51–60 of 83 posts
The question comes down to this: is a life full of suffering, torture, violence, and misery better than no life at all? For me, the answer is no.
Actually the article is asking whether a good but curtailed life is better than no life at all. Which is a more interesting question.
I've stumbled upon some of the same thoughts: cows would be fucked if we stopped eating beef; animals wouldn't give two shits about devouring my ass if the conditions were right, turnabout is fair play; fuck crabs; etc. But I also recognize some the points raised by vegetarians/vegans: we do eat way too much meat; we do treat livestock horribly; fuck crabs; etc. And I think the answer is closer to vegetarianism than…
Why beef specifically?
What a load of rubbish. 1. Plant-based diets are good for the environment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316289/ 2. Animals are sentient. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494450/ 3. The "thought experiment" is flawed. See https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/eating-meat-is-good-says-the... - good rebuttal here Keeping animals alive in the worst possible conditions on the promise that "we'll do…
Agreed, it's hard to imagine voluntarily embarrassing yourself in public as badly as the author has done here. "When I went to college and met for the first time a good number of vegetarians and vegans, I used to blow their minds with this argument" Indeed. That must have really been something. Well, he won't say anything to make us thinks he's positioning this in less than good faith, then? "Honestly, fuck crabs" Ok…
That's a common problem on Substack, it seems. Lots of people writing long "essays" on topics they don't quite understand, but think they do.
What a load of rubbish. 1. Plant-based diets are good for the environment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316289/ 2. Animals are sentient. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494450/ 3. The "thought experiment" is flawed. See https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/eating-meat-is-good-says-the... - good rebuttal here Keeping animals alive in the worst possible conditions on the promise that "we'll do…
If you're eating farmed plants, then there is a lot of environmental destruction and animal death/suffering behind that, too.
— The Vegan Society, Definition of veganism
Emphasis mine.
Are animals people? For most of human history, the answer has been no. I'm sure that there have always been humans that thought of their favorite animals as people (or similar), but the scientific and social acceptance of animals having consciousness and emotions similar to humans is VERY recent. Look at the pushback that Jane Goodall got for her research for context. Anyway, I don't have a good ethical argument in f…
What a load of rubbish. 1. Plant-based diets are good for the environment. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6316289/ 2. Animals are sentient. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494450/ 3. The "thought experiment" is flawed. See https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/eating-meat-is-good-says-the... - good rebuttal here Keeping animals alive in the worst possible conditions on the promise that "we'll do…
Not to mention he has a very, very low opinion of animals. Animals do engage in creativity and play. That we've been able to observe. We honestly don't know if they engage in philosophizing or other sorts of abstract thoughts because we don't speak dolphin. Matthias is basically basing his rebuttal on animals not being sentient. Or at the very least, minimally sentient.
So cows can't tell us if they'd rather go extinct or continue as they are. And I'd imagine that whatever way you formulate the thought, you'd find people who would prefer one or the other. If the people were only as aware as cows; if the people were as aware as normal but treated as cows; a third scenario I haven't thought of.
And there's the question of whether or not we have an obligation on how to treat them. If someone disagrees with that obligation, you have to get over that hump first. Kind of on their terms. Because if they believe we don't have an obligation because cows have hooves, you're not going to convince him that cows don't have hooves. You have to find out why hooves matter to him then find an argument along those lines. Arguing from the sentience of a cow isn't going to cut it. Arguing we have a moral imperative as the most abstract thinkers isn't going to cut it. You have got to argue hooves.
And if you can't do that because his position is so nonsensical there's no way to rationally argue against it, you have to accept he's just not going to understand.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, it's hard to imagine voluntarily embarrassing yourself in public as badly as the author has done here. "When I went to college and met for the first time a good number of vegetarians and vegans, I used to blow their minds with this argument" Indeed. That must have really been something. Well, he won't say anything to make us thinks he's positioning this in less than good faith, then? "Honestly, fuck crabs" Ok…
The author says, in the introduction, "this entire essay is ridiculous." You are taking it much too seriously. It's all meant in a joking way just to explore some sillier ideas around animal ethics that may or may not have a kernel of value hidden in them. Nothing about this article is embarrassing, unless you intentionally misconstrue the tone and intentions of the author.
The "one bad day" movement in the meat industry is a rounding error overall production It isn't that funny when 1) wild caught seafood is crushing wild populations of fish, cephalopods, and shellfish 2) nearly all meat is raised industrially and the livestock live in inhumane conditions 3) most animals are processed well before their first years.
The essay isn't provocative and cute, it is logically flawed and glaringly incomplete, which is the embarrassing part. The closest thing to a kernel of truth is at the end, when he talks about "one bad day" philosophy and he ruins that part by talking about eating only old animals, too (ignorance of what that means for farming ROI and also the impact of the taste/texture of the product).
This essay is a steaming pile from someone that is - based on their other accomplishments - clearly smart and capable of much better, and that pisses me off.
Am I missing something or is the obvious quick answer to this, the opposite of what he expects?
And that's even giving the benefit of the doubt to the setup, like, how can you be raised 'free range' on a planet that you'll instanttly die on if people stop eating you?
I've stumbled upon some of the same thoughts: cows would be fucked if we stopped eating beef; animals wouldn't give two shits about devouring my ass if the conditions were right, turnabout is fair play; fuck crabs; etc. But I also recognize some the points raised by vegetarians/vegans: we do eat way too much meat; we do treat livestock horribly; fuck crabs; etc. And I think the answer is closer to vegetarianism than…
> We should eat less meat and probably far less beef Why beef specifically?
It really boils down to: "Is humans acting as their squishy biology dictates" good or does our "goodness" derive from striving to be more than that biology? I'm on the "accept that we are made to eat meat and probably should on occasion" end of the spectrum, but that doesn't make the current state of how we make and consume meat an ok thing. Factory farming isn't a necessary evil, and the level at which we eat meat (…
We aren't really "made to eat meat" though. Humans have evolved to be omnivores because it is the most efficient way to get the nutrients that our bodies need. With a varied diet, we can get all of the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that we need from the food we eat. That may or may not include meat, and in a modern society you can easily get by without ever eating meat, from a pure nutritional standpoint.