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This is why I take a few minutes out of every day to scream at the those horrible people running the animal shelter about human suffering in Pakistan and opportunity costs and their whacked out morality
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Sep 8, 2022 13:56
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Or, for that matter, why spend your time posting on a message board complaining about animal welfare when you could be doing something to fight the real injustices. Or if you only have enough time to complain on the internet, and you really believe what you are saying, you should be spending that time complaining about the humans making the world worse for other humans, not the humans who are trying to do something good but (allegedly) not good enough. E: silence_kit posted:A maybe unsavory truth is that most people who dedicate themselves to a political/social/moral causes beyond posting about them on the internet do it because the issue personally affects them and solving the issue would improve their own status in society. I don’t see how you get that for animal welfare. Some people actually do care about other beings beyond what they personally can get out of it, strange I know.
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Sep 8, 2022 14:26
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:in the short term, who is responsible for caring for the animals raised for meat who are spared the slaughterhouse? Why would simply not breeding food animals anymore make you uncomfortable? Is it cruel to prevent something from being born? If so, is every wasted horse sperm an injustice because we could have made a baby horse with it?
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Sep 8, 2022 15:56
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:as i stated, what i'm uncomfortable with is the idea of reducing the suffering of sentient beings by reducing the number of sentient beings. this hews a little too closely to doomer anti-natalism, "why should i birth a child into this hell world" stuff. surely we can figure out ways to make things better for the animals we've effectively created as co-habitants in the human dominated biosphere, rather than simply evicting them when their existence is deemed ethically uncomfortable. this is what we'd do for people, after all Sorry, why is family planning unethical? That's one reason to do it right, reduce suffering by not having more kids than they can care for? If someone can only support 2 kids, are they obligated to be barefoot and pregnant their whole lives anyway pumping out kids they can't afford to take care of because it would be wrong to reduce suffering by reducing the number of sentient beings created? Plenty of people choose not to have kids at all. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 16:09
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i didn't say it was? unless you're equating anti-natalism with family planning, which is a hostile misreading and i can only assume you're trying to pick a fight Well I'd say you are the one equating other people's arguments with "doomer anti-natalism", since distortion park didn't say anything like that. If anyone is doing a hostile misreading, it would appear to be you. And I explained why I asked the question, your argument would appear to make family planning unethical as well since it is " reducing the suffering of sentient beings by reducing the number of sentient beings". So how is it different. Why is having fewer human children okay but breeding fewer livestock animals somehow not?
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Sep 8, 2022 16:17
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i dont know what to tell you to give you satisfaction. i've already told you that you have an incorrect perception of my argument and i cannot help you any further along your journey towards understanding. you'll have to puzzle out the differences between contraceptives and anti-natalism yourself You are the one who equated any deliberate reduction in livestock populations to reduce suffering in a vegetarian world with "doomer anti-natalism" in the first place! I'm just pointing out why that doesn't make sense. Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:as i stated, what i'm uncomfortable with is the idea of reducing the suffering of sentient beings by reducing the number of sentient beings. this hews a little too closely to doomer anti-natalism, "why should i birth a child into this hell world" stuff. I'm only asking you to think through the arguments you're making, but if you don't feel like doing that I can't make you I guess. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 16:39
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Maybe I could put my argument another way, since I seem to inadvertently be triggering a defensive reaction. There is some number of cows, chickens, pigs, etc that we would have the capacity to humanely care for in land set aside as habitats. That number is not zero. Therefore, a vegan world could humanely care for those no-longer-farmed animals by breeding them down to a number that can be reasonably cared for. (We could also reduce their dependency on humans, for example there's no need to have sheep that die without shearing, we bred that trait infinite hair growth into sheep, we could stop selecting for it or even select against it) Is that unethical? If no, then there's no problem. If yes, controlling the amount a species breeds to match the resources available is unethical, then where exactly do you go from here? If you let herd animals breed as much as they want with no predators, you get to the repugnant conclusion
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Sep 8, 2022 17:19
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distortion park posted:
Yeah that's what I'm saying, if limiting the number of sentient beings to match the resources available is unethical, then the only ethical course is to maximize the number of sentient beings, and this can't be correct because it would lead to incredible suffering. If the op didn't mean to say population control is inherently unethical, then I don't get what the problem with vegan world is. We can care for some number of farm animals, so it's just a practical matter of making sure not to breed more of them than that and our success at doing that would depend on how dedicated and consistent we were to protecting animal welfare. I'm sure humanity wouldn't be perfect, but a world where everyone were vegan would obviously be kinder to farm animals than we are now.
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Sep 8, 2022 18:12
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i think we've disrupted the biosphere too much for a natural rewilding. for example, is it a good idea to release genetically modified trees into the environment, to better resist introduced invasive pest species? is it possible for human-bred animal species to thrive in an unmanaged environment? pigs would be fine, sheep would be hosed Wouldn't a process of 'rewilding' have to include a transitional period where we stop selecting for, say, infinite hair growth in sheep, or even consciously select against it until you get to the point that the species can survive without human interaction. I'm not really familiar with the term but it seems like something that would have already come up somewhere.
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Sep 8, 2022 18:16
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The argument that because animals kill each other then it's okay for us to kill them is a bit odd. Humans kill each other does that make it okay to shoot up a school because those kids might get murdered by someone else someday anyway? Obviously not. If you want to kill animals you should just argue that killing them is ethical because they don't have souls/thumbs/grammar/tools/sapience/whatever humans have that makes it wrong to kill them. Not make some illogical two-wrongs-make-a-right well-wolves-get-to-do-it argument.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:25
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OwlFancier posted:
Right so that's your actual disagreement with vegans then. The whole "are you going to dive the oceans and save the shellfish from an octopus" thing is just a distraction and a gotcha. We are morally responsible for what we do, not what others do. There's no moral inconsistency between believing humans should not eat animals on ethical grounds and not feeling the need to save them from being eaten by other animals. If you think the ethical objections to eating animals are wrong just argue that imo
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Sep 8, 2022 22:40
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Harold Fjord posted:I think when, why, and how you kill them are all relevant when trying to assess the morality of an act and that the comparison to school shootings is absurd. Preferring ethical meat to veganism does not make someone a potential Pet Shop Shooter. The real issue is that you reject the premise, that's where the disagreement lies. You think killing animals isn't inherently unethical the way killing humans is, as long as it's done without inflicting cruelty. Which isn't unreasonable (I tend to agree fwiw, I am not vegan although I do try to eat more plants and less meat), I'm just pointing out that trying to gotcha vegans in that way is fruitless.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:55
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OwlFancier posted:I can disagree on both counts, I can find the natural infliction of extraordinary pain on wild animals to be objectionable while also thinking that humans can provide better conditions for them than nature can and that killing them humanely is only a quite minor wrong, which is offset by the use of their bodies for human welfare. You certainly can disagree on both counts! But that's a separate argument, and it's not inconsistent for someone to disagree with you on both counts either. Vegans think that killing a cow is just as wrong as killing a human. Doing it humanely doesn't make it right, after all you wouldn't say it's okay to kill a human and take their stuff as long as you double-tapped them quickly and painlessly. It doesn't matter that someone else might torture them to death for their stuff later and so you may as well spare them that and get their stuff too. If killing is wrong, it's wrong. That's the disagreement between you and them.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:03
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XboxPants posted:Here's my problem. Let's say I accept you're right about cows. They're stupid beasts without souls. It's fine to kill them for my benefit. What about elephants? Gorillas, chimps? (which very much are killed for bush meat) Who draws the line of which animals have the right not to be killed, and how should they decide? You have to draw a line somewhere right. Plants are living beings.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:12
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DrBox posted:
XboxPants posted:"Pets" are a bit of a questionable idea for me, even though I've always had them and still do today. There may not be a universal answer. I'm sure he would prefer it if there were no fences or gates and he could roam the neighborhood and return as he pleased, but that would be dangerous so I choose to make that decision for him for his own good.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:26
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OwlFancier posted:Eating beans instead of beef most of the time I might agree, but never eating beef ever seems somewhat exceptional to me, and certainly some of the other exclusions seem moreso. Really? You don't see why people might be absolutist about an ethical principle? Surely you have some principles you're absolutist about no? Would you eat a humanflesh-burger if the restaurant were right there and you were hungry and had to get to work and it's not like they'd stop killing humans to make burgers if you skipped it. You're making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. You think killing animals is fine sometimes. They don't under all but the most dire circumstances.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:46
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OwlFancier posted:
If you were transported to humanburger world I'm sure the people in line for burgers would tell you your absolutism is odd, but so what, no amount of telling you that or trying to find some other gotcha is going to change your mind unless they manage to convince you to adopt their ethical system in place of your own. If they can't convince you to abandon your murder-is-wrong stance then there's no one weird rhetorical trick they can use to get you to eat a humanburger once in a while.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:59
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DrBox posted:
What about in a future where that problem is solved and the shelters are empty but people still want pets, would breeding them to satisfy families who would like a pet be all right then?
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Sep 9, 2022 00:28
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Harold Fjord posted:So all the cows going extinct is moral in a way that humanely killing one is not? Why not. I don't think we should breed any more sickly inbred dogs that suffer from genetic problems, so we should probably stop breeding more pugs. But it doesn't follow from that that it would be cool to kill all the pugs that already exist. OwlFancier posted:I think the hangup here is that I and others are not suggesting specifically cows. But rather that if you removed cows, you would consequently get more animals that are not cows, because they expand to fill the newly available habitat (working on the assumption we would not be filling the cow pasture with something else that prohibits animal habitation) If animal welfare is what you're concerned about when you suggest we...get rid of nature???...or at least keep nature away from the pastures we have now, surely it would be better for the cow's welfare not to kill it and eat it.
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Sep 9, 2022 01:14
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OwlFancier posted:It would! But this is where my idea that killing animals humanely for human use is not a particularly great wrong comes in. I can think simultaneously that humans should endeavour to increase animal welfare in many areas, and are equipped to do so at some scale far in excess of what nature would provide (pets being the obvious example, but I would extend it to ethical livestock keeping as well) and also that we can increase our own welfare by killing them, and that if it is done so properly and following proper care, that this results in a net overall benefit, as I think the human use of a cow's component parts is of greater utility than the cow simply living a bit longer. Yeah I get that but vegans disagree because they think killing animals for human benefit is unethical, and you're not going to convince them to be okay with farming animals without resolving their ethical objection, which this reasoning doesn't do (if that's your goal)
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Sep 9, 2022 02:25
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OwlFancier posted:Well yes which is why that was in response to your question and why I have generally gone with the consequentialist suffering-equivalence argument for other people, and also why I didn't bother leading with the "animals are not the same as people" approach despite believing in it. Yeah but I'm not sure what the argument accomplishes? If the act killing is wrong, then emphasizing how you could do it without causing the killee any suffering doesn't make it okay. I dunno feels like you're trying to backdoor around the actual conflict.
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Sep 9, 2022 03:23
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So would they be slaughtered in their prime for meat in this scenario, or only euthanized for genuine humanitarian reasons when they became too sick to have a decent quality of life.
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Sep 9, 2022 03:43
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OwlFancier posted:I think that the existence of humans making that decision for animals under our care means that it is eminently possible under what I think is a fairly common ethical framework for us to decide to kill animals for other reasons too. This is why it feels like you're trying to backdoor around the ethical conflict, because the answers to these questions are pretty straightforward if killing animals is wrong. No it wouldn't be wrong to eat something that died of old age. No it would not be permissible to kill them earlier in order to eat them when they are tastier. No it wouldn't be positive utility to kill them for their parts because their life is precious to them, under the same reasoning that it wouldn't be positive utility to drug a homeless man and kill him for his organs to save 5 other people.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:16
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OwlFancier posted:Right but "you can keep animals as livestock and eat them as long as you don't kill them" is not, as far as I know, a vegan position. That's probably not even vegetarianism. But you are also arguing that it's okay to go ahead and kill those livestock too with a roundabout argument that tries to avoid their ethical belief against it. This is impossible to do, for the same reasons that someone trying to make equivalent roundabout arguments to get to killing human beings would (I assume) fail to win you over. Like, sure it's better to build orphanages to put orphans in rather than leave them to suffer and possibly die before their time on the street. It's morally good to do this even it's not your fault they're on the street in the first place. But it doesn't follow that because your orphanage reduced suffering that you may as well euthanize a few orphans and make lampshades out of them. Someone might even argue that they suffer less by getting to be warm and safe for a few years before getting painlessly dispatched to the lampshade factory than they would suffering and dying from exposure outside, and that would even be true. Somehow I doubt that would win you over to the cause of orphan-lamps though since you believe human consciousness is special and killing them for such reasons is wrong. I'm not telling you not to argue for the superiority of petting zoos over untamed nature. Go ahead. I'm just saying trying to find a way to get to killing animals without touching vegan ethical beliefs isn't going to work.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:33
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Harold Fjord posted:
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Sep 9, 2022 15:35
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Imo if you want to debate with vegans and change their mind you should treat their objections with the same seriousness that (non-rear end in a top hat) people afford to those with religiously proscribed diets. But what I see a lot of instead is contempt, dismissal, or at best trying to argue around the reason they object to eating animals rather than addressing it. In this thread even. If a restaurant brought a Jew guacamole with carnitas you wouldn't tell her to just eat around the pig parts. You don't try to rhetorically trap a Muslim with elaborate and ridiculous scenarios where an indigenous king serves them a pulled pork sandwich and it would mean war not to eat it. If you were trying to convince a Muslim that they should eat pork (which most people wouldn't even try to do in the first place) you'd have to take their faith seriously and make arguments in that framework. Convince them God doesn't really mind or that God doesn't exist or something like that. Trying to argue around it with stuff like - well you only do it to feel better than other people - you shouldn't be absolutist about it -ok what if you only did it a little bit -what if the pigs had happy lives first - wouldn't it be better for God if 10 people ate 20% less pork than if one person ate zero, why don't you try that - ah but if everybody gave up pork tomorrow what would happen to all our millions of pigs, do you want them to die, do you want a genocide of pigs, etc These arguments may work for you, because you don't have ethical objections to killing animals. But they are a waste of time and effort on somebody who does, for the same reason that somebody would be unlikely to succeed in convincing you to do something you consider unethical by calling you a virtue signaler or saying "well just do it a little bit"
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Sep 9, 2022 15:54
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Harold Fjord posted:
Harold Fjord posted:it implies we should care about animal welfare itself in a way vegans have been quite clear that they do not.
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Sep 9, 2022 17:08
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Yashichi posted:
There are genocides of human beings going on in the world right now, are you out there stopping them? No. Does that mean that you can't (or that it would be 'morally arbitrary' for you to) criticize the killing of human beings or have the opinion that it should stop VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Sep 10, 2022 |
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Sep 10, 2022 13:09
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DeadlyMuffin posted:
Is this your only objection to killing people (humanely) that we don't eat them afterwards? Would a society that farms people to eat them be ok, as long as they used sustainable farming practices and humane methods?
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Oct 18, 2022 21:24
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Bar Ran Dun posted:If you are making distinctions about when human fetus or even a young child acquires sentience are those distinctions also applicable to animals? There's no contradiction in believing leeches might be sentient and that it's wrong to go out and smash them for fun, but it's also perfectly justified to pull one off of you and not be concerned if it can't find another host and dies. Whether a fetus is sentient is beside the point, forced birthers want to make it all about that and only that to justify forcing women to be incubators
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Oct 19, 2022 10:32
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Also pretty funny that he's complaining about strawmanning in the comments after opening with "white vegans eating avocado at every meal"
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Dec 5, 2022 15:42
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Harold Fjord posted:He's talking about people he sees on Twitter. Idon't see how you could deny that white vegans on Twitter are annoying about avocado but generally we use citations to prove this sort of thing Yes I already pointed out he opened with a strawman
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Dec 5, 2022 18:18
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Harold Fjord posted:It's not a straw man I'm confused. Ok well he is and I don't see how you can disagree with it unless you have some kind of proof that everyone he's arguing against eats avocado for every meal but it's a free country I guess
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Dec 5, 2022 18:24
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Harold Fjord posted:I think that's what we call a joke or exaggeration but since it's not a post made in the thread by a poster there's really no way to tell My man that's what a strawman is, an exaggeration that's easier to attack. Which like whatever it's fine, it's just funny that he immediately starts bitching about strawmanning after he does it
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Dec 5, 2022 18:30
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Yes of course he doesn't really believe vegans are arguing we should fly in avocado for every meal that's why it's a strawman. If he genuinely believed it, he would just be wrong. I don't know what to tell you dude, it's funny when someone tries to dunk on people with a meme and then immediately goes into hall monitor mode about Formal Debate Club Rules. "Sir! SIR! You responded to my imgflip jpg with a flagrant violation of modens ponens how dare you sir!" Lol
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Dec 5, 2022 19:22
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Bar Ran Dun posted:He might not be correct. It would depend on how he is feeding the cow if he has adequate pasture or is having to buy grain (which would have been shipped). And even he were, I'm not sure how that's an argument against veganism. It's more environmentally friendly than eating plants from Mexico? And therefore better? Ok well growing vegetables on that same land would do even less harm to the environment than growing livestock feed on it soooo
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Dec 5, 2022 19:45
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think he's trying to argue against veganism so of course it isn't a good argument against veganism. Idk about that he posted a meme blaming deforestation on vegans, pretty confusing then imo E: I think we're talking past each other because you're focusing only on his fairly benign statement and ignoring the stupid inaccurate meme as a meaningless joke, but my original observation was about how absurd it is for him to complain about other people's debate etiquette after trying to dunk on them with memes. And frankly, the obvious intent of including the meme is to mock people, so it's also pretty silly of him to act surprised when those people draw inferences about his argument based on it or argue with it etc. If one is trying to make a serious point with a carefully limited scope, pairing it with some dumb  meme that's making wildly stupid claim isn't the best choice!
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 6, 2022 |
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Dec 5, 2022 19:59
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