Lemmyworld admins be like
Let’s assume for a moment that somehow your salad was conscious. That’s an even bigger reason not to eat an animal that has to be fed on plants for a long time.
Or maybe its just a fundamental fact of life that something has to die in order for you to live and virtue signaling about the degree to which you participate in that death is a pointless exercise.
Ah yes, the old “I accidentally stepped on a fly, might as well exterminate the whole biosphere” defense
“our new cancer drug is 99% effective!”
“So it doesn’t work in 1% of cases? Then what’s the point, throw it away, we just have to accept that cancer is going to happen”
These arguments are exactly why people hate vegans. It’s nonsense.
Not only do you jump to an insane straw man. You showcase that you ignore a clear increasing contradiction around your world view and choose reactionary nothing.
If you care about life realize the harder question. If you care about the environment realize clear inefficiencues. Currently, you showcase nothing more than crude thoughtlessness.
I’m not a vegan but it’s foolish to think that vegans aren’t objectively correct. Let’s even say that plants are conscious beings on the level of cows or pigs. The conditions these plants are grown in are a million times better than that of the average factory farm animal. Additionally, in order to sustain ourselves on cows and pigs, exponentially more of these conscious plants need to be killed to fatten the conscious animals we are eating.
If we just ate the plants instead there would be several orders of magnitude less suffering in the word, antibiotic resistant bacteria would be a less immediate issue, a significant amount of our greenhouse gas emissions would disappear, and we’d all probably be healthier to boot.
Yes, something has to die in order for any organism to continue it’s existence. Let’s not pretend that only plants dying aren’t a better alternative in every way to animals dying in order to further our collective existence. You accuse vegans of being reactionary but your comment smacks of knee-jerky defensiveness for something you seem to understand is wrong
Devil’s advocate: are they a million times better?
Monocultures, moldboard plowing destroying soil structure and creating an Ap horizon, organics depletion and excessive application of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides…
Suspending any personal beliefs in the matter, it is truly easier to empathize with people, mammals, then others animals because we better understand their experience. We cannot understand the abstractions of a plant’s lived experience. Humans are only just starting to examine the intricacies of plant familial systems through root and mycorrhizal networks.
Fair enough. I’m not going to sit here and claim that out current agricultural structure is perfect or even ideal. I personally think a decentralized and highly local system of food production and distribution would be better for the products themselves as well as the environment, human health, and community strength. A million times better is hyperbole but I think it’s fair to say industrial agriculture is better for the plant than it’s equivalent for livestock.
Fertilizers aren’t great, pesticides aren’t great, soil erosion isn’t great. If we waved a magic wand and turned everyone vegan we would still see a net decrease in these harmful agricultural practices simply because people need less food than cows or pigs (among others), especially in the numbers were raising these animals in. If we’re going to care for the wellbeing of the plants we eat, it would still be better to stop raising animals for food from a purely mathematical perspective.
I also agree that animals are easier to empathize with, and as such, we may overlook other (possibly intelligent) forms of life as a consequence. Perhaps one day we will achieve a thorough understanding on the lived experiences of plants and that knowledge may create another paradigm shift. But we need a planet that is capable of sustaining life for that to happen. Reducing our collective meat consumption is one of the myriad tools we have to ensure that end. Sorry if I’m coming off as confrontational or anything. I’m sick and my brain is foggy so I wasn’t paying much mind to tone in this comment haha. Not trying to start shit or anything, just too lazy to edit
I’m not a vegan. Their argument was literally that morally there is no difference in the amount of death caused by any person for the purposes of consumption.
Not only do you jump to an insane straw man.
It wasn’t an insane strawman though? It was literally the argument they made. Something has to die for you to eat, therefore it doesn’t matter how many things you kill or how necessary those deaths are. The fact that you must kill something absolves you of any guilt for any amount of killing, is the ridiculous argument the person made (and which carnists often make) which we are making fun of for being obviously evil and wrong.
It is - it’s a super affirmative position. It takes an extreme position within the sphere it’s trying to criticize to make an exaggerated point to attack. It’s literally a classic strawman.
Your follow up is in the same vein. Its empty rhetoric
That’s called Reductio Ad Absurdum and is a valid, classic form of argumentation. If you take their premises to their logical conclusion, the result is absurd, so their premises must be false.
You don’t get to arbitrarily limit where a premise gets applied in order to pick and choose which conclusions to stand by. It isn’t a strawman to show that someone’s premises lead to conclusions that they would disagree with, that’s literally the point.
This logic doesn’t make sense in any other context. Like, if I say we should try to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere, you could point out that emitting CO2 is a fundamental part of human life, so something something virtue signaling blah blah blah. Just because something is unavoidable to a certain degree doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minimize it.
Or maybe there’s happy middle where everyone can live comfortably while keeping the harm we cause at a minimum.
Or, at the most selfish, we could make sure we don’t kill ourselves this decade or the next.
unless the point is that consciousness is not a disqualifying trait to become food
It wasn’t for the donner party.
Well a salad is made of cells that have responses to certain stimuli
The brain if you where to go and simplify it down to its most very basic layer is just responses to stimili
The brain is a collection of responses to stimuli that together create a kind of network that can respond to stimuli in complex ways
Plants are a collection of cells that respond to stimuli
So they very well will likely to be conscious on some level
The above comment is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning. The Code of Hammurabi is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning.
So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.
So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.
i think statistically it would be insignificant based on the sheer amount of written material out there, so it should actually be a function of how long the work is, plus how long it’s been around for, the longer it is, and the longer its been around for, the more complete of a historical document we have.
Everybody needs to eat stuff. And if it is about reducing pain and having a better climate impact, you should plants all the way. A cow eats 50 times the amount of plants that it gives back in meat.
The cow meat is already there, in the store. Individual choices do not affect the climate. It is disrespectful to not consume it.
demand and supply are a thing
But it tastes better
I’m afraid I’m going to need a better argument than “I support killing animals because it makes me feel good.”
Then raise a cow and kill it.
Can’t, don’t really have the space for it, but you want to see my chickens and my ducks? Heck, you can have a picture of my dog, but I ain’t eating that.
but I ain’t eating that
Well, now I’m just disappointed that that’s just a vegan anti meat page.
I was more disappointed by the inconsistency of their claims.
On the front page, they said that, they gave their livestock the highest quality feed and kept them happy in an open environment.
Upon reading further, they changed their tone to keeping them in small cages, followed with stuff like, “don’t worry, you won’t taste it”.They, as a company, lost credibility. Definitely not buying from them.
So the choice is meat or division of labor?
I don’t have the space for it, though I’d really like to have a little farm of my own.
I’m sure there’s poison that tastes good. Go eat that, Mr. Bigot.
That’s why I only eat fungi. It’ll be reciprocal eventually.
Fun fact, humans share more DNA with fungi than they do with plants. We share nearly 50% of our DNA with fungi.
Plus mushrooms are the sex organs of the mycelium organism. Just an extra fun fact for free there.
So, OP eats mushroom dick. Got it.
There are theories that hypothesize that mycelium came to earth via asteroids from space.
So it may be more apt to say that OP eats space dick instead.
It’s my understanding that fungi came around rather late in the game. Long after animals and plants both.
“Plants rights activists” out in full force in this thread lol
it’s not that they want to reduce plant suffering. it’s that they don’t care if plants suffer.
Imo, the person in red looks much healthier.
Low effort
Guys this comment thread is causing me, an animal, stress.
Stahp
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Lower effort.
^^ Lowest Effort.
That’s your highest effort one yet.
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hey vegans, cool fact, plant based diets are vastly more efficient and effective at feeding people than meat based diets.
Meat consumes plants to exist, most of that energy is lost. Not so much with plants.
Just start telling people this shit lmao. Who cares about morality when you can pretend to be saving the environment instead.
I’m no vegan but that’s a common vegan talking point
It is, but many vegans also do really unhelpful things that are closer to trying to berate or shame people into not eating meat and it is obviously not effective.
You do not know the best advice for advocacy for a group without being part of it.
You say you’re supportive of vegans but then go out of your way to say the “vegan cheese is gross”
I know it may be hard to believe, but my taste in food is different from yours. I would never cook with vegan cheese. There are plenty of vegan recipes out there which don’t require processed fake food.
Taste is not a valid argument to harm bovines and there are many different types of vegan cheeses, you cannot generalize.
There’s that antivegan language again “fake food”
Taste is not a valid argument to harm bovine
milking a cow doesn’t harm it.
Processed fake cheese is fake food.
You don’t get it. Don’t use real cheese or fake cheese. Cook healthy things, not that processed shit. Why do you have to have some form of cheese?
You’re being culturally insensitive and uncivil. The processed plant-based food problem is overblown and fearmongered in the mainstream media in order to protect the interests of animal agriculture. Vegans want the taste of cheese without the cruelty involved.
Easter eggs don’t have eggs in them so why call them that.
You do not know the best advice for advocacy for a group without being part of it.
it’s possible they do
there is nothing about being vegan that makes you suited for advocacy
Out of curiosity, how many people have you convinced to go vegan?
None. Why do I have to convince a single person to criticize an argument I don’t think is convincing?
Well, I guess I’m just not sure why you’re trying to give us advice about something you have zero experience with.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you don’t actually care what kind of approach is more convincing, and you’re just trying to tell us to shut up, or say things in a way that makes us easy to ignore.
You have no idea what you’re talking about at best, and realistically, you don’t even want us to be successful. So, thank you for your unsolicited advice on which tacts are unhelpful, but, just so you know, I will be promptly tossing it into the trash.
I have a lot of experience with people trying to convince me of things.
And you are welcome to take the advice I didn’t give to you in the first place and throw it in the trash.
I have a lot of experience with people trying to convince me of things.
how much experience do you have with people convincing you of things?
no arguments there
and it’s an interesting one too, if you like production stats at least.
Hey non-vegan, fun fact: No one really cares when you tell them eating plants are more efficient.
Common responses include “bAc0Nnnnnn!” and “I’m gonna eat two times the amount of meat to make your efforts useless”.
hey non vegan vegan fun fact, you would be surprised at the sheer amount of consumption and productive the livestock sector of agriculture creates.
Likewise you could easily just respond to the last line with “you can’t take away my gas stove, i’m just going to burn gas lamps in my home now” and get a little bit eepy and sleepy due to all the buildup of combustion products inside your home.
Amazing strawman at the end there.
Hi friend, I propose you try an experiment: post a small handful of anonymous comments on the Internet, try to make them benign as possible but casually slip in an acknowledgement that you are vegan. Something along the lines of “God that recipe looks amazing, but I think I might swap out the beef broth for veggie broth as I am vegan” like I said the point of this experiment is to say something completely as benign and inoffensive as possible.
Once you post sit back and wait for the responses to roll in. You will likely find that while not every time, it is incredibly common for people to send you pictures of bacon, and an abundant of angry responses to the mere offhand mention of the word.
I sincerely wish it was a straw man fallacy, but it unfortunately is a exceedingly common response to the word.
It really isn’t. I know plenty of anti-vegans who react in that manner.
The animal industry feeds the plants as much as the plants feed the animals. I’m not sure how vegans feel about synthetic fertilizer like miracle grow, but that’s what will have to be used in place of manure if the meat industry goes away.
Many of the organic crops grown use animal manure to fertilize the plants. I know you can use seaweed and other plants for compost(weeds are already composted back in via tilling, seaweed requires harvesting from the ocean or long distance shipping from farms), as well as cycling crops to prevent nutrient deficiency…
BUT manure doesn’t just add nutrients. It adds beneficial bacteria that helps keep the soil healthy and make the nutrients bioavailable to plants. It conditions the soil for water retention, and helps break up clay soil and add organic matter to sandy soil.
Will vegans keep animals just for manure? Or will organic lables on food be less important? Are we going to start scraping the forests for leaves to chop up an add to farm soil? That can’t be good for forests though. I guess I’m just confused about how to maintain large farms without access to large amounts of manure.
The ideal answer is compost, regenerative agriculture, and (better treated) human-sources waste.
Organic crop yields will almost certainly reduce a bit without animal waste fertilizer, but that is fine since crop consumption will fall by a greater amount due to not needing to feed a bunch of extra animals.
an interesting idea, but anything that decays and “composts” can be used as a fertilizer so.
This includes things like organic scraps, you don’t just have to use animal shit. Although it’s a pretty good one if you have access to it.
I think personally, we should move to a more decentralized food production system, to help alleviate some of the costs of industrial agriculture, which are pretty heavy.
Veganic agriculture is already a thing, and it works fine.
but much of the plant matter that animals eat is grazed or waste from some other agricultural product.
TBF land clearance for grazing land is a catastrophic issue for the environment and going on in places like the Amazon rainforest.
Some ecosystems are naturally evolved to supporting grazing species like the grasslands of North America which was once home to millions of Buffallo but that’s not true of most land currently used for grazing.
land clearance for grazing land is a catastrophic issue for the environment and going on in places like the Amazon rainforest.
absolutely. I have some ideas about what to do about it, but none of them involve buying beans
It’s at a point where I’m all for a UN resolution to end land clearance in locations like the Amazon Rainforest, to be enforced by lethal means if necessary.
Billions of lives may depend on securing such important ecosystems.
I don’t have any influence with the un.
Haha not saying you do but it’s what I would like to see happen
that can be true, but we also grow a substantial amount of feed for agriculture usage, even if it’s not local to us. A lot of alf alfa being grown is exported.
It’s all dependent on whatevers cheapest at the end of the day. And regardless of this fact, a lot of energy is still lost in this process, cows are a significant contributor to climate change, ironically.
There was a good discussion of this on Reddit recently. Sorry to link to Reddit, but it’s a good, topical post worth perusal.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Agriculture/comments/1dv7fw9/how_much_good_land_is_used_to_grow_food_for/
ETA:
We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf
yeah that pretty much checks out. The best solution to climate change is to kill shit like private jets and yachts. But that’s unlikely to happen.
The best solution to climate change is to kill shit like private jets and yachts.
I severely doubt those emissions are anything but negligible because there are so few yachts and jets.
Edit: Yeah, just downvoting is cheap, so here’s just a single statistic for you: https://ourworldindata.org/global-aviation-emissions
Total aviation is responsible for about 2.5% of worldwide carbon emissions. That’s all air travel, private jets included. While it’s obviously very popular to focus on the luxuries of the rich, it just won’t be effective to focus on those when fighting climate change, let alone being a solution as you claimed.
wait until you find out about all of the infrastructure and build costs for these things.
realistically we should do everything, but transit is one of the significant providers of emissions, along with power production and agriculture.
all of agriculture is only about 20% of our GHG emissions. cows are a fraction of that… there are definitely bigger issues.
as for the alfalfa, it’s also a small fraction of global crops. 2/3 of all crop calories go to humans with only 1/3 going to livestock… this includes about 70% of the weight of the global soy crop (after we have pressed it for oil), as well as fodder like corn stalks. we basically fed livestock trash and get food. it’s a pretty good deal.
all of agriculture is only about 20% of our GHG emissions. cows are a fraction of that… there are definitely bigger issues.
obviously, but in terms of livestock, cows are pretty significant.
30% of all global stock going to feed is a pretty large percentage of global crop production.
I think it’s probably fine. it will work itself out when the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
i think it’s a lot more likely to work out better in a highly decentralized system, i’m not much of a commie myself personally, as i prefer to live outside the bounds of normalcy, and unless i get a lot of say in the commie meetings i’m not sure i can justify existing in that society lol.
the iww encourages your autonomy
Cool, but steak is my favorite animal.
true, cows are my favorite food.
Boobs are my favorite source of entertainment.
Wait… Nope, nothing to do with sustenance
nothing to do with sustenance
You think? I’m pretty sure that’s the purpose of boobs.
i thought it was for us to legislate female top wear?
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hmm
There’s no way this won’t restart the same argument with someone, huh? Top-tier shitpost, well done.
Thanks, I saw it come across my FB feed and knew what had to be done.
I mean if you stretch the definition enough even cells know they are being eaten. they usually respond by “shit this cant be good, I better press this big red button”
Yeah, that’s absolutely what keeps happening with these news items. “Lifeform demonstrates reaction to stimulus!”
What will Staples do?
dont get the reference
Ew, Joe Rogan.
There was a Hungarian cult that convinced others that people can survive by eating light. There were some deaths and was quickly shut down, but they exist forever in anorexia-related jokes.
I think you’re talking about Breatherism? There’ve been a couple of those cults all over Europe. It’s not particularly popular, luckily, but they often make it to the newspapers, because someone usually dies.
It originates from Hinduism though. There’s a another Indian religion called Jainism. These are the monks you see brushing away the beetles before their feet, to not step on them. It’s very much about nature and spiritualism and being good. Fasting is a key concept of this religion and the most extreme cases will choose to fast until death to cleanse the world. This is all very spiritual though and takes years of preparation.
Yo fuck that propagandist piece of shit Joe Rogan. Keep him off of my feed.
I’m constantly dismayed to find that brain damaged ape, topping the podcast charts weekly. He’s such a disease
Joe Rogan 🤮
Finally we have one thing to pin on like 3 weird vegans.
That’s not how knowledge works.
lmfao this is hilarious
So many vegans taking this 100% seriously lmao
