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Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

To forgive the tautology, intelligent creatures are intelligent. Which also means that love is possible. I mean... every person who's ever had a pet (of any sort) understands this (as I stare at the photo of my recently-deceased and very-charismatic cat). It may not fit into any naturalistic model that clearly separates humans from these other intelligent creatures (and ascribes all perception of humanlike feeling to "anthropomorphism"), but nevertheless, that is how I believe it is. They play, they feel pain, they get bored, they get hungry, they get (ahem) horny, they get excited/happy, they love (perhaps dimmer versions than the ones we're familiar with, but anyway). Sometimes my cat would make sounds in the dark of night that sounded like... ennui.

If anything actually separates us from the animals, it's not these things- it's things like music appreciation or creativity. All the other experiential things we're familiar with seem to be shared with them.

(And yet... I continue to eat bacon. sigh. I've met pigs that were clearly happy to see a friendly face of any species... haunts me, actually.)

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Think of it this way. If you suddenly lost the ability to speak and didn't have fingers or arms and all you could do was swim, bump around, and bite things, you'd probably act a lot like a fish, but you'd still love and feel emotions like a human, we'd just have no way of knowing. We are extremely arrogant (and oddly so, in my opinion) in our assumption that "lesser" species don't have consciousness or that they have a dramatically lesser or reduced phenomenological experience of the world. I think animals think and have many of the same emotions we have, and we're just huge assholes. In the very least it makes sense for that to be the default assumption, rather than to assume by default that animals are unfeeling automatons and to literally disembowel dogs like Descartes did to be like "see, here it isn't experiencing pain -- it's just a meat machine that reacts in a preset way!"

wait... Descartes disemboweled live dogs?!?!

It appears so. What a filthy guy. Don't read if you don't have the stomach for it

https://blog.timesunion.com/animalrights/descartes-and-anima...

Gary Francione (Introduction to Animal Rights): “Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil.”

Curses omitted from this comment.

If you would believe some materialists, we're ALL just biological machines with illusory feelings, though...

We are all just biological machines, whatever that means.

However, it would be a mistake to presume that our feelings are an illusion, or that pain is meaningless without some ephemeral abstraction beyond the material to grant it a Platonic "reality" that mere nerves and synapses can't aspire to.

Funny thing is, Descartes was approaching it from literally the exact opposite angle. To him, the soul was all the difference between real pain and "mechanical reaction".

For such a smart guy, to act on such an assumption without any evidence for either a soul in us or no soul in animals seems grossly out of character... although he probably predates the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution of thought

illusory? In that real feelings exist in a more real form?

The world is what our bodies make of it - its as real for me as it is for my cats. IQ doesnt imply worth.

See, I'm ok with that. That doesn't mean your feelings and the feelings of others don't matter.

Horrific. That wouldn't pass any ethics review board today.

I worked for a short time in an animal facility nearly two decades back as part of an immunology undergraduate research project. I did all the ethical and vetinary training and exams. Some scientists do take Descartes' line, that animals don't feel like human beings do. I don't. I think it's a convenient philosophical position to take to avoid agonising over inflicting pain and suffering upon other organisms. It's a line of work I got out of at the earliest opportunity; I found it stressful and nauseating, even while working under strict ethical guidelines and practices which minimised pain and suffering to the highest possible extent, and had strict regulation of animal welfare.

While it's possible to debate the relative intelligence and sentience of different species, I strongly suspect that all higher mammals experience emotions similarly to ourselves, and I suspect that this may well extend to lower mammals and possibly other species such as amphibians and fish. Though this is obviously difficult to investigate and prove. It's dangerous to anthropomorphise human behaviour, feelings and emotions in other animals. However, I think it's equally, if not more, dangerous to assume that animals are incapable of none of the feelings and emotions that we do.

Dogs can clearly experience pain. The anguished yelp if I accidentally tread on my dogs paws wearing heavy boots is sufficient to tell me that! And arthritic pain in old age was less obvious, but they took clear steps to avoid actions which would hurt. They clearly experience fear. I've seen my dog's legs turn to jelly when faced with a herd of cattle, and I couldn't drag him past them because he dug all his paws into the ground and refused to take a step further. Another cried when they were too scared to walk across wobbly and loose rocks on a mountain, and I had to carry them over. The same applies to other animals as well, though the means they use to communicate pain or fear may differ.

I liked the direction taken by Emory university e.g. this recent research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571... which gets past interpreting behaviour and instead uses fMRI to see how dogs respond directly. Hopefully this will show the similarities in our reactions as well as some of the differences.

Research like that summarised in https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/24/smart-d... is also important. This shows that dogs can have sophisticated linguistic and reasoning capabilities. How many other species have such untapped potential, which we simply haven't noticed?

Ya I'm troubled by this too. I'm really into bodybuilding but the human body simply can't recover unless it eats beef/salmon/eggs/chicken/etc at least one or more times per week, especially after the minor injuries that inevitably come with lifting weights.

As a general rule, I never eat mammals that are omnivores or carnivores, so pigs and anything higher in the food chain are out. Veganism is a little unrealistic IMHO, but you can certainly eat these in the following order from most to least and try to stay vegetarian as much as possible:

* diary products - eggs, milk, cheese

* shellfish - clams, shrimp

* fish - tuna, salmon

* foul - chicken, turkey

* beef

If you look at beef as sacred (as many cultures do), then the death of one cow can feed countless people. In terms of deaths vs nutrition, it's probably the best meat source. Unfortunately it has environmental consequences, for example the desertification in the west is due to cow and sheep ranching. Usually my only serving of meat each day is a turkey sandwich. Then a cheeseburger once a week for recovery. And I weigh 260 pounds, coming up on a 300/400/500 bench/squat/deadlift so if I can eat meat sparingly, anyone can.

>I'm really into bodybuilding but the human body simply can't recover unless it eats beef/salmon/eggs/chicken/etc at least one or more times per week, especially after the minor injuries that inevitably come with lifting weights.

Is that so? How would you explain bodybuilders like these?

https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a19535559/vegan-bodybuild...

I don't know about these guys specifically but a lot of "vegan bodybuilders" are recent converts jumping on the bandwagon. That said I know longstanding / lifetime vegans and vegetarians who are into weightlifting and they get on just fine.

I'm not even close to a vegan or vegetarian, but your claims are just not true. There are a plethora of other sources of food sources for "recovery". There are quite a few vegan bodybuilders. There are even Vegan NFL players and MMA fighters, both of whom require far more in the way of "recovery" than a bodybuilder.

I lift HIT for BB. You might give Elmhurst's nut milks and protein shakes a try. Peanut protein is extremely comparable to meat protein. Veganism isnt unrealistic - it is just not a walk in the park unless you can afford to buy nice products like these peanut protein shakes and drink 8 of them a day.

Proper veganism for lazy hackers like us, that BB, is expensive. You and me both know we arent going to eat a plate of chewy mushy beans. Find the products that work for you. Elmhurst is basically my go-to for most of my protein.

https://elmhurst1925.com/shop/protein-shakes.html

Ya the funny thing is that I've tried to be a vegetarian as much as possible over 15 years with a 5 year break in the middle. The very best post-workout meal I ever found is a large burrito made of something like:

* 1 can of pinquitos or pinto beans

* 1 can of garbanzo beans (optional)

* 2-3 flour tortillas

* 1/2 onion

* 1/2 green pepper

* cheddar cheese

* 1/2 avocado or about a dozen black olives

* salsa

* lettuce (optional)

Then eat it in a giant bowl with 8-16 oz of milk.

This all worked great until the last year or so as I've developed some leaky gut issues due to a sensitivity to peanuts after living on PB&J sandwiches for a year after the housing crash. I think the sensitivity may have transferred to beans recently, causing a legume/nightshade sensitivity to my gut flora or intestinal lining. Could just be due to middle age though.

Anyway, I switched to almond butter, laid off the beans for a couple of months, ate L-glutamine and licorice root capsules, and am 85% back to normal. No acne but some digestive issues still.

A vegetarian diet helps you pack on pounds like a gorilla, but can make it tricky to get the "dry" look of classic bodybuilders from the 70s that ate 1-2 pounds of beef per day and did steroids. Also I know very few vegetarians that made it longer than about 3 years. It's doable but takes discipline to eat enough variety and get enough micro nutrients. Inflammation is a big problem with legumes, but it's also a problem with high animal protein diets. Like anything, balance is best, but for ethical reasons I prefer to eat as little meat as possible. Hope this helps someone.

I guess we aren't much alike. I've always been a skinny guy, its hard for me to eat a lot. Without cheeses, I have a tough time packing on weight. Thats why I like shakes, its much easier to down a shake than eat a meal. But I'll concede that solid foods are probably better for gut health.

Rice and pea protein tends to be extremely gritty due to the husks, so I am not a big fan of it. These peanut shakes are lifesavers for me, although its probably a tenuous plan to rely on a single product to maintain veganism? :-/

Micro nutrients aren't a huge deal if you take quality supps like Life Extensions Mix. Greens+ Wild Berries is also a great complete nutrient supp.

Id also recommend eating a few tablespoons of bee pollen granules. They actually have a surprisingly high amount of protein and micronutrients.

I have logos for a startup I was working on called Roylent, which would basically be a protein shake made purely from bee products, bee pollen, honey, propolis, and royal jelly.

Unfortunately I never completed it but I do think it could be a good product for vegans that are ok with non-lethal products that work with animals rather than against them. Bees are awesome. :-)

>for example the desertification in the west is due to cow and sheep ranching

No, the west was a desert long before ranching. I'm not sure what you meant here but I think you'll need to be a bit more specific or provide a reference to what you're talking about.

In fairness, it's not well known - but - you are actually the one that's wrong in this case. The loss of biodiversity is pretty staggering in the west, especially in the high desert country of the northwest in states like Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

It's not so much about precipitation but loss of biodiversity. For example where I was born, there was a 10 foot tall sagebrush forest covering most of southern Idaho a century ago. There were streams every few miles with more than enough fish and wildlife to support thousands of Native Americans. That's all been replaced with cheatgrass as far as the eye can see and a 5-10 foot drop in the water table so all high desert streams are essentially gone and the area can no longer support life. Rodents, cats and even people have contracted the plague:

https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/elmore-county-plague-c...

This was mostly due to widespread cattle and sheep grazing on public lands. Livestock ate all of the native vegetation so the topsoil ran off:

https://www.uexpress.com/new-republic/2015/2/6/the-cowboy-an...

Many groups like the Snake River Alliance and Idaho Conservation League work to reduce overgrazing but in conservative states like Idaho it's a constant battle with state and local governments. The BLM tends to cater more to ranchers and big agribusiness companies like Simplot than to conservationists.

I could write for pages about this but will just leave this link as a starting point:

https://www.google.com/search?q=idaho+high+desert+conservati...

> And yet... I continue to eat bacon. sigh. I've met pigs that were clearly happy to see a friendly face of any species... haunts me, actually.

I've raised pigs, and eaten those pigs. They're a lot like dogs - very loyal and intelligent. I suppose that makes me a monster in this thread full of vegans.

I had a pet pig, Habeas Corpus we called him. Smart as could be. Loved to hang around us, play tug with a knotted t-shirt, run around the yard chasing/being chased. Gentle as could be.

We had a wire fence ring with a tree in it, that's where he stayed on summer nights. Hated going back into his pen at night when he was a piglet, became really hard to get close to around dusk, would just keep his distance casually without being offensive about it. One evening I sat on the grass by the fence, just chilling, and he came over to root around, just being companionable. When he was busy with something in the grass I picked up the wire, gently moved it over him and set it down again - now he was inside the ring.

A moment later he looks up, does a double-take, figures out he's in the pen again, and starts to scream bloody murder. Pigs can really scream! Took him a while to forgive me.

I think pigs are the next animal I will give up eating.

The last thing to be given up will be bacon, of course. I could switch to turkey bacon of course.

Funny name, btw!

it took me like 6-7 months to go vegan, it was hard for me to give up omelettes and cheese. but one day, I woke up and just didn't want to eat it anymore.

Start to have vegan meals once a day. then 3x a week. slowly your taste buds change and then you don't want it anymore

I could forgo meat although not easily, but cheese -as a French, that's a really tall order.

Cheese and eggs can be produced far more ethically than meat. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t have my morning poached eggs:

I only buy from ethical egg producers though

> perhaps dimmer versions than the ones we're familiar with

No, I think that's our subconscious desire to believe we are separate from the world around us speaking. They may experience and express feelings differently than we do, but that doesn't mean that experience is less meaningful.

I use the video game analogy for this. animals may be 8 bits, we're 32 bits. Still whatever bits games are running on, they use the same basic formulas (in the metaphor, these are our senses, emotions and abstractions). It's indeed evident that we share a lot with animals. Even if they may not think as much, and can't communicate like us. I also believe that most important times in our human lives, are quite animal... holding a baby, holding your SO hand, eating, pissing, sleeping well. Doesn't need to know about curved topologies.. and I'm sure most of us would be content with the list I just wrote. And to go back to the analogy, we spend time thinking about problems and whatever, but going back to 8 bits often leads to interesting use of our existences. Like helping someone simply can brighten your life much more than financial success.

I like this analogy.

To take it further I'm equally as fine with me eating an 8-bit animal as I am with a 64-bit being coming into my house and eating 32-bit me :)

Easy to say when you don't know any 64-bit beings. Which is to say that it is easy to see the food chain as moral justification when you're at the top of it.

No im pretty sure in any case i dont want to be eaten :)

256-bit cyborgs are coming

I would argue it's actually the opposite.

It seems to me that the more intelligent a being is, the more difficult they find it to allow themselves to fully experience their own emotion - be it love, anger, or whatever.

In my experience, cattle take that to an extreme. A cow can absolutely experience love and pain - but even the most intelligent of cattle that I've known were pretty dim compared to even other animals.

It seems to me as if the only thing they can experience are their emotions, and therefore emotions are much more meaningful from their frame of reference than from ours.

Hogs, on the other hand, are scary smart. When I was young I had a hog that incidentally bit my shorts while I was feeding them and pulled them down. He saw that I was embarrassed by that, and from that point forward any time I came to feed them and had another person with me, he'd make a beeline for me and try to "pants" me. He thought it was funny.

Evolutionary speaking, all the animals that care for their young or form bonds with other animals (same species) for cooperation have a higher likelihood of feeling emotions that you mentioned in your comments. Pain might be universal but things like "love", "play", "excitement", "boredom" etc. are highly unlikely in crustaceans or even fish.

So it's very clear that eating mammals and birds is ethically not okay but apart from the environmental reasons, eating sea food is probably not as bad as eating mammals/birds.

I think many humans are guilty of over-anthropomorphizing themselves.

How can you continue to eat other animals if you feel the way you do about other animals?

Because at the end of the day I have to eat and meat is a fantastic source of nutrients, many of which aren't found in a vegan diet like heme-iron.

FWIW I tried their Impossible Burger and it was amazingly spot-on, flavor and looks and texturewise.

But you are correct about the other criticisms/concerns about vegan diets in your child comment (I responded to this one because HN apparently limits you to 4 or so levels' deep commenting)

EDIT: Now the ability to reply to that one has returned. Not sure why that happened, but whatever... leaving this here

Wait till you try Impossible Burger 2.0...OMG

holy shit, this is literally hot off the presses as of 2 days ago. Thanks for the heads-up!!

https://medium.com/impossible-foods/how-we-know-youll-like-v...

Regarding the heme thing...

https://impossiblefoods.com/ is onto that

Thanks for linking that. An amazing goal and I wish them the best of luck, but we'll still have numerous other nutrients to engineer after we're done fixing this one issue.

Not to mention all the ingredients we'll have to engineer out of a vegan diet like the excess phytic acid (again just naming one example)

Humans don't need heme-iron, just iron. And I can get all the iron I need from whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds and vegetables.

Thank you for calling me out on this (admitted) bit of bullshit in me. ;)

I guess I am comfortable with my cognitive dissonance in this area. FOR NOW.

(But seemingly no other areas. I memorized just about all the informal fallacies mostly so I can Correct People's Bad Thinking On The Internet, sigh...)

I'm also waiting for companies like https://impossiblefoods.com/ to do their thing. I tried their impossible burger, and it was amazingly indistinguishable from the real thing. If they come up with impossible bacon and impossible chicken, I'd definitely be able to pull off vegetarianism or pescatarianism. In the meantime, I unfortunately love my chicken and eggs, milk, cheese, ice cream (all in moderation). Also, although I do eat eggs, I check this site to make sure they're ethically obtained: https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/eggs/ And I ONLY buy eggs from the highly-ranked producers. I pay extra for this, of course.

Also I think fish/clams/oysters/shellfish are sort of the exception for most people, all signs point to them being only dimly conscious with extremely tiny brains. Given their nutritional value, it's arguably ethical to kill them for food (but not unsustainably to the point of drastic population decrease, which I think we're currently doing with bluefin tuna...) This doesn't include octopi and whales/dolphins and other obviously-intelligent creatures, of course.

What is your position on humane painless animal death after living a full life? (given that every being has to die, anyway)? What about lab-grown muscle fiber?

Again, I honestly appreciate the fact that you have a low tolerance for hypocrisy/cognitive-dissonance (at least in this area), and I fully admit this is a dissonance I am actively maintaining. I'm... trying to get out of it.

Self-honesty turns out to be the most difficult honesty...

Unfortunately there is a part of our brain that just wants to eat the stuff we're used to eating. It's really hard to change your diet, whether that's to lose weight, to mitigate a disease like diabetes, or to eat with your ethics. From my experience, the most successful way to cut out animal products from your diet is to have a passion for cooking. Trying out a new vegan recipe every week or so will start to build up your repertoire to the point where you're hankering for a dish that just happens to be vegan instead of consciously fighting against your desires.

Humane painless animal death after living a full life? How can you humanely kill something which does not want to die? No matter how painless, if you killed me and I had not asked you to, it would not be humane.

Actually, if you asked me to kill you and I did, I'd still get arrested due to anti-euthanasia laws (depending on jurisdiction!)

Using your reasoning, we should happily eat any animal (possibly including human, but animals also commit suicide sometimes) that suicided...

I think death is an inherently ugly thing no matter how you approach it, and given the existence of carnivores and omnivores who are not vultures waiting for food to die before consuming it, I don't think killing in nature for food is avoidable. Pain avoidance is much easier to reason about, however.

Like it or not, we are part of the natural world and its strange rules of engagement. Having just watched a hyena eat a wildebeest alive (someone in the comments here posted it), I have to wonder if humans are not the most "humane" killers-for-sustenance on the planet. The most ethical thing we can do (other than creating meat in a lab such as what Impossible Foods is doing... I'm a fan), IMHO, other than go vegan, is to be as humane as possible about the killing bit, give animals as full a life as we can, even if we intend to eat them towards the end of their lives.

I believe that one day (possibly in the far future), every human will be vegan. I can't say that it's reasonable to expect everyone to be vegan now, though. The French love their cheese, the Germans love their liverwurst and bratwurst, the Italians love their pizza, and the Japanese love their sushi. I am a huge fan of grilled chicken, eggs and sushi (and the VERY occasional burger or bratwurst... I'm ethnically German, btw) and the wide variety of cheeses out there... these things would be extremely hard for me to give up, so my fallback position, for now, is to obtain these things in as humane a way as is possible for me right now.

I commend your veganism, regardless. It is admirable and it is an ideal you have attained in this time and it should be emulated.

But a hyena is a carnivore. Humans are not. A hyena cannot contemplate the finality of death and probably doesn't understand much about the pain it's causing, it's just eating a meal. Humans do understand all those things and on top of that humans do not need to eat meat and are very possibly healthier without it, yet we continue to do so. Also, nearly all meat consumed by humans comes from factory farms which deprive the victims of even at least a natural life up to the point of death. It's a life of emotional and physical torture from birth. What makes you think any animals raised for meat get to live a long life before being killed? Most won't make it to 1 year... After all, who would eat old tough meat? Given that most people in the west can easily get to a fully stocked grocery store with more variety of legumes, grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds not to mention tofu, tempeh, seitan, cashew cheese, ready made vegan goods like beyond burgers, pizzas, vegan egg, vegan sausage... To me it seems incredibly cruel to continue to eat animals and their eggs and milk. We don't need to do it anymore and to continue to do so is willfully supporting cruelty against animals.

https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/eggs/

The highest rated egg producers have "truly pastured" chickens... which is probably as close as you can get to giving them a "natural life" while confining them. Note that there is a mutually-beneficial trade going on here- They do give up their eggs (and eventually themselves), and are (broadly) confined, but while alive they can eat as much as they want and they are secure from predation.

I am extremely impressed by Impossible burgers (Beyond is OK, but Impossible... wow.) I haven't tried vegan eggs but if they don't get the yolk almost exactly right I might not be able to switch, can you provide a link?

Also, what's your opinion on lab-grown muscle meat? Is it all about ethics for you?

> To me it seems incredibly cruel to continue to eat animals and their eggs and milk.

I believe at least the "eggs and milk" can be done in humane ways. Again, we provide an environment for them with unlimited food and minimized risk of predation. In the wild, food would be scarce and predation risk would be ever-present.

As far as eating animals... I consider it a near-necessary evil for now that will eventually go away. (I know you're arguing that it isn't necessary, and you're probably right... I'm talking about convincing EVERYONE of this RIGHT NOW tho)

> We don't need to do it anymore and to continue to do so is willfully supporting cruelty against animals.

I have an idea you might like. What if you took a few friends to do a field trip to the source of the meats/eggs/cheese they eat (after doing the homework to investigate where these are, of course)? Judgment-free. And also to observe treatment and (if you can stomach it, and if they permit it, which they may not) the slaughtering part. I'd go on that trip. Observed truth is the best argument...

so what happens to the male chicks that are born in the egg industry? They get killed, by gassing, suffocation or being thrown into a grinder. Why does a dairy cow produce milk? because she has a baby. Where does that baby go after birth? I mean, the milk is for the humans, not the baby cow, right? Baby cow gets taken from mother causing intense emotional pain for both, and if male, sold into incredibly cruel veal industry or beef industry or just killed. If female she goes through the same lifelong torture of repeated rape, then having her baby stolen, then being milked raw by machines, in lonely terror, as her mother, for around 4 years, before her poor body is spent and she is shot as humans have no use for her. Dairy cows have possibly an even crueler fate than beef cows. How is any of this humane? Why would I ever go to see any of this happening? There is so much written and video evidence available online, I don't need to go and see it happening myself. Think about how much meat, cheese and eggs people in America alone throw down their throats every day. There is no way this demand could ever be met by anything other than the most cruel and heartless industrial scale production methods where animals are no more than a commodity to be exploited.

I’m listening. Couple of comments.

The fact that cows must produce babies in order to produce milk was somehow lost on me. That’s unfortunate. I had assumed it was injected hormones that faked a pregnancy. But you did send me on a cow rabbit-hole.

> intense emotional pain for both

I did not find objective evidence that this is common, nor do I think it is easy to evaluate whether a cow is experiencing “intense emotional pain.”

> lonely terror

Yes, the worst milk producers do that. I buy organic and that means the cow absolutely must be pastured.

> video evidence available online

Yes, of the worst possible conditions, taken at the most offensive and least ethical milk producers, and posted to blogs with a clear vegan bias to rationalize. Surely. :P

> no way this demand could ever be met (unless ethics is sacrificed)

I would like to see evidence for this assertion

I'm not going to spend my day finding evidence to convince you. You seem to be the sort of person that demands unreasonable amounts of evidence (clearly no one has studied every dairy cow to see if the suffer when their baby is taken away, or monitored every factory farm to see how the animals are treated. In fact with USA ag gag laws this is very hard anyway - big agriculture money buys the law makers) knowing that you won't then need to consider that your food choices support cruelty. If you are OK with the knowledge that sentient intelligent beings (where's the evidence that cows are intelligent, right?!) are treated as nothing more than a commodity, or slave, and if you can't understand (without evidence!) that taking a baby from an animal would cause it to suffer, then good luck to you, and enjoy your milk. I find it sad when common sense and compassion lose to statistics and numbers. (for the record, a simple google search seemed to return quite a few reports on psychological studies done on farm animals - if you are genuinely interested/concerned, and I doubt you are, then give a whirl). Ciao.

Our species manage to get away from running after food. Animals do, every life form takes from the environment. The issue is how easy it is to us to breed, slaughter, bag and cook living forms nowaday. But if you were 100000 years ago, you'd have no second thoughts about eating animals.

100000 years ago humans had significantly less empathy than we do now. And they didn't have a grocery store with more varieties of vegetables, whole grains, beans, lentils, fruits, seeds, nuts, tofu, tempeh, seitan, cashew cheese, veggie burgers, vegan sausages, vegan pizza, vegan chikn, plant based milks... than one could possibly imagine, a short drive or walk from their home.

Are you sure it's empathy ? 10000 years ago someone killing an animal knew it was taking a life. I've read once that jewish religion did create kosher rituals because of that (maybe other religions too I didn't dig further).

Today it feels more like depression based morality caused by the chaos of the last decades and the glooming collapse than empathy. At least that's how I feel when I see people talking about the subject (but tbh I don't see a lot of that group, mostly some known figure in mainstream medias.. probably not the best speakers).

Again, long ago, you had to survive, it was fair game. My cat doesn't refrain from stabbing a mice at night, a cat is highly skilled and potent compared to a mouse.. yet nature balances things out, mice hide, they live their existence. You know if you make it too comfy, a species will diverge and probably harm itself. Stress is part of life. And as humans, even when violently hunting.. I think we knew (pulling that out of my own theorizing arse) that it was a sad but needed act.

Now we're in an era where technology, knowledge will remove all these requirements from our lives (say we get synthetic food, etc etc) so we're shifting toward a purer existence. Something where you don't impact nature as much. But it's still early days in a way.

Interesting that you chose cats as your example, as they are a predator animal that kills for sport. My cats have killed many mice, but I've never seen them consume one - they much prefer their food bowls.

Cats are instinctively driven to hunt and kill, even when they have no need or desire for sustenance. They enjoy it.

Interesting, I thought they did it some of the prey .. I'm super super surprised about this 'sport' side. Even real wild animals eat their prey most of the time.

I love animals. I also love to eat animals. I don’t have any trouble reconciling these two things.

Then you don't love animals. Or, you are happy for living creatures you love to be killed and to eat them, which is scary.

I love plants. The fact that I eat them too does not change that at all.

It's a bit silly to compare killing a plant to killing something with a central nervous system. Plants don't think or feel. Birds and mammals certainly do.

"However, there is evidence that plants react to damage by emitting chemicals or gases that communicate discomfort or stress and that they somehow adapt to minimize this discomfort."

Plants don't have a central nervous system that can experience discomfort or stress. The terms are used as an analogy. My laptops emits heat when it is "stressed" as well.

I'm a backyard beekeeper and I just love bees. They're very intelligent. But you should see how commercial beekeepers treat them in the production of all this "vegan" food.

In the production of what vegan food? Vegans don't eat honey. Maybe you mean what California does in order to grow almonds? So just American almonds? that's not really "all this vegan food" is it. it's one thing that isn't exclusively eaten by vegans.

It sounds like you're trying to imply that the vegan food industry is particularly harsh on bees. This is not the case. Livestock consume far more of our crop yield than we humans do, at least in the US. We would need fewer commercial beekeepers if we ate plants directly. You're always losing caloric efficiency when you take extra steps through the food chain. There is no environmental damage caused by eating vegan food that isn't magnified when consuming animal products.

Because they're delicious :(

So a brief moment of taste pleasure is worth the suffering and killing of another creature that feels physical and emotional pain?

Obviously yes for most people, since vegans are a tiny minority. Bit of a high horse you're on there.

I think most people who are in this predicament consciously choose not to think about it in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance. Destroying your philosophical model of reality and remaking it is not exactly a pleasant process. Something you find out when you go vegetarian or vegan is that if that gets brought up, which usually happens in the context of rejecting an offer of food or being questioned about why your plate only has crackers at a potluck, many meat eaters will suddenly feel the need to explain why they think it is ok to eat meat. Perhaps that's just preemptive and a result of encountering more militant vegetarians in the past, but I think it is more likely to be a result of being reminded of their cognitive dissonance. Who are they trying to convince? I didn't ask for an explanation of their dietary choices and don't feel any particular need to explain mine.

They're being jerks, but why is an interesting question.

I don't think it's a cognitive dissonance thing, at least where I've seen that picture. I think it's an us/them thing. Specifically, the kind where one group gets the idea that another is out to get them. (That "militant vegetarian" you mention is someone I have heard about my whole life yet never met.) If they don't have a lot of vegetarian friends, you may be their first chance to have a conversation about it, and that's probably the only one they rehearsed.

It may not be as crystallized as other areas, yet, but I think this is also one more field for cultural proxy wars, as we all get drafted into us/them camps. Again, at the individual level, you might notice the person doing the attacking always thinks they're defending. Complicated big picture stuff at play.

> encountering more militant vegetarians in the past, but I think it is more likely to be a result of being reminded of their cognitive dissonance.

Don't project onto people you clearly don't understand. Creating mental models of people you disagree with that involves making them stupid or living in dissonance does a disservice to yourself (by making you ignorant), to them (by you spreading your ignorance), and to wider political debates in general (it's very difficult to come to an understanding when people are incapable of understanding the other side).

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stating a rational fact about someone's cognitive dissonance "makes them stupid" or "spreads your ignorance"?

I carry that cognitive dissonance (I know animals feel; I believe they have souls; and yet I continue to eat meat); the difference is that I (through tons of introspection) have made peace with my (very few) dissonances and therefore, calling me out on it (as someone did further up the comment chain here) will result simply in me acknowledging their observation (without any emotional/anger element).

I bet the number of vegetarians would go up quite a bit if people had to slaughter animals themselves if they wanted meat. Our society is pretty good at hiding the dirty work from people.

Looking at my grandparents' generation, who had to do just that, I wouldn't count on it.

My parents both grew up on farms where they slaughtered their own animals. They ate meat maybe once a week or less. So at a minimum meat consumption would go down.

I suspect the reason why they ate meat rarely was because it was expensive (even when it's your animal, it still has a cost), not because they were squeamish about it.

Not to detract from your point but Nature itself is brutal. There's no mercy kill when a predator catch a prey.

Case in point : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpQmJ7UUNFQ >> Warning, this is not for the faint of heart. <<

I've worked in a slaughterhouse, doing the night shift cleaning up the mess before a new day begins, I know what's it's like. Overcrowded boxes full of chicken shitting themselves, getting hanged by their legs on a factory line before getting their throat sliced by a fast spinning blade. Not a pretty sight for sure and a sad way to go.

It's very unfortunate how the mass consumption of meat creates terrible living conditions for the various animals we breed for that purpose. But if we measure the scale of suffering, I think we're doing a bit better than nature.

And yes, by going vegan you do not contribute to that, I get it. I have huge amount of respect for people that live by their moral standards and stick to it. Yet this doesn't mean that the wilderness is some Disney fantasy and yes, for all intent and purpose, most animals out there in the wild are bound to have a gruesome end.

I'm not implying that we're doing animals a favour by sending them to a slaughterhouse, simply that this is the natural order of things. If you feel strongly about that and choose to not consume meat and such, great. As for me, despite what I've seen, there's nothing wrong with eating meat. The only thing I wish is a more humane breeding, and I'm happy to pay more for that.

I'm aware that it's slightly hypocritical because would there be an alien specie doing the same to us, I'd probably would have a different perspective on that. As it stands, I enjoy being an apex predator. May it last forever.

There's nothing natural about factory farms, you can pretend that they are no different to a lion eating a gazelle, but they are. We eat way more meat than we naturally should. Ever seen a fat lion dying from heart disease? And what about responsibility that comes with the power humans have over other animals. Lions are just being Lions, they don't understand what death really means, it's just a meal. They also are carnivores, humans are not. They also don't have grocery stores.

What if someone else is doing the killing and I'm doing the eating? Not being facetious, I struggle with this and I don't fully buy into the "guilt by association" angle. If I stopped eating meat today, animals would still be killed at exactly the same scale as before. So what would have I accomplished besides depriving myself of nutrients? If we could all do it together I'd be on board. Maybe we can start with "meat credits" or some other kind of demand reduction? That really helped curb climate change....

I think portion control would be a more effective approach. A little meat goes a long way. I think you'll get further convincing the public with a moderation message than a black and while moral argument.

If you stopped eating meat and replaced it with a balanced vegan diet you wouldn't be depriving yourself of anything other than heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes etc. You'd be the winner. Also, you'd be doing your part in reducing the demand for all those animals to be raised and slaughtered. If everyone had the opinion of "well what's the point unless everyone does it" no good change would ever happen.

But it is pointless unless everyone does it, at least until a large percentage of the population does it. You're ignoring opportunity cost, this isn't like recycling where I have nothing to lose by doing it. Until we reach critical mass, the early adopters would have essentially "subsidized" everyone else.

A few ounces of meat/fish a day aren't going to cause any of those diseases and are packed with nutrients that a vegan diet has a very hard time providing at a similar cost, especially in poor countries. The Gates foundation isn't betting on chicken on a whim. I still think moderation is the way to go. If everyone cut their intake by 50% we'd have a healthier population, animal slaughter would be cut in half, and we wouldn't have to reinvent meat.

Apart from B12, what nutrients are in meat that I cannot get from a vegan diet? Why is it acceptable to be slaughtering hundreds of millions instead of billions of animals a year, if we don't need to? And we don't have to reinvent meat; most vegans don't eat fake meat products. We could move away from the concept of eating meat all together.

Creatine, Carnosine, D3, DHA, Heme-iron, Taurine. But it's not just about the nutrients, it's about the supply and the cost. Most people don't have access to the balanced assortment of grains, vegetables, and legumes you seem to enjoy. Without meat and dairy they would risk malnourishment.

We probably could move away from meat, if everyone was well off (and took supplements). But that's not the case. And I never said 100s of millions were acceptable, merely that a 50% portion reduction is a LOT better than nothing, and probably a lot more than a morality strategy will achieve.

Creatine is not an essential nutrient and is produced naturally in the human body from amino acids glycine and arginine which i can get from legumes amongst many sources. Carnosine comes from amino acids, which i can get all 9 of from legumes and whole grains. D3 from mushrooms. DHA my body converts from ALA, which i get from nuts amongst many other sources. Heme-iron I don't specifically need, I just need Iron, which i get from whole grains, legumes, nuts etc. Taurine comes from amino acids, see Carnosine.

I do agree that there are a lot of people eating too much meat, but the diseases you mention are all caused by overeating in general, and are just as easy to get on a vegan diet.

No. I said a balanced vegan diet. Even over eating whole grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds and legumes whilst not eating foods that have cholesterol (meat, eggs, dairy - literally any animal products) plus the evidence of red meat and processed meat causing cancer, means I do have much less chance of having any of those diseases I mentioned.

I oscillate between reason and impulse. We are creatures of habit and the environment in which we act is full of nudges toward omnivorous decisions.

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