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Comment by talkingquickly | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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".

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