Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Those arguments could be applied to just about any behavior, including not eating meat. You're presupposing the need to justify eating meat, and then using generic arguments to dismantle specific statements without point. If you want to have a useful discussion, please provide an argument..

View on HN

You shouldn't eat meat because its production causes animal suffering. It's pretty simple really.

I presuppose the need to justify just about everything actually. Your surprise at this approach kind of explains the gaping logical holes in your previous comments. Please though, continue with your "specific" statements, I'm enjoying this.

EDIT: mixed you up with the other commenter, disregard the last 3 sentences, sorry.

You shouldn't eat veggies because their production causes animal suffering. Ever hear of pesticide runoff?

plants -> livestock -> meat -> metabolic energy is less efficient than plants->metabolic energy. In the interest of minimizing suffering caused there is an obviously superior approach to providing our society with metabolic energy. Your move.

Nah, you've proved unwilling to entertain other viewpoints so I'll save my breath.

If animals are raised responsibly (free-range, good food) and killed unconscious, there's no suffering, no?

Yup this is true when defined narrowly enough, but impossible in practice. Plus you'd have to address the argument that cutting short a happy life is a moral harm.

If we were a society that was capable of doing this at scale, there would certainly be far less of a reason to be vegan, but I hesitate to say there would be no reason at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com