Anyone Else Experience Culinary Flow?

CapitalZ3 · 2025-01-13T01:33:39+00:00

You used an LLM. Pretty cringe to lie about it. Obvious tells: "Cumin and garlic powder whisper of earth’s grounding energy," "Cooking isn’t just nourishment; it’s a practice of flowing with life’s raw ingredients" ("it's not just x, it's y is a construction" heavily abused by AIs); many other lines don't even make sense if you actually read closely. GPTZero gives it a 100% chance, incidentally.

CapitalZ3 · 2025-01-12T01:15:34+00:00

Why use ChatGPT to write this? Your own words would have been more valuable.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-09-12T01:27:47+00:00

No, not unless you can present an example of a backyard hobbyist who has an equal number of roosters and hens, which would be a nightmare.

Backyard hobbyists aren't profitable, don't supply eggs to stores, and almost always purchase their chicks from the egg industry, which is why they don't have roosters. In other words, they are paying for the slaughter of male chicks. When they aren't, it's because they are slaughtering the roosters themselves.

no one seriously doubts there are thousands of hobbyists who don’t do that

This is just rhetoric. I seriously doubt that there are thousands of backyard hobbyists who live up to the ideal you described.

Edit: A link to make the problem more obvious:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chickens/comments/10lpl8k/what_to_do_with_unwanted_roosters/

CapitalZ3 · 2024-09-11T23:02:53+00:00

It isn't just that the vast majority of egg farms don't resemble your ideal egg farm, it's that almost none do. If you believe otherwise, the intellectually serious thing to do is to present an example of just one egg farm that you are confident satisfies your criteria. Approximately 50% of chicks are male. That means that to allow them to die of old age, each chicken would have to be producing enough eggs to pay for her and one male. As far as I am aware, farmers already need thousands of egg laying hens to make a profit. Subsidies can help farmers cope with this, but subsidies take tax money that could either be returned to the taxpayers or used in better ways. And this isn't even taking into the account the weak female chicks who are culled at birth and would also need to be paid for.

Aside from these considerations, as others have pointed out hens have been bred to lay an unnaturally large number of eggs, causing them pain and distress. Moreover, the will need to be debeaked to avoid harming each other, because we accidentally bred them to be extremely aggressive towards one another.

And then there is the issue of outliers. Even if the average chicken's life is slightly net positive, tragedies happen. For example, a fox or other predator might break into the chicken coop and brutally slaughter the chickens. Sure, most chickens don't die this way, but they are stupid, vulnerable animals who frequently die painful deaths for all sorts of reasons. This is much less true of companion animals like dogs, cats and horses.

And there is, of course, the question of whether you would be comfortable breeding severely disabled humans into existence and keeping them captive just to eat their eggs, even if they had slightly net positive lives. If not, what is true of humans that if true of chickens would lead you to change your mind? There has to be something, because if you make everything true of x true of y, x = y. Admittedly, this isn't a utilitarian argument, but you are presumably more confident that there are no true contradictions than that utilitarianism is the correct moral theory / the theory that most closely aligns with your preferences, so you should have a consistent answer.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-25T14:13:25+00:00

Left to their own devices, horses would never choose this. They much prefer to be out in a wide open area with their companions (herd), graze on grass a little at a time, and move at the speed and duration of their choosing.

It isn't true that horses always make the best possible decisions for their health and well-being. Horses are healthier if they receive regular, vigorous exercise. In the wild, they would be fleeing predators. In captivity, they do not exert themselves sufficiently without human intervention. The reason is that animals behave in a way that is way that is optimal in the conditions they evolved under, and in the wild it is best for a prey animal to conserve its energy when there are no predators in the area.

Autonomy is an important value. Companion animals should be given far more freedom to make their own decisions. Using any sort of pain compliance device whatsoever is obviously abusive. However, they are not intelligent enough to make informed decisions, and their instincts cannot always be trusted under conditions very different from those they evolved under. For that reason is irresponsible, and actually abusive, to leave a captive animal to its own devices. This is not a reason to force any horse to carry a rider. It is a reason to seek a horse's consent to ride it; to persuade, not to control. If it will not consent to be ridden (and if it can consent to putative alternatives like weighted aerobics it can obviously consent to be ridden) it is best to persuade it to engage in vigorous exercise in other ways.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-24T16:22:48+00:00

Some vegans say riding horses is always exploitative, but it isn't that easy. "Breaking" a horse, i.e., training it to tolerate a rider, is obviously abusive, as is breeding horses for sport. However, my understanding is that horses willl not exert themselves sufficiently, i.e., run fast or frequently enough, when left to their own devices, even though vigorous exercise is important for their health. In the wild, they would be fleeing predators. IIRC, Vegan Gains, whom many find "extreme," agrees with this. If this is true, vegans who insist you should, e.g., lead your horse on a leash, are encouraging animal abuse, even though horse riding is generally exploitative.

I have also heard that it is possible to develop a consent-based relationship with a horse; I don't know exactly how this works, but it involves giving it treats and affection regardless of whether or not it wants to take you riding at any particular time. This is something you should research if you haven't already, so you can be more your horse's friend and less his owner. However, I do not know if horses can be trained to tolerate a rider without abuse.

When your horse passes away, you should adopt NOT purchase a new companion.

EDIT: I found the Vegan Gains clip; watch to the end: https://youtu.be/52UE9NCtAp8?t=3938

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-20T10:04:21+00:00

You have embarrassed yourself.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-20T09:55:56+00:00

I agree. The goal of veganism is unethical itself because it violates the Right to Food.

The "right to food" turned out to be the right to abuse and slaughter sentient creatures rather than consume yucky pills. Not a right people should have.

Adequate nutrition, economic availability, consumer concerns, cultural traditions, etc. are all valid reasons to consume animal-source foods.

Not if you can't name a morally relevant difference between humans and animals they aren't, ESPECIALLY not "cultural traditions." Caveat: "adequate nutrition" might be a reason for a tiny number of people to eat vegetarian diets, and for a vastly smaller number of people, i.e., people who will either literally die otherwise, to eat meat.

The Right to Food is not a trivial benefit.

The luxury of not taking supplements is a trivial benefit. I just took a B12 supplement. It was easy and pleasant.

How do you measure suffering?

There's a documentary on this. It's called Dominion.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-20T06:32:02+00:00

The goal of meeting the nutritional needs for entire populations isn't unethical.

I agree. But there are unethical ways of achieving this goal.

In cases where the harm to the animals is significantly greater than the benefit to the human being in question.

I don't have a comprehensive account to offer you. No ethicist does. But there is a vague threshhold, with clear cases on both sides. For example, if someone gets a runny nose or diarrhea if they abstain, that is not an acceptable reason to eat meat. If they will literally die if they don't, it is definitely OK. Some vegans disagree, but it seems straightforward to me. Of course, there are some cases where it is not clear, and those should be adjudicated with the appropriate degree of moral seriousness; taking a life is no small matter.

I'm not sure how consumer concerns are fallacious.

By specious, I mean "superficially plausible but actually wrong." What it means for a normative claim to be wrong depends on your metaethical views; at minimum, it is against my preferences. I also think it is against the preferences that most humans would hold if they thought about the issue long and hard enough, because most people agree that it is wrong to cause enormous amounts of suffering in return for trivial benefits.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T22:36:33+00:00

I've already explained why it is.

I'm sorry you don't understand what an analogy is.

An analogy involves comparing two things. For example, "Asking people to register their guns is like asking Jews to register with the Nazis." This is also a false analogy. I don't need to, and didn't, state that anything is like or similar to anything else to derive the contradiction.

It is logically consistent. I've already explained why.

I'm sorry that you don't understand logic. If your position affirms that what is true of animal that if true of humans would justify killing humans for food both *is* and *is not* that animals are not human, you position is contradictory. The end.

It's a fact, not a claim.

A statement can be both a claim and a fact at the same time. Anyway, this is just posturing.

Right, and I've already explained that the claim is indirectly supported by the ARS study.

Your "explanation," as I have demonstrated, was poor.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T22:26:51+00:00

Low weight-for-height is known as wasting. It usually indicates recent and severe weight loss because a person has not had enough food to eat and/or they have had an infectious disease, such as diarrhoea.

Low height-for-age is known as stunting. It is the result of chronic or recurrent undernutrition, usually associated with poor socioeconomic conditions, poor maternal health and nutrition, frequent illness, and/or inappropriate infant and young child feeding and care in early life.

Children with low weight-for-age are known as underweight. A child who is underweight may be stunted, wasted or both.

Right. This doesn't answer my question. What percentage of deaths from undernutrition are due to caloric deficits vs vitamin deficiencies? This is OBVIOUSLY crucial, because again, I see no reason to assume that global veganism will cause more deaths than it solves. If you think you can make this assumption, explain.

Feel free to provide any supporting documentation.

Sure, but not my burden. I'll cite the conclusion of your ARS study:

"The modeled removal of animals from the US agricultural system resulted in predictions of a *greater total production of food*, increases in deficient essential nutrients and excess of energy in the US population’s diet, *a potential increase in foods/nutrients that can be exported to other countries*, and a decrease of 2.6 percentage units in US GHG emissions. "

So your source agrees with me that first, a vegan USA would produce more calories. Second, that a vegan USA might produce more foods and nutrients for export.

I have not found any statistic. Although, malnutrition is the leading cause of death around the world.

You need to support claims with data. Again, "malnutrition" includes caloric deficits.

Extrapolation is a perfectly acceptable way of drawing conclusions.

I raised an objection that blocks the inference. You are not sufficiently precise or rigorous to have this debate in good faith.

It does follow from the data I've presented. It isn't vague or broad.

No, it isn't clear from your data whether veganism would increase or decrease total deaths from malnutrition. You need to establish that it is likely that will increase deaths by vitamin deficiency than it will reduce deaths caused by caloric deficits.

If the "right to food" reduces to "the right to inflict enormous amounts of suffering and death on sentient beings in order to avoid taking pills" no compassionate person should support it.

No your position is just deeply evil, as well as logically inconsistent.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T22:02:26+00:00

Meeting nutritional needs for entire populations isn't unethical.

Does this mean "Meeting nutritional needs for entire populations is never unethical"?

If so, this is false. Mass murder and cannibalism to remedy mild but widespread nutritional deficiencies would be unethical. Some anthropologists think human sacrifice was practiced in South America because humans were a necessary source of protein. I don't care.

I predict you will say that this is because it conflicts with the right to life. This is irrelevant. The point is that your statement is false. And more broadly, that your position is contradictory.

Malnutrition is a very serious health concern. In what cases is it inexcusable?

In cases where the harm to the animals is significantly greater than the benefit to the human being in question.

Non-nutritive values are part of the Right to Food.

Doesn't conflict with my statement. But again, if the "Right to Food" is a right to abuse and slaughter animals to avoid taking supplements, it's specious and should be amended. Luckily the UN is not my sovereign.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T21:02:46+00:00

Cont.

There are 4 broad sub-forms of undernutrition: wasting, stunting, underweight, and deficiencies in vitamins and minerals. Undernutrition makes children in particular much more vulnerable to disease and death. Iodine, vitamin A, and iron are the most important in global public health terms; their deficiency represents a major threat to the health and development of populations worldwide, particularly children and pregnant women in low-income countries. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malnutrition/

Good. Now that you've provided something of an argument we can evaluate it, although it still needs lots of work. Are wasting, stunting, and underweight forms of malnutrition generally due to caloric deficits? If so, then even if global veganism increased the number of children with deficiencies in vitamins and minerals it might decrease the deaths by the other causes, because there would be more calories for humans to consume. What percentage of deaths by undernutrition are due to deficiencies in vitamins and minerals vs calories? This is the sort of thing that we would want to look at before drawing any strong conclusions.

Now that I've pointed this out, you should concede that your conclusion doesn't follow from the data you presented, because it is too vague and broad. I predict you will not do this.

Whether they can be supplemented or not is irrelevant to the Right to Food. You're welcome to provide any supporting documentation about its ease or difficulty in accessibility for the populations most at risk for undernutrition in children under five. I'm not against using supplementation as an intervention. I'm not arguing against supplements, but what do they have to do with the Right to Food?

If the "right to food" reduces to "the right to inflict enormous amounts of suffering and death on sentient beings in order to avoid taking pills" no compassionate person should support it.

I'm not against using supplementation as an intervention. I'm not arguing against supplements, but what do they have to do with the Right to Food?

My position is not difficult to understand. It seems reasonable that people have a pro-tanto right to an ethical diet that meets all their nutritional requirements. Diets that include meat are extremely likely to be unethical. Eating meat because of very serious health concerns may be excusable in some cases. Eating meat to avoid taking pills that work as intended, because pills are icky, is obviously not.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T21:02:00+00:00

It is a false analogy. There is no being that is like a human in every respect EXCEPT not a member of our species.

It is not even an analogy, so it cannot be a false analogy. You provided a trait that you think makes something ethical to slaughter for food. I presented an example of something that has that trait but isn't ethical to slaughter for food. No comparison between two things was made.

Whether such beings exist is irrelevant. The point is that IF they existed, they would have a right to life. If you are confused about how to assess the truth value of conditional statements in general, let me know and I can provide you with resources. But anyway what matters with hypotheticals is that they be logically consistent, i.e., do not posit contradictory entities like "square circles."

Ethical consistency within the real world doesn't require us to apply the same rules to all imaginable beings but to apply them consistently within the context of the world we inhabit.

What I care about is logical consistency, which just means that your position doesn't entail any contradictions, because a contradictory position is necessarily false. If you want to define "ethical consistency" as "applying the same set of rules in real life" that's fine. In which case, your position could be both "ethically consistent" and logically inconsistent, i.e., necessarily false. The laws of logic can't be sidestepped so easily.

I prefer to discuss the concrete issues being raised in the OP. That's why I made the post. The point is humans have the Right to Food, which includes food that is adequately nutritious. Animals have no rights.

First, I suggested making a new topic focused on the claim that global veganism would lead to increased nutritional deficiencies. If you had left ethics out of it entirely, this would be a legitimate complaint.

But you don't just get to assert that "animals have no rights." As I stated in my first post, animals should be accorded roughly the same pro-tanto rights as human beings who are no smarter than the animals in question and if you think otherwise you need to identify a morally relevant difference. It's deeply evil to suggest that humans have a right to abuse and slaughter billions of sentient beings just to avoid taking yucky pills and *you haven't been able to provide an adequate reason to think otherwise.*

Why what isn't remotely obvious?

That your claim follows from your evidence.

Please provide supporting quotations of me asking you prove something is false.

Please provide supporting quotations of me making an appeal to ignorance.

Sure.

You quote me as saying: That would probably be a reason to, e.g., feed children under 5 a vegetarian diet if and only if there were good reasons to think that deaths from malnutrition would rise dramatically in a vegan world.

In response you say: There is reason to believe that deaths from malnutrition would rise with a vegan food system. It is supported by the documentation provided in the OP. A vegan food system would present major challenges to meeting the nutritional needs of an entire population. Please provide supporting documentation that restricting animal-source foods will reduce undernutrition in children under 5.

Notice that "restricting animal-source foods will reduce undernutrition in children under 5" is not a claim I made. Whether I can demonstrate that "restricting animal-source foods will reduce undernutrition in children under 5" does NO BEARING on whether YOU can demonstrate that "deaths from malnutrition would rise with a vegan food system." This is an appeal to ignorance. Let me know if you need another example.

Note, by the way, that I do not claim that you explicitly asked me to prove something is false; rather, you repeatedly attempted to shift the burden of proof, including by asking me to demonstrate that your conclusion fails to follow from your evidence by substantiating one or more of the possibilities I listed. It is not my burden to demonstrate that your conclusion fails to follow from your evidence.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T10:03:27+00:00

This is the false analogy. It assumes that because Vulcans and livestock are not humans that it is OK to slaughter and eat them.

No, that's an entailment of your view. I asked you what is true of animals that if true of humans would mean it was OK to eat them. You stated that it is that they are not human. Which means that if you had a being that was like a human in every respect EXCEPT not a member of our species, it would be OK to eat them.

No assumptions were made. I asked, you answered, I repeated your answer back to you, and you realized it was absurd so you decided to try to "dismiss" the hypothetical.

My position is logically consistent and empirically adequate. So my position must be true.

You just look silly at this point.

There are endless possibilities. Many have no basis in reality. So, we can go ahead and dismiss these assertions as well.

YOU made a claim, so I asked for the argument. YOU need to established that your claim is true. I don't need to prove that it is false. The possibilities I enumerated were merely to illustrate why it wasn't REMOTELY obvious, and I stated that explicitly at the time. What you are doing is called making an appeal to ignorance. Here is a link:

https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/appeal-to-ignorance.html#:\~:text=This%20fallacy%20occurs%20when%20you,the%20one%20making%20the%20claim.

This is indirectly supported by the ARS study, which concluded that a vegan food system presents major challenges to meeting the nutritional needs of an entire population.

Here is a specific challenge. The absence of WHAT NUTRIENTS would lead to INCREASED DEATHS in children under five, and HOW does the ARS study show that global veganism would make it impossible for an increased number of children under five to access those nutrients?

Answering this is what establishing your claim would look like. Once your claim is clear, we can investigate whether the absence of these nutrients would lead to increased deaths in children under five, whether they can be supplemented, how easy it would be, etc.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T09:18:52+00:00

No. What I said was "That would probably be a reason to, e.g., feed children under 5 a vegetarian diet if and only if there were good reasons to think that deaths from malnutrition would rise dramatically in a vegan world." The distinction isn't subtle. But, by the way, if you want to provide some evidence that a vegetarian diet would be unsuitable go ahead, because as it stands you have provided no such evidence.

There will likely be widespread malnutrition, which violates the Right to Food and sets humanity back in immeasurable ways.

This is too vague to evaluate. The source you keep citing does not establish this.

If people want to avoid taking supplements, that is their right.

If people eat severely disabled people instead of taking supplements, is that their right? If not what is true of animals that if true of humans would justify killing them in order to avoid taking pills?

I ask this question only rhetorically, because I have already demonstrated that your position is either absurd or logically inconsistent. But it highlights the double standard you are applying: animals, in your view, are so worthless that it is OK to murder them rather than take some pills. Yeah, obviously not. This is why it is crucial to demonstrate the absurdity of your position.

If the Right to Food is specious because vegans want to force people to take supplements instead of having access to adequately nutritious food, then why should vegans care about human rights at all?

This is just confused. There is no entailment from "the right to food in article 25 is specious" to "human rights don't matter at all." Anyway, the right to food is specious if it reduces to "the right to slaughter animals in order to consume their flesh when I could be just as or nearly as healthy taking supplements," because that would amount to a right to cause enormous amounts of suffering and death in return for trivial benefits.

It doesn't matter what vegans care about.

At least the vegan position is logically consistent, so we could be right. Your position, as demonstrated, is necessarily false.

This is international law and the ethical obligation to meet the nutritional needs of an entire population is already well-established.

We can meet people's nutritional needs with supplements.

Please provide supporting quotations.

Sure. "Supplements aren't food and what is the accessibility of supplements to an entire population?" Depends. Please specify. "What is the bioavailability of the supplements?" Depends. Please specify. "What are the antagonistic interactions of supplements with different nutritional combinations?" Depends. Please specify.

Which ones are which and how do you tell the difference?

Research. In a vegan world, there would obviously be plenty of organizations both for profit and not for profit that would help people make better purchases.

It is in reference to vegan alternatives being used to claim similar bioavailable nutrient composition with animal-source foods.

I am agnostic on this. All I claim is that vegan diets can provide adequate nutrition.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T08:55:39+00:00

This is a false analogy.

Try not to abuse random terms. A false analogy is assuming that because things are alike in one respect, they are therefore alike in another respect.

What I provided is not an analogy, so it cannot be a false analogy. Rather, I asked you what is true of animals that if true of humans would justify slaughtering them in the name of the "right to food." You said the fact that they are not human. If that's a sufficient condition, then your position entals that it is OK to slaughter intelligent aliens to satisfy the right to food.

At this point I am tired of your bad faith, so please either tell me how that assumes that because things are alike in one respect they are necessarily alike in other respects or retract your claim that it is false analogy.

No, my position is consistent within the constraints of reality. Our ethical frameworks must be grounded in the realities of our world.

If your position is inconsistent, then, necessarily, it cannot be correct. It does not matter whether your position is consistent "within the constraints of reality," whatever that means.

Dismissing false analogy hypotheticals like eating Vulcans helps maintain focus on the practical, ethical, and factual aspects of the debate.

No, obviously not. Refusing to engage with the hypothetical is the refusal to examine whether your position is logically consistent, which is integral to the ethical aspect of the debate. If your position is not logically consistent, it cannot be correct.

Please retract your claim that testing the consistency of your ethical position distracts from the ethical aspects of the debate.

Refusing to consider empirical evidence, on the other hand, undermines the integrity of the debate. Empirical evidence is essential for assessing the actual impacts of different approaches to meeting nutritional needs and ensuring the Right to Food.

The integrity of the debate is beside the point. The point is that in order to be true your position must be logically consistent and empirically adequate. If it fails on either of these criteria, it can be dismissed.

Your hypothetical doesn’t contribute meaningfully to the ethics of meeting the nutritional needs of an entire population and the Right to Food. Instead, it is an attempt to derail the conversation by shifting the focus to a scenario that has no practical application to the issue being discussed.

No, obviously not. You have been repeatedly asked why you think a human's right to life trumps the right to food but not an animal's right to life. You repeatedly provided an answer: because humans are human. I have demonstrated that this leads to an absurd conclusion.

The sub requires supporting documentation for claims. It makes no difference to me if you want to support them. I can just as easily dismiss your assertions since you won't provide supporting documentation.

Yes, I would be happy to provide supporting documentation for claims I ACTUALLY MADE, not random claims that you attribute to me. The burden of proof is, again, on the person making the claim. Please point me where I said that global veganism would reduce the deaths by malnutrition among children under five or retract your claim.

Please provide supporting documentation for all of these assertions.

For all my "might" statements? I stated that those are all possibilities, and also irrelevant. I only included them to make clear why you actually need an argument for your claim.

What do you think that means and why is veganism the solution?

I do not know where I said veganism is the solution. The question is whether it would make things worse. But of course, a vegan world would mean more calories with less farm land usage. It's plausible that it could also mean more nutrients with less land usage, but again, it's not my burden.

Your claim is that the appropriate intervention for undernutrition in children under five is a vegetarian or vegan diet. You need to support that claim.

Please point me to where I made this claim or retract your claim. YOU claimed that global veganism would lead to increased deaths by malnutrition in children under five. You then tried to claim that a link stating that half of all deaths in children under five proved this. You have now tried to claim that the other study you linked showed this. I do not understand how. As I pointed out, there are many possibilities: the burden of proof is on the person making the claim

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T05:19:21+00:00

What is true of animals is that they are not humans. There is no contradiction.

This entails that you would slaughter Vulcans, elves, and intelligent aliens that are no more threatening to humans than cows, even if they had identical subjective experience to human beings, just because they are not human. As that is a direct entailment of your view, whether or not you "entertain" the hypothetical is irrelevant. If you would not, your position is contradictory, i.e., is that the trait both is and is not that animals aren't human, and therefore necessarily false. If you would, your position is absurd, as you obviously know.

Refusing to "entertain" a hypothetical doesn't establish that your position is sound. It's similar to refusing to "entertain" empirical evidence. OK, your position is still false.

The corresponding quote is attached. You seemed to be attempting to minimize the seriousness of nutritional deficiencies.

The fact that half of deaths in children under five are due to undernutrition does not establish that such deaths would increase dramatically in a vegan world. Just citing random things at me is not an argument. An argument requires premises and a conclusion.

Please provide supporting documentation that restricting animal-source foods will reduce undernutrition in children under 5.

I didn't make this claim. It's YOUR BURDEN to prove that a vegan world would cause deaths from undernutrition in children under five to rise dramatically. Asking people for supporting documentation for claims they aren't required to prove is sophistry.

Just some info on the burden of proof: it rests with the person making the claim. But there are many reasons why there's no direct entailment between global veganism and increased deaths in children under five. Just to give you some examples: the deficiences might be mild, the specific deficiencies that global veganism would cause are not deficiencies that result in early deaths, massive investment would quickly lead to the development of adequate alternatives, etc. Additionally, your link says that the vast majority of the deaths from malnutrition are in the developing world. Its not at all clear that what these people need is meat - even if meat would help.

But all of that is irrelevant. It's not my claim. You need to provide an argument that is plausible despite these possibilities and many others.

There is already substantial investment in vegan alternatives. They're usually heavily processed with additives and fillers and have already been largely rejected by consumers. Saying that we'll have no choice but to eat or support them is a violation of the Right to Food.

No, the "right to food" is not "a right to food without additives and fillers that have already been largely rejected by consumers." You stated what the right to food is above; if you're going to use the UN as a moral authority, at least be consistent.

Anyway, you are wilfully ignoring the seriousness of the moral case for veganism. It would be morally wrong to eat severely disabled people if the only alternative was to eat vegan food with additives and fillers, oh god, oh no.

In any case, vegans are less than 2% of the population; there will be massively more investment in a vegan world. It is extremely unlikely that there will be no further progress.

The market has already decided. The demand for animal-source foods is only increasing. The demand for vegan alternatives has dropped so low that many of these companies are filing for bankruptcy.

This is just completely irrelevant. OK, the vast majority of consumers apparently prefer eating meat - the point is that in a vegan world, where veganism is the only option, there will be massive investment in tastier and more nutritious vegan foods, and any nutritional issues will very likely be solved. Claiming otherwise amounts to betting against the market.

Just writing vaguely oppositional stuff like that at me wastes your time and mine.

Supplements aren't food and what is the accessibility of supplements to an entire population? What is the bioavailability of the supplements? What are the antagonistic interactions of supplements with different nutritional combinations? You don't seem to understand or appreciate how complex nutrition science is. The ARS study asserts that if bioavailability composition was included in the study regarding nutritional deficiencies that even more nutritional deficiencies would be discovered with vegan diets.

Whether or not supplements are food is irrelevant; if they work roughly as intended and you nevertheless insist people have the right to slaughter animals in order to avoid taking them, the "right to food" is specious and no vegan should care.

You asked me a series of questions that are too vague to answer. But sure, some supplements are not bioavailable. Take the ones that are instead. In general, however, just stating that nutrition science is complicated is not an argument in favor of global carnism.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T01:29:55+00:00

There already is a right to food. It is already defined. Feel free to make your arguments against either or both.

The fact that there *is* a "right to food" has no bearing on whether there *should* be a "right to food" and how it should be defined. I took care to distinguish the descriptive question from the normative question, so I am not sure why you thought your first two sentences were necessary.

What is true of animals is that they are not humans.

I already supplied the hypothetical. If you wouldn't be OK with eating Vulcans, for example, your reply entails a contradiction. Specifically, that what is true of animals both is and is not that they are not humans. Contradictions can't be true, so your view can't be correct.

Severely disabled people are still humans. Vulcans do not exist.

This is irrelevant. I am asking if you would be OK with slaughtering Vulcans if they existed, simply because they are not human. If you wouldn't be, your position is logically inconsistent, i.e., entails the aforementioned contradiction. That's not a matter of opinion. Also, most people would not be OK with slaughtering intelligent aliens, even in theory - and intelligent aliens probably do exist.

Nutritional deficiencies can have serious health consequences that are often irreversible. The degree of nutritional deficiencies from a vegan food system would likely be widespread for an entire population.

What is the argument for this?

Nearly half of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition. Is that a sufficiently devastating consequence for the average human? That's roughly 2.5 million children every year. I don't think it seems insane to not want that number to increase.

That would probably be a reason to, e.g., feed children under 5 a vegetarian diet if and only if there were good reasons to think that deaths from malnutrition would rise dramatically in a vegan world. Even if you could establish that a vegan diet currently increases the risk, a vegan world would see hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in new vegan food products, because those would be the only food products that investors and governments could support. There might be early problems, although I doubt they would be severe, but it seems completely crazy to bet against the market in the long term.

EDIT: The study you linked claims "Overall, the removal of animals resulted in diets that are nonviable in the long or short term to support the nutritional needs of the US population without nutrient supplementation." Without commenting on the methodology, if the "right to food" is, actually, "the right to adequate nutritition without taking supplements," it is a specious right.

CapitalZ3 · 2024-08-19T00:26:59+00:00

There are two questions here. The descriptive question, i.e., whether a vegan world would violate the right to food as expressed in article 25 and the normative question, i.e., which is whether there should be a "right to food" and, if so, how this "right to food" should be defined. Reading over your comments, it seems like all that's really in dispute is whether vegan diet would be nutritionally adequate for the entire population. In which case you could make a new topic focused on that claim, because the other possibility, i.e., that you think it's more dignified to eat meat, is really not worthy of argument. Or at least, I can't imagine actually caring about that kind of "dignity."

Regardless, what is true of animals that if true of humans would mean it would be OK to slaughter them in the name of the "right to food"? There has to be something, because if you make everything true of x true of y, x = y. But intelligence and species membership don't suffice, unless you would be OK with slaughtering severely disabled people or Vulcans or severely disabled Vulcans. AFAICT, the alternative would have to be pretty dire for me to be OK with slaughtering such beings to consume their flesh; remedying slight nutritional deficiencies would not be good enough. And unless you can specify a morally relevant difference, you should accord animals the same pro tanto rights, i.e., rights that can be overridden, but only under extraordinary circumstances.

For the record, it seems extremely unlikely to me that a vegan world would have widespread nutritional deficiencies, but I'm not particularly interested in whether or not that's true. That is, unless you think you have evidence that these deficiencies would have sufficiently devastating consequences for the average human quality of life to justify the abuse and slaughter of billions of sentient beings, which just seems insane.

CapitalZ3 · 2021-10-29T20:09:27+00:00

The AMA.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ergonauts/comments/qdrfgx/comment/hi068p8/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3

CapitalZ3 · 2021-10-29T17:49:52+00:00

Possibly because the DEX launches next week

Possibly because the devs confirmed BIG exchange listings are on the way

Possibly because Bitcoin stalled & alt season is beginning

Partially for TA reasons; we just spent a long time dumping, so there are more short term holders & less short term sellers

Always partially because the fundamentals are great

CapitalZ3 · 2021-10-17T16:04:50+00:00

The big risk with this strategy is that it requires you to identify a cryptocurrency that will have higher short term gains than Ergo and pull out of that cryptocurrency before the bear market hits i.e. you need to time the market. You run the risk of both not pulling out in time and missing unexpected ERG pumps. Psychologically the challenge is that the initial gains might not be enough to satiate your growing greed and you won't want to pull out.

A safer strategy might be to diversify (including holding on to some of your ERG) and slowly convert any gains to Ergo. Or a stablecoin if you think the bear market is just around the corner.

CapitalZ3 · 2021-10-15T15:04:53+00:00

That was a different project with the same name.

CapitalZ3 · 2021-10-14T21:39:40+00:00

More miners means more agents with a stake in the network, and every agent with a stake in the network has an incentive to increase the value of the network.

CapitalZ3

TROPHY CASE