to some extent true in terms of pastures, though not for all pastures, do not know enough about soil and climate preferences for different crops for that bit)

  2. Harvesting feed crops somehow kills less birds / rodents etc (have absolutely no idea, obviously combine harvesters and pesticides would kill regardless, but don't know if feed crops are less attractive to those animals to begin with so less wind up dead)

It’s clear to me that eating animals when one has the choice not to is probably somewhat immoral.

I know it's a well belabored question, but why? I mean why is it clear for you specifically?

I mean, your weight of 150 lbs is approximately my starvation + dehydration weight...as a junior in high school. That being the 145 lb weight class for wrestling. Its unhealthy to be that weight as an adult male with my build. Now that I've filled out, I weight 175 at extreme cut levels of both body fat and relatively low levels of water. I am also shorter than the average American male. More realistically I should be at or around 190. Again, as a short guy. I am not even a gym rat. This is me, doing mostly lots of walking and body-weight exercise.

Also your emphasis on soy in the protein (And several other) sections seems problematic given its hormonal side effects

I mean, your weight of 150 lbs is approximately my starvation + dehydration weight...as a junior in high school.

Are you seven feet tall? I am approx. six feet tall and I got to approx 150 lbs a couple of years ago when I first went on a diet. I was slim, but calling that "starvation weight" would be a gross overstatement. That's BMI 21, ffs. I still had fat reserves.

Edit: ardrama doesn't like tildes, can't even escape them with \

Nope, slightly shorter than the national average. A tall person with my build would probably be considered freakish even in the NFL.

In the context of BMI, I am considered obese even when more real measures have me at 8% bodyfat.

I’m 6’1 and last time I got my body weight analyzed literally my muscles, bone, skin and viscera weigh more than 150lbs. If I weighed 150lbs I would not only have literally zero body fat but I would have lost muscle and bone mass. I was 225lbs with 45lbs of body fat.

I am a very strong dude, but I’m not exactly a high level strength athlete. Apparently, All it takes is a lifetime of on again off again strength training, an active lifestyle, and a series of physically demanding jobs to have a body composition where 150lbs is an absurdly low body weight. Plus being six feet tall.

bench, and squat (they’re embarrassing, I’m a runner)

And because you're vegan. Seriously, try to get yourself to the point where you can rep 185 (bench). I was able to do that in highschool, it's not anything crazy but you will need to eat a lot more than 55g a day. Granted, it's not impossible with a vegan diet but a lot more difficult and expensive. Plus, you're going to be eating so many more calories just to get the same amount of protein (unless it's a lot of shakes, then... oph).

Humans evolved to eat meat. That might not be ethical but it is historical. It's great that your diet works for you but it wouldn't work for me. You're a much better distance runner (2:36 marathon is impressive) but you're not a better swimmer and you're probably a lot weaker.

I think the pushback you get is because you don't know what my nutritional needs are and assuming your diet would be healthier for me is just wrong.

Thought experiment: Since the ethical issue is a part of it for you; What would it take for you to start eating meat? What if a MD said, you have a deficiency and a steak a month would solve it... Would you? What does that say about your bias here?

I get it, you have the ethical high road. But not the nutritional one and comparing your diet to the 'couch potato' diet is self-serving.

There's a big difference between reducing meat consumption from American levels to sensible ones and becoming vegetarian, and another leap from there to veganism. While I am partial to arguments for the former and will note that westerners' objections to a plant-based diet seem to stem partially from their inexplicable inability to prepare vegetables in any way that isn't disgusting and unpalatable, I doubt there is anything that would get me to give up meat, eggs, and dairy completely. If your focus is on the environment, then arguing for a diet that's more restrictive than necessary seems counterproductive and only likely to encourage obstinate resistance.

On the other hand the ethical objections only really seem to convince sheltered first worlders who have never interacted with farm animals outside of a petting zoo; most people around the world encounter them often, know how intelligent they are, and slaughter them for food by the millions nonetheless. I will happily explain to people how pigs are smarter than dogs over a bowl of pork or how as a kid I had a pet chicken that would wait for me by the door every morning over a plate of wings. I may like and respect those animals, but at the end of the day they aren't human, simple as that.

Finally, the negative health effects of modern diets are numerous, and some of them may stem from overconsumption of certain meat products, but it doesn't seem like the dominant factor by any means when stacked up against overloading on refined sugars or just overeating in general. Even if that were the case, the solution would simply be to return to a more traditional diet where we eat meat less often, but when we do we eat as much of the animal as possible, instead of fixating on a few lean cuts of meat while turning the rest into pet food.

westerners' objections to a plant-based diet seem to stem partially from their inexplicable inability to prepare vegetables in any way that isn't disgusting and unpalatable

Any advice on that? Every time I decide to "eat more vegetables" I end up flummoxed on how to do that exactly, other than steaming them and having them as a side. Or making a salad. Or dumping a can of green beans into a bowl and calling it good.

What vegetables are you having, exactly?

I agree with the other comment about the best and easiest way to make generic leafy greens tasting good being stir-frying them, with some shallots/scallions/ginger/garlic (not necessarily all of them at once) and salt, maybe some oyster sauce. The Cantonese would blanch it very briefly before stir-frying to preserve colour and improve texture, but it’s not necessary if you don’t want to wash another pot. Conversely, just blanching them works for a lot of Chinese vegetables as well, if the vegetables themselves are fresh enough. Try to pick smaller specimens of e.g. choi sum or bok choi; the leafy greens I find in the west tend to be very overgrown, and as a result taste worse (less taste overall, and more bitter than average), less crunchy, and much more stringy and fibrous than in indigenous Chinese cooking.

But it would help to know which vegetables you’re actually using. None of the above is very useful if you’re trying to eat pumpkin.

Right now I mostly eat tomatoes in the form of homemade tomato sauce, onions in the form of cooking them up in sauces or burrito fillings, and that's about it. I mean, I'll eat other vegetables at restaurants and functions, but cooking at home that's pretty much it. Maybe once every couple of weeks I'll make fried rice, I throw some canned peas and carrots in that. If we're getting fancy I might put some canned green beans in a bowl as a side.

Are there any vegetables you‘ve had in the past that you liked and would like to replicate?

I find leafy greens taste best either cooked the Chinese way (sauteed briefly with things like garlic and osyter sauce) or tossed into a soup right before it's done. The key is to add some salty and savory flavors and to not overcook them. If you would rather they be soft, you could go for the Indian/Middle Eastern route instead, which is to chop them finely and stew them with a lot of herbs and spices.

Well, you're obviously fit as fuck. What's your training program like?

That said, I have one delta to offer.

I was vegan ten years. I found it pretty hard to keep making gains on lifting until I brought my protein intake up to 1g of protein per pound of body weight. That is, 2g/kg. This is significantly higher than your target.

By lifting I'm not talking crazy body building stuff. Just trying to meet non-embarrassing targets like body weight bench, 1.5x body weight squat and 2x body weight deadlift.

I was stuck pretty far from these goals until I added a lot more protein.

It's kind of challenging to get, say, 175g of protein a day from purely vegan sources without also taking in a lot of carbs and fat for the ride. Unless you do isolates, which are not so appealing.

So, I started consuming animal sources of protein and made gains in just a few months that I had been struggling to make for years.

So that's my anecdote.

I'm in my 40s btw so protein intake might be a bigger deal due to age related decrepitude as well.

I'm really loving this thread. I haven't seen such prideful self assured unrepentant flesh eating monsters since I last read the Eclipse Phase exhuman manifesto. Not all of the responses of course, only one or two true believers without caveats. The sort of person that sounds like they might even kill and eat an uplifted animal.

I mean that in the most loving possible way. The authenticity and candor in this thread really hits my heart.

I know those self identifying natural humans reading this might take offence to the word 'monster'.

But I legitimately mean it as the highest of compliments here. The beauty of a creature that rips other creatures apart without remorse or compassion...

Bravo thejdizzler, for pulling them out of the woodwork.

I find myself wondering how they taste... I'm sure they'd object but- it just feels so right, so respectful, playing by the same rules among such beautiful creatures.

  • -35

I am not sure whether you're being ironic or not, but even as satire, this is not a good comment. If it's meant ironically, speak plainly. If it's meant sincerely, then saying "in the most loving possible way" does not make calling people monsters for a difference in moral values acceptable.

Banned for a day, because the smarmy, self-satisfied obnoxious tone of this post seems meant for no other reason than to provoke anger.

Thank you, I find social updates to be intensely euphoric and one banning is worth a thousand downvotes informationwise.

I particularly appreciate:

If it's meant sincerely, then saying "in the most loving possible way" does not make calling people monsters for a difference in moral values acceptable.

This really drives home the point that my comment utterly failed to convey my intended meaning, and in fact conveyed nearly the opposite of its intended meaning.

To be clear, I am not being ironic or sarcastic. Self-satisfied, perhaps. It is very satisfying seeing my kindred post things like "I do many immoral things and have made my peace with them, and I like the taste, so I remain omnivorous."

I am a monster, and they are in-group. If I had conveyed my meaning properly, perhaps I still would have deserved the ban for making a post that only accomplishes buttering up my ingroup. But regardless, that is not what I posted. That meaning was not conveyed at all. It created some second order conversation that let me make clearer posts like this one, but it would have been far superior if it had stood on its own.

Side note: If anyone here wants to join my collective's 'transcendent compassion of deep understanding' themed vore club come post-singularity, hit me up. (I'll be the one in the 'Peter Watts The Thing' shapeshifter body wearing a pink and blue striped velociraptor morph.)''

Tell you me, what is the difference between a human and an animal?

Are you seriously asking?
In any case, I feel compelled to unravel the question if only for myself.
setting aside the vapidly true 'humans are animals' take-

Highly abstract language, highly evolved culture and technology (even when compared to other animals with culture and tool use), their unique status as current peak predator and as our game theoretic peers, the fact that they are foom-ing much faster than any other animal species, thus becoming less and less like other animal species.
Other than those very, very crucial differences, the remainder of our variance is perhaps average among mammals.

Alright. Why are animal lives or animal welfare morally relevant?

They're not... well, ok. This misses the point but:

To be rigorous, I see two ways things can be morally relevant, terminally, and instrumentally. Instrumentality is much more convergent than terminality. So a Vegan would value them terminally, and they have value instrumentally, I might even argue that we've thus far squandered the potential for use cases for animals- But instrumentally, food is valuable, obedient servants are valuable. So this does the Vegan who wishes for all to treat them as Kantian persons few favors.

So yes, I can totally squeeze water from a stone and come up with ways in which they are morally relevant if you push me to. I can argue that side of the argument. But I'm not trying to do that. My top comment has failed you. I apologize for that. It seems that I have brought you to the conclusion that I'm a vegan.

My position is much closer to- "Those animals will taste even better if you embrace their suffering with a sociopathic compassion that levies understanding but no mercy, and indulge deeply in the body horror. (Also my indulgence in this mode of thinking is why I'm not a vegan)"

My comment absolutely failed to convey this. Mostly because it was busy clapping.

Love the veiled threat. The right to eat meat is without doubt worth dying for, but against people on soylent diet it's more likely to be “killing for.”

So, do you think this is a good comment? Do you think is adds anything or just makes yourself feel smug?

I'm not smug. Sadistically giddy maybe.

I think that my comment is the same thing as 70% of the comments in this thread.
People explaining why they aren't vegans- with their explanation boiling down to a difference in values.

I think my comment points at the idea that which lives by monstrous means is likely to die by monstrous means, perhaps at the hands of those running selfless tit for tat (treat others as they treat others. Engage with each organism by the rules it uses to engage with other organisms, etc). But this is not an argument against carnism.

I mean, who's to say we'll ever run into a sufficiently powerful species running selfless tit for tat? We may just as well run into another race of monsters that we will be better suited to devour if we develop ourselves as monsters. And in any case, rejecting meat for that reason would be Tasteless. Unauthentic. Frightened. Unbased. I personally run something like selfless tit for tat, but I'm fringe. And as I've said, it's not about stopping people from eating meat. It's about respecting the beauty of the principles, joining in on the fun, and developing ourselves as monsters. An almost Klingon sentiment... but for eating people.

Unless of course the carnist didn't realize how based and Jungle-pilled they're being, in which case they should reflect on that and become based and Jungle-pilled.


And as for whether my comment was good. I did write it with the thought that I might need to write this follow up comment. I believe both of them together stand tall.

  • -17

I think that my comment is the same thing as 70% of the comments in this thread.

Nope, you're just projecting.

I think my comment points at the idea that which lives by monstrous means is likely to die by monstrous means

You wrote that about diet. Are you serious?

another race of monsters...

But this is not an argument against carnism.

You're actually pretty funny.

Here's the thing. No one cares about your diet. Mind your business.

lol. What diet? Maybe try attacking my worldview. My diet hasn't come up.

While it's probably not fair to reply to someone banned...

I think this "tit for tat" thing, as if all living things engage in constant IPD, is...irrelevant? Weird? Nonsensical, perhaps? I think people here might be able to argue that not every defector or cooperator gets back what they put out into the world. Some things in life are just plain unfair. If you're arguing that people who eat meat will eventually be repaid by being eaten or whatever, I just don't think that will happen. If you're arguing that we'll have to become monsters if we meet aliens, well, that's just not a given at all.

It's only a 1 day ban. It's fine.

I'm not really arguing either of those things per se... though I do live them. And the fact that I live them religiously is leaking into my posts.

I think these things are worth considering. Any reader that hasn't considered them should. I see that you have done that thinking and have come to more or less the same conclusions that I have. Nothing about the future is a given.

You might be confused because I spent part of my last post tearing apart the idea that my philosophy can be used as a Pascal's Mugging. Saying that we could meet aliens that we need to be monsters to kill was part of that. It's analogous to 'but what if anti-god exists and bad people get infinite reward' in response to Pascal. It isn't an argument that we have to be evil because anti-god exists.

I am of the position that if you aren't aiming compassion at animals you're really missing out on a huge amount of the higher pleasure that you can get from really reveling in the complex emotions available if you really explore the feelings of eating something you love as a sophont. Compassion is not some mere game theoretic mechanism for aligning with other humans. That is a mere use case. Compassion is a tool for gaining a biological and predictive understanding of your prey. This is why it is a higher pleasure. It is a universally applicable learning skill.

I'm the primary 'monster' here. Pridefully so. My use of the word 'monster' in the my top post was careless, and led to needless confusion. I have updated to the belief that there was no way for anyone outside of my closest confidants to make the inferential leap from what I posted. But you can take my intended meaning as a synonym for 'brother and kindred' that evokes 'body-horror exalting aesthetic' with a positive, or complexly meta-negative affect.

Illustrative Side Note: Hit me up post-singularity if you ever want to hunt and eat someone or vice versa. Platonically I mean.

Many years ago my roommate and I ate fried chicken while watching a vegan propaganda video. What a great afternoon.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I licked my canines and incisors a few times reflexively while scrolling through the thread.

"Am I the only one being made to feel hungry by watching this?"

-Nathan Explosion watching the yard wolves eat a man alive

This still takes dedicated shopping trips and preparing homemade meals. If someone is just eating frozen meals or going out for fast food, removing meat leaves you limited. I have a pescatarian friend who would be vegan if not for her doctor telling her she wouldn't be getting enough nutrients without fish, and she still struggles, because she lives in a college dorm and doesn't put nearly this much effort into her meals. Even if someone is making their own nice homemade meals, removing meat cuts a lot of nice variety they would have to their meals.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

Given what sort of world the 'natural' world is - one full of parasitism, predation, want and consequent suffering, I don't believe we have any special duty to be merciful and trying to be unduly concerned with reducing suffering. As it is, we're reducing suffering by destroying natural ecosystems.

However, I'd support ending factory farming just because it'd make food more expensive.

Really though, reducing suffering by ending factory farming is like trying to make sea less salty by pissing into it.

Also, what you outlined is a fair bit of work.

Then you have to train yourself to eat weird things, instead of perfectly natural things like megafauna meat.

and generally seem to result in poor health outcomes,

That's definitely not the meat, but the caloric excess, sugar and probably also seed oils that lead to unfavorable omega fatty acid ratios.

Nutritional research is extremely shoddy,and healthfulness of vegan diets is only in comparison with people who do not care much at all about what they eat - random loser diet. If you compare health conscious meat eaters and vegetarians, you get nothing really, or better health in meat eaters.

You can find a general overview and link to such here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033062022000834?via%3Dihub

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

I like the taste of meat, it's enjoyable. We could cut down a lot of environmentally unsound practices if we wanted to reduce the standard of living. Air travel for instance is not essential - teleconference or do a VR tour of a foreign city. VR headsets themselves are fairly expensive and non-essential, as is the 4070 TI in my PC. We could rezone everyone into Burj Khalifa-style pod megastructures and save a lot of transport energy and free up plenty of land. We could ration food instead of wasting huge amounts of it because it's ugly. But people don't want to live in the pod or eat the bugs, no matter how healthy or non-sapient they might be.

Furthermore, dairy is apparently good for you and tastes good - for example ice cream has some ameliorating anti-diabetes properties: https://archive.is/38Wqi

In addition, nutrition science is not very well developed, they keep changing their stance on things like salt, fat and sugar. Or ice cream for that matter. The field as a whole has not had great success. We should be sceptical of the whole field of academic counter-insurgency after Afghanistan and Iraq turned into complete disasters, we should be similarly sceptical of nutrition science. Health has been declining for decades now.

We should stick with tried and tested food products from times when the general population was fairly fit and healthy. Milk from cows, not oats or soy. Fruit and vegetables, fish, grain and meat, olive oil as opposed to palm oil. Or we could copy diets from healthy, long-lived countries like Japan, France or Italy.

nutrition science is not very well developed, they keep changing their stance on things like salt, fat and sugar

There's a reason for that. You can find it on the USDA website

We provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on public policy, the best available science, and effective management. We have a vision to provide economic opportunity through innovation, helping rural America to thrive; to promote agriculture production that better nourishes Americans while also helping feed others throughout the world; and to preserve our Nation's natural resources through conservation, restored forests, improved watersheds, and healthy private working lands.

Yeah. 'human health' and 'helping farmers sell things' are not aligned goals. The United States Department of Agriculture funds studies and propaganda to prop up middle America. State legislatures do the same of course. And corporations are happy to chip in.

Milk from cows

Milk from cows is a conspiracy. No really, the entire Got Milk campaign was welfare for middle America farmers. See, in the 1900s after the drop in demand at the end of WW1, The US government bought so much surplus that they had cheese rotting in caves. Predictably, this caused the market to produce even more milk. At this point, there was a lot of political will to make people drink more milk. And we got the Got Milk campaign. And when people stopped drinking milk, they started shoving it into every product as powder and cheese.

Of course, only northern Europeans even evolved to drink milk. By drinking so much of it, even though they couldn't properly digest it, that they eventually evolved to do so. Something like 15% of the population is lactose intolerant.

All that said- milk is probably fine in moderation. But this is America. We don't do moderation, we do regulatory capture and making the bottom line go foom.

  • -12

Of course, only northern Europeans even evolved to drink milk

Not true, there are alternative mutations inducing lactase persistence in other pastoralist groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence

It's a bona fide superpower and a very neat example of convergent evolution under cultural pressures.

Yeah, there was a similar thing with corn and HFCS around the same time everyone started getting fatter - governments should not be interfering with agriculture nearly as much as they do. Ensuring that there's some basic level of caloric self-sufficiency is enough, just in case there's a supply-chain issue or war.

I read some P. J. O'Rourke and he had a great chapter on just how much the government was messing around with agriculture in Parliament of Whores, this was from the 1990s and I doubt it's improved since then.

deleted

Absolutely. I think it's a little ironic that said Europeans now want to stop being based and stick with their ancestral diet but-

It's perfectly reasonable. Who wants to spend another thousand years evolving capabilities we'll probably be able to add by hand with gene-tech within hundreds?

Also putting milk in everything is... well.

I'm sure plenty of people here are willing to bite the bullet and say they're fine with poisoning the non-Europeans on purpose.

Can't argue with based people.

Just gotta steal their mutations and express yourself even harder.

People claim that it’s hard to be healthy, get enough protein, or not be deficient in key minerals on a vegan diet.

Your post has reinforced that stance for me. The only valid defense I can think of is "I didn't even consider that issue, but it was fine regardless".

What definition are you using, so that your dietary habits don't qualify as "hard"?

It's pretty much a stereotype for me by this point; whenever a vegen comes down from the mount for a sermon to try and convert the unbelievers, they start with a similar spiel and then immediately go into a long diatribe about all the various hoops they have to jump through to get their various dietary necessities.

None of which are easily accessible, and tend to only be accessible in their locale due to the world-wide shipping network we currently possess that makes shipping exotic food about fairly easy.

Nah. You do you, boss, but I'll stick with my meat, veggies, and dairy diet, thanks.

In my estimate, veganism is a form of deliberate cultural imperialism, centered in practice on moralizing, whose central claim is the fungibility of food and the elevation of basic necessity over any other concern…

For most of humanity, the meaning of food is culture, tradition, religion, and history. How do we practice those things or engage with external ones as a vegan? How would you break bread without the bread?

Veganism places no value on the personal or the past. It doesn’t particularly care that cuisines have meaning and value in and of themselves. How do I eat the food of my people as a vegan? How do I celebrate with them? What do we do when we gather? Veganism demands I eat foreign crops that can’t possibly be grown here which can only be prepared in ways authentic to no one.

If the ethical treatment of animals is a concern we can now engage, let’s do so. The unhealthy American diet is an eminent problem, so let’s make it better. Homogenizing the strongest component of culture world wide into beans is not a good solution.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

You're taking a lot of flack, so let me give you a somewhat sympathetic response.

I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but I have close friends and family members who are, so I respect the lifestyle and don't have any disdain for those who are committed to it.

That said, that closing line alone probably killed a lot of sympathy you might have gotten, because it smacks of the stereotypical self-righteous vegan demanding that non-vegans justify their failure to live up to vegan principles. No, sorry, you have to sell it, they don't have to justify not being sold yet.

Speaking for myself, I'll skip past the snarky "bacon is delicious" comments and say that I do in fact have moral qualms about eating creatures who might be sapient or near-sapient, and I think factory farming is pretty bad. That said, vegans and vegetarians talking about how environmentally awful meat consumption is often exaggerate or elide a lot of facts. The benefits of vegetarianism are even more over-hyped, and I say that as someone who actually likes vegetables and agrees that most people should eat more of them.

Since I don't believe you'd be okay with eating meat if we had a carbon neutral meat industry, we're left with you selling what is essentially a moral, if not religious, conviction. I'll hear you out, but imagine how "Here's why Jesus is Lord, so what's your excuse for not being saved?" would go over.

My fundamental allergy to veganism is its quasi religious nature.

I’m a materialist atheist, a universal Darwinist, a naturalist. I also used to be quite religious, so I find none of these arguments compelling and instantly hear them echoed in tenor by old apologist screeds that were often cloaked in appropriated scientific language that veers wildly from data dumping to naked moralizing.

I feel the same about anarchism, pacifism, deep ecology. They all seem part of the same coalition of beliefs that radically decontextualizes some sordid or sad aspect of existence and then when it is isolated, attempts to argue that it can be erased. I remain unconvinced.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

I mostly agree with everyone saying they don't need an excuse, but I see your kind of thinking a lot in EA/Rationalist spaces, and I think it's completely wrongheaded, so it's probably worth spelling out my philosophical position.

If you found out tomorrow that animals had no qualia whatsoever, would that change your behavior? It shouldn't. Whether or not animals have qualia has no effect whatsoever on the causal progression of the universe. It doesn't matter at all to anything that can be perceived by you.

"But doesn't that imply that empathy itself is irrational? Couldn't you apply the same arguments to humans? Surely we should care about their qualia right?"

Here's the difference: What is empathy for? What is it's purpose? Why do we have it? Is it because God, or Omega, or the aliens running the simulation want us to be nice to other conscious entities? No. The purpose of empathy is to approximate good decision theory. Anytime two people spontaneously cooperate in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma that's good empathy, and it's good decision theory too. Anytime someone cooperates against cooperate bot in the prisoner's dilemma, that's just dumb. Animals are cooperate bot (or defect bot I guess). You defect against cooperate bot (and defect bot) because their decision is not influenced in any way by anything. The mosquitos are not going to stop biting us if we abolish factory farming. You are applying the tool of empathy far beyond its intended distribution, and you are getting suboptimal results because of it.

I think you generally make a good point here.

Whether or not animals have qualia has no effect whatsoever on the causal progression of the universe.

This, though, I think is just factually wrong. The only reason "do animals have qualia" is a question we care about is because humans have qualia, and talk about those qualia, and thus the qualia of humans have an effect on the causal progression of the universe. If animals have qualia, it is as a part of their evolved responses to their environment, and it was only selected for to the extent that it causes their behavior to be better-suited for their environment.

Humans behaving weirdly when presented with environments well outside the ancestral? Story of civilization right there!

Frankly, I have empathy for those who I have empathy for, it's baked into my values, and no amount of argument will make me care about cows, pigs or chickens. The only reason I'd stop eating them is because lab grown meat is both as good and cheaper.

Other commentors have made some good rebuttals but there's an obvious one missing:

The vast, vast majority of people do cannot or could not be bothered putting this much effort into nutrition. You are obviously an outlier, being an amateur athlete who seems to get some enjoyment out of monitoring your nutrition needs like a hawk. Most people cannot or do not want to do this. If you're a 'casual vegan' (in that you just eat vegan and you are not monitoring your food for nutrient content) it is incredibly easy to end up with a vitamin or some other deficiency. I've seen it happen to multiple friends and family who have gone vegan.

It is far, far easier (in fact, it's the norm) to eat a nutritionally complete diet incidentally as a non-vegan. And this is not even considering the mental energy expended on working out whether certain food is vegan in the first place, let alone the nutritional content of said food.

On the other hand, the vast majority of people cannot be bothered to put the effort into learning as much about nutrition as bodybuilders, yet because bodybuilders did the hard work and shared their findings the knowledge has percolated downwards to the point where a highschooler can pretty quickly learn what he needs to do to get big. Veganism is a bigger task but knowledge about common deficiencies you need to watch out for on a vegan diet seems like something that could spread over a few decades.

who seems to get some enjoyment out of monitoring your nutrition needs like a hawk

Metaphor doesnt check out.

A very conscientious, literate hawk

I made the exact same argument.

They say great minds think alike.

(I didn't see your comment until after I made mine)

The last paragraph invalidates whatever else you may have written. By associating yourself with environmentalism and animal welfare, you break the illusion of your post being purely an objective evaluation of a diet - it instead comes to appear that any seeming facts you deliver are likely cherry-picked to support your moral politics.

And maybe this is untrue, maybe it really is purely about practical health concerns, but then why that last paragraph? It smells too strongly of missionary zeal.

What I'm trying to get at is this - it's disappointing to give a text the benefit of the doubt only for it to ruin its credibility in its last lines.

As for my own excuse: Eating meat is normal, the vegans I know tend to be crazy, better stick to my guns.

Yeah I feel the same. It's a pretty decent post right up until the end where it turns into combative moralizing. Honestly, this sort of thing is exactly why people give vegans shit. I'm fine with vegans, live and let live. But a lot of vegans don't seem to feel the same, and people don't like being preached at. Honestly even if @thejdizzler had concluded in a less hostile way that would've been fine too. Something like "since there isn't a hard nutritional need to eat animal products, I personally feel that the right thing is to abstain" would've been ok (at least in my book). But saying "what's your excuse" is just spoiling for a fight.

I don't think OP's last paragraph is any more combative or 'missionary zeal' than many other political posts here, eg about race or trans stuff. And both are fine - conflict over facts values and strong moral claims are useful information.

I slightly disagree. Yes there are similarly zealous posts on other subjects, but they very rarely adopt the tone of "my values are universal and you must adopt this position or else justify yourself", and the ones that do are usually criticized for it.

Source: My memory. I may be wrong.

I would agree that other posts are equally combative. I disagree that it's fine in either case. We can, and should, have discussions over conflicts of values without goading people into text-fights.

I think criticizing OP for that is very much an isolated demand for niceness, but it's close to what I would consider unnecessary combativeness. Lets boot up GPT-4 and see if we can quantify this.

I quoted the final paragraph and prompted it with: "The following Reddit comment is a 3/10 on the combativeness scale. Make it a 4/10." Here's what I got:

"I'm not saying a vegan diet is the be-all and end-all, but both research and my personal experience make it evident that you can be athletically successful on a vegan diet. Given that American meat consumption rates are environmentally disastrous (it would take 8 earths if everyone indulged like Americans), and are generally linked to poor health, we'd all be better off if we moved towards a more plant-based diet. Sure, regenerative grazing can produce sustainable meat, but it's nowhere near enough to meet the absurd American demand for meat. Let's not forget the ethical side of things: studies show that many farm animals (think cows, sheep, chickens) exhibit levels of intelligence akin to young kids and pets. I've warmed up to the idea of small-scale animal farming where animals are treated more humanely before being slaughtered, but that still involves a drastic reduction in meat consumption. Nutrition isn't a significant hurdle, so what's stopping you from making the change?"

Not much different. Still seems pretty fine. Lets crank it up: "Make it a 5/10"

"Honestly, it's baffling how some people still argue against veganism when both research and my personal experience show that being athletically successful on a vegan diet is entirely possible. American meat consumption rates are an environmental nightmare (we'd need 8 earths if everyone ate like Americans) and contribute to poor health outcomes. It's high time we shifted toward a plant-based diet. Yes, regenerative grazing is an option, but it's laughable to think it could meet the ridiculous American demand for meat. And don't even get me started on the ethics: many farm animals (cows, sheep, chickens, for example) have intelligence levels similar to young kids and pets. While I've become more accepting of small-scale animal farming with better treatment, it still involves eating way less meat. Nutrition isn't a valid roadblock, so why on earth are you still clinging to your meat addiction?"

Ok, OP is 2/10 combativeness points away from maybe being unnecessarily combative. I think that's a perfectly fine buffer.

This bothers me greatly. I am not fine with using GPT-whatever as a conversational tool. I come here to interact with humans, dammit.

I come here for intellectually stimulating conversation, with agents that I can plausibly convince or be convinced by.

GPT-4 produces better text than the average redditor, if not quite the Motte. The only real issue with it is that it's utterly impossible to convince it of anything in the long term, making debate a waste of time unless it's pedagogical and you're trying to learn something.

Honestly, I don't see the issue with someone using it for a quick and dirty way of making a point without typing out a whole tract.

Frankly, if you don't want to type it all out, then either just give me some bullet points or type out the prompt itself. Whomsoever wants can then plug it into the chatbot of their choice.

That's my strongly-held opinion, anyways. I'm also offended when someone pulls out a phone mid-conversation for no matter what reason, so feel free to call me overly sensitive and outmoded.

If veganism worked, the majority of the world's elite athletes would be vegans. I know you're dying to shout the names of the few who are (Hamilton, Honnold, etc.), so I'll remind you that we're aware of them.

Today's athletes have diets as optimized as those of astronauts. Every input is recorded, and every performance output is monitored.

The overwhelming majority of the highest-paid athletes in the world are omnivorous, as are the overwhelming majority of Olympic gold medalists, and the overwhelming majority of World Cup players. The Communist Chinese government will stop at nothing, legal or illegal, moral or immoral, to give their Olympic athletes the slightest edge. Their athletes are all omnivores.

The individuals and organizations with skin in the game at the highest level all over the world are almost universally omnivorous.

That says a lot more than yet another bougie white guy who's into amateur endurance sports.

As an accomplished runner, and 4- year vegan, this always baffles me. In my time as a vegan, I’ve set PRs ...

Had you trained equally hard as an omnivore, do you believe your performance would have suffered?

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

This is an attempt at consensus building

Recent science, to the extent it's a reliable institution to trust anymore, seems to at least partially refute your point:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/29/vegan-diet-meat-scientists-british-beef-livestock-farming/

I’m 150 pounds, and with the recommended RDA of 0.8 g/kg body weight for protein intake a day

The recommended RDA is way, way too low if you want to maximise muscle gain and minimise muscle loss on a calorie deficit, same for the 1.6g/kg for athletes. The real number is more like 2.4g/kg of lean body mass. It's true that protein "completeness" is not that big of a deal, since it's pretty easy to get all amino acids with a few different vegetables. What is, however, hard to do on a vegan diet is eat a high-protein, low-calorie diet, which is what you'd want to be able to do if you're planning on losing weight and either maintaining or building muscle at the same time. All vegan foods that contain protein either contain even more fat, or even more carbs. You can get your protein needs from vegan stuff, but you'll need to eat a shit ton of calories to do so. On the other hand, my 2300 cal/day non-vegan diet gives me 190g of protein without that much effort.

2.4 g/kg (over 1 g/lb) is total overkill. No study has ever shown a benefit of increasing consumption over 1.6-1.8 g/kg (Source: https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-intake-for-bodybuilders/).

** per kg of lean body mass, so at 20% body fat this would be around 1.92g/kg, which is a bit closer to the 1.8g/kg number

Aint nobody got time for that.

Because to meet your nutritional needs, you need a hypothetical well curated extremely well thought out vegan diet, while a diet that includes meat can achieve that with 1/10th the effort and thought. This is not feasible for the vast majority of people and saying otherwise is hand waving the problem away.

Its like yeah you can hypothetically thrive and live a good life on a shitty minimum wage if your finances and spending are in perfect order, or you could just earn more and never think twice about upsizing your mcdonalds order.

Likewise I can eat steak and not think about vitamin B deficiencies ever.

Oh and I also dont give a shit about animals, ill eat them regardless.

You can also drink Kombucha, eat vegan yogurt, or take a supplement and not think about vitamin B deficiencies ever. It's really not that hard.

Lots of people in this thread who don't give a shit about animals apparently.

  • -21

I don't give a shit about non-human animals, especially the ones dumber than us.

You can't change my mind by arguing the point, it's a fundamental values difference. I don't really care much for the rights of stupid humans either, so I'm not just a species chauvinist.

The only way to change my mind would be outright coercion, and I'd fight for my right to do as I please, thanks.

Lots of people in this thread who don't give a shit about animals apparently.

Why should one?

I wouldn't go about being cruel without purpose, but nature is one big merciless energy stealing game, and I don't see why I should empathize with the enemy.

Giving a shit about things that aren't of your species is the behavior that I would consider weird, and insofar as it conflicts with empathy for your fellow man, transparently degenerate.

I'm not saying you do this specifically, but I think it's deeply immoral to ascribe more moral value to animals than humans in any situation.

Lots of people in this thread who don't give a shit about animals apparently.

Yes. This is the root of the matter. If they invent a wonder pill tomorrow that cures all micronutrient deficiencies, then meat consumption would remain virtually unchanged. Americans would eat their chickens and Chinese people would add a bit of cut up pork into their vegetables, etc.

The near total lack of concern and revealed preference lack of moral consideration for animals is more powerful than any nutritional argument. In some counterfactual world in which vegans were rock solid correct, Americans eating their hamburgers and Chinese people enjoying a bit of pork in their vegetables simply would not care.

In some counterfactual world in which vegans were rock solid correct, Americans eating their hamburgers and Chinese people enjoying a bit of pork in their vegetables simply would not care.

You can't just change the one fact in isolation, though. In some world where it was as easy to get nutrients from vegetables as meat, perhaps those diets would not have come about in the first place. Probably humans would not have, for that matter.

If you dont particularly care about animals or global warming there is just no upside to being vegan.

You can match a meat eaters diet with a shit ton of supplements and specially selected foods. How many places in the world do you think have access to... kombucha and vegan yogurt? But you cant superceed it.

Or you can just not do that and live a higher quality life where you eat better food, can eat all cuisines from around the world, can eat out with friends, not be a liability at road trips and dinner parties..

Well to be fair to jizzler, every service station in my suburb in Australia has kombucha in the fridge, and I live in a shitty suburb. Vegan yoghurt I don't see as much of.

My "excuse" is that I'm vegetarian. I'm okay with doing 70% of the good of a vegan diet, while having far more options at restaurants and for cooking.

Although your central claim is fairly reasonable: "People claim that it’s hard to be healthy, get enough protein, or not be deficient in key minerals on a vegan diet", I think the rest of your post ends up primarily engaging with a weakman.

Very few informed people disagree with the claim that it is "possible to be [moderately] successful athletically on a vegan diet."

The standard points of disagreement are as follows:

  • How hard is it to hit all macros and micros on a vegan diet (typically in comparison to a comparable omnivore diet)

  • Is a vegan diet optimal from a health and/or performance perspective

Since you are either ceding or not interested in the latter, let's focus on the former.

Based on what you have shared it does indeed sound like you have a healthy diet & lifestyle. But you are also putting in vastly more work than the average person would. So much so that I wonder if you realize how unwilling the average Westerner would be to do anything like what you have done:

  • Train consistently & intensely enough to become an elite runner

  • Track micros and macros (not sure how religious you are, but very few people are willing to do this)

  • Get regular, discretionary bloodwork

  • Analyze the bloodwork and make appropriate lifestyle changes

  • Adjust supplement intake based on season

None of the above would be realistic to ask most patients. Even just asking them to eat a few more forkfuls of greens or drink one less soda per day results in abysmal compliance rates after any length of time.

In terms of ease, I'm of the opinion that the average person who will never count macros let alone micros is going to have fewer significant deficiencies if they eat meat than if they do not. Would you agree?

Anecdotally, as someone living in a trendy coastal area I know several people who have switched to a vegan diet. None of them ended up healthier, at least one of them ended up needing medical intervention as a direct result.

(edited right after posting to fix one word)

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

I don't think there's anything immoral about eating animals. I don't need an excuse.

Question then is, do you see anything wrong with abusing, torturing, or otherwise putting animals to other 'inhumane' uses.

Since once you've accepted that killing them for sustenance is permissible, seemingly anything else is on the table.

YesChad.jpg

I'm totally OK with the torture, murder or abuse of nonhuman animals of below human intelligence.

I don't do it myself, since I get nothing out of it, but I respect the right of anyone who cares to try.

I don't mistreat my dogs, since I love them, and it causes me emotional pain to see others mistreat their dogs. But barring an uncontrollable emotional outburst, if I have time to reflect and think, I would be content with letting them do their thing, as I am for people doing things I find no enjoyment in, but doesn't hurt me directly, or if it does indirectly, then only insignificantly.

Today, people are largely justified in being leery of people who crucify rats or microwave kittens. Those behaviors likely correlate quite strongly with sociopathy, including violence towards humans. That does not mean that those acts themselves are fundamentally malign as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps one day we can decouple the two, if we ever cared to, and I'd be totally cool with it.

Overall, I'm not fond of extending my moral circle of concern any further than I want to. And it's not too far.

I don't see how you equate the two. Animals have less moral worth than humans, not zero moral worth. Eating them is legitimate (yes, including pet animals). Torturing them for sick pleasure is not.

Torturing them for sick pleasure is not.

Can you expound on this, though.

If raising an animal with the explicit intent of cutting their life short for your own sustenance is 'legitimate,' why does it matter if you engage in torture or abuse during said short life?

Because the means matter as well as the ends? Torturing things for pleasure is just plain wrong, whether you do it to humans, animals or even plants.

This is the point I want to hear you explain your perspective on.

If we've granted that taking the life of the animal is acceptable, it doesn't seem 'plain wrong' to do anything else to them, if no other humans are harmed or involved.

I'm not trying to create a gotcha here, I really want to get the reasoning at play.

Killing animals for a good purpose is ok, torturing animals for no reason is wrong because of the effects pointless cruelty have on the people that perpetrate it.

Yes you can quibble about where to draw the line. Yes that means I’m ok with factory farming.

Killing animals for a good purpose is ok

I'd like to avoid the truism, though. "it's okay to do [x] for a good purpose" doesn't give us much extra information. We aren't clear on what 'good' or 'okay' means here.

I will even grant that sustain one's own life is a 'good' purpose.

But what of eating meat merely for the pleasurable enjoyment of the experience? What about keeping an animal in captivity because you enjoy their company or you like the status of owning a rare/expensive animal?

Humans historically have put captive animals to many, many uses. Which uses might be less legitimate in a world where we have artificial alternatives?

the effects pointless cruelty have on the people that perpetrate it

I think this raises the question of what does this mean for the people who operate animal slaughterhouses who are constantly killing animals that they, themselves, are not going to eat. What impact might it have on them?

I suggest that someone who does such things to animals is probably deluded in such a manner which indicates a propensity to harm actual people in similar ways.

Even extreme animal rights activists rarely think it's wrong to harm insects, but someone who likes pulling wings off insects just to see them squirm is probably a bad person.

So from a legal perspective, are we right to criminalize and punish animal cruelty whilst carving out a large exception for the animals we eat?

What are we defining as "torture?" I tend to think of "torture" as purposefully inflicting suffering with an intent or goal in mind (like, say, getting information or a confession out of someone). I get the sense that most of the suffering associated with the culturing of animals for food is not exactly anywhere near inflicting pain on them For The Evulz, so much as it's a consequence (however avoidable!) of "volume over quality" snaking its tendrils into every aspect of industrial production.

Yes.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

Animals are tasty. Grilled, smoked, braised, cured, ground ...

what’s your excuse?

I don't need an excuse for the diet of my species.

Your veganism wouldn't outlast Whole Foods, while my diet is far more "sustainable".

Worse comes to worse, we can always eat the vegans.

What's unsustainable about any of these foods? I can and have grown almost all of them including mushrooms?

He means that in a situation of economic decline and political turmoil, times you can reasonably expect following the defeat of the United States in WW3 and the end of the dollar as a reserve currency, you won't be able to get all the fancy things you eat to have a nutritionally complete diet.

Meanwhile, he'd probably be fine unless times got really tough.

I think that in a situation of deep economic decline when the US gov can no longer subsidize its farmers it's meat that will get radically more expensive. The US already produces its own soybeans and corn, and they are mostly used for animal feed and industrial purposes. Remove the subsidies, and corn-fed beef and soy-fed chicken will become too expensive for daily consumption.

Counterpoint- Argentina has experienced deep economic decline and continues to heavily subsidize meat production, to the point of having among the world’s highest per capita consumption of (normally very expensive) red meat despite being slightly poorer than Mexico.

Yes, but we don't usually associate countries south of the Border with making particulary-smart economic decisions. Granted, maybe Argentinians really can't go without the amount of meat the currently consume and, as your comment seems to imply, they are making do regardless of the strains elsewhere.

I don’t expect a politically tumultuous US to be making particularly smart economic decisions.

I really, really doubt that's the case.

Americans pay very little for food compared to their incomes.

Note the blood red countries that are much poorer, such as Poland, Czech Republic etc.

/images/16831550638599954.webp

Who do you think is paying those subsidies now?

If you mean that the biggest source of federal revenue is individual income taxes, then people will still be paying them, they just won't go to the farmers.

So you're positing a world where the US Federal Government can no longer subsidize farmers, but will still be collecting all the taxes it used to use to subsidize them? Seems to me that the "deep economic decline" is doing all the work there; it's not that farmers are subsidized (and note that Federal involvement with farmers often pushes the price up, as with price supports, rather than just down) but that the US is wealthy.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

Animals are below humans. I don’t consider killing them to eat- or for any other actual purpose- to be wrong, and I don’t consider claims of animal intelligence to have any bearing on that. I eat meat, I don’t like eating lentils and kale, and I don’t listen to hippies. If it would take 8 earths to feed people meat, then let’s find 8 earths somewhere.

I don’t like eating lentils and kale

Non-vegan with mostly the same opinions as you. But lentil soup is amazing (with ham still on the bone cooked in a slow cooker to thicken the broth). I agree that lentils without any meat are pretty lame though.

Kale soup with beans is decent too on occasion (and technically vegan), but it's not one of my favorites and I can see not liking it.

Zuppa Toscana (regardless of authenticity outside of Olive Garden) is also a delicious use of kale. Not at all vegan, but a good way to eat some kale.

What's your philosophical/scientific basis for this? This clearly contradicts my own intuitions/ the scientific consensus.

  • -16

My philosophical basis for animals being below humans is that it’s a postulate. Yes, I’m aware that some animals we regularly eat are smarter than some people- pigs are smarter than my nine month old nephew, but sorry not sorry, I value him more than every pig on earth, and relative intelligence has no bearing on that. I also value other random nine month olds more than any arbitrarily large number of pigs, or for that matter whales(probably the smartest species regularly eaten by people) because animals are not people. If we kill them to eat them or make medicine from their bodies or wear them or because they’d otherwise cause property damage or whatever there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that because they are not people.

What on earth would be the scientific consensus around “animals are below humans” and “I eat meat, I don’t like eating lentils and kale” and “let’s find 8 earths to feed meat to humans”? Those are value judgements, not scientific theories and facts.

This is clearly using “scientific consensus” as intimidation and consensus-building, even if there’s a weak case for “if animals were on par with humans the original replier would consider otherwise”. A weak case that doesn’t even begin to approach your own rhetoric!

Your own post contradicts your claims.

150 pounds

RDA for athletes is up to double this amount: 1.6 g/ kg body weight, or 110 G protein for me. I can hit this if I try, but my daily consumption is usually around 100g protein, at least during the times I’ve tracked intake..............

algae DHA supplement daily, chia, flax ..................

fortified in soy milk and nutritional yeast ...................

For your fairly low body weight, you need to be laser focused about your nutrition to avoid being deficient. Even then, you struggle to meet protein needs for anyone who prefers a bulkier-aesthetic. You eat foods that do not fit into any culinary tradition. Require a ton of time to plan around and are expensive. ( though I'll grant you that invisible subsidies makes it hard to calculate what part of it is an illusion).

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

I have a life ?

Let me flip that around for you. What is your excuse for adopting a lifestyle as limiting as veganism when there are other options that achieve the same goals with far less compromise?

IMO, Veganism doesn't work because it is absolutist. Veganism doesn't work because vegans are more interested in being vegan than helping animals of any kind. The need for complete eradication of animal products makes it a culture war issue, rather an a productive discussion about reducing animal exploitation.

A lot of Asian cooking can be done with minimal of use of animal products. Indian, Chinese, Thai.... the list goes on. Vegans could have used their massive marketing machine to push a change in that direction, reduced animal suffering by 99% (the last 1% being use of ghee, cream, oyster sauce, fish sauce, shrimp paste, etc), and gotten closer to their goal instantly. But they didn't. Hell, I suspect the vegans didn't go vegetarian because a bunch not-cool Indians were already vegetarian and there was no cultural cachet to be gained from vegetarian grandstanding.

Veganism is fairly arbitrary too. If pesticides are necessary for plant food, then what's wrong with eating cousins of those pests ? If vegans are alright with genociding cockroaches & slugs, then what are their ethical issues with eating shrimp & snails? If vegans are alright with genociding rats, then why can't we eat rabbits ? Why is honey not vegan ? Vegans support modern medicine and pesticides. So clearly, rats are the globally accepted intelligence bar for genocide. Based on that, Climate change is not a good enough excuse for veganism, because chicken + fish are dumber and quite sustainable.

I know a lot of vegans and I don't judge them. Afterall, people avoid food for arbitrary reasons all the time. (Hindu-beef, Muslims-pork, etc). But some will claim to have moral superiority for it, and can't stop talking about it. I scoffed at the Jains in school who used to chastise me for killing mosquitoes and I scoff at any vegan who has issues with me eating meat.

Your own post contradicts your claims.

I was more or less going to post this. "Not actually that hard" is incompatible with obsessively tracking micro-nutrients. That is way beyond what an average person is willing to do. Eating without any nutritional deficiencies as a vegan requires a wall of text to keep track possible sources of nutrients you actively have to seek out. Eating without any nutritional deficiencies as an omnivore requires have a palate more refined than a five year old.

It also seems like claims of being "successful athletically" on a vegan diet are primary made by participants in endurance sports. While I can appreciate those sports, this is somewhat outside of the average mental picture for athleticism. Outside of the niche of endurance sports most people think of power, muscularity, or strength when they think of athleticism. A vegan diet is also pretty clearly not optimal, even for endurance sports. I don't follow marathon closely enough to know if this has changed since

2011

But you know, there’s a also a reason no vegan runner has qualified for the Olympic marathon trials. Not the Olympics. The trials.

It's clearly possible to sustain life as a vegan, but success athletically has to be defined before you claim to have proven that possible to be successful athletically on a vegan diet.

Just a heads-up, you replied to the wrong comment.

Dude, I have a life too. I honestly don't think about this crap 99% of the time, except when eating out a restaurant or arguing on an internet form. I only tracked my intake for this post. If I wanted to bulk I would use protein powder like 99% of meat eaters, or make a serious effort to include more protein rich foods like soy.

I agree with some of your points. I'm not sure why the line is at animals when it's pretty clear that things like oysters are basically plants. There's a difference between those edge cases, and something that's clearly as smart as a human baby like an octopus or a pig.

People claim that it’s hard to be healthy, get enough protein, or not be deficient in key minerals on a vegan diet.

Put simply, that part is cope. People could switch to vegan diets if they wanted to, but having a bunch of reasons why they totally can't renders it all that much easier to justify electing not to do so. I've had similar experiences with all manner of dietary choices that people insist make a huge difference in whatever direction, and many of them aren't anywhere near as fit as me (although my race paces still lag well behind yours, congrats on the sub-15). Anecdotally, I really doubt that nutritional style is holding many people back in their health and fitness goals, it's much more about specific selections and quantity of food.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

I like meat. I'm unbothered by the general claims regarding sustainability because I'm willing to pay the going rate for local farms that I know and trust, so whether other people can afford to or are willing to doesn't impact me. I freely confess that killing sentient animals bothers me a little, but it doesn't bother me much and I don't think it's an ethical imperative to not do so. The mice that I killed as a researcher bother me much more than the cattle that have decent enough pastured lives before being killed and much, much more than the deer that's shot through the lungs and dropped. Eggs are even easier to justify - I get them from parents, whose chickens seem to live much more pleasant lives than the median bird. Fish lives simply don't matter and there's plenty of bluegill and perch in the lake.

The egg thing always bothered me, as someone who's had family members that raised chickens. Modern hens produce a shit ton of eggs and will literally go insane ("broody") and starve themselves to death sitting on unfertilized eggs if you don't collect them. What's the vegan rationale for refusing to eat them? I can see being against factory farming or whatever (I don't agree, but I can acknowledge that there exists a consistent ethical system to be against it), but just flat out refusing to consume all animal products regardless of context seems overly dogmatic.

The closest thing to a steelman I can come up with is something like, the chickens didn't consent to be your pet so it's unethical to raise them in the first place. But given that the majority of vegans I've met have pet cats, I don't think that's the logic. If it's ethical to raise and provide for an animal (with conditions superior to what can be found in the wild!) and to do so you need to perform some caretaking task that creates something usable as a byproduct (eggs from chicken, wool from modern sheep) it certainly seems as though you could reconcile eating eggs and wearing wool with being vegan, unless you're willing to bite the bullet and just admit that the modern domesticated breeds of these animals are unfit to survive and should go extinct, which is... a take.

Deeper in the thread I was arguing with a guy who literally just said these animals should… cease to exist? I guess? So the take is a real one.

I’m a little fuzzy on the mechanics, but a “final solution” for farm animals from a vegan perspective is honestly a bit hilarious.

I respect this attitude, and I think it is directionally the same as me, although I am much more uncomfortable killing animals.

On the exercise point I think the real important factor is just the specific stimulus. My mile (running) and triathlon PRs are from when I was meat eater and honestly eating crap (sleeves of Goya cookies for lunch), but my training stimulus was almost perfect.

cognitive research has shown that many farm animals (cows, sheep, chickens come to mind) show many signs of intelligence similar to young children and pet animals

If you said pigs I would agree. But those examples are of very dumb animals. Chickens are dumb and extremely mean.

But sure, some food animals are of comparable intelligence to some pet animals. That's why I'm okay with Koreans eating dogs and Europeans eating horses. I find our meat taboos in America to be ridiculous. Legalize horse meat and the hunting of feral horses. Animals have virtually no moral worth so let's get them on the dinner table.

How can you categorically say that animals have no moral worth? Is this axiomatic, or do you have justification?

They are actually most likely coherent in their own beliefs, also categorizing dumb humans in the same way. I would place money down that they don't apply this to stupid fetuses though.

Vegans confidently assert the ethical violation involved with eating meat or using animal products. Following their good example I will similarly assert the almost complete lack of ethical concerns regarding meat.

Considering that American levels of meat consumption are unsustainable environmentally (we would need 8 earths if everyone ate as much meat as Americans), and generally seem to result in poor health outcomes, it seems that moving closer to a vegan diet would be better for all of us.

I'd jump to blaming sugar and lack of exercise for bad health outcomes before I blamed meat. Do you not think those two health interventions would be more effective?

While regenerative grazing can generate meat in a sustainable manner, it cannot do so on the scale of factory farming, and thus cannot satisfy the insane American demand for meat.

I'm curious on the numbers on this. Is factory farming more efficient land use? How much is currently being used as regenerative grazing?

There’s also the issue of ethics to consider: cognitive research has shown that many farm animals (cows, sheep, chickens come to mind) show many signs of intelligence similar to young children and pet animals. I've become much more open to the idea of small-scale animal farming, where animals are treated humanely, but still ultimately killed and eaten, but this still entails eating far less meat. Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

In terms of ethics, I've come to realize I'm a human centrist all the way. I really don't care how smart other animals, aliens, or machines are. I prioritize humans first. The only way that I care about animal suffering is that my fellow humans are bothered about it. But only a minority seem extremely bothered about it, most people don't care, or have an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude.

The final reason is that I generally like the taste of meat, beef most of all, chicken is ok, and I dislike most pork products. I went mostly vegetarian when I was over in India. The quality of the meat wasn't great, and the quality of vegetarian food was really good. I'd probably stop eating meat if vegetarian food tasted as good, and was significantly cheaper.

I think simple sugars certainly have a role in metabolic syndrome, but saturated fat is also clearly a huge problem (i.e atherosclerosis and obesity). Pretty much the only source of saturated fat is animal products (dairy and meat).

Factory farming exists because it is cost efficient. Growing grain and soy for animal feed is more efficient in terms of calories per acre than grass fed (because wheat and soy are more efficient plants at converting sunlight to calories and protein than grass is). However, our current monoculturing is clearly not sustainable from a disease or resource use perspective. So we'll have to go back to more traditional animal agriculture methods. Which means less meat.

I'm not sure that your ethical point is really a satisfying argument to me. What is the difference between that statement and me saying "I'm really not concerned about the suffering of black people, I'm a white-centrist?" I also don't believe this is true for most humans ala pets: most humans surely care way more about their dog than someone halfway across the globe.

As far your last point: I think you underestimate how much that we can adjust to changing hedonic stimuli. I used to love beef and pork and salmon before I was vegan, but 4 years of vegetables has made me like... vegetables.

Factory farming exists because it is cost efficient.

Factory farming doesn't really exist for beef in North America -- cattle are overwhelmingly raised on rangeland (which is not good for growing other crops either) then given some grain (in an outdoor feedlot) for the last couple of months to put some cheap weight on them and provide the fatty marbling that Americans like. If you want to skip that last step, you can get grassfed beef just as easily as all that vegan stuff you are buying.

Granted if all beef were grassfed we would produce somewhat less beef -- I'd need more than a wave of the hand to be convinced that this would be in any way untenable in terms of available grazing areas.

I'm not sure that your ethical point is really a satisfying argument to me. What is the difference between that statement and me saying "I'm really not concerned about the suffering of black people, I'm a white-centrist?" I also don't believe this is true for most humans ala pets: most humans surely care way more about their dog than someone halfway across the globe.

It wasn't really meant to be convincing. I'm fine if you value animal welfare and want to be a vegan. If you can do it while being healthy, all the better to you.

It's just that I don't care about non human entities so no arguments that appeal to their welfare are convincing to me. My viewpoint doesn't have to be universal, just prevalent enough that there are enough people to allow the meat industry to continue existing.

Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?

You don't get to set the default; I don't need an excuse.

I’m also quite baffled at the assumption that the burden of proof is on omnivores to defend their diet.

It’s honestly incredibly arrogant. there’s so much stacked against it I think it takes a very fanatical type of person to have that level of hubris.

I mean, just off the top of my head:

1.) Humans are omnivores. That’s how our bodies and brains evolved, and that’s the type of diet that interfaces most completely with us.

2.) Not everyone is a utilitarian, in fact I’d be amazed if even 10% of the population subscribe to beliefs that can be considered fully utilitarian. Outside of that belief system, suffering is often complicated to define and also is often considered morally neutral without greater context.

3.) Even if you are a utilitarian, the state of Nature most animals, including ancestral humans, existed in is incredibly rough and brutal and full of pain and suffering. It’s not a given that domesticated animals, even ones with very sad & short lives, would be better off without human intervention. Or that ending animal domestication will lower total suffering in the world. It’s not even close to a given. There’s a sanitized “Disney channel” version of animals’ lives that I feel that animal lovers sort of unconsciously project on a low level, but the truth is staggeringly cruel.

I could go on and on for hours about this. This is one of the few subjects I’ll likely never budge an inch on, I fully understand the other side of this issue and particularly the instinct not cause unneeded pain and suffering.

But whenever I hear hardcore vegans, which is to say any vegan at all, talk about this all I can think is “This ain’t it, chief”.

Even if you are a utilitarian, the state of Nature most animals, including ancestral humans, existed in is incredibly rough and brutal and full of pain and suffering.

But how is this relevant to the question of whether humans should raise animals in inhumane conditions?

It’s not a given that domesticated animals, even ones with very sad & short lives, would be better off without human intervention.

Well, they wouldn't exist if not for human intervention, which is better for the ones with very sad and short lives.

Or that ending animal domestication will lower total suffering in the world.

You would have to think that e.g. pigs in CAFOs are not suffering at all to believe this.

How is it reverent? It’s literally the baseline for consideration of wether or not animal welfare is important or not in the first place.

Because the question isn’t “will animals suffer?”, that’s a total given. Animals rip each other to shreds, stalk each other in the middle of night, devour the sick and helpless, gorge on each others entrails while they are still alive, and on and on and on forever and ever.

Inhumane conditions? The whole goddamn universe is an unending inhumane condition for them.

So the question isn’t “how much will animals suffer” it’s “what type of suffering will animals be subjected to” and “to what end?”.

That’s where you all lose the plot. Even if you were totally right on animals being worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans, you would additionally have to prove that domesticated animals would be better off not existing at all, and that by ending animal domestication you have managed to somehow lower the amount of animal suffering occurring in the world, while simultaneously outweighing the positive utility animal consumption has for humanity.

Which is from where I’m sitting is an utterly ludicrous claim.

Wild animal suffering is completely irrelevant to this question.

Imagine there's a planet in the Andromeda galaxy where ten trillion humans are being flayed alive.

Does that affect whether or not you should mug the next person you see? Clearly not - it's wrong to do that even if there's a lot of bad stuff going on elsewhere. You're not responsible for the torture planet. You are responsible for the mugging.

Even if you were totally right on animals being worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans, you would additionally have to prove that domesticated animals would be better off not existing at all, and that by ending animal domestication you have managed to somehow lower the amount of animal suffering occurring in the world, while simultaneously outweighing the positive utility animal consumption has for humanity.

If you insist on taking for granted the claim that animals are worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans (you brought this up, not me), then the rest of the argument is a cakewalk. What kind of monster would breed humans in the conditions of factory farming just to eat their flesh? Even if humans tasted really good?

You yourself said that many domesticated animals lead short and sad lives. Do you really think that existence is a benefit for them?

Wild animal suffering is completely irrelevant to this question.

I mean even if you think that ... wouldn't it be highly relevant to other questions, like environmentalism? If Wild animals in general suffer and their live lives not worth living, then a good utilitarian would want to pave over all of nature, yes?

Imagine there's a planet in the Andromeda galaxy where ten trillion humans are being flayed alive.

I'd certainly not feel bad about this planet being blown up by a stray asteroid. Do you feel the same way about life on Earth in general? Is the main problem with the last 4 or 5 mass extinction events that they didn't go far enough?

If Wild animals in general suffer and their live lives not worth living, then a good utilitarian would want to pave over all of nature, yes?

I guess you'd have to ask a good utilitarian.

Fair enough, I suppose I just usually associate veganism with utilitarianism on some level.

I guess I'll just phrase it as a full argument:

A. Animals suffer greatly in their natural environment. Nature and evolution have optimized for survival, not happiness.

B. Artificial environments can make concessions to animal happiness that Nature cannot make.

C. If you care about animal welfare, artificial environments that make some attempt at keeping animals happy are to be preferred over natural environments.

D. If you think artificial environments are not a net positive for animals, then natural environments are definitely not a net positive.

E. Thus if you think we should get rid of artificial environments for animals in order to alleviate their suffering, then we should also get rid of natural environments for animals to alleviate their suffering.

I believe that is the encapsulated argument that @MaximumCuddles has been getting at. Vegan's don't seem to reach point E in the argument. The logic is sound, so one of the points must not be valid from the perspective of a vegan. The question is: which points do they think aren't valid? That would narrow down a large moral argument to a specific point of contention.

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It’s amazing how similar this is to arguing with an Anarchist. Which to me is also a sort of crypto-religious belief wrapped in a rationalist skin suit.

Wild animal suffering is relevant because when you say animal domestication is morally wrong, the obvious next question is “compared to what?”. Good and bad must be weighed against each other to make some semblance of moral judgement, especially in the realm of the political. And veganism insofar as it is related to animal welfare and liberation is certainly political.

So the obvious comparison is the lives of wild animals, because the end of animal domestication means the subject of moral questioning is overwhelming subjected to that mode of living, which is basically the IRL version of lovecraftian horror.

This also highlights the absurdity of your thought exercise, because we can clearly point to a possible world for humans better than being skinned alive for meat. It’s the one we live in right now. Not only is it possible but it’s currently existent. No such comparisons exist for animals. So the whole moral weight of this line of reasoning collapses.

As for the question as to wether a short and sad life is worth it, that remains an open question.

Certainly Life seems to think so, seeing how abundant those types of lives are in nature, red in tooth and claw.

Wild animal suffering is relevant because when you say animal domestication is morally wrong, the obvious next question is “compared to what?”... the end of animal domestication means the subject of moral questioning is overwhelming subjected to that mode of living, which is basically the IRL version of lovecraftian horror.

You are verging on intentionally being obtuse. If I proposed turning loose the 130 million pigs slaughtered every year to fend for themselves, you would have an argument. Instead I am proposing not having those 130 million pigs at all. The comparison is not between factory farming or wild life, it's between factory farming and non-existence. The state of nature is totally irrelevant to the question of factory farming. It's not an option on the table for these animals.

The torture planet doesn't have to exist. It would be better if it did not exist, no matter how people live on Earth. To say otherwise is to engage in utilitarian sophistry that you were condemning a few posts above.

As for the question as to wether a short and sad life is worth it, that remains an open question.

Certainly Life seems to think so, seeing how abundant those types of lives are in nature, red in tooth and claw.

You cannot derive an ought from an is.

I agree, I feel like you are being quite obtuse. But that’s how these conversations generally go.

The problem with your little analogy is that for the animals, the torture planet was already here. It was here before us and it will be here after us. We didn’t build it. It doesn’t need us to exist. We simply carved out a little portion of it for our own purposes. The only proper way to judge that carve out is by comparing it to the rest.

The is/ought thing is telling, humans can talk about is/ought distinctions because they exist for us, we can decide amongst ourselves to live differently than the state of nature, within some limits. We have options.

For animals there is no “ought”, only “is”. That’s why they are animals. There is only the existence they are born into or no existence at all, which is hinted at even by your own admission and desire, The “final solution” for domesticated animals.

I think our little dialogue has demonstrated that Veganism is part of a whole constellation of beliefs that take an aspect of our existence where there is suffering, radically decontextualizes it, and then compares it to itself.

Anarchism, Pacifism, anti-nuclear activism, deep ecology, they all seem to have this in common and they are all, from my perspective, equally tedious to interact with as they have an almost religious-like aversion to dealing with the plain tragic reality of life.

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Default is not killing sentient creatures for your taste pleasure?

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No.

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