Comment by moosey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by moosey | Hacker News Reader

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> If we really take any logical argument against meat eating to its root, we will be left with nothing to eat.

I would argue that this is [edited out: Reductio ad absurdum] a straw man argument. One of the best 'logical' reasons for not eating meat, as opposed to ethical arguments, is the reduction of greenhouse gases and other negative outputs the lower an individual eats on the foodchain. This argument doesn't suggest that an individual starve or die, but instead pushes that individual towards more careful use of the resources available to humanity.

In addition, an ethical argument could be made for not causing pain. Since the vast majority of life on the planet is incapable of experiencing pain, it leaves the vast majority of food that humans eat available for consumption.

So there exist logical arguments against eating meat that do not leave a person with nothing to eat.

Edited because Reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy, but a straw man is a fallacy brought about by faulty application of Reductia ad absurdum.

> the lower an individual eats on the foodchain

Why are you privileging organisms higher up the food chain? There should ethically be no difference in how we treat living things based on where they are in the food chain, except for qualitative reaons (bacteria vs a cow), so you are making the distinction on purely practical reasons.

> is the reduction of greenhouse gases and other negative outputs the lower an individual eats on the foodchain

That is at best a practical argument, and one that can be made only because technology to scrub greenhouse gases is not yet in use.

> Since the vast majority of life on the planet is incapable of experiencing pain

Counting by species or by total population? Insects may not feel pain (AFAIK) but most species (animals and plants) experience pain or stress.

> exist logical arguments

Not sure why you keep saying logical arguments. As opposed to what? Non-rational ones?

There are strong ethical arguments to be made for not causing pain/stress when killing animals (and plants) and not killing life unnecessarily. But against eating meat? Its in our very nature to eat it, indeed meat is part of a healthy and balanced diet.

Eating lower on the foodchain is a strategy to reduce the suffering caused by one's own survival - a cow shares much of our physiology, so reasonably we can assume it suffers from things which would cause us to suffer; a crustacean, less so, and a cucumber, not at all, at least by any mechanism we understand.

Simply kill the animal humanely and it will not suffer. Make sure that grazing animals have adequate space and aren't fed shit, offal and pumped full of antibiotics to save money and con the consumer.

In other words, treat the animals, and the people who will eat their meat, with some dignity.

Fair enough. There is a difference between never eating meat and being responsible in eating it. The argument here is about not eating meat at all which makes the logical argument around greenhouse gases not applicable. With respect to ethical arguments, unless you really end up manufacturing food that meets nutritional needs of humans, do you also account for the pain that a human has to suffer for eating inferior food lacking essential nutrients?

> the pain that a human has to suffer for eating inferior food lacking essential nutrients

That's only the half of it! What would happen to our national dishes if meat, fish and frutti de mare were to be banished from the table?! Barbaric!

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