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Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

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Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#101

Post by eitland »

ahelwer wrote: post #69
masklinn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself. Most of those nutrients you, as a human being, either can't eat at all or get nothing from. Humans can't feed on hay and silage.

Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat. I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

As someone who grew up on a steep farm where grass, fruits and potatoes where the only options that worked out in practice (most of it is steep, summer is short and unpredictable) I'd say maybe you should reconsider.

One easy thought experiment that helped me understand: given how extremely poor our ancestors where and how hard they worked to make ends meet there must have been some advantage to keeping animals.

Otherwise they wouldn't have had them, because they are sometimes a real hassle and gathering food for them is time consuming I can tell you.

So maybe your idea would work in a more temperate climate. And maybe it would provide extra food for people further north, but it would mean a lot of land that cannot be used for anything but pastures would go out of use.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#102

Post by gdubs »

solotronics wrote: post #46
chrisco255 wrote: post #41

This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater." This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, ph…

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

The world’s wealthiest (eg, the American middle class) have the largest carbon footprint, and would make the most immediate impact by eating less meat.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#103

Post by dredmorbius »

andreitp1 wrote: post #58
ahelwer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you eat an animal, you are consuming (in this analysis) all nutrients it has consumed over its entire life, of which 90% are wasted vs. just eating those nutrients yourself. It isn't talking about bioavailability or whatever.

How exactly would they be "wasted"? Seems to me that they would just end up back in nature and deeding other organisms as part of the food chain.

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

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#104

Post by squish78 »

_Microft wrote: post #92
squish78 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in the winter in temperate climates when you can't harvest enough calories or protein to survive on a vegetarian diet

Are you claiming that vegetarians have no access to the global logistics services or storage of food? This is ridiculous.

The parent comments were about civilization collapse and hunter-gatherers, so I was staying on-topic

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#105

Post by Carioca »

nvahalik wrote: post #47

When reading about what Physcon, I reminded me of an interview[0] I recently listened to with Drs. James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian. They bring up some of these very ideas and how they are encountering them today in our society: i.e. people who see science and reason as "master's tools" of "oppression". It seems that everything old is new again. [0]: https://youtu.be/YDFL3xwEEG8

As a Brazilian, I see a MUCH larger threat from the current right-wing government than from lefties inside academia. While the relationship between natural/hard/exact sciences and social/soft sciences can indeed be very strained, there's very little interference in the actual content of research.

Meanwhile, the State Assembly of São Paulo formed an Investigative Comittee that just requested the content of all research produced by the three state universities in the last 8 years to look for bias under the guise of fiscal responsibility[1]. The commitee is led by a conservative state congressman who never attended college.

1: https://www.adusp.org.br/index.php/defesauniv/3408-deputada-..., link in Portuguese

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#106

Post by chimprich »

whatshisface wrote: post #74
ahelwer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat. I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

I'm not an expert on global agriculture, but a lot of the famous Texas cattle ranches can basically only grow grass. If the natural state of the land is brush that only goes up to your ankles you aren't going to feed much other than grazers off it. The efficient solution would be to use the good land to grow food and the rest of the land to feed livestock, and that's what tends to happen (feedlot factory farms fueled…

> the famous Texas cattle ranches can basically only grow grass

Why? Anyway, wheat is a grass.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#108

Post by eitland »

conjectures wrote: post #75
ahelwer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the vast amounts of land used to grow those things can be redirected to other things that humans can eat. I have no idea why otherwise smart people get such a brain block on the topic of meat-eating. These "gotcha" points fall apart if you take 10 seconds to think about it.

Yup. Think I've heard them all over the course of 20 years. The obvious explanation is that people don't like the implication that their behaviour is unethical and look for clever outs. Rather than simply owning that benefits > costs from their point of view (a la 'I like bacon too much'). Of course questioning motivations is not a point to be made in an argument. However it is an entirely satisfactory Bayesian expla…

Any of your teachers/lecturers had a background from agriculture?

I'm not saying this is not possible. But I am saying - as someone who has grown up on a farm and studied farming - that it might be somewhat more complicated.

For a start, not all farmland is usable for anything but grass.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#109

Post by JoeAltmaier »

HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #68
solotronics wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment. Protein per calorie doesn't seem comparable.

I'm trying to figure this out. I see chicken breast at $3 for 450g which is about 900 calories? So 1/3 penny per calorie?

A tomato is 16 calories per 100g which cost 50 cents so what, 3 cents per calorie? Did I do that right?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#110

Post by HNcantBtrustd »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #109
HNcantBtrustd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetarian is lower cost and better for the environment. Protein per calorie doesn't seem comparable.

I'm trying to figure this out. I see chicken breast at $3 for 450g which is about 900 calories? So 1/3 penny per calorie? A tomato is 16 calories per 100g which cost 50 cents so what, 3 cents per calorie? Did I do that right?

You'd like Efficiency Is Everything.

But I was particularly talking about per calorie rather than "per dollar"

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