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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

It strikes me as rather bizarre to oppose eating octopus because they are "too smart", but to continue to eat other animals because they "aren't smart enough". That's a really arbitrary line to draw.

An analogy I like to use is that there presumably could be aliens out there that would like to eat humans. You could imagine said aliens landing on Earth and trying to eat us, and even imagine some argument among themselves that humans aren't smart, and thus can be eaten - something that we'd all obviously find issue with.

Now obviously animals cannot think of or cannot communicate with us that they do not want to be eaten the same way we could with another species, but I believe part of the responsibility of having any kind of power (whether intellectual or otherwise), is to take the utmost care of those who are somehow weaker than you. To do otherwise is to take advantage (might makes right), and that notion is disturbing.

In those terms, I have a very hard time justifying raising, keeping, and killing (and in most cases causing incredible suffering) to animals purely for our pleasure, when it is both entirely possible and likely more efficient for us to not eat them.

Basically, the only reason we eat animals today is because we've always done things this way. I do not mean to be offensive, as putting it this way suggests that those eating animals are wrong or doing evil, but instead I just think it is one of the many little things that we as society and individuals do without much thought.

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> It strikes me as rather bizarre to oppose eating octopus because they are "too smart", but to continue to eat other animals because they "aren't smart enough". That's a really arbitrary line to draw.

Especially when you consider that plants are also organisms, many of which exhibit complex reactions to stimuli, signalling among individuals, memory, etc.

Besides, I don't know of a compelling ethical argument for why it's worse for one to eat things that are perceived to be more similar to oneself. There seem to be obvious evolutionary arguments for why such taboos would develop, but that's not a sufficient argument in my opinion.

> Basically, the only reason we eat animals today is because we've always done things this way.

That's a bit oversimplified, because it implies that the genesis of humans (or their ancestors) eating animals is simply arbitrary, an accident of history. But it's pretty clear that eating animals provided some massive advantages over not doing so, and later domesticating animals for consumption even more so.

> Especially when you consider that plants are also organisms, many of which exhibit complex reactions to stimuli, signalling among individuals, memory, etc.

Is this an argument for or against eating meat? I have seen some stuff on how plants have some form of "intelligence" (or more accurately as you put it, reactions to stimuli), and I could see how that could be used to justify eating meat as well. I'm being dense here, but hoping to understand your point better.

> That's a bit oversimplified, because it implies that the genesis of humans (or their ancestors) eating animals is simply arbitrary, an accident of history. But it's pretty clear that eating animals provided some massive advantages over not doing so, and later domesticating animals for consumption even more so.

Yes, eating meat was incredibly important for us to develop both physically and as societies. It would be rather foolish to condemn people for eating meat thousands or even hundreds of years ago. It's just when you are at the point when pretty much everyone (or at least pretty much everyone reading this) has access to relatively cheap quality vegetables, we are at a different point.

> > Especially when you consider that plants are also organisms, many of which exhibit complex reactions to stimuli, signalling among individuals, memory, etc.

> Is this an argument for or against eating meat?

I took it as an argument against using "intelligence" or "likeness" as any sort of measure upon which to base the decision of what to eat on.

A bit of a rambling, since I'm basically just thinking out loud.

We'd all obviously find issue with being eaten not because we think it's unethical that the alien wants to eat us (it's unlikely that the ethics question would even come up), but because we don't want to die, as an individual and as a species (I'm trying to say that it's NOT obvious that the issue we would have with such a scenario would have anything to do with ethics, not to make a judgement whether it's ethical or not). And so your argument looks like it's saying "we don't want it to happen to us, therefore it's unethical (for anyone to do that to us, or for us to do that to others)". I know you probably doesn't mean it that way.

Now, whether it's ethical to eat meat itself. As someone else have mentioned, I've always wondered where do you draw the line? Pigs and cows seem obviously out of the questions, but how about cockroach, caterpillar, corepod, hydra[0]? Event certain plants do sense distress signals when they're being attacked.

Do we actually know that it's possible for us, as a society as a whole to survive entirely on non-animal products, food or otherwise? Additionally, even if it might be just historical accident that we have a heavy meat-eating society, and another society that starts out without ever using animal products can advance to where we are right now and have a perfectly functioning society, it doesn't mean that it's ever feasible to actually switch to such a no-animal product society. In our terms, that would be a switch from not just from one programming language to another, but probably from silicon-based chips to germanium-bases chips.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus)

> Do we actually know that it's possible for us, as a society as a whole to survive entirely on non-animal products, food or otherwise?

Yes, we know that we virtually can't, at least not in a long-term multi-generational societal context. Humans are superbly evolved to eat a little bit of just about everything, and terribly evolved to eat a lot of one kind of thing for a long time. There are millions of years of evolution built into us and inherited from our ancestors that determined that a modern homo sapien is destined to require some animal products in their consumption inventory. Meat was important enough that if we had an herbivorous ancestor, that ancestor is unknown in the fossil record. We purposely spent so much time finding animal sources, despite plentiful plant life nearly everywhere, that we even evolved brains, tools and fire and actually evolved away in-situ nutritional synthesis of various critical nutrients (that all other herbivores enjoy) all almost purely to take on the higher risk task of eating other animals. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763330

In theory it might be possible to craft a healthy, sustainable, long-term diet that uses no animals whatsoever, and would last generations with no ill effects on population health.

However, there's overwhelming evidence that, in practice, the kind of diet around 90% of practicing vegans practice is not that diet. In numerous serious studies, 70-90% of all tested practicing vegans test as B12 deficient, which is not a sustainable long term dietary deficiency over generations. Theoretically, after just a few generations of this kind of deficiency, if anybody is alive at all, they'll suffer from severe congenital neurological deficiencies that would make sustaining a modern society impossible. B12 sufficiency would be a non-optional part of any non-animal diet, and it appears that practicing vegans are not able to construct an alternative herbivorous diet that provides even single-generational sufficiency.

Other typical deficiencies found in large vegan population studies suggest that humans are generally poorly adapted to long-term, sustained, plant-only diets: with neurological and cardiovascular issues presenting as long-term consequences of the diet.

There's other challenges, some nutrients are pitifully rare or not as bioavailable to humans from plant sources as from animal ones: B12, DHA (and some important varieties of O3FAs, Vitamin A compounds, Arginine, Creatine, Carnosine, Vitamin D, Heme, and the list goes on.

There's other issues to, as the nutritional balance of vegan diets isn't what we're evolved to process, humans suffer from various absorption issues as plant sources provide high quantities of some food components that prevents absorption of some critical minerals: e.g. phytates block zinc for example.

One of the significant challenge for Vegans is the incredible amount of "sciency-sounding", but completely wrong nutritional advocacy advice available in the vegan community. The science is so complex, almost no vegan understands enough of the science of human biology, nutrition and agriculture to properly assemble a diet for themselves (as demonstrated through dozens of studies). Various critical dietary issues are often waived away or minimized (just eat yeast extract!) and major deficits are often covered up under a handful of dietary supplements (many of which are derived from animal sources) for long-term adherence.

The flip side of the problem is that modern food practices also provide animal sources far in excess of what we evolved to need nutritionally. You could probably eat a vegan diet 4-5 days a week, and eat a healthy omnivorous diet just for dinner the other 2-3 and easily satisfy all your animal sourced nutritional requirements and come out extremely healthy with none of the Vegan diet associated health problems. And I don't mean a huge steak for those dinners. I mean just a regular old meal with a few ounces of some animal sourced protein.

Around 1/4 of Indians are vegetarian [1]. That's 300 million people today. The vegetarian traditions of Hinduism date from a few hundred years BC. How do/did these people get B12?

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/seta/2004/10/21/stories/200410210011...

Animal sources of protein. Vegetarianism does not preclude this. Most vegetarian Hindus (Brahmins mostly) are lacto-vegetarians and quite a few are ova-lacto-vegetarians.

http://forbesindia.com/article/recliner/being-vegan-in-india...

Jains are often also pointed to as long-term Vegans in Western Vegan circles, but it turns out most Jains are a particular kind of lacto-vegetarian, with some other peculiar restrictions (no root plants). For example, most Jains will still cook with Ghee.

Some Jains live a Vegan-like lifestyle (there may be up to 500 in all of India), but wax-on and wax-off getting periodic B12 during lacto-vegetarian times (B12 is fat soluble and can stay in your system for up to 3 years). Still, B12 sufficiency is a major topic in modern Jain literature.

However, and this is important, several recent population studies in India have shown that as many as 81% of Indians are B-12 deficient. Current dietary guidelines for Vegetarians in India is driving the need for consumption of at least 4 glasses of milk per day or change to an omnivorous diet to cover the dietary B12 deficiency.

Because of cleaner food handling and the widespread introduction of antibiotics, B12 deficiency has also been demonstrated to be increasing in India and many local urban doctors report seeing multiple patients with B-12 deficiency per week.

In most Western studies, Vegetarians have far lower incidents of B12 deficiency than do Vegans. Vegan populations test as deficient at 70-90% of the population. B12 deficiency is trivially treated with animal protein sources.

Probably milk and eggs. They're not vegan, as far as I know.

> We'd all obviously find issue with being eaten not because we think it's unethical that the alien wants to eat us (it's unlikely that the ethics question would even come up), but because we don't want to die, as an individual and as a species (I'm trying to say that it's NOT obvious that the issue we would have with such a scenario would have anything to do with ethics, not to make a judgement whether it's ethical or not). And so your argument looks like it's saying "we don't want it to happen to us, therefore it's unethical (for anyone to do that to us, or for us to do that to others)". I know you probably doesn't mean it that way.

I am no philosopher, so I'm sure there are many holes in my argument. :)

> Now, whether it's ethical to eat meat itself. As someone else have mentioned, I've always wondered where do you draw the line? Pigs and cows seem obviously out of the questions, but how about cockroach, caterpillar, corepod, hydra[0]? Event certain plants do sense distress signals when they're being attacked.

That's a really interesting question. I learned recently that some vegetarians consider it acceptable to eat oysters because they don't have a central nervous system. Indeed, this whole argument is about "drawing the line", and it is rather complex and interesting.

> Do we actually know that it's possible for us, as a society as a whole to survive entirely on non-animal products, food or otherwise? Additionally, even if it might be just historical accident that we have a heavy meat-eating society, and another society that starts out without ever using animal products can advance to where we are right now and have a perfectly functioning society, it doesn't mean that it's ever feasible to actually switch to such a no-animal product society. In our terms, that would be a switch from not just from one programming language to another, but probably from silicon-based chips to germanium-bases chips.

You are right that it would take a massive shift, and whether or not it is actually possible is a valid question. Thing is, humans have dealt with massive changes in the past, so if we really wanted to, it seems possible. We aren't really trying, at this point, though.

As a vegetarian, I think it's perfectly reasonable to draw the line at the complexity of an organiams's nervous system. That's about the closest standard we can use to estimate so-called "sentience".

It does become difficult when you look at organisms with more minimal nervous systems, like very small insects. I personally avoid unnecessary death of insects most of the time, however I will kill ants and cockroaches if they intrude into my home. I'm not entirely sure if this makes me a hypocrite. I suspect it might, since ants and cockroaches may be capable of feeling pain and perhaps even emotions.

> That's about the closest standard we can use to estimate so-called "sentience".

The problem is that choosing "sentience" as the line is also entirely arbitrary. Sentience at best is poorly defined and almost impossible to prove or disprove about just about anything. It's understood as an intuitive concept, but sentience, consciousness and similar terms have defied solid definition for centuries. For example, it's a trivial exercise to demonstrate that a mountain might be sentient, but have qualities about itself that cloud our understanding of its sentience.

As more and is understood by both AI and Cognitive Science communities, the ideas of consciousness and sentience are being better understood as perhaps just emergent phenomena and not underpinned by any spiritual or moral reasoning -- i.e. the concepts of sentience, and similar phenomena, may actually go away altogether and be tossed in with the pile of falsely observed ideas, like luminiferous aether, chi and humorism.

I agree that consciousness and sentience are likely just emergent phenomena, but that doesn't necessarily make them any less "real".

Consciousness and awareness are already used as a determining factor of life and whether it is ethical to kill an organism. For example, look at the case of a brain dead hospital patient. Most people would not say it is unethical to take them off of life support even if it's basically equivalent to killing them.

Even if sentience is "artificial" in the sense that it's merely a property large networks of neurons display, it's still a significant notion because it allows us to experience, or at least feel like we are experiencing, sensation and subjectiveness. And I think it's fair to apply that same reasoning to non-human animals, though obviously it is difficult to determine with certainty since you can't obtain the full subjective experience of a different species.

> Most people would not say it is unethical to take them off of life support even if it's basically equivalent to killing them.

Now hold your horses there. There are huge numbers of people, probably millions, who feel morally very righteous that it is unethical and immoral to take somebody off of life support regardless of brain activity.

The axiom they've built their moral structure on is not "sentience is sacred" but "life is sacred", which strictly speaking is a stronger test than any Vegan is willing to adhere to. Strictly speaking, by that test, a Vegan is a practitioner of vast, premeditated plant killings on a vast scale. (let's not let the impossible forced hypocrisy of the axiom get in the way of a good discussion)

I don't agree with one any more than I agree with the other. The problem is not a matter of degree, but a matter of definition. A Vegan doesn't get to claim "sentience is sacred", build up a moral framework around that and then push it on anybody any more than the Rabbi down the street gets to tell me that I shouldn't mix fabrics because it's an abomination to God or the Minister in that weird Lutheran church down the road that believes that women shouldn't wear pants because it's also specifically abominable (Deuteronomy 22:5) or my friend the Imam gets to lecture me on what the Koran says about alcohol.

Even if the animal is sentinel and can feel pain, what's the problem of killing and eating them? The reason certain behaviours are considered moral/ ethical and are set as a standard is to make sure we (human) can have a reasonable life among one another, and not because the behaviour itself is intrinsically good. A lot of the time, something is immoral because it leads us into a rat race with no winner.

I think the main point I'm trying to make is that I'd love to see a concrete philosophical explanation on many of vegan-related stuffs. But instead, most of the time it's just pseudoscience and empty big words :(.

Ultimately the problem is that "morality" as practiced generally comes from some kind of religious backing. "Don't mix fabrics because God said so" and boom, it is immoral to mix fabrics.

This was an easy crutch for people to use for a long time because it saved them the difficulty of actually thinking about things.

Modern social movements away from religion as a basis for morality has put this kind of lazy thinking into a tailspin. Humans have only ever been able to define morality as having some kind of immovable axiomatic underpinning of the kind religion likes to provide. But if religion is out, and we still want to be moral, what do we underpin it with?

If we say "Science" than Veganism is right out, as it's scientifically proven to not be an optimal diet. And sentience, while interesting, holds no more moral preservation requirements in science as does maintaining an environmental temperature close to absolute zero.

It seems the sad answer is that people arbitrarily embrace some new axiom and then define their morality on top of it. Lazy people just copy this defined morality and now you end up with "angels on the head of a pin" internet fights like "how sentient does an organism have to be...?" or "what's the most free license software should morally be distributed under?" or whatever the nonsense debate du jour is.

Problematically, like all new converts, people who've embraced their new religion want to tell everybody about it, and chastise all the unconverted for their immoral unclean ways.

The truth is, the guiding notion of morals have become antiquated, but humans have resisted coming up with some other guiding framework that doesn't require mindless adherence to some arbitrary axiom.

For my money, if I had a gun to my head and had to choose an axiom to build a moral framework off of, I'd go with "ensure that survival, propagation and continued forward evolution of the species".

Are you suggesting that morality has no purpose other than to provide a civilized society? That's one view on morality, but it's not that common nowadays.

To suggest that you shouldn't harm a neighbor solely so that others won't harm you is a very selfish proposition. This is an anemic view on morality and altruism in any modern society. From an evolutionary standpoint, altruism and morality serve merely as constructs and contracts to enable a functioning society, but from a psychological standpoint they're something far greater.

>The reason certain behaviours are considered moral/ ethical and are set as a standard is to make sure we (human) can have a reasonable life among one another, and not because the behaviour itself is intrinsically good.

Ok, then what happens if you decide a certain person or certain group no longer reasonably belongs in the category of "one another"? For example, how some Sunnis view Shiites, and how Hutus view Tutsis. That group is no longer seen as a vital part of civilization and can be treated in any way at all, because behavior cannot be intrinsically good or bad.

>I think the main point I'm trying to make is that I'd love to see a concrete philosophical explanation on many of vegan-related stuffs.

If you want one example of such a philosophical explanation, look at utilitarianism. There are countless other moral philosophies which can be used to argue that "intrinsically good" behavior is a thing to strive for, even if it may be applied with certain nuances.

It may be debatable whether moral vegetarianism actually has the desired effect of a utilitarian standpoint (not eating meat may not necessarily reduce the number of animals killed each year for food), but it is ludicrous to argue that morality plays no role in a vegetarian or vegan's desired end goal of reducing animal suffering and death.

Just to be nitpicking, I said "functional society", not "civilized society". Although the distinction make no effect on your argument.

>Are you suggesting that morality has no purpose other than to provide a civilized society? That's one view on morality, but it's not that common nowadays.

Yes, that's what I meant (roughly). And while your example (don't harm other so you won't be harmed) sounds selfish, how about "help others in needs so you will be helped in time of need" sounds? To quote Wikipedia: "Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc., or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.". It does not necessary have to be because people are selfish, but because there are many many possible behaviors, and a universal standard (morals) allow us to know what to expect. The complexity of dealing with a large group of people (society) can get really messy real quick, just because of the sheer number of possible possibilities . That's also why many people believes that when it comes to two adult with sounded mind dealing directly with each other, any thing goes.

I'm well aware of utilitarianism, and that's actually (partly) where I got the idea of moral standard as a basis for a functional society, but I digress. It seems like the difference between your and my argument was how we tallied up the happiness sum. I draw the line at "being human", and you have a bigger one that encompasses "sentient being".

> Ok, then what happens if you decide a certain person or certain group no longer reasonably belongs in the category of "one another"? For example, how some Sunnis view Shiites, and how Hutus view Tutsis. That group is no longer seen as a vital part of civilization and can be treated in any way at all, because behavior cannot be intrinsically good or bad.

I was about to say that that there is no difference between, let's say Sunnies and Shiites, except their belief, in the sense that except for historical accident, an eternal war between the two won't end. But I just realized where that argument would lead to (and I don't like that). I guess I will have to think a bit more on vegan-ism :-)

Non-religious moral philosophies, at their core, do generally try to optimize for reducing harm and promoting helpfulness wherever possible.

Even if one does not subscribe to a specific moral framework, or a group of people subscribe to different ones, there are still some activities that they can agree are immoral. That's why it's okay for vegetarians/vegans to think that something is wrong even if they may not have developed it in the context of an existing moral philosophy. To say that something is immoral is merely to say that "I have subjective reason to believe that [something] is causing more unnecessary harm than good for other lifeforms".

I wouldn't lump all non-religious moral philosophies into the same group like that.

There are plenty that do not optimize for reducing harm or promoting helpfulness. Many seek to ensure fairness or equality. Others legitimize strength. Most of the ones I'm aware of set humans as preeiminent to the moral construct and seek to find ways to maximize the human condition.

FYI, Nietzsche was the king of non-religious philosophers in the early 20th century and was interested in neither of those things.

Rand's Objectivism is probably the second best known and it too has no interest in either of those things.

"Don't want to be eaten" is a pretty high bar. There's not much we could eat if that were the criterion. What's left - fruit?

I'd agree that the line in this case seems to be quite arbitrary but I'd respectfully suggest that it's not fair to say individuals whom eat meat having not given it much thought.

Although that may be true for some people, myself and many people I've talked to have given it significant amounts of thought and simply not found a sufficiently compelling argument against it.

It seems unfair to suggest, and apologies in advance if this wasn't the intention of your comment, that people who eat meat automatically do so due to lack of thought rather than having considered the options and positively chosen it as a course of action.

I did not intend it that way.

If you, or anyone else has really thought of the matter and are satisfied (I genuinely would like to hear the reasons), that is quite different than doing something just because that's what everyone else does.

What I intended to convey was that as a society, except for people who either are or are portrayed as extremists, eating meat is not even given a second thought.

Every other ad on TV is of a delicious burger. Entire shows and channels are based on our ability to prepare meat in delicious ways. Hell, I live in Texas, and one of the many things people think of when they think of the state is our BBQ.

In this kind of culture it is inevitable that many people will go through their lives without for a second even considering what it would seem is an important ethical issue. Like I said, I don't mean offense, and it is unfair (and not my intention) to say that those who do eat meat haven't thought about it. It's just that people do need to think about it.

To use a contrived but parallel example, if I were to suggest that "we should not use walking as a method of moving around" I'd expect the onus to be put on me to explain why this was a good suggestion.

So if accept that from an evolutionary perspective it's "natural" for human beings to eat meat and therefore the onus tends to be one people suggesting we shouldn't to demonstrate a solid argument against it then I don't think that's a bad thing. If of course you don't agree with the evolutionary part then that's a fascinating argument in itself!

I could not agree more that people should question norms. The more "obvious" a viewpoint is considered by most people, the more important it is to question it and the bigger the potential benefits from doing so.

But my intuition would be that whether or not to eat meat is actually one which is questioned fairly often, at least in western society. It's a friendly debate which I'd estimate I encounter at least every month or so between either myself or friends with other friends who are vegetarians. But having heard a multitude of arguments against eating meat, I've not yet heard one which (ethically/ subjectively or economically) in my opinion stood up to scrutiny.

Now people working 8 - 8 in jobs they hate, that's a norm I'd like to see questioned more!

> I'd agree that the line in this case seems to be quite arbitrary but I'd respectfully suggest that it's not fair to say individuals whom eat meat having not given it much thought.

It's fair to say that giving this issue much thought strongly correlates with thinking that eating animals is immoral. But thinking it's immoral doesn't necessarily imply you are a vegetarian. I can't find the statistics right now, but there was a study that compared philosophers' position on eating meat to the general population's and found that philosophers (particularly ethicists) usually thought eating meat was wrong, even though their rate of vegetarianism didn't really reflect that.

I'd be interested to see the method behind any data which looks at whether giving the issue much thought correlates with thinking that eating animals is immoral.

In particular with reference to the study you mention, whether it includes any assessment of the answers from those in the general population sample who could be considered to have given it much thought vs those who haven't.

It's the type of question where it seems like the risk of selection bias is huge. I know plenty of people who could, if asked directly give a very well reasoned argument about why they eat meat, but they don't feel especially passionate about it so wouldn't publicise this viewpoint.

So the people we'll tend to hear from are the people who have a) given it thought and b) come to a viewpoint which is contrary to the mainstream and c) feel passionately that others should come to the same realisation.

It sounds like a really interesting study, but in general I think it would be difficult to find a study on any topic which concluded "philosophers largely agree with the general public".

>Now obviously animals cannot think of or cannot communicate with us that they do not want to be eaten the same way we could with another species

That's not obvious. The will to live is strong everywhere, and that cows don't speak "human" isn't to say they don't have a will to live (not be eaten). Nor that we can't speak "alien" any sign that we don't have a will to live (not be eaten).

This all reminds me of: http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

We are animals that eat animals. You are putting too much thought into it.

When the question is a moral one it's no more sufficient to say, "We are animals that eat animals," than it is for an executioner to say, "We are people who kill people."

You're not putting enough thought into it.

And I say it's not a moral question. Disprove me rationally, down to the axioms.

What are you saying is not a moral question? Eating meat, or killing animals?

It's pretty obvious that eating meat in isolation poses no moral issues, but wouldn't you say any process that involves the killing of organisms generally invokes moral questions?

> but wouldn't you say any process that involves the killing of organisms generally invokes moral questions?

No. The key word is "any" and morality is not universal nor always appropriate. 90% of the world doesn't have a single moral question about swatting a mosquito, and almost no Vegan feels the need to ponder the morality of killing kilogram after kilogram of plant matter or harvesting millions upon millions of yeasts for a single meal, or ponder the holocaust of deaths they cause through the simple act of breathing.

Basic life processes are not moral or immoral. Drawing a circle around one and claiming it's some grand moral issue is silliness.

For example, follow me on this alternate reality philosophical thought experiment. You have to breathe, yet we kill millions of microscopic organisms with every breath, we diminish global O2 availability for our fellow Oxygen breathers, we each increase CO2 by about a kg per day (over 7 billion kg per day or over 2.5 trillion metric tons per year for all of humanity!) further exacerbating global climate problems, and on and on and on.

This is a more important moral question than what we eat. We can always grow new plants and animals to replace the ones we've eaten, but our atmosphere is finite.

Our breath is detrimental to each other and it is our personal responsibility to do whatever it takes to minimize our breathing and maximize the availability of Oxygen to our fellow living creatures: we must minimize movement, sleep as often as possible, avoid cardiovascular exercises, come up with diets that either reduce O2 absorption or reduce Carbon exhaustion, and so on.

Among "Sippers" as we're going to come to be called, heated debates break out whether suicide is a good O2 maximizing choice or not since it will end all breathing. Opposing arguments center around the increase in animal activity as the body decomposes which would bring further imbalance to the atmosphere. Radical Sippers will stage walk-in protests at health clubs and jogging trails to keep people from the immoral acts of cardiovascular exercise. Health forums will be full of angry fellow Sippers trying to turn people away from the ghastly "Nazi"-like organizations called "Jazzercize" and other similar immoral activities "breathers" do.

At the extremes, the "Ethical Atmosphere Users" (EAU) will become a potent and radical organization seeking to stop uncaring breathers wherever they can, marathons, public parks and pools, lamaze classes, sometimes with shenanigans sometimes with violence. We'll go through a dark period where an ultra-militant splinter group of the EAU called "The Inhalers" will bomb a handful of health clubs after hours. The accidental death of a treadmill repair person working late will bring swift police action and put an end to group. Years later, a calmer, gentler ex-Inhaler will recount his troubled youth after becoming a national radio news announcer and promote tree planting and phytoplankton cultivation in personal ponds as a saner, safer alternative.

Entire libraries of Sipper literature will be written focusing on the time-graph [1] of global O2 Content in Earth's atmosphere, pointing out the responsibility of each of us to ensure as much Oxygen for the next creature as possible and how over the last 100 million years the global O2 percentage appears to have gone down and how, when we look in the fossil record during times of high Oxygen content, we find flying insects the size of Eagles...proof that Sipping is the only moral life choice for all people of conscience. That time series graph will become a de facto symbol of the international Sipper movement.

A different hard-line faction will splinter off and rebadge themselves "Sippists" and claim that any unnecessary breathing is deeply immoral and that Sippers don't go far enough. They insist that a minimum of 16 hours a day of sleep is required to minimize personal O2 consumption and that people of good moral principle should be sleeping round the clock. They organize hibernation retreats where groups of Sippists will rent a mountain cabin and take sleeping pills and sleep as much as is biologically possible in order to absolutely minimize their breathing.

A handful of post-child Sippists have been sleeping since 1982 when the "Group of 12" started the "Eternal Slumber" movement. Posters of the group's leader, nicknamed "Sandman" and one of his followers "Rip" can be found in every Sippist center and most of the community Sipper co-ops around the world.

Clearly this is a silly example, the truth is that morality has nothing to do with breathing. It's not applicable and is irrelevant. The same for eating. There are of course moral consideration about what you provide for others to breathe (no poison!) and about how you provide yourself with food to eat, but what you eat in and of itself has no moral quality whatsoever and I'd go so far as to say that attempting to apply morality to eating is foolish from the start.

Eating is a natural process, so I agree that eating and breathing generally aren't of moral consideration (though one could imagine hypothetical scenarios where they are).

Vegetarians and vegans just take issue with the raising and killing of livestock for eating, not the eating itself. And I don't think I need to explain the difference between killing microorganisms or plants and killing mammals, as that has been discussed at length in this thread already (most people draw the line based on an organism's developed nervous system, hence why some vegetarians have no issue eating oysters or jellyfish since they are very close to plants neuron-wise).

First off, thanks for the robust and healthy debate.

I wouldn't lump Vegetarians in with the same group as Vegans. Many Vegetarians have that philosophy. But plenty of others don't. For example, I was a happy Vegetarian for a year and a bit and didn't hold that philosophy at all.

> most people draw the line based on an organism's developed nervous system

That's a red herring of an argument and entirely arbitrary and convenient. If pushed, many Vegans would basically agree that Eukariot/Opisthokont/Animal is the group that's right out regardless of nervous system development. It really has nothing to do with a nervous system. All kinds of living creatures have some kind of nervous system and display stress responses, and quite a huge number of them are on the Vegan menu (or on the dunno, don't care list).

The typical argument is "I don't want to cause pain to a living thing", but again pain is just a stress response, and all sorts of things exhibit stress responses. If I anthropomorphize my lettuce in just the right way, pulling leaves off of the plant for salad causes them to wilt, while bathing the same wilted leaves in cold water causes them stiffen again. Since a lettuce plant has no central nervous system I have to assume cognition (as it is) is distributed (plenty of animals have distributed thinking systems, why not plants?) am I soothing the orphaned leaf? The parent plant will also spring into action and repair the damage I caused through a complex response system that I could squint and call a pain response.

Who am I to say my lettuce didn't just experience the plant world's equivalent of pain? Just because one of my ancestors happened to make it into the Opisthokont family and my lettuce's ancestor made it into Archaeplastida is entirely arbitrary to any possible sense of morale code.

What about Amoeba, Chromalveolata, Rhizaria (which includes multicellular organisms), Excavate, etc.? One of the most powerful demonstrations I ever saw on the question of life involved an Amoeba. Why aren't Amoeba on the "don't eat" list Vegans keep?

More concretely, Vegans' strange stated obsession with neuron based nervous systems locks them into a philosophy where life isn't important, only things that they believe can feel are. It's the dietary equivalent of "if I don't get caught, it's not wrong". But there's considerable evidence that all kinds of things on the Vegan menu can feel in their own way. Plants were the first things to colonize the land, why are we so arrogant to think they can't feel, but perhaps in a way unrecognizable to us Opisthokont/Animals? After all, our common ancestor was billions of years ago.

The argument Vegans make is curiously specific, if we met an alien species unlike anything we had ever encountered before, I'd rather send an omnivore to investigate, because if it didn't have nervous system built up of neurons, no matter how intelligent, a Vegan might put it on the dinner menu...that's a bad first contact protocol.

So here's a valid, no nonsense, alternative morality: I support what ensures the continued propagation of my species. An unbelievable number of my ancestors, most outside of my recognizable species, have lived, procreated and died in the most unbelievably brutal circumstances -- scratching and clawing their way through life, all so that I could live. They fought so hard that they survived through evolutionary and geological changes. They evolved better ways that I might live and evolved away anything that I don't need. I owe my life to their lives and I and my fellow progeny of their sacrifice must carry on in the best manner possible or their lives were all in vain.

You can derive almost every modern appropriate moral behavior from that moral axiom, to include the proper treatment of our food stock: plant, animal or other.

One last thing. I was particularly moved by a lecture I sat in on by the Dalai Lama about violence. One of the things he revealed and I felt particularly moved by was the concept of violence against ourselves. In his lecture he discussed self-immolation, but I took it to mean anything that does our own bodies harm. Veganism is not something that is good for our bodies, it does our bodies harm and is such "violence" against ourselves. Of course I'd also add that the Dalai Lama once had an army, and his favorite food is Sokham Bexe which includes minced meat and butter.

>So here's a valid, no nonsense, alternative morality: I support what ensures the continued propagation of my species.

Supporting meat eating when there's no other way to survive is a different situation. Many people in first world countries have no problem living off of vegetarian or vegan diets. Any global movement to an eventual plant or artificial based food production and a distribution system would have to be a long, multi-phased rollout. And let's be frank, in 100 years (or however long) it is likely we will start to see this as palatable artificial meat products start to become produced, so eventually ethical vegans/vegetarians are probably going to win some form of this debate as it will be cheaper and more efficient for people to grow artificial meat than to grow and raise livestock for years. There will be a friction period where artificial meat probably doesn't taste as good, but once those kinks are worked out and production finally meets demand, people will see raising of animals for food as unnecessary.

>More concretely, Vegans' strange stated obsession with neuron based nervous systems locks them into a philosophy where life isn't important, only things that they believe can feel are. It's the dietary equivalent of "if I don't get caught, it's not wrong".

Pain and emotion are the characteristics ethical vegans/vegetarians try to use to judge whether it's ethical to kill something, and development of a central nervous system often provides a good insight into these characteristics. Some studies have shown plant responses to stimuli, but so far no studies have shown that plants experience a "subjective experience" or are capable of thoughts in the way we think of them. Bacteria and paramecia also respond to stimuli, sometimes in complex ways, but most people would not consider them sentient.

If it's later proven that plants can really experience things like pain and emotion, then most ethical vegans/vegetarians would likely shift their stance and promote 100% artificial food for consumption, derived purely through chemical reactions and petri dishes.

> life isn't important, only things that they believe can feel are

This is how all moral actors behave, though. Universally speaking, life is not considered important, except in certain religions like Jainism. Accidental or intentional killing of bacteria, amoeba, and dust mites doesn't bother anyone because of a perceived sense of so-called sentience. People all use "sentience" as a guidebook for how they should treat things (most agree torture of a pig or sheep is immoral, but most would not think something like a plant or single-celled organism is capable of being tortured). We all drew these lines, and science can help us determinine just how close our psychological lines match up with nature's real lines.

Sentience, emotion, consciousness, and pain fall on a spectrum and aren't necessarily "all or nothing", but at the very least science can help us truly identify the organisms closest to "nothings".

>The argument Vegans make is curiously specific, if we met an alien species unlike anything we had ever encountered before, I'd rather send an omnivore to investigate, because if it didn't have nervous system built up of neurons, no matter how intelligent, a Vegan might put it on the dinner menu...that's a bad first contact protocol.

Assuming the alien species consumes organisms, unfortunately it is far more likely they would consider us a meal than the reverse.

> but so far no studies have shown that plants experience a "subjective experience" or are capable of thoughts in the way we think of them

You could make easy arguments that this is true of most animals we eat. Does a clam really have a subjective experience?

Anthropomorphism is a powerful bias.

> If it's later proven that plants can really experience things like pain and emotion, then most ethical vegans/vegetarians would likely shift their stance and promote 100% artificial food for consumption, derived purely through chemical reactions and petri dishes.

I would think that anybody who's ever grown plants can recognize that they have an emotional life of some kind...they even like it when you sing to them! Plants have bad days and good days, get sick, move towards favorable stimulii and withdraw from unfavorable stimulii. They can communicate with each other and have fascinating and diverse sex lives (even evolving incredible pieces of aeronautical engineering to help them survive). There's considerable research that plants and humans can form emotional connections and self-support each other.

Any Vegan serious concerned about sentience should stay awake at night thinking if they're doing the right thing w/r to plants.

> then most ethical vegans/vegetarians would likely shift their stance and promote 100% artificial food for consumption, derived purely through chemical reactions and petri dishes.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Soylent-like movement would happen. I'm surprised it already hasn't. It seems like a heck of a lot less trouble for day-to-day living than what most Vegans go through.

Thanks for the thoughts.

How does cannibalism fit into this framework? Is it still "foolish from the start" to apply morality to eating? If not, what specifically make eating other highly intelligent life but not humans okay?

Please note this question isn't related to legality or convenience, only morality.

I'll counter with some questions, why is cannibalism considered immoral in your culture but there are some where it is not, and there are others were certain types of cannibalism or referential cannibalism is okay?

Please drive your thinking all the way back to the basis of the morals governing it and how it arose. Do you accept that basis as an axiom for everything in your life or do you pick and choose whatever society has told you are the correct ones? Is your system of morality really based on the original foundation for that morality, or based on social convention?

If you believe your moral system is "better" than just following social convention and has a deeper basis, perhaps some kind of religion. Do you follow all the tenants of that religion or do you pick and choose from those? Why and why not?

If you've rejected that moral basis for some things, why haven't you rejected it for all things?

If you are without a moral basis, what is the foundation you are using for your moral system? When you believe something is immoral, and somebody asks "why?" enough times, what is the answer?

Or have you arbitrarily just chosen some moral rules you think sound nice e.g. (don't kill each other), and rejected others which you think don't sound so nice e.g. (you must perform exactly these rituals, don't mix fabrics). Why have you done this? What is your guiding principle?

If we don't share the same basis for our moral systems, why should I follow your morals and you follow mine?

Exactly. That topics like these receive any attention is ridiculous. It shouldn't come as a surprise to us, however, that a topic so empty has appeared in what amounts to a lifestyle magazine run by first world, white, upper middle class slackers disconnected from reality. And perhaps most amusing of all is that these are exactly the same kinds of people that are pro-choice. There's something wrong going on here, some state of stunted development.

These are exactly the kinds of people who blather on about "speciesism" but fail to understand that there's a seething sanctimony to their moralizing. The official message is "we're no better", but the very idea of speciesism is speciesist and incoherently so. "We, the great moral humans, are better than these other animals for we do not behave as they do. Where they would have no qualms about eating us or any other animal, we, the morally superior, do not."

I suggest the author be shipped promptly to the third world, some war zone in Africa suffering from famine, without resources, without her Lexus, her cashmere turtle necks, and her credit cards, and be put in a position where she must learn resourcefulness and survival or perish. Heck, if we put all of our limp-wristed, hipster millennials through that kind of experience, there might be fewer hipsters. Reality is the greatest teacher.

Eat the damn octopus.

Here's a line that's pretty clear: does the creature itself care if its cohort are eaten? That is, why should I protect say dolphins, if other dolphins make no effort to protect their own?

This means, for octopuses (octopi as a plural is incorrect; its Greek not Latin) its probably ok. They are born alone, are loners and meet others of their kind only to mate. So snack away!

I used dolphins in my example because of a curious behavior seen at an annual dolphin slaughter. The Japanese annually net dolphins in a bay where they like to congregate (the dolphins, not the Japanese). Every year some dolphins escape the net.

The next year, the dolphins return en masse. Why? Didn't the dolphins that escaped give some alarm - "Aliens with catchy stringy things will entangle you and drag you up to the bright place if you go there!"

No, they apparently don't. Either because they don't communicate very well (which speaks poorly for their intelligence), or they just don't give a damn about other dolphins. Either way - dolphins pass my snack test.

Even some of the dolphins that escaped, return the next year. Why? Maybe they like it! Maybe its some rite of passage to run the gauntlet, risk capture in the bay of death! Like some Klingon warrior ritual or something. Then hey! we're just doing our part!

Or, far more likely in my opinion, they're just not very smart.

This reminds me of HG Well's Time Machine where it explored the theme of one human species eating another human species.

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