Comment on Time to grow up.

• federatingIsTooHard@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  when you try to right the ship to actually talk about the concrete issue, and the other person keeps trying to turn it into personal me-vs-you and who’s-better-than-who - they’re operating in bad faith

  jesus christ. there is no self awareness here at all.

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• abraxas@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Thanks for the apology. Forgiven. Now onto the topic. I understand how emotional vegans can get on these issues.

  What is the reasoning that’s superior to vegan reasoning?

  Sticking with ethics, a few bullet points.

  1. “Nulla poena sine lege”… “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed”. A legal (and ethical) maxim. Lacking compelling reason to accept vegan reasoning, it is ethical to eat meat.
  2. Every ethical system has at least one argument that supports meat-eating. Joined with bullet point 1, there is no foundation worthy of continuing the discussion. A strong argument for veganism alongside a strong argument against veganism boils down to “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed”, so long as one pro-meat argument remains. Pick any ethical system if you want to dig in deeper, but I tend towards Utilitarianism.
  3. Similar to the above, life is suffering. The animals I eat live better lives than most humans, and would live WORSE lives or NO lives if they were not being eaten. (See Sir Karl Popper below)

  There is my ethical reasoning that is superior to vegan reasoning. If you’re interested in someone with better foundations than even me, look up Sir Karl Popper’s position on this matter (the philosopher of the “Paradox of Tolerance” fame). He holds to Negative Utilitarianism, and disagrees with veganism being a utilitarian virtue. It was largely in response to (and/or is used in response to) Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, a Utilitarian argument for veganism I strongly disagree with.

  Therefore, “Everything which is not forbidden is allowed”

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  • dx1@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Mmn, so negative utilitarianism, the stance that people should minimize suffering. And for some reason this does not apply to animals?

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    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Check out Karl Popper’s argument.

      For my points, it’s simply that through any analysis, farming animals is more net utility than not. I actually hold to it by positive Utilitarianism as well as Negative.

      First is the utility of people consuming them (if there wasn’t any, everyone would just drop meat-eating in a heartbeat). There is undeniably utility in consuming meat/dairy.

      Second is the utility in domesticated animals. The alternatives are wild animals or anti-natalism. For the former, there is no question that even the worst case “veal cow with botched slaughter” is better than the best case of wild animals (life of constant starvation and fear, ended slowly and incredibly painfully). As for anti-natalism… I hold with Karl Popper. To exist and feel pain is better than not to exist. Farm animls have plenty of positive-utility moments.

      Third is the Utility Monster scenario. HUMANS are Utility Monsters, as compared to animals. This is not to be confused with human exceptionalism. Cows are not planning what to name their grandchildren, waiting for Christmas Dinner. They’re not excited for a delicious meal, slow roasted for 12 hours. The truth is, there is more Utility to 1000 families eating a hamburger or a steak filet than a slaughtered cow living 1 more year, even 10 more years.

      So to sum it up… There is no disagreement that agriculture creates net positive utility for humans, right? Well, I have shown that agriculture also creates net positive utility to animals. Disagree or not, even if you could somehow poke holes in some of those points, there is an avalanche of Reason to the idea that a non-vegan world is simply better than a vegan world.

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      • federatingIsTooHard@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        bravo

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      • dx1@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Agriculture in general creates net positive utility for humans but there’s a rough equivalency for that benefit between animal and non-animal ag (actually worse for our health to eat the animal products) while it creates huge negatives for the animals involved. The equation of people consuming animal ag products to proof that it “creates utility” strikes me as the same fallacy as saying smoking cigarettes has “utility” - I’d argue it’s an irrational behavior (in terms of selfish benefit alone) that prioritizes very short-term enjoyment over long-term enjoyment.

        I don’t know where you’re getting the idea animals are living “better than humans”, this is divorced from reality. Industrial animal agriculture is just that, an industrial process, animals in miserable conditions for their short lives to promote the bottom line of the company in question. Propagandized takes depict cows roaming around lush green hills and such, but essentially anything appearing in a supermarket had absolutely nothing to do with this.

        On top of that there’s the actual reality of the incredible resource (read: water, fossil fuels) usage associated with animal agriculture because it’s inherently wasteful at scale, which is a contributing factor to our destruction of the environment sustaining our existence.

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