Comment by adtac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adtac | Hacker News Reader

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>Make the lion vegan to complete the circle.

1. Lions are obligate carnivores, we're not. We do not need meat to survive (evidenced by several cultures around the world living off a nearly entirely plant-based diet for centuries), lions do.

2. What animals do isn't a good moral compass. Animals rape each other, steal, kill their children, and do all sorts of morally reprehensible stuff.

>Some animals are abused and we can work on regulation to prevent that

The best solution to stopping animal abuse is to not breed the animal in the first place. Can't abuse something that doesn't exist now, can we?

>I don't think making sure cows die by old age should be the end goal.

I never proposed that. I said we shouldn't have bred them into this miserable existence in the first place.

Why do we get to decide how long a cow should live? Why do we get to artificially inseminate a cow that cannot possibly give consent? Why do we get to take away the newborn child of a defenceless creature? Come on.

How about because I don't care about it that much? Sometimes good food involves suffering. I'm glad we're at the top of the food chain. I'm not about to give up my steak, I'm not about to give up my cheese, I'm certainly not about to give up my foie gras.

I don't think we should go out of our way to hurt animals (for example intensive chicken production where you have overcrowded operations where chickens stay in the dark, etc, should be outlawed), but if I want to eat it I'll eat it. The cow need not consent, because it's my food.

Fundamentally it's simply not a moral issue to me, it's a gastronomic one. I believe most people agree with me. Vegans are so incredibly out of touch.

PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.

I mean, if you see the footage of what goes on in slaughter houses and then still think momentary sensory pleasure (taste) is more important to you than the life of a sentient being, you're just a sociopath. Do you also believe it is okay for me to torture a dog just because I get visual satisfaction from it?

>Vegans are so incredibly out of touch.

really? lol ok

I'm fully aware of what happens in slaughterhouses. I would be more than willing to pay for more expensive meat where the animals have more space for them, or eat proper grass, as opposed to, let's say, having corn shoved into them and antibiotics to suppress persistent infections, etc. The meat is tastier that way, too.

> you're just a sociopath

Sure, according to your definition I would be. So would most people, billions of them.

> Do you also believe it is okay for me to torture a dog just because I get visual satisfaction from it?

Visual satisfaction? No. But if you want to slaughter and eat it I don't have a problem with that.

> really? lol ok

Yes, really. You come across as some sort of quixotean person yelling at windmills while most of us over here are just eating our meat. It's simply that people don't say it, out of politeness.

> Sometimes good food involves suffering

It never needs to. You're performing mental gymnastics, I'm sorry. It's never true that this sort of immense suffering just needs to magical occur for the world to operate normally. There are limitless delicious recipes that require 0 suffering, 0 pain, 0 murder.

> I don't think we should go out of our way to hurt animals

That's what the entirety of animal agriculture is. We go WAAAY out of our way. It's expensive, inefficient, unhealthy, and immoral, and we do it anyway.

"I don't care but looking at pictures it doesn't feel right" yeah the classical it's-ok-as-long-as-I-don't-think-about-it attitude

Oh I've seen plenty of pictures and videos and whatnot. I've slaughtered plenty of animals myself (though never a cow, to be honest).

I'm not looking away and pretending it doesn't exist. I'm staring at it and saying "yes I approve of that because I like to eat animals".

If your argument is that intensive farming is less than ideal, sure, I agree. If your argument is that the solution to that is to stop eating meat, that's where you lose me.

That’s saying “I want change but I don’t want to change”

Not really. Just because you enjoy a good steak doesn't mean you agree to torture the animal. Also "happy" animals seem to have better taste so it's a win win.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q8984/why-animals-that-died...

How on Earth is it a win for the animal you are raising to then kill? If the cow could talk, do you think it'd describe the situation as a win win? If I keep a slave, and raise them to harvest their organs, and keep them content until their teenage years only to kill them, is that a win win?

What kind of slave? A human slave? They're more valuable in other forms of labor than harvesting their organs (usually; sometimes organ prices can exceed labor value). That's why slavery and organ harvesting still exist after all, if no one thought it was valuable, then it wouldn't exist. We don't have slaves in developed countries because we figured out that former slaves being able to use their brains for labor rather than their physical prowess was more valuable for society as a whole.

This is the most HN response ever.

That's because I'm trying to remove any emotional or moral appeals from the answer and try to focus on the rational answers, because people usually don't respond to moral appeals if they don't hold the same morality worldview as one would. It's like both sides not understanding each other, such as pro choice and pro life people.

Why would it never need to? I can say that a steak is a good food, and by vegans' definition it involves the suffering of a cow, and therefore, sometimes good food involves suffering.

I'm not saying all good food is cruelty free. I'm saying one can eat exclusively delicious food without involving cruelty.

Yes, but that's not the argument that the poster above was making. Good food can be cruelty free, but not all good food can be. Therefore, if you want a specific food that requires cruelty, you're just gonna have to accept that fact. Somewhat related, but why would I restrict my choice of food if I want to eat what I want to eat?

Because it involves horrific agony to be experienced by a living thing.

So what? Again, moral appeals don't move people who do not subscribe to the same world view as you do. If I'm pro choice, I could yell all day that a woman's right to life matters more than a fetus', and if I'm pro life, I could say the opposite. It won't change the minds of people who don't hold those same moral positions.

Who's talking about murder? I'm not for eating humans lol. This sort of phrasing is intellectually dishonest.

> That's what the entirety of animal agriculture is. We go WAAAY out of our way. It's expensive, inefficient, unhealthy, and immoral, and we do it anyway.

So are you against eating all meat or in favor of reforming industrial meat farming? These are two very different positions.

> It never needs to.

Yes I didn't say it needs to. I said sometimes it does. Foie gras involves sticking a pipe down a duck's throat and force feeding it until it has liver desease which makes its liver extra large and tasty. It is what it is. I support it because it's delicious. My taste buds are more important than a given animal's suffering, plain and simple.

I know I'm being blunt but I feel this holier-than-thou attitude on the vegan's side needs to be confronted with a little bit of "silent majority"-type viewpoints.

I'm not making controversial points, I'm spelling out widespread ideas to you.

> My taste buds are more important than a given animal's suffering, plain and simple.

lol holy shit. When your reasoning gets to this point, I think we need to back up and appreciate the insanity of what you're saying. Would you be fine with some alien species arriving to Earth and doing all this to you? Would you accept it and think "Ah yes well it is what it is!"

Like it or not, that's what the argument is of most people who eat meat. I also think my tastebuds are more important than an animal. This is why things like impossible foods sidestep this issue, because they know people don't switch en masse on ethical grounds, but they do it you make a better product, in terms of price and more importantly, taste.

If an alien comes to us to eat us, I mean yes, that's just how it is. We can try fighting back of course (which species wants to be killed?) but if they win then, what can you do? Appeal emotionally with them? They could say the same thing, that it's just how it is. Might really does make right. If they have superiority in fighting power, I mean, there's nothing we can do other than accept it. And that's the same thing that's happening with us and the animals we eat.

So if I can physically overpower someone is it okay for me to keep them as a slave? Is it moral to kill someone if I gain pleasure from the act, as long as I’m physically capable of it?

The alien hypothetical isn’t about what is possible, it’s about what is right. Would you feel that the aliens should be allowed to enslave and eat you? Or would you feel like you’re being wronged, and that you don’t deserve it?

Might makes right, so sure, if you were able to enslave someone, why wouldn't you be able to keep them? You just have to fend off from people who'd want to take them away from you, right? After all, we do that with pets, they're our slaves basically.

It's clear that you're trying to say that animals and people are equivalent, that animals are slaves. If I don't believe in that world view, you can't make me care. You could show rational reasons like, eating a vegetarian diet is better to combat climate change, which I accept, but having a moral appeal doesn't move me to change my meat-eating ways.

If an alien can overpower us, sure I'd try to escape because I obviously want to live, but I'd be under no delusion that I deserve to not die. The alien captured and wants to eat me, so that's going to be what will happen. There is a difference between how I feel, what would happen, and what is morally right. I posit that morals don't matter in this case, only power over other beings, which the aliens have over us in this scenario.

Said another way, why should morals matter in this case? I'm genuinely asking, because whenever I ask this, people don't give an actual answer and instead say something like, it's the right thing to do or it reduces suffering, but this uses morality to explain why morality matters, sort of like using the Bible to ask why things that are said in the Bible are true.

>> 2. What animals do isn't a good moral compass. Animals rape each other,

Neither what humans do is a compass for animals's behaviour. You know that cows are not humans, right? There is not much consent in their social life.

We can work to offer them a "good" peaceful life before a quick innevitable slaughter. Not all the farmers cage their animals. Some of them live a pretty good life eating good grass and breathing fresher air than most humans do.

As long as the lifespan of a cow is concerned what difference does it make if it lives 5 years or 20 years? Eventually you have to accept that death is innevitable for animals, insects, plants and humans alike.

Eventuall you will end up death too, get eaten by "disgusting" worms.

You also seem to favor no life at all than a short span? Would you prefer not to be born if you were to know your life will end up tragic (i.e in car crash, or eaten by a lion)?

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