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Comment by delecti | Hacker News Reader

Everything I've seen suggests to me that most people's annoyance with perceived "preachy" vegans comes from cognitive dissonance around being forced to confront that vegans have a good point. Why confront real issues when you can make a bacon joke and say "oh, I could never give up cheese"?

It's like when talking with someone who is very disciplined about exercise. Many will say something like "wow you're so lucky to have such good genes" to deflect from the fact that they're just not willing to put in that level of work.

And I say that as someone who is not vegan, and is pretty lax with exercise.

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> comes from cognitive dissonance around being forced to confront that vegans have a good point.

The problem on polarized issues is rarely "one side knows they have no good points and are just trying to avoid that the other side does". Really this mindset would be part of the preachyness problem in the first place, the idea that the only reason people don't like this side is they know this side is right so why aren't they just admitting it!

> Why confront real issues when you can make a bacon joke and say "oh, I could never give up cheese"?

I agree with this but probably in a different meaning than you meant. It's not by default "I don't want to deal with the consequences of their valid stance so I'll deflect until it goes away" it's a "I really don't want to deal with the religious guy handing out bibles when I'm just going to the café for a coffee, I'll just joke with him I couldn't live without <choice of sin here> every night instead of risking dealing with a surprise preachy interaction again". The interaction gave no hint of who actually had or knew they didn't have the right stance about religion.

> It's like when talking with someone who is very disciplined about exercise. Many will say something like "wow you're so lucky to have such good genes" to deflect from the fact that they're just not willing to put in that level of work.

In some situations like this example they probably know they aren't doing the right thing, in others (as given in the example above) that's not the case. That some topics are so is not evidence one way or another about another topic being so. The only common theme is that it was uncomfortable for the person deflecting, not the reason it was uncomfortable.

I do think it cuts both ways; veganism is extremely strange. The strangeness does not prove that it is good or bad -- but absolute veganism (as perhaps distinguishable from other historically popular, frequently religious diet practices) is wildly out of line with nearly all humans in all of human history -- and could reasonably appear to be overly simplistic.

So, I think the "vegans that are complained about" are nearly always the folks who don't much take this into account.

Conversely, it can easily be argued that it is paradoxical to normalize the slaughter and consumption of animals while simultaneously holding the belief that they should be protected (e.g. animal abuse laws).

Approaching how we life our lives primarily from an ethical lens can lead to all sorts of uncomfortable or strange conclusions, however.

Exactly, one day no human will consume meat. There are many reasons why but the popularity of it now stems from humans dealing with starvation--which we are still dealing with. If I have a variety of vegetables and grains I don't even think about meat. We are privileged to be able to not eat meat. It is something I give thanks for. We glorify it but the act of eating meat is not dignified. The time we can salvage any sort of dignity is by not killing the animal, not processing it, and eating only the parts that deemed worthy by our culture (the tender parts that chew easily).

"One day no human will consume meat."

If I had some time-travel-y way to bet my entire life savings against this prediction, I would.*

(*yeah, someone's going to get persnickety here. As long as humans are around, I believe some are going to eat meat.)

That statement is only supportable if vegans had a policy of annihilating meat-eating humans, which seems anathema to the vegan philosophy.

So maybe we can qualify that by saying "one day, no human will eat meat harvested from unethical or otherwise ecologically destructive livestock-farming practices."

most people's annoyance with perceived "preachy" vegans comes from cognitive dissonance

Let's consider other "preachy" sources to see if this argument holds weight.

Consider replacing "vegans" in this sentence with morally motivated religious evangelists of any kind, or morally motivated pro-/anti-abortion activists, or morally motivated homophobes, or MS/Apple/GNU fanboys/girls.

So no, it's not that people think the preachy group might have some kind of point, it's the preachiness, smugness, and righteous superiority itself that is the problem. The idea that this one group with such a narrow focus has discovered the one true superior way is what's the problem. It's counterproductive to whatever goals the group claims to represent. Moral guilt tripping is a lazy way to shortcut arguments.

What if no one is guilt tripping but the other side is just uncomfortable as hell with their own easy acceptance of the status quo?

How about "meat is murder"? You don't think that's guilt tripping? Or that it's actually an extremely aggressive thing to say that's likely to upset some people?

That right there is the textbook definition of guilt tripping. This line can be applied to literally every side of every argument. It has no content, no explanatory power, it's just another excuse for attempted manipulation.

Vegans do have a good point, however, for the majority of the population food is just something that they crave, eat for taste, or because it is thrust in their face daily by corporations. They aren't doing it for the sake of killing, and therefore the point that vegans make isn't something people consider nor care for.

I personally think your diet should be based on nutrition, with morals and the environment following a close second.

That's the rub, though - we know that vegetarian (including vegan) diets are nutritionally complete and applicable at virtually all stages of life [0], yet people make choices that result in hundreds of billions of animals being slaughtered each year. The cognitive dissonance that accompanies eating meat is extraordinarily pervasive [1].

0. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19562864/

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_eating_meat#Meat...

Why is there an ethical problem in slaughtering an animal for meat if that animal has been raised in good conditions and the actual killing happens with a minimum of pain and fear for the animal?

I get why foie gras is problematic, but I don't see the problem in a leg of lamb.

Have you seen the movie "The Island"? A organ supplier fakes a post apocalypse for the humans living in the bunkers. They still live a nice life and when they need organs they hold a lottery to see who gets to go to the surface where they've built a resort on an island as they supposedly repopulate.

These humans live fairly happy lives and were bred (cloned) to be harvested for the organs. Would you oppose the real world implementation of this system? The people could even not find out what happens to them, they could be gassed during the transit.

It really stems down to whether you think it's okay to kill living beings. I don't care too much for life forms smaller than 1cm and that's one of my biases, but I don't think it's okay to kill living beings larger than 1cm.

You could say that we are humans and those are non-human animals, therefore it's okay. I'm not a fan of this line of thinking because that is how caste systems work in societies that exploit different groups of people. They're of a lower caste so it's okay to treat them like dirt. They're of a different skin color so it's okay to treat them bad. It's okay to kill them.

If we discovered aliens, what would have to be different about them to make it not okay to raise them to be killed for our tastebud enjoyment? The ability to do calculus? Plenty of people can't do calculus. The ability to speak? We're still trying to learn how certain whales communicate or how crows seem to have a memory for previous bad actors /abusers in studies. We don't eat handicapped people nor people with severe mental problems. If it's not okay to farm humans, what about our predecessors? We have a common ancestor with other life forms on earth, so where do we draw the line? Bipedalism?

I would not be ok with such a dystopia.

However I don't think there's a clear line to be drawn. Why do most people object to eating dog or cat while they have no problem with pork? Pigs are about as intelligent as dogs (and can also learn to recognize individual humans).

Extrapolating that line of thought there is also no fundamental difference between eating plants and animals, but most people argue that it's morally wrong to kill animals for meat but ok to eat plants.

> Why do most people object to eating dog or cat while they have no problem with pork?

Cognitive dissonance, plain and simple. This was explained in the Wikipedia article I linked above.

> You could say that we are humans and those are non-human animals, therefore it's okay. I'm not a fan of this line of thinking because that is how caste systems work in societies that exploit different groups of people. They're of a lower caste so it's okay to treat them like dirt. They're of a different skin color so it's okay to treat them bad. It's okay to kill them.

I don't find this a super compelling reason not to eat meat because humans being a separate class than other animals is essentially a precondition to arguing that eating meat is immoral since plenty of other animals also eat meat. Applying a higher moral standard to humans compared to other animals is only reasonable if there is some sort of intrinsic intellectual capacity that we have but they lack. Once you open that door, there are still arguments to be made that eating meat is immoral, but the issue is much less clear cut, and I don't think it requires cognitive dissonance to come down on the other side.

> Why is there an ethical problem in slaughtering

In short, I think killing another living being that experiences suffering is wrong.

There needs to be at least a base agreement on some ethics before diving into an ethical debate, and if you don't see a problem with needlessly killing animals, then this exchange will be worthless.

Extend the reasoning of how we know it's wrong to raise and kill a human for our own consumption to animals, and we arrive at veganism. Please see my second citation in the parent comment for a better overview.

The Wikipedia article describes the various psychological mechanisms people use to avoid thinking about the fact that something they are doing involves something else getting killed. It does not provide arguments for why killing an animal for it's meat (or hide or other resource) is wrong.

A counterpoint to your 'raising humans for consumption' point which is equally extreme but in the opposite direction. How do you know plants do not feel suffering? After all studies show plants can sense surroundings and communicate with other plants even of other species.

It is commonly understood that plants do not have the same mechanisms to experience a range of emotions (pain, happiness, sadness, etc.) as fish, birds, and other animals do.

Further, if we want to abstract away from a mechanistic understanding and focus purely on a reduction of suffering, then veganism should be your goal. Most crop production is simply for animal feed. Eliminating animals from our diets would dramatically decrease the amount of plants we destroy.

>It is commonly understood that plants do not have the same mechanisms to experience a range of emotions (pain, happiness, sadness, etc.) as fish, birds, and other animals do.

Isn't this another form of the Meat Paradox, though? Plants have been shown to have moment to moment awareness of their surroundings, can communicate with each other and will turn away from unfavourable conditions. How can you definitively say that plants don't feel pain?

Even if plants feel suffering, fewer plants die from eating them directly than would if we had to pass their calories through an intermediary animal. It's closer to equivalent for chickens, but it's about an order of magnitude for cows.

If you grant that eating a plant causes suffering to that plant I don't see why the order of magnitude of the suffering or number of entities made to suffer matters.

Is it acceptable to inflict suffering on other beings to alleviate your own suffering or hunger?

> I don't see why the order of magnitude of the suffering or number of entities made to suffer matters

I absolutely disagree. Minimizing suffering is good. Less suffering is better than more suffering. The specifics of implementing it are obviously complicated, but if you don't agree that minimizing suffering is a good thing, at least in theory, then I don't know if we have any moral common ground.

> Is it acceptable to inflict suffering on other beings to alleviate your own suffering or hunger?

I assert that I have a right to attempt to continue my existence. Given that, and the above, I think it follows necessarily that it's better to cause less suffering in that pursuit, if possible (and it is).

Also, all of this is only entertaining the possibility that plants can suffer for the purpose of discussion. I think it's entirely obvious that they cannot experience suffering.

> In short, I think killing another living being that experiences suffering is wrong.

It fails Kant's categorical imperative. Animals aren't going to believe that eating meat is wrong - and if we tried to prevent animals from eating meat, we'd kill a lot of them - not to mention it'd just be ridiculous. There's simply no way to include animals in universal law and maintain reciprocity. It's an internally inconsistent ethical philosophy, and obviously so.

That's to say - people make fun of ethical vegans for the same reason they make fun of libertarians - clear gaps in the philosophy they refuse to acknowledge.

I don't agree that morals need to be reciprocated to be valid. It's not internally inconsistent to say I think it's immoral to kill things beings even if they wouldn't grant me or others the same.

Libertarians don't agree that the inability to protect the environment makes their philosophy invalid either. The fact is though, most people look for reciprocatity in their moral philosophy.

It's not that every individual has to agree not to kill you. It's that we have to agree that punishment is appropriate for killers. Getting specific - it's incoherent to say it's immoral for humans to kill rabbits but moral for foxes to kill rabbits. To have a consistent moral philosophy, you have to either punish the foxes and try to prevent them from killing the rabbits, or you have to admit that killing rabbits isn't _really_ a problem.

I'm not arguing that it's moral for foxes to kill rabbits. I'm arguing that the presence of immoral actors does not negate the arguments in favor of morality. Foxes aren't immoral, they're amoral. It's wrong for me to kill people even if natural disasters do. I can't have a moral discussion with a fox.

It still doesn't follow. It's wrong to kill because of the harm killing causes. Whether the killing is done my an immoral or amoral agent doesn't change the effect. If you really believe dead rabbits is a bad result, you ought be spending your time preventing the amoral agents from causing that bad result.

Consider an infant - an infant is basically an amoral agent - it doesn't understand killing. If a infant kills somebody with a gun, we don't say "oh well, he doesn't understand killing" - we say "why the heck did that baby have a gun? Where are his parents?" We expect moral agents to prevent amoral agents from causing harm. So why aren't you trying to prevent the foxes from killing the rabbits?

Am I obligated to personally intervene in every bad thing that happens in the world as a prerequisite for pointing out they're bad? Your argument seems to boil down to "you aren't trying to stop all instances of a category of bad thing, so your opposition to that category of bad thing is invalid", which is a pretty weird argument. I also think murder is wrong, but aside from personally not murdering, I don't do anything about murders happening in the world.

If foxes are amoral agents, why is it immoral to kill them?

I don't think that's an accurate representation of Kant's viewpoints; please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Cruelty...

It's been many years since my collegiate philosophy course that focused on ethics in society - largely using Peter Singer's works as focal points of discussion - but could you try and reframe your idea? It doesn't seem like reciprocity has much bearing on this topic.

A nutritious vegan diet is not difficult. The hardest thing about it is that you mostly have to cook it yourself, since so many restaurants offer few (or no) vegan choices.

Fortunately, that's gradually improving. And it's a good idea for people to eat less restaurant meals if they're really interested in nutrition. It's hard to claim that nutrition is one's #1 priority when one is eating 1,500 or more calories per meal and few vegetables or whole grains.

Veganism isn't automatically nutritious. It can be, just as meat diets can be -- but most meat eaters don't. Either can be nutritious with planning and education.

As you say, your diet should absolutely start with nutrition. But given that you could eat nutritiously either way, you should indeed let your ethics guide you -- which includes both animal welfare and the environment as a whole.

But in particular, it'll be very hard to claim that nutrition is top priority if you're frequently eating Big Macs and never eating vegetables or grains.

I think this could be part of their reaction, but a bigger part is a natural inclination to belittle people who claim to have a moral High Ground or superiority.

In my experience, begin to frame things as a personal choice that they made without implying judgment on others simply don't get the same response

The end goal of the radical vegan moralists is to legally reshape my cuisine and the cuisine of the majority of people to match their preferences. Not all vegans share that view but often independently come very close to it or could still be swayed into a more radical world view.

Deflecting is a polite way of terminating a conversation that can otherwise get very ugly and end friendships and/or further entrench and radicalize the counter-party in the conversation; not a concession to the quality or lack thereof of their points. Or to put it another way, when someone suggests I try a vegan diet, my first instinct is respond in a respectful way with an understandable and relatable reason why I will not, not to hammer them in the face with the truth that I will continue to guiltlessly eat God’s creatures until the day I die and I will raise my kids the same way.

It seems like you're strawmanning and radicalizing our conversation here a bit by focusing on radical vegan moralists. As a vegan of 2 years I can tell you that a supermajority of the vegans I know would not endorse *legally* reshaping anyone's cuisine. The radical segment of any social movement is usually the minority. Your argumentation here seems similar to completely denouncing Christianity, Political Party XYZ, or even Silicon Valley because of its most radical segment.

Note that I gave no indication that they were more than a fringe and pointed out that they were not well representative of vegans as a whole. Radicals are by definition the fringe and don’t need additional qualifiers, particularly in a sentence that was loaded with them (vegan moralists are also not representative of vegans; many vegans are vegan for pure dietary reasons or personal preference).

My real point was this if you read past the first paragraph: if you care about politeness, keeping friendships and not hammering people in the face with what you actually think, you know, all the things that can further radicalize people, then deflection is the best course of action. This deflection should not be viewed as an implicit concession that somebody has a good point.

> Note that I gave no indication that they were more than a fringe

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you but your phrasing in the quote below seems to imply that most vegans are secretly aligned with or could be persuaded into become the radical moralists you mention earlier:

> Not all vegans share that view but often independently come very close to it or could still be swayed into a more radical world view

It's just strange to me that you're talking about radicalizing while seemingly using radicalizing debating tactics yourself. I'm sorry if that comes off as disrespectful or rude but that's the crux of my issue with your comment.

Edit: But I should also mention and acknowledge that I did read past the first paragraph in your original comment

Persuadables—non-aligned people without a strong position one way or another—are generally the largest subset of any group with an ideological element to it, and while the ideological component is severable from vegans individually, it is not severable from veganism as a movement.

This doesn’t mean they are secretly aligned, just that given the right circumstances, they could be persuaded to a more (again, more, not necessarily most!) radical position. Most people can, this isn’t limited to vegans nor does this apply strictly to veganism.

> It's just strange to me that you're talking about radicalizing while seemingly using radicalizing debating tactics yourself. I'm sorry if that comes off as disrespectful or rude but that's the crux of my issue with your comment.

Understandable. What it boils down to is I chose a tactic of advocating for a pretense while dropping all pretenses myself. Pretenses are inherently deceitful, but they can serve a good cause used appropriately, in this case maintaining basic social order. But by opening up my real thoughts underneath that pretense I was hoping to demonstrate why the pretense was in fact useful. Judging by the vote counter, I’ve seen it break even a few times today so that tells me it’s split down the middle how many people got that and how many people didn’t, so clearly I have room to improve too.

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