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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

If you won’t kill a cow but like eating burger that’s not cognitive dissonance.

I find it frustrating when somebody replies as if they've only read one sentence in a paragraph.

I also said, "I like animals and I eat meat." I thought that was pretty clear, but if you'd like me to beat the point to death, the cognitive dissonance is between my fondness for animals, cows included, who I would never personally hurt and don't want to see killed, and my fondness for a good cheeseburger.

Could I come up with some contrived rationalization which somehow includes both? Sure, I have in the past, and many meat-eaters do. But ultimately I saw through my own bullshit here. Cows aren't essentially different than horses or dogs, but I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog. This doesn't make any logical or moral sense; it's just what I grew up with and am used to. When I think about it, I experience cognitive dissonance. For some that dissonance resolves into becoming vegetarians; for others they just refuse to think about it, or become dickish anti-vegetarians. I'm only different in that I have worked to get more comfortable with that sort of dissonance, as it's important to me to see things as clearly as I can.

> I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog.

Horse is good, and while they are noble and majestic, so are cows (which are also cute to boot). I think the same of fish, and while less cuddly, I still feel a tiny bit conflicted about taking one's life just to eat when I do it.

Dogs are family for me. I'd probably be OK with wolf or coyote or similar.

I don't begrudge anyone how they want to align their morals with how and what they eat.

Sure. I don't begrudge them either. I'm just pointing out that feeling of conflict. I think how we respond to that is important. And bringing it back to the original post, I think his MAGA fisherman just getting mad or changing the topic is an example of a bad way to handle it.

In the instance of cow vs dog or horse, it’s only cognitively dissonant if you try to reduce it to a context-free universal truth.

With context, it’s simply “we should not eat animals we keep as pets”, where “we” needs to be contextualized to the person and culture. I keep dogs as pets, and therefore should not eat them. Other people don’t keep dogs as pets and are free to eat them.

More generally, we shouldn’t kill things we love. Pets are loved, and shouldn’t be killed for food. Farmed animals are a means to an end, not an object of affection.

Other contexts apply too, for the pedantic. Starvation is a context that would make eating pets okay, so on and so forth.

A lot of morality is contextual. If a good friend is going through a break up, I should care and be supportive. If a stranger like Taylor Swift is going through a break up, I have no moral obligation to care or be supportive (though it would be kind to do so anyways). Morality is contextualized by my relationship to that person.

> we shouldn’t kill things we love.

Why? I'm not advocating for killing humans but before the modern era it was common for people to own chicken which the kids would love as pets but you gotta eat, so the beloved chicken would get killed and eaten.

Sounds more like a modern luxury rather than a ground truth.

You're missing GP's point. They are very clearly, explicitly stating that they do not feel emotionally comfortable, nor morally justified, with killing animals for food. It does not have to be a "context-free universal truth," it's the truth for them.

> Farmed animals are a means to an end, not an object of affection.

I've read a few accounts of farmers who didn't feel that way and talked about how sad they were sending the animals for slaughter, but they still did it.

There was a TV show ages ago where this guy decided to film one cow for it's life and then cook the meat. They showed the film and then he was just crying and the chef was starting to cook and be sympathetic.

Or something like https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683

I'm not a vegetation but I feel like I am really pushing something out of my mind to eat meat, so it is a cognitive dissonance.

If you think harming animals unnecessarily is wrong, but still eat meat, then yes thats cognitive dissonance. The meat industry is the single most prolific source of animal abuse in the world. Factory farms are basically auschwitz for animals. Buying meat and then getting upset at someone who kicked their dog etc. is a pretty clear cut example of dissonance because you are saying that animal abuse is wrong, but your actions indicate you have no problem with it.

I get what you’re saying but you’re kind of discounting how much proximity to an action matters. There’s a big difference in how a murder happening in front of me/somebody I know impacts me vs. knowing there was a murder of somebody I don’t know somewhere out there probably while I wrote this comment. both are equally tragic, both do not occupy my mental or emotional in space the same way

Comparing animal cruelty with what is pretty widely seen as one of the single most horrific things humans have ever done to each other serves to weaken your argument for people that don't already agree with you, not strengthen it.

I know comparisons are a tempting tool, since they're a very effective way of communicating a lot of information and, more importantly, an impression very economically. But part of what made the holocaust so horrible is that people were being treated like animals. It's like trying to argue that dogs should be kept inside by saying "What if you made your toddler sleep outside in a dog house?", it's a comparison that defeats itself.

If your goal is to feel righteous on the internet and demonstrate your strong love for animals, by all means proceed. If your goal is to change hearts and minds, reconsider your rhetoric; you'll have much more luck if you tune it to people that don't already agree with you,

There’s a reason why Isaac Bashevis Singer and Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz have made the comparison of factory farming to the holocaust. Factory farming is arguably the single most horrific thing humanity has done period. Its scale is terrifying.

> part of what made the holocaust so horrible is that people were being treated like animals. It's like trying to argue that dogs should be kept inside by saying "What if you made your toddler sleep outside in a dog house?", it's a comparison that defeats itself.

"In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka"

– Isaac Bashevis Singer

"I believe as long as man tortures and kills animals, he will torture and kill humans as well—and wars will be waged—for killing must be practiced and learned on a small scale".

– Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz

Sure it is.

Maybe if you're principally opposed to killing cows for meat, yet still eat burgers, but not if you simply could not be bothered to actually kill the cow.

I cannot kill a cow, but I’m happy there are people who can.

I also cannot build trains or houses, but I am an ardent supporter of a rain-proof roof.

Those are two different uses of 'cannot'. I know how to kill a cow, but 'cannot' bring my self to do it. I 'cannot' build a train because I don't know how to, but if I did I would be happy to do so.

Do you know how to "kill" a cow in the sense of turning most of it into edible food rather than merely letting it go to waste? If not, then I'd call that a similar type of aversion.

I mean killing a cow is easy, but they weigh like 150kg and efficiently butchering the carcass is the hard part.

I’m sure there are people who consume child pornography with the same stance.

One sentient being paying another stronger sentient being to exploit a weaker non consenting sentient being for “pleasure” the first sentient being with no concern for the experience of the exploited.

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