Hacker News Reader

Comment by tdavis | Hacker News Reader

Why would a vegan blog do this in the first place? Presumably the vast majority of vegans are so for ethical reasons; they can't possibly be allergic to anything that has once been part of an animal. In which case, veganism (?) is basically the definition of "what you don't know can't hurt you."

I applaud the blog for their investigative journalism, but all they've really done is taken restaurant choices away from a group that already has a smaller number of places to eat.

Right? Am I missing something?

View on HN

What about people that are vegan/vegetarian for ethical and/or religious reasons? While it won't 'kill' them, people are making money by lying about a product to their customers (fraud). Is this a good thing?

Wouldn't you feel pretty violated if you thought that you were making an ethical choice, only to have the person helping turn out to be a cheat? (e.g. killing someone to put them out of the misery only to find out that they still had a desire/will to live)

An even better example would be if you were boycotting the RIAA by buying music from an independent label that claimed they weren't part of the RIAA. Only to find out that .5% of their profits really were going to the RIAA. Wouldn't you feel violated if all that time you thought that you were doing a good thing boycotting the industry, but you weren't entirely? Obviously it's better than if you were buying directly from big name labels like Sony,etc but you're still going to be pissed off at being misled.

Allergies are not the only non-ethical reason some people choose to avoid certain foods, and it's also not a all-or-not situation. Those who are concerned with high levels of "bad" cholesterol, risk of colon cancer, too much "high-quality" protein, etc... may look to decrease or eliminate certain foods such as meat, milk or egg.

Also, I wonder if you think that "what you don't know can't hurt you" applies to other ethical concerns. If you're government tortures people but doesn't tell you, does that insulate either them or you from any ethical responsibility? Would you also believe, in that hypothetical case, that a journalist who brought the story to light only served to weaken the people's faith in the government, or is there value in uncovering deception which prevents people from exercising their ethical choices?

Does opening the box kill the cat?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com