Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

Personally I avoid moral and ethical discussion because I think it takes real discipline to create a convincing, general, elegant, and accessible moral framework by which to convince others, and I don't think anyone has a go-to framework yet.

In fact, I think having a framework for anything is uncommon and difficult (concurrency and parallelism, cognitive science, causal learning, math). The consequence of discussing without a framework is that we're really just thinking about what we want, and working backward to find any reason for it, unwilling to just say "It's what I want."

I've yet to meet a vegan that provides me a framework with accessibility and clarity, and this article is no exception. I don't even have a moral or ethical framework for myself yet, because I know it must be incredibly hard, and I feel like embarking on a search for one would be like wasting one's mathematical career on P ? NP. I'm not a philosophical genius. I'm just a person with feelings.

With morality and ethics, it's either you already agree with my values or you don't. It's nigh impossible for me to persuade you in the value of Jesus the Christ. You would expect me to solve some unsolved philosophical questions with clarity and accessibility, and I likely wouldn't even scratch the surface of the problem.

I don't think any vegan is about to come out with a blockbuster theory that smashes through the philosophical community, building general consensus. In the meantime, they're just having feelings like I do, and trying to find justifications for them post-fact.

Do you already have the same feelings as I do? Great. Now we can make some arguments about achieving our mutual feelings. But I'm not going to pretend that it's some conclusion of a logical foundation.

Even if I'd have a moral framework to start a discussion upon I wouldn't be able to convince you to stop eating meat because it was not a choice you made based on facts and rational arguments but something you've born into. Unless you find the moral values yourself you'll be eating meat forever.

That's exactly my thinking about moral and ethical argumentation. If we already share the same values, lucky for us, we have a foundation to build upon. If not, oh well, let's look for areas we can agree upon.

I think moral consensus is successfully used when the right historical moment has come along, and the tipping point has come to the old moral majority. Obama has made a similar point in his recent arguments about gun policy, stating that for some issues, there just isn't the moral consensus to do pragmatic work.

The likelihood is that one cannot build a bridge across values, and that values are axiomatic. Either you accept them or you don't. But if you built a blockbuster theory that built consensus in the philosophical community, those effects would probably begin to ripple outward. I think that's incredible work.

I think this desire is a case of the best being the enemy of good.

The ethical case for veganism is accessible for people who accept the rather mainstream premises that we have man made climate change and unethical treatment of production animals, and working against them is the ethical thing to do.

If you're talking about climate change, it seems quite distracting to think about animal suffering. The focus then should be on making food production more ecologically sound. It would also follow that if we make animal suffering ecologically sound, then we shouldn't care as much anymore, and instead redirect society's very finite energy and attention to other issues.

This is like when people argue that death penalty is bad because it's so expensive. Then it would follow that their argument becomes disarmed if we make the death penalty cheaper. Somehow it feels like they were really arguing that death penalty is evil, but they came up with a logistical argument. Logistical arguments have logistical solutions. This is a consequence of working backward from a feeling they wanted to justify -- the problem framing and solution are orthogonal to what they really want.

If we were to talk about climate change or ecological damage, our focus should really be on energy and pollution from industrial and transportation output.

I also think my point stands that I haven't heard of any clear and convincing moral or ethical framework for veganism. You're building a sideways case for climate change.

Hmm. I don't think many people argue that "death penalty is bad because it's so expensive", and I don't think bringing up climate change & animal rights at the same time in the case for veganism interconnects them like you claim.

Sure they do: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=cost+of+death+penalty+in+the+...

I think you missed the heart of my discussion. I brought up the "death penalty as expensive" point to metaphorically illustrate the consequences of arguing backward from a feeling, reaching for any argument that would buttress a desire.

The consequence is that the proposed framing and solution are orthogonal to what one really wanted to argue -- that death penalty is evil. Instead you find yourself arguing whether the death penalty can be cheaper.

I accuse the argument of "veganism helps ecology" the same way, which is a point you summoned first. People who advocate veganism probably do so for moral reasons, because if ecological sustainability were their motivating value, then veganism would probably be far down the list of problems and solutions. Plus, if they wanted to be practical, they would argue for vegetarianism first, and not the hardline of veganism. It becomes suspect to say that ecology is their motivating value, and that veganism is the solution.

The likelihood is that the veganism proponent is not emotionally or intellectually interested in a discussion about how we might make animal killing processes more ecologically sound, and would find that discussion a little depraved. Now they're caught in a discussion that they're not truly interested in.

> I brought up the "death penalty as expensive" point to metaphorically illustrate the consequences of arguing backward from a feeling, reaching for any argument that would buttress a desire.

But I have been making the case that this is easy to think about with our everyday ethics reasoning without having a rigorous philosophical framework and I don't accept the notion that in the veganism case people are generally arguing backward from a feeling (though I'm sure that also happens). So calling out the death penalty metaphor was connected to my argument that people's ethics reasoning acumen is not as lousy as the metaphor implies.

> I accuse the argument of "veganism helps ecology" the same way, which is a point you summoned first. People who advocate veganism probably do so for moral reasons, because if ecological sustainability were their motivating value, then veganism would probably be far down the list of problems and solutions [...] if they wanted to be practical, they would argue for vegetarianism first

In my experience many people do argue for and practice vegetarianism first, and the studies & analyses I've seen indicate that vegetarianism/veganism are at the top of the list of effective and practical carbon footprint reduction solutions. So I think this thinking is based on false premises.

Re arguing backwards, note that here we were discussing how the average person might consider veganism, and not how the the average vegan got there. So the discussion is vulnerable to something like survivrship bias.

"If we were to talk about climate change or ecological damage, our focus should really be on energy and pollution from industrial and transportation output."

I wonder how many of conscience (vegan or otherwise) both to check whether palm oil is used anywhere in their diet, given the massive environmental damage that is done by that industry (e.g. massive deforestation of native forests in places like Borneo).

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