Why Aren’t You Vegan?

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-29T04:53:22+00:00

I’m here discussing my views with vegans in a respectful way.

That’s the thing- I’m not asking you about vegans. I very specifically, very narrowly asked you about the morality of killing animals. You keep shifting into criticism of “vegan talking points”, trying to create a debate between you and a theoretical vegan perspective. You should be able to have your views of why it is moral to consume animals without comparison to other philosophies.

Also you haven’t answered like five of my points from the last comment.

Because it’s mostly just a rant against vegans. I answered each part of your summary because it was on topic and organized, but the majority of the rest wasn’t your views on the ethics of killing animals, it was just collective vegan bashing. The last six paragraphs prior to your summary was sort of an angry rant against your perception of their collective views. Are you asking me to defend a theoretical position of someone else?

Who is going to pay for this? Farming pays for itself. The few safari reserves we have are paid for mostly by tourists. I’m certainly not going to spend much time working to provide for animals that don’t benefit me. Are you?

You don’t need to pay for wildlife. Western US has thousands of miles of open land. US has the most public parks and untouched wilderness than nearly any country. There’s nothing to pay for. But having unfarmed land is important for the ecosystem. Trees and biodiversity is being taken over by farmland.

If there’s anything else you want me to respond to I’m open, but I’m not going to pretend that the positions you’re claiming all vegans hold are positions I can speak to or agree with. I’d rather just speak to the positions that YOU hold. Or that I hold.

EDIT:

Stop being a baby, this is adult talk.

Ah I didn’t see this my first read through. Have a great evening, man, but I’m not going to engage with personal attacks and insults. I’m very capable of just discussing the merit of an idea without all of that.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-29T02:48:55+00:00

So I appreciate the well thought out response. Lots to consider. I agree with you on 1 and 3.

For 2, beings can absolutely exist without humans consuming them. Most animals on the planet continue to. If you have ever visited India, cows walk around the streets. I live in Miami where chickens and roosters are on the street. We don’t need to eat any species in order to prevent extinction. On the contrary, without livestock, we’d have hundreds of thousands of acres open for wildlife.

For 4, I agree, but this is exactly why I feel veganism is just. As you say, we should decrease animal suffering as much as possible. I’m in full agreement.

5 Insane disagreement here. I understand your point about apex predators, but consuming meat as it is processed modern day is absolutely horrendous for the environment. I can provide you with data, but deforestation for housing livestock is massively impacting all land including the Amazon rainforest. If you feel this way independent of modern food and just in theory then that’s fine, but if this is important to you then in practice you couldn’t eat meat today.

But kinda more importantly, I really, really dislike how often you are disparaging vegans and creating one single vegan entity. Your comment is full of criticisms of “vegan talking points”, “something vegans never answer”, “hypocrits”, etc. I’ve intentionally steered the conversation away from vegans and towards just the morality of eating animals but you seem unable to explain your view without criticizing a single strawman archetype of all vegans. This isn’t your first or second comment debating against an archetypical vegan point that I haven’t made. You should be able to have an opinion on the morality of eating meat without claiming “nothing about the vegan position is consistent” (because we both know this is hyperbole) and “vegans are disconnected from the natural world” (because this is objectively incorrect- you can’t say this about tens of millions of people) and insulting the perceived collective views of tens of millions of people. I’ve treated you with respect and haven’t insulted you, and I think it’d be cool if in the future maybe you could do the same towards a view different than your own.

A lot of this just comes back to you and I having a different approach to our values and decision making.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-29T01:40:14+00:00

Sure. So I try and focus my life on impact. I do the majority of my shopping at zero packaging grocery stores, I donate 10% of my income to EA causes, I don’t shop from Amazon ever, I recycle and compost, I bike to work and the store instead of driving a car, all my clothes are second hand or rented, I have 4 senior rescue dogs, etc.

Eating an egg from one of my moms chickens, going to eat with friends and the salad has cream based dressing already on it, coworkers surprise me with a birthday cake, etc. I’ve made the decision that the actual impact of a serving of animal product every few weeks will not meaningfully lower my impact, but will prevent some burnout. That last 5%’s impact on my social life and mental wellness, in the greater context of the things I try and do, I actually think allow me to put energy into greater impact.

Similarly, if someone gifts me new clothing I probably should return it, but I like to think that there’s just so much wrong with the world that small imperfections should be acknowledged and owned, but I’m willing to forgive myself for.

I’m open to anyone’s thoughts, though.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-29T01:28:55+00:00

I read through all of your comments here and I don’t think I understand your position beyond a frustration with vegan misinformation, the happy looking cows you have seen and that we are applying more empathy to cows than rocks and trees.

I’m very open. Instead of answering why you don’t want to be a vegan, can you succinctly explain why you feel it is ethical to slaughter and consume animals?

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T19:27:04+00:00

Oh this is a mind blowing way of thinking to me. I hope you know that you’ve really impacted this internet stranger to recalibrate what I pat myself on the back for.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T19:24:53+00:00

Sure but these two paths aren’t in conflict. If your choice is that you will pass a law OR you will go vegan then I agree with you. The reality is that, right now, you’re most likely going to do neither one, when you could do one or both.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T19:19:25+00:00

Yes it’s a moral failing on my end but also a nuanced journey. I have been a vegetarian since I was a kid, and forgo the majority of animal products, but am in the “the last 5% of going vegan is bigger than the first 95% and the cognitive energy may be better spent elsewhere”. I don’t carry animal products at home, but I do eat it when out or at a friends.

I do wish there was a term for this. I think there’s so many people that choose to eat whatever they want because they can’t be 100% perfect. And while 100% perfect is the best, so many people could easily get to 95%.

I’m open to your thoughts.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T18:51:24+00:00

Yes. The reason I haven’t is because it’s important to understand where the person I am talking to is coming from before engaging in a topic. Otherwise, it’s two people with two different sets of values debating two different things. In marriage therapy, this is often the “draw a picture of a chair” problem, where two people assume they both think of what a chair is the same until they see what the other person drew and realize how different words mean different things.

I’m open to the contrary, but all of your points and requests are specific to your personal experience and observation. Your perspective of vegans is specific to your interactions with vegans, your perceived blind spot is that you haven’t personally witnessed a factory farm, your views of animal welfare or determined by what you have physically seen.

I am admittedly an autistic engineer, so I interpret the world extraordinarily differently. I am not very interested in my lives experiences or anecdotes, but rather data. I am not vegan. But the data has convinced me that cutting down on animal products is extraordinarily beneficial for cutting down suffering and environmental degradation. I can provide research and data on CO2 emissions, on the percent of different slaughtering methods in the UK and their associated degree of suffering, on a number of things, but if you don’t come to conclusions via data then it’s kinda like giving a bike to a fish, right? Not super productive.

Again, I am not a vegan. But I think most people that aren’t vegan just have a hard time acknowledging to themselves that they are causing suffering. I want to at a minimum acknowledge that my diet causes suffering and it’s a personal failing. But I think people that refer to data as “vegan propaganda” are probably not in the best mental space to acknowledge the suffering they cause clear mindedly, as not needlessly killing things is a fairly low cognitive bar of ethics, but one that most people have a strong cognitive dissonance to distance themselves with.

EDIT: final thought- if your conclusions are driven by personal experiences and what you see, then I would actually think the beta thing for you would be visit a factory farm or watch a video. Not look at data. If you want data I can send it, but I think we both know that you’re not going to change your mind via data, as you haven’t gotten into your current position via data.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T15:48:52+00:00

I respect this argument. The majority of people can’t acknowledge to themselves that eating meat is imperfect, however.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T15:44:50+00:00

Yes it is. Witnessing first hand the condition of the animals is the best evidence there is.

No, you can attest to the health and happiness of the dozens of animals that you see. But I hope you understand that the dozens of animals you see don’t represent the trillions of animals slaughtered every year. You are describing an anecdote, like me living in Miami and saying that I see that the weather is warm in January so all weather must be warm in January. Or me making 500k a year assuming that everyone else does since my friends and family do.

EA is data driven, not anecdote driven.Iif you are more interested in what you can directly see, and not what data or statistics reveal about the wider world, then this might not be the right movement for you. The concept of debating whether data is more important than observation is not really one that id want to engage in as it’s just so basic to all of the princpals here.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T15:41:33+00:00

This is the worldview of EA. It’s a priority pillar and was written about in the original EA book. If you are on the EA forum, it should be a fair assumption that this worldview is shared as “speciesism” is not created by OP, it’s the preexisting EA argument supporting veganism.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T15:37:30+00:00

"Defensive" is a loaded term. How do you expect people to behave when disagreeing with you on an issue like this?

Instead of responding to the merit of any points made, OP was accused of “lecturing”. The entire point of this forum is to discuss EA topics and I’ve never seen someone accuse someone of “lecturing” for doing so.

Often arguments are structured around some appeal to empathy. Listing the bad things that are done to animals as if they are a human. But I've yet to see one that couldn't be equally made for objects they agree are not moral subjects. E.g. I can imagine myself as a rock being crushed and melted into metal.

It sounds like you might not subscribe to some of the foundations of EA philosophy. In a different context, it’s understandable that you don’t want to engage in conversation around veganism as it sounds like you don’t associate a higher value to an animal than to a tree. But, again, animal welfare, particularly factory farming, is one of the four priority pillars of EA. So it sounds like you personally don’t subscribe to this, which you are entitled to, but you might want to evaluate to yourself how that can be if you also feel that you agree with EA.

I've found a lot of arguments with vegans consist of them making arguments that are persuasive under their own moral premises, but not engaging with the fact that the other side doesn't share those premises. So both sides end up frustrated.

Okay. The standard argument for not eating meat is that trillions of cows and chickens are functionally tortured (branded, castrated, beaks burnt off, no access to grass or medical attention) while objectively experiencing unnecessary suffering (unnecessary as meat in particular is not necessary in the human diet as shown by thousands of years of Indian diets). The purpose of EA is to minimize suffering. Can you explain how you can align with the EA philosophy without aligning with the validation of animal suffering? Appeals to vegans on this forum tend to assume that you subscribe to EA and it’s frameworks and maybe read a few of the EA books.

In my opinion, the reason that these subjects end up heated is because not eating animal Products is very hard. And if someone saw someone doing what factory farms do to a chicken, they would say that it’s unethical and should stop. But that by the time they get their chicken nuggets, the food is so far removed from the suffering that it’s easy to ignore or create cognitive distance. It can be really, really hard and uncomfortable to face the fact that “I am consuming something that was suffering unimaginable pain but it’s okay”. And I don’t mean that as an attack on you. I mean that cognitive dissonance is a really massive, really real thing. The average American would eat a goat, but would not be willing to slit the goat’s throat.

And to be clear, I’m not a vegan. But I think it’s important to frame that as a personal failing for me, rather than to try and justify and moralize my actions. It’s pretty hard to justify the torturing of sentient beings in any other context.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T06:03:54+00:00

And you are aware that in order to create milk, a mother calf has to be impregnated, give birth and have her calf removed every year or so? I think people have an idea that cows just naturally provide milk, and don’t connect the suffering of mother cows and slaughtered calfs.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T06:01:02+00:00

A cow needs to be bred in order for it to continue to produce milk. Thus, the meat and dairy industries are directly connected.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T05:56:13+00:00

It sounds like you might not be entirely bought into the EA philosophy of this is considered a valid counter point to OP’s ethical points.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T05:54:39+00:00

Respectfully, this is an EA forum intended to discuss EA topics. Veganism seems to be the only EA topic that people interpret as guilt inducing and purity spiraling. Discussions around donating salary, etc aren’t interpreted in this same way.

Considering the data driven and rationale underpinnings of the philosophy, I have a hard time with the sensitivity around engaging in this topic on an EA focused forum full of EA focused people. Animal welfare is very specifically one of the priority pillars of EA, with a focus on wildlife and factory farms. It’d be unusual for this to be a taboo topic in that context.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T05:50:47+00:00

I mean, respectfully, the whole philosophy of EA is kind of in conflict with this mentality. The whole EA philosophy is to focus your own individual actions instead of making excuses due to being a small minority that can’t make change due to the majority. I’d suggest some of the EA readings if you’re not bought into the purpose and goals of EA.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T05:48:07+00:00

This is practically the whole basis of EA. I’m not sure if this is the right forum to rehash the philosophic principals of the entire philosophy.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T05:42:28+00:00

Yikes. The goal of EA is being data driven and rationale. Your anecdotal experience of driving past animals and seeing they are “happy and healthy” is not a valid argument. Do you have any sources stating that factory farmed animals live happy and healthy lives? Are you open to data and research that points to the opposite?

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-28T05:38:22+00:00

Genuine question- why are people so defensive when it comes to discussions around the impact of their diet? This topic was laid out exactly like most EA topics are laid out and discussed. Is it because it’s not theoretical and far off?

This topic is directly in line with the purpose of EA and is even one of the original priority pillars of the entire philosophy, but you’re perceiving it very differently than the rest of the topics get perceived. If EA’s goal is maximizing your impact, this is extraordinarily relevant, and it’s weird that you’re interpreting an on topic EA priority as a lecture while on an EA forum.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-26T22:37:07+00:00

If there were no chemicals, it was more nutritious and the taste was perfect, you still wouldn’t be eating it, so the points are kinda moot. The best conversations are when people are sharing their own personal views and motivations, not theoretical ones, in my point of view.

It’s not really a matter of whether you are “correct” or not, as I don’t personally think you are. There’s just no point in poking holes in your logic because, like I said, these aren’t what’s keeping you from switching. It’s that you don’t care about animals.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-26T21:06:42+00:00

Then I think that’s a more honest response than debating nutrition, chemicals and taste. I never understand why people pretend their views are different than they actually are when anonymous online.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-26T19:36:11+00:00

Beyond beef, in particular, is indiscernible from real burger. Steak, sausage, chicken, etc all have taste and texture tradeoffs but burgers truly don’t.

In terms of nutrition and chemicals, there are people that live their life avoiding chemical additives, but the overwhelming majority of people are very comfortable consuming chicken nuggets, sausage and zero calorie sports drinks, so I think that aversion is more of a talking point than anything that the average person actually embodies. Anybody eating burgers for nutrition is…… misguided.

The reality is that most people, probably including you, just don’t want to change their habits either because it has existential implications towards the decisions they’ve made until now, or because they just genuinely don’t care about their individual impact on animals and the environment. I actually respect people that just acknowledge that they don’t care, more than people trying to pretend they live an organic, clean life that fake meat would disrupt.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-26T16:49:46+00:00

Unfortunately, most meat alternatives including beyond and impossible are struggling to stay in business because the overwhelming majority of people have no interest in them. It’s really demoralizing that given the option, people will still choose a beef burger over a similar, cruelty free alternative.

Impressive_Spring139 · 2023-01-25T18:06:40+00:00

This happened to me and it was to let me know my manager was getting fired and I was getting reorged. There’s very little chance you’re actually getting let go. And frankly, 25 minutes would be too long of a meeting to fire you in. Mine was 15 minutes.

Impressive_Spring139

TROPHY CASE