Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

I don't think this is the most generous take. I think what most people are trying to find is the underlying principles. Consider the following potential first principles:

1) Minimize suffering

2) Minimize animal death

3) Minimize charismatic mega fauna death

4) Minimize climate impacts

5) Maximize human health

6) Maximize human performance

7) Maximize human longevity (healthspan or lifespan)

Each of those can lead down different, sometimes competing tracts. Can vegan/vegetarianism be compatible with any of those? Sure. Can it optimize all of them at the same time? I'm doubtful. It's certainly possible that in the rush to do something we end up on the wrong trade-off. That's why it's import to drill down on exactly what one is claiming is ultimately important.

As I already said before and explained at length, it's a hypothetical example intended to illustrate a principle pertinent to the question of speciesm, in direct response to a comment that was about speciesm. I am not sure what "reality" you feel is being mischaracterized by directly speaking to an issue raised by the commenter. I honestly can't make heads or tails of what you are trying to say is being mischaracterized here.

>when the topic of harmful farming practices is the primary focus, why did we deflect to "well, what about if a building was on fire?" Where are you getting that?

There was no "deflection" from one topic to another. "The topic" was not one thing, but a couple of different things that are intertwined: farming that segued into a monolog on speciesm, and I was responding to the latter piece, although my response has implications for both. In direct response to that, I have put forward a hypothetical that illustrates a case that runs contrary to the idea of speciesm as being about creatures "deserving suffering". All I can say is that I am sorry that something that speaks directly to that question confuses you.

I'll repeat my question to you: how did you read "save humans from fire before mice" and take that to mean something along the lines of "therefore, disregard harms of farming practices?"

>your conflation of giving animals a higher moral value than humans; that still stands.

This is pretty incoherent to me. I would love to at least be able to understand and express a disagreement here, but I don't know what conflation you think has occurred.

So yeah, you haven't engaged with the point I've raised despite it being perfectly relevant, and you've expressed surprise, feeling that my point is off topic, which I feel is spurious. And you're saying a few things are being "mischaracterized" or "conflated" and I'm not sure what specifically you are talking about.

So you’ll still minimize the number of crop deaths by going vegan.

Even if you believe that plants are just as sentient as animals (which some people have argued to me…) then going vegan still reduces that suffering the most.

And "responds to input" isn't really the same thing at all as "capable of feeling sensations" (though, like many definitions, the line between the two is fuzzy, hard to pin down, and possibly context dependent.)

Life itself is a notoriously tricky thing to define definitively.

Yes, farmers don't populate their herds with wild animals. I didn't understand then what you meant by "rescue". Without using the word "rescue" though, it is the case that humans did take in those animals and protected them and nurtured and cared for them, when they first domesticated them. Entire subspecies of animals are living in our care and with our support and don't have to survive on their own in the wild.

You're wrong that I don't understand the evil of factory farming. It's actually something that I have very strong opinions about: I believe it is an atrocity that harms both animals and humans, both physically, mentally and ethically, and that we will do well as modern societies to eliminate it. I don't believe it's possible to raise healthy and happy animals at such mad scales. And I'm pretty sure, though I've never worked in a factory farm (and I never would) that taking part in that industry stains one's soul forever, at least for those people who do have a conscience.

I guess I don't have to say that I believe small scale farming is a different matter. That should be obvious that I think so.

But I also think you're wrong to say that small scale farming is not how most people are getting their food. It absolutelyl is! I posted this link earlier, in another thread, as a reply to another comment you made:

> Five of every six farms in the world consist of less than two hectares, operate only around 12 percent of all agricultural land, and produce roughly 35 percent of the world's food, according to a study published in World Development.

https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/

Most farming and agriculture in the world _is_ small-scale farming. And while the food produced in such small scale farms is 35% of all food produced in the world, that's partly because 2/3s of the world eat much less food than the other third and it's also true that a third of all the food produced in the world is thrown out:

https://theconversation.com/we-throw-away-a-third-of-the-foo...

And I probably don't have to give you any links to convince you that certain people in the world eat way, way too much meat (as well as everything else!). This is particularly true for the people in the Americas and Western Europeans who eat about twice as much meat as the next people down the line. I believe this is a matter of production, rather than demand, that the Americans particlarly eat so much meat just because that's where most of the world's factory farms are located, and I'm pretty sure we could feed all those meat-lovers just fine without CAFOs if they could be convinced to at least halve their meat consumption. I believe so for the reasons I gave above: that most of the world already does fine without factory farms, most of the world eats a small fraction of the meat eaten in the Americas and because there is so much food waste that we could eliminate and that would help us feed everyone.

I think it should be obvious that some parts of the world consume many times more than they need and many times more than the environment and the economy even can sustain and that those people really need to slow down. But that's not true of everyone everywhere in the world. Perhaps we disagree then because we are looking at things from a different place in the world?