The best argument against vegans is always the fact that plants also are living beings. Now if you are gonna create hierarchy of living beings to justify your food consumption, well…
And how does that prove anything? Can you prove sentience requires neurons? The clear answer is no, that’s just a confortable assumption we make to not be shackled to phylosophical inertness.
Plants aren’t sentient though, that’s a pretty good reason to put them lower on the hierarchy of living beings that are morally ok to eat. And it’s quite likely that fewer plants die for a vegan diet than for a standard diet, as animals need a lot of feed to produce meat, eggs and dairy. Some percentage of the plant protein, fats, and carbs will always be lost along the way when we feed them to animals, so eating those plants directly is more efficient.
Sentience is hard to measure though. Also I had a weird discussion with my neighbour once who argued that in order to kill fewer sentient beings, we should eat the bigger ones as the ratio of meat per sentience was better, so we should really eat whales. Which made it pretty obvious to me that a) he was nuts and b) sentience might not be the best indicator for ethic food consumption.
/edit
That doesn’t mean that I oppose the idea that eating plants is better. I’m just arguing against sentience as a good indicator.
Except his argument is flawed on its own grounds, because the bigger the animal the more food it takes to support it before you come along and kill it. Assuming we had an objective measure of sentience, it’s pretty likely most non-herbivores are costing more sentience than your save by eating them.
At which point we should just cause the extinction of all animals except humans and the few plants needed to support humans. See how that’s a horrible metric?
What do you think they have to feed to the animals? If you believe plants to be important enough, you should go vegan to reduce their suffering. Also, do you get really annoyed at people walking on grass? How about if you see someone kick a dog? I swear, when it comes to the veganism devate, normally sensible people completely lose all sense of logic.
Cows don’t photosynthesize they eat a shit ton of plants to make a tiny amount of meat so if you really care about plants you would eat the plants directly and skip the middlemen that waste 90% of the plant matter
We’ve had some help though, i think i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us wherever we go, and letting them roam free in ecosystems that didn’t have any equivalent predator, leading to stories like this https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/03/25/species-extinct/
i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us
Do you have a source for that? Intuitively 1/3 of all species extinctions (keep in mind this in general includes plants and other kingdoms of life, not just animals) sounds far too high imo. Maybe you have read that number in a slightly different context, like bird deaths in urban areas, or perhaps in a more specific context similar to the one in your link? Don’t get me wrong, like your link shows, (house) cats can easily have a devastating effect on the local wildlife, in particular birds and small mammals or reptiles (wikipedia has an article on the topic, although I didn’t find anything like your numbers in it). But as far as I know the major ways in which humans have caused extinctions are historically overhunting (mostly affecting large birds and mammals), habitat loss in particular since the advent of agriculture, and more recently of course the effects of the climate crisis since the industrial revolution.
Hold on, the link you posted says 10 to 100 times more than the natural background extinction rate. That’s very far from "any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of the Earth.
You consider humans superior in intellect and ability compared to all other animals yet can’t grasp the fact that some humans have chosen to use said superior intellect and ability to avoid killing other animals?
Isn’t that usually the argument that anti-vegans use? That we’re the top predator due to our intelligence and technology and therefore we have an intrinsic right to the lives of other animals?
That would be an incredibly bad argument. Because it’s not a motive, it’s just descriptive. “we’re at the top so we have the right” it’s just a claim we make for ourself without considering how we got there… and what if a smarter, more advanced alien race would come down to earth and conquer us? Would they agree that since they are top of the chain now they have “the right” to slaughter us? Obviously not. So then we would claim: “we’re smart! Look, we know math. And love… we also feel pain.”. So these are important to us.
I’m not on either side of the argument, but would guess a good argument would be that fish need to eat other fish in order to survive as it’s their only source of food. We don’t. Provenly.
Can the same be said about people? How do we judge imagination of a fish? If we don’t understand what they feel is it because of their lack of imagination or ours?
To be fair, he’s technically not wrong, exactly as you pointed out - if your life just ends instantly, be it fish or human, they won’t feel or think jack shit.
People absolutely do need to eat meat, specifically cooked meat in order to be intelligent. It’s what made cavemen smarter than other animals. Also the recent rise in average height and IQ from good nutrition is in part directly related to cheap meat from factory farming.
Except in most cases we can’t. You may be able to, in which case, good job, but meat is much cheaper per quantity and quality of nutrients, not to mention people like me, whose only real source of dietary iron is meat.
1kg of chicken breast meat costs me less than 5 USD and covers multiple days of meals. To get equivalent nutrients out of plants would cost me way more than that.
wtf you can? Where I am chicken breast is USD $11.64 per kg!
Compare that to beans. Where I live I can get a kg of dried pinto beans for $3.50, and with 67% as much protein per serving as chicken it would cost $5.25 to get the same amount of protein as a kg of chicken breast.
What’s the price of 1kg of dried beans where you live? That’d be a more apt comparison.
Depends a lot on brand and quality, but I’d guess the average is somewhat close to yours, at $3.00 US. Beans are a major source of protein for most people, where I live. Doesn’t help me, though - I don’t much mind the flavor, but they make me incredibly nauseous.
Iron is just a mineral, where do you think the cows get it? Plenty of plants have iron. Meat is also typically a lot more expensive than rice and beans. Like you want to eat meat, that’s cool, just stop acting like it’s for your health when meat is literally a carcinogen.
According to that logic, Inuit people should be able to outsmart all of us - but they don’t seem to be smarter or dumber than the rest of the human population.
Right… let’s check his comment point by point, shall we?
A person does not need to eat meat.
I believe you’ll agree with this without the need to further explain it.
People absolutely do need to eat meat
This is strictly true, in our current context. The food production chain simply cannot cope with the abrupt loss of a main source of nutrients in most places. Particularly when 'muricans are throwing away up to half of their food.
specifically cooked meat in order to be intelligent.
Non-statement statement of dubious quality. Should be rewritten.
It’s what made cavemen smarter than other animals.
That’s invariably the most accepted explanation to homo sapiens evolution
Also the recent rise in average height and IQ from good nutrition is in part directly related to cheap meat from factory farming.
Meat provides very dense nutritional value, I’m sure you’ll agree - it’s why carnivores exist to begin with. We know, factually, that nutritional quality directly correlates with better health, both in body and mind. We also know that meat can be VERY cheap, as long as you’re not looking for “grade A elite baby wagyuu” stuff.
Nice argument, you sure showed him! Oh, wait, you didn’t - there was no substance to your reply. I suggest actually choosing a point of contention and explaining your perspective next time.
Because hunting is necessary to keep the balance of species in the wilderness in check. That’s why you cannot shoot everything at any time.
For example, wild boars are a huge problem because they tend to absolutely demolish their environment and then move to a different spot, rinse and repeat. Thus, you have to keep their numbers down to actually protect the wilderness.
If someone shoots a bear out of season, that’s illegal and you ahould report him.
Huh, interesting you can still see that comment. I was sort of drunk and being flippant and I don’t actually remember what I wrote (and I can’t see it now!).
Maybe it takes a while for a comment to be deleted on all instances. Not really sure how Lemmy works under the hood as I’m kinda new. I can still see the comment.
In any case, don’t sweat about it, it wasn’t something nasty. Just, yeah as you said, flippant.
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The best argument against vegans is always the fact that plants also are living beings. Now if you are gonna create hierarchy of living beings to justify your food consumption, well…
Plants aren’t sentient and you need more plants to feed a cow (and then eat the cow) than if you just eat plant-based.
We can’t prove plants are sentient. Then again, neither can we prove humans are sentient.
What do you mean? With our scientific knowledge we can prove plants aren’t sentient. They don’t have Central Nervous System.
And how does that prove anything? Can you prove sentience requires neurons? The clear answer is no, that’s just a confortable assumption we make to not be shackled to phylosophical inertness.
Plants aren’t sentient though, that’s a pretty good reason to put them lower on the hierarchy of living beings that are morally ok to eat. And it’s quite likely that fewer plants die for a vegan diet than for a standard diet, as animals need a lot of feed to produce meat, eggs and dairy. Some percentage of the plant protein, fats, and carbs will always be lost along the way when we feed them to animals, so eating those plants directly is more efficient.
Sentience is hard to measure though. Also I had a weird discussion with my neighbour once who argued that in order to kill fewer sentient beings, we should eat the bigger ones as the ratio of meat per sentience was better, so we should really eat whales. Which made it pretty obvious to me that a) he was nuts and b) sentience might not be the best indicator for ethic food consumption.
/edit That doesn’t mean that I oppose the idea that eating plants is better. I’m just arguing against sentience as a good indicator.
What would be a good indicator then if not sentience?
Except his argument is flawed on its own grounds, because the bigger the animal the more food it takes to support it before you come along and kill it. Assuming we had an objective measure of sentience, it’s pretty likely most non-herbivores are costing more sentience than your save by eating them.
At which point we should just cause the extinction of all animals except humans and the few plants needed to support humans. See how that’s a horrible metric?
What do you think they have to feed to the animals? If you believe plants to be important enough, you should go vegan to reduce their suffering. Also, do you get really annoyed at people walking on grass? How about if you see someone kick a dog? I swear, when it comes to the veganism devate, normally sensible people completely lose all sense of logic.
Cows don’t photosynthesize they eat a shit ton of plants to make a tiny amount of meat so if you really care about plants you would eat the plants directly and skip the middlemen that waste 90% of the plant matter
How come fish can eat their own offspring but we can’t do the same to ours?
Have you ever tried eating a baby? No?
Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Fish eating fish doesn’t lead to ecological disturbance. Humans have put multiple species on the verge of extinction.
That is a slight understatement:
We’ve had some help though, i think i read that something like 1/3 of all human caused extinctions are because we keep bringing cats with us wherever we go, and letting them roam free in ecosystems that didn’t have any equivalent predator, leading to stories like this https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/03/25/species-extinct/
Do you have a source for that? Intuitively 1/3 of all species extinctions (keep in mind this in general includes plants and other kingdoms of life, not just animals) sounds far too high imo. Maybe you have read that number in a slightly different context, like bird deaths in urban areas, or perhaps in a more specific context similar to the one in your link? Don’t get me wrong, like your link shows, (house) cats can easily have a devastating effect on the local wildlife, in particular birds and small mammals or reptiles (wikipedia has an article on the topic, although I didn’t find anything like your numbers in it). But as far as I know the major ways in which humans have caused extinctions are historically overhunting (mostly affecting large birds and mammals), habitat loss in particular since the advent of agriculture, and more recently of course the effects of the climate crisis since the industrial revolution.
Hold on, the link you posted says 10 to 100 times more than the natural background extinction rate. That’s very far from "any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of the Earth.
No, it says
both in the general intro and in the “Extinction rate” section, and
in the “Extinction rate” section (both verbatim quotes from its first sentence).
Oh, dropped a digit. Should have just taken that nap I was gunning for. My mistake!
I’m still so pissed they fridged Maria man, fucking bullshit
She’d been on the sidelines for 11+ years. Fucking disrespectful.
You know who’s not talking about the value of a fish’s life? Fish
You consider humans superior in intellect and ability compared to all other animals yet can’t grasp the fact that some humans have chosen to use said superior intellect and ability to avoid killing other animals?
Does he?
Isn’t that usually the argument that anti-vegans use? That we’re the top predator due to our intelligence and technology and therefore we have an intrinsic right to the lives of other animals?
Nope. My argument is simple. Steak tastes good.
Yeah they have definitely tried that angle in the past
That would be an incredibly bad argument. Because it’s not a motive, it’s just descriptive. “we’re at the top so we have the right” it’s just a claim we make for ourself without considering how we got there… and what if a smarter, more advanced alien race would come down to earth and conquer us? Would they agree that since they are top of the chain now they have “the right” to slaughter us? Obviously not. So then we would claim: “we’re smart! Look, we know math. And love… we also feel pain.”. So these are important to us.
Anyone who grew up in the 90s knows that fish don’t have any feelings anyway.
I grew up in the 90s and I also learned that underwater the fish don’t stink.
Agreed, if a bear can eat a person why can’t I eat a person?!
Not sure if this is about carnivores or big, hairy gays, but hey, whatever suits you.
Ask Jeffrey Dahmer.
I mean, you can… just don’t let law enforcement find out.
I’m not on either side of the argument, but would guess a good argument would be that fish need to eat other fish in order to survive as it’s their only source of food. We don’t. Provenly.
What’s wrong with fish eating plastics we dump in the waters. Are they anti plastic or something???
/S
That’s right! Oil spill is full of calories! Why don’t they just slurp it up so they can contain a lot of fish oil!
We still need to eat someone
Are you sure?
Yeah, until we evolve to consume light directly, we’ll be processing some other organics.
Imo harm does not equal to kill. A fish with limited imagination cannot be harmed if his life just ends and he does not feel anything.
Can the same be said about people? How do we judge imagination of a fish? If we don’t understand what they feel is it because of their lack of imagination or ours?
To be fair, he’s technically not wrong, exactly as you pointed out - if your life just ends instantly, be it fish or human, they won’t feel or think jack shit.
Eat yourself then.
A person does not need to eat meat.
People absolutely do need to eat meat, specifically cooked meat in order to be intelligent. It’s what made cavemen smarter than other animals. Also the recent rise in average height and IQ from good nutrition is in part directly related to cheap meat from factory farming.
Got any sources?
PBS video
Not exactly a scientific paper, but I guess it should be a good enough source for lemmy
So you think our need to COOK meat is the same as needing to EAT meat?
My god. I don’t think there’s much help for you.
The video says it was cooking, not cooked meat, and even says homo erectus mostly ate plants.
Uhhh… no. It’s not good enough for lemmy.
We needed to eat meat to get to this point. We can stop now.
Except in most cases we can’t. You may be able to, in which case, good job, but meat is much cheaper per quantity and quality of nutrients, not to mention people like me, whose only real source of dietary iron is meat.
Unless you’re a hunter there’s no way meat is cheaper, wtf are you talking about?
1kg of chicken breast meat costs me less than 5 USD and covers multiple days of meals. To get equivalent nutrients out of plants would cost me way more than that.
wtf you can? Where I am chicken breast is USD $11.64 per kg!
Compare that to beans. Where I live I can get a kg of dried pinto beans for $3.50, and with 67% as much protein per serving as chicken it would cost $5.25 to get the same amount of protein as a kg of chicken breast.
What’s the price of 1kg of dried beans where you live? That’d be a more apt comparison.
Depends a lot on brand and quality, but I’d guess the average is somewhat close to yours, at $3.00 US. Beans are a major source of protein for most people, where I live. Doesn’t help me, though - I don’t much mind the flavor, but they make me incredibly nauseous.
Iron is just a mineral, where do you think the cows get it? Plenty of plants have iron. Meat is also typically a lot more expensive than rice and beans. Like you want to eat meat, that’s cool, just stop acting like it’s for your health when meat is literally a carcinogen.
Nails have iron, try eating one of those! The air is mostly Nitrogen, why do plants even need N2 in the soil?
It’s basic fucking science that nutrients take different forms which can be absorbed differently.
Again: where do you think the cows get it, lol. Not from nails.
According to that logic, Inuit people should be able to outsmart all of us - but they don’t seem to be smarter or dumber than the rest of the human population.
Access to meat (thus better nutrition) increasing doesn’t imply meat makes you Megamind. That’s a very poor argument in bad faith.
The minute you start blathering about a “rise in IQ” you are making a “poor argument in bad faith.”
Because? Things don’t become truthful just because you said them.
Don’t tell me… tell your meat-obsessed friend over there.
Right… let’s check his comment point by point, shall we?
I believe you’ll agree with this without the need to further explain it.
This is strictly true, in our current context. The food production chain simply cannot cope with the abrupt loss of a main source of nutrients in most places. Particularly when 'muricans are throwing away up to half of their food.
Non-statement statement of dubious quality. Should be rewritten.
That’s invariably the most accepted explanation to homo sapiens evolution
Meat provides very dense nutritional value, I’m sure you’ll agree - it’s why carnivores exist to begin with. We know, factually, that nutritional quality directly correlates with better health, both in body and mind. We also know that meat can be VERY cheap, as long as you’re not looking for “grade A elite baby wagyuu” stuff.
Where, exactly, is your point explicit?
You are absolutely 100% wrong on this. And so wrong that it’s hilarious. Please don’t reproduce.
Nice argument, you sure showed him! Oh, wait, you didn’t - there was no substance to your reply. I suggest actually choosing a point of contention and explaining your perspective next time.
Oh, the irony.
There’s no irony, as my point of contention is your inability to discuss things like an adult despite, presumably, being one.
Everything is good as long as no one messes with THE BEANS!!!
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the vegans vs meat eaters oozed on over from Reddit.
You mean, people?
By this logic, is it fair game to eat people who eat animals?
Only humans that eat other humans.
Why can’t i eat humans who are “OH YEAH ya’ll dawg i shot A BEAR YEAH!!” and then didn’t eat it?
Because hunting is necessary to keep the balance of species in the wilderness in check. That’s why you cannot shoot everything at any time.
For example, wild boars are a huge problem because they tend to absolutely demolish their environment and then move to a different spot, rinse and repeat. Thus, you have to keep their numbers down to actually protect the wilderness.
If someone shoots a bear out of season, that’s illegal and you ahould report him.
Huh, interesting you can still see that comment. I was sort of drunk and being flippant and I don’t actually remember what I wrote (and I can’t see it now!).
Maybe it takes a while for a comment to be deleted on all instances. Not really sure how Lemmy works under the hood as I’m kinda new. I can still see the comment.
In any case, don’t sweat about it, it wasn’t something nasty. Just, yeah as you said, flippant.
Robin pls.
I learned from Nirvana that it’s okay to eat fish, 'cause they don’t have any feelings.