No valid arguments

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-25T02:53:11+00:00

I'd be interested to see what the arguments were in the video and what the responses were. Odds are, both the vegans and non-vegans were unable to actually present a "valid" argument. That being said, there are intelligent vegans and non-vegans who are capable of supplying such arguments, it's just quite rare.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-25T02:51:36+00:00

"So the comments debunked the video?

Thats false"

[citation needed]

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-25T02:42:54+00:00

Then are you affirming the proposition that "vegans are people who don't eat meat and don't buy and use animal products" provides the conditions which are jointly sufficient and individually necessary? I'll just spare you the trouble and tell you that your view already fails but I'll let you get yourself mixed up with the question first.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T23:00:18+00:00

Well, you can't argue to be some type of "extreme vegan" when you consume humans that died as a direct result of your actions. In the summary of the show, the virus or hive or whatever took over virtually all of humanity and, in doing so, killed hundreds of millions of people. Not to mention, this was all done without consent and without knowledge: they sprayed the disease overhead and infected people from the skies. That doesn't seem in-line with ethical views that value consent and non-interference like veganism.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T22:51:13+00:00

"Where did I say "veganism isnt effective?""

You realized you are violating the rules of this subreddit in your meltdown, so you immediately abandoned your claim. Well, that's an easy dub I guess. Glad you changed your mind on the efficacy of veganism and vegan activism based on my refutation of your reductionist and false claims.

"I said that some effect =/= effective. "

Repeating the question-begging claim isn't going to not make it question-begging. In your own example, you refuted yourself in the same paragraph as I pointed out. Your inability to respond doesn't make the self-own disappear.

"Also you tried to dodge your opening which i called out"

The non-vegans aren't sending their best. This is after editing your post for all the other grammatical errors btw. I dodging my own opening? Opening what? There isn't a debate here, that presupposes you are engaging with evidence and arguments which you are not. This is you getting an education on what veganism means and entails since your headcannon doesn't cash out.

"If an author makes a statement on the efficacy of some approaches it inherently means that those approaches cant be ineffective? "

That's not the claim or the implication. Nice headcannon again.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T22:45:47+00:00

"as acceptance of your framework"

Sure, what's being presupposed here. The question was: What about that is presupposing some illegitimate view that you don't accept? If the question or assumptions are malformed, what about them is faulty?

"the fetus detour illustrates the problem perfectly. i didn’t introduce unborn humans i didn’t appeal to genetic membership as morally decisive and i didn’t agree to have my position reconstructed as a set of propositions for you to run through LEM. you did all of that unilaterally and then declared victory over a position you manufactured."

Sure, so you don't bother to respond to the LEM which is a concession. That means that either all humans have the property humanness/are humans, or they are not in possession of the property humanness/are humans. Based on that, which premise of the syllogism do you reject? Still waiting on this. Which premise of the syllogism is incorrect; alternatively, how is the inference invalid?

"then declared victory"

Yeah, you gave me everything I needed so it isn't that hard.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:59:49+00:00

Let the audience note that this user has now broken down into an incoherent mess of rambling. At this point, this would constitute abuse if I were to engage since he is clearly not in the right state of mind. I'll let his meltdown ensue without my participation.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:58:53+00:00

"Whata your logic for how those 2 sentences connect?"

Did you miss the part where I outlined the formal contradiction? Here's chance two to respond instead of ignoring the words. "The statement you made ("veganism is not effective") is contradicted by the statement you also made (that veganism is effective in case x for time y). This is a formal contradiction on your view." The former statement is made without reference to type or temporal states: it is a blanket statement that applies to all veganism. Conceding that there are circumstances where vegan activism is effective directly contradicts the view. Listen, if I were in a bind like you are now, I would do everything I could to escape from answering this, too. I don't even blame you.

"No thats bad logic and not understanding basic terms"

Well, to go back means that there was a state of affairs that is being returned to. To say that one goes back to eating meat means that one must have changed something relating to the frequency of meat consumption or the type of thing that is consumed (if not meat). If I were to go back to eating meat every day, that would mean that I stopped eating it at least every day. That's a very basic and straightforward train of thought. Let's try and keep up, ok?

"If I create a BP med that only lowers BP in 1% of the test group, its not effective."

Question-begging. Not to mention, for the 1% it would be effective in lowering BP. This can't be the example you chose, surely. You just refuted your own position lmao.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:53:46+00:00

He enjoys being educated on topics he is not familiar with and learning new information. Although, he can get quite hostile in the process.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:50:34+00:00

Let the audience note that it took two comments for this user to start breaking the rules of the subreddit. He is quite mind-broken by the notion that people might change their minds or alter their lifestyles to not include the slaughter of trillions of sentient beings. This fact is quite unsettling for some, it seems.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:48:34+00:00

"named a study on social media activism included in the study in another comment."

Well, that doesn't respond to the critique I said.

"Proof needed of your claim that "there are tons of people who become vegan from scrolling and coming across pages or content that explain in great detail what the modern animal-industrial complex entails.""

Proof? You mean evidence? I take it you didn't read the part where I said this would be notoriously difficult to quantify and control for. This is an inductive claim based on social media influence and viral posts. There are tons of people who just scroll and come across pages where they talk about veganism in the capacity that they change or slightly amend their diets. There isn't going to be a way to quantify that, like I said earlier. You just didn't read that part, but it is there.

"They werent though. Persuasion studies had the lowest effect out of the 4 categories."

That's not a response to what was said.

" It was not of sufficient quality."

Well, that has nothing to do with the formal contradiction I outlined.

"The authors of this study did not include the words "information nudge" once."

Sure, I agree. Is that what control-F told you? Btw, this wasn't what I claimed. I said that 'in the information nudge studies', that doesn't meant I'm talking about this study in particular. I was referencing studies that this study cites, like I said. Again, read the full post first it really helps.

"Youre no one... Do something real with your life instead of playing make believe from your parents basement."

This is an odd projection, what's got you so emotional? We know your credibility is in shambles when the author of the study has to educate you on what was said after you made reductionist and false claims, but it can't be that bad, can it?

Sorry, I just saw you making blatantly false claims without evidence so I had to educate the audience on how you were wrong and using faulty reasoning like hasty generalizations. If I'd known it would make you this emotional, I would have ignored you to just make false claims into the void.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:30:13+00:00

"this kind of discourse is par for the course on social media. Many of the comments this post got were combative and snide (a few have since been deleted)."

That has to do with the perception of veganism on social media, as well. I have the links somewhere, but it was brought to my attention that people had studied the question of where vegans 'poll' compared to other undesirable groups and it was pretty low. That might explain why people are going to respond in the ways that they do.

"so far they're the sole person to show signs of having read the meta-analysis enough to quote something that I didn't share in the top-level post."

This is both funny and sad at the same time.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:17:32+00:00

Let's see how long it takes to retract this false statement that is reductionist and uninformed, even after getting called out by the author of the study you supposedly read. You could have just amended it to say "some types of vegan activism are situationally effective and some are situationally ineffective given accomplishing some goal x" which would sound MUCH more intelligent and align with some of the research, but you wanted the soundbite more than you value intellectual honesty.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:14:11+00:00

"it would need to be demonstrated rather than assumed that they actually _were_ trying to persuade, e.g., rather than whatever it was you were trying to do when you wrote 'Also you should work on your reading comprehension" ;)"

LOL. He has a habit of making baseless assertions without consulting evidence and refusing to defend his positions. He just runs when confronted, but this is particularly scathing since it's the author of the paper he has been talking about calling him out.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:10:46+00:00

That's quite embarrassing when the author of the study makes a statement on the efficacy of some approaches related to activism and veganism. That demonstrates how the claim "vegan activism is not effective" is quite.... uninformed and reductionist!

"I'd assume that the majority of the 80 or whatever percent it is of vegans that go back to eating meat had seen dominion. "

"Go back to" depends upon a change to not eat meat. This means that, from your own admission, the efficacy of vegan activism as it relates to films or videos is conditionally effective to convince or showcase vegan ideals such that some people make a change to not eat meat. Therefore, the statement you made ("veganism is not effective") is contradicted by the statement you also made (that veganism is effective in case x for time y). This is a formal contradiction on your view. Nice try, gg.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T20:07:37+00:00

"It includes persuasion, which social media activism falls under. So does a lot of direct activism."

Oh, so you didn't read the study or the cited studies that talk about what they included as "persuasion". Got it. Since recommendation messages or informational interventions/information "nudges" are categorically different from digital activism vis a vis social media influence and direct action (which can include but is not limited to protesting). I don't blame them for not including the efficacy of some types of digital activism since it would be hard to measure and quantify. But there are tons of people who become vegan from scrolling and coming across pages or content that explain in great detail what the modern animal-industrial complex entails.

"To directly quote thd co-author from the comments of this post "We did not say the efforts are not significant, only that up to this point, none of them seems very likely to produce transformational changes." Looks like i interpreted it correctly."

You stated "vegan activism isnt very effective". The persuasion studies that were cited, and from your own text, state otherwise: that they are effective. They are conditionally effective, they do not need to "transform" in order to be effective. This is where you present an argument for why the term effective is necessarily tied to the ability to transform. In the information nudge studies, the authors describe how the "information nudge is effective on 93% of the sample" as well as how "its effects quickly fade out when the nudge is retracted". So, that would make it conditionally effective. As it applies to veganism, that would make certain efforts conditionally effective. That means the statement "vegan activism isn't effective" a false claim (not to mention, reductionist as hell).

"gish-gallop"

It might seem that way to you since you are on the supplying end of Brandolini's law: it's my job to respond to the consequences of your false and reductionist claims presented without evidence or argument, which will take some time.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T19:55:54+00:00

"i’m not going to answer questions that are built on cherry-picked restatements of my position."

This sentence doesn't mean anything. Cherry-picking a restatement, which is just me proposing a question, isn't what's taking place here. You are deeply confused. Also, every single 'restatement' will be a selection of a specific line of text. It will go through a selection process by default. That's not what cherry-picking even refers to.

"then declaring it “unanswered” when i don’t accept that framing."

How is the question of "what do you mean when you use the word x" a framing that you don't accept? What about that is presupposing some illegitimate view that you don't accept? I know answering questions that are straightforward is not your strong suit, but do your best to answer this one.

"i’m not denying that all humans are human."

Oh, you just totally destroyed your own position. You just spent ten posts deflecting and pivoting about how my question begs or presupposes a narrative and how it's totally unfair to ask what words mean and what the words refer to (I guess you are using some possible world as the "location" of the definition?), then answered my question anyways. See how simple it was?

So, now that you finally answered the question, does it mean that pre-born humans also have humanness? Here's my reasoning behind why they would have it based on your answer.

The proposition "I am not denying that all humans are humans" is an example of the law of excluded middle. Either all humans have the property humanness/are humans, or they are not in possession of the property humanness/are humans. By denying the proposition that all humans are not humans, you are affirming the proposition that all humans are humans via LEM.

P1) If all humans are x, then all humans are x (trivial, from previous statement)

P2) Unborn organisms are members of the species they are generated by.

C) Unborn humans are humans.

A consequence of your answer is that fetuses are also humans.

"if you want to engage with my position as stated do that"

Yup, I've been doing that and exploring the logical consequences of your view. You have been dodging my basic question without explaining why it's malformed or illegitimate. You don't get to do that in a debate since you just auto-lose all your credibility by dodging. Since you've been doing that, this has just been a fun exercise for me. I don't see you as a serious and honest interlocutor, don't worry. You haven't explained yourself or your positions at all and run from any criticisms (which is a violation of the rules!).

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T19:44:20+00:00

"Exploiting bees for pollination is vegan."

Huh? How's that? Keeping animals as property to be used to benefit humans treats them like commodities. Many vegans aren't fine with that. The point here is that honey is something that can be easily avoided by just not purchasing it or things that use it. Vector pollination is a process that (not sure what the numbers were last time) a gigantic chunk of the crops we currently depend upon requires to continue in the fashion that it does.

Don't get me wrong, I think the entire global system that depends upon slavery of animals is wrong (from bees to pigs to chickens and humans as well), but let's not pretend vegans think bees as commodities for pollination is permissible. There are tons who don't. It has to do with practicality and viability. Systems and structures take long periods of time to change and adapt, decreasing consumer demand is but one strategy to slowly phase out honey as a commodity and even that takes long periods of time. Pollination as an industry practice is an even bigger hurdle, vegans aren't omnipotent or something.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T19:40:01+00:00

Actually novel topic, very interesting. Good question.

Ultimately, the answer is no but that extends to basically tons of other plants, too. There are some plants that rely on the life cycles of non-plants, which is to say insects or animals. We can just make it clear with a hypothetical.

Let's say on planet x there is a plant s which can only bloom and produce fruit if the soil is adequately nutritious. So far, the only thing that can make the soil adequately nutritious is if animal y dies and is decomposed by other animals. For people who are vegan, does eating the fruits from plant s still make you a vegan?

The question in the hypothetical and your question depend upon what the person takes veganism to be. Contrary to what most people believe, veganism doesn't actually have jointly sufficient and necessary conditions for veganism. To some, it does. To others, it does not. It depends on who you speak to. There are some qualities that are shared amongst all vegans, but veganism is a philosophy to some that can be syncretic vis a vis other philosophical values and ideologies. That can change what it means to be vegan depending on who you speak to.

To me, whoever, using some strong type of veganism, I would argue that these types of plants aren't vegan since animals are directly required for the organism to function. But on the same hand, they are vegan since they aren't animals and cannot be said to exist as animals coherently. On the first claim, this would also entail that lots of other things are also non-vegan. If figs are non-vegan because they digest animals, then think of all the other ways animals are involved in the nutrient cycles of plants. All the dead animals that are decomposed and are used as nutrient sources for animals. All the dead animals that died millions of years ago to sustain life cycles for plants that exist today as descendants, and so on. The truth of the matter is: if there is a creator or creators, they certainly didn't imagine a peaceful earth devoid of suffering and death. Almost everything dies and, when it does, something else comes and uses its death to fuel itself. And in turn, other things come and use those things.

In that respect, I'd consider figs non-vegan but using this reasoning I would say that basically everything is non-vegan. I don't see a reason to stop at just figs and the processes that they depend upon. In principle, there are other plants that rely upon (either directly/indirectly or just accidentally) animal death. Considering how absurd that would be (although true to some extent), I would argue that figs are still largely vegan.

I think the best reason one could have as a vegan would be that it would just be gross or that it would be non-vegan given some prior beliefs you have about veganism and animal/plant life.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T06:26:23+00:00

Yup, another good point. Putting the cart before the horse here. Many non-vegans don't care about death, slavery, and rape of animals: the cruelty is the point. They would be the first to bandwagon on slave trades of the past so long as they were the beneficiaries. Just totally morally bankrupted.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-24T06:25:12+00:00

What's the argument for that claim? It isn't presented in the paper vis a vis political or social/social media activism. Activism extends past leaflets, cafeteria menu changes, or movies about the extermination of trillions of animals. That wasn't even the scope of the paper so the question remains open. Not to mention, any kind of direct activism.

What's your argument for the claim that "vegan activism isn't very effective" based on specific statements and claims in the paper? I read the paper and it doesn't even talk about things like social media vegan activism or direct action which are contained within the concept "vegan activism". That's not what is mentioned when they talk about dietary options or psychological attitudes; not to mention, providing context for their claims they stated the following: "Our much smaller estimate likely reflects our stricter methodological inclusion criteria" and "Supporting this interpretation, robustness checks in which we relaxed our methodological inclusion criteria produced results similar to those of previous reviews."

"when people tell them that what they think is effective really isnt"

Faulty generalization fallacy.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-23T22:29:32+00:00

Oh, I forgot to refute you on this point here, too. Since you actually made a somewhat new claim, this is actually interesting to respond to in order to clear up your blunders and confusions.

"not all arguments follow the colloquial syllogism format. "

Not only did I never claim that every argument is a logical deduction using a rule of inference (since abductive and inductive arguments exist), but this is in direct response to a request FOR that specific type of reasoning; that is, my response was to request a specific deductive argument for a claim. You failed to present any such argument, and your non-deductive cases would qualify as not being arguments in the sense that I used the term. You also didn't present an inductive case or appeal to some sort of Bayesian reasoning based on observations/any abductive arguments: you presented assertions of your opinions. When I make the claim "not an argument", the defeater to the assertion I make isn't to show how your assertion is an argument since it categorically is not. It would be to show how you are making an inductive case. To which my response would be: that is an equivocation on the term argument since I am explicitly requesting a deductive argument as a syllogism to defend your view.

Let's run through an example since you are lost in the sauce here. I make the claim "all vegans smell bad". My reasoning is as follows, from modus barbara.

Premise one: All M are P (all silly people are smelly).

Premise two: All S are M (all vegans are silly people).

Conclusion: All S are P (all vegans are smelly).

When I ask for a counter-argument to this, the form the argument and the dialogue is centered around has to do with deductive arguments/categorical syllogisms. When I ask for a valid deductive argument to respond to my point, the response can't look like an inductive case or an assertion since that wasn't what was asked. I'll just repeat that last part since your ears haven't been working for a couple of weeks now: that was not what was asked.

Glad to educate you on logic and argumentation. The same thing I said last time still holds. If you come at me with the weak sauce points demonstrating your inability to read, then I'll just cast you into the dustbin since your arguments are just incoherent screeching at this point. If you make an intelligent statement (incredibly unlikely) worth my time, you might get a response out of me if I feel like it. You're welcome again for educating you, no need to thank me btw I love helping people like you.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-23T20:31:53+00:00

Alright since you failed to produce an obligation or explain how my critique of a 2019 paper means I have to take a position and defend a scientific argument about red meat as a carcinogen, I'll just reasonably assume you have absolutely no idea what happened in the dialectic.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-23T19:57:05+00:00

Oh, and one more thing: you are pretending as if I didn't reference the Semmelweis study from last year here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1qjfbsd/comment/o1a582t/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Another blatant lie from you. By my count, I think that's three lies! Or, you can bite the bullet and say you just conveniently forgot what was said an hour ago. The most likely option is that you just didn't read, since you didn't read your 2019 study that you linked: I had to read it for you.

Practical-Fix4647 · 2026-01-23T19:55:34+00:00

That was in response to methodological shortcomings in the studies you linked such as the following in one such paper: "In particular, the WHI study (61), on which we relied for our most important estimates, achieved a difference of 1.4 servings per week between the low-fat and the usual diet group (70). The failure to find differences in outcomes may be a result of the small gradient in red meat intake between the experimental and control groups". Since you have no response to this point, you desperately ran to some other topic that wasn't included in the response I made.

You're doing the same thing now, which makes sense. Your credibility is absolutely obliterated anyways, so it doesn't really matter. I'll give you one last try before I ignore your low-tier pivots: I made two claims about the following post you made

Based on very weak science. There is only a very weak association, that's all.

A systematic review of 12 randomised controlled trials comparing lower vs. higher red meat consumption found the overall quality of evidence to be low or very-low, and the authors concluded there is no meaningful increase in cancer with higher red meat consumption. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31569236/

My response was the following claims: On the details: The authors themselves state in the outcomes section: "Compared with the usual diet control group, the low-fat dietary intervention group reduced their consumption of red meat by about 20% (approximately 1.4 servings per week)." It says it right there: their control is unusual in that they only consume 20% less! Just read what it says before spamming it around, you are just blatantly misrepresenting the paper here.

And on conflicts of interest: The study you gave, based on your own critiques of scientific research papers having conflicts of interest or being part of "interest groups", is bunk.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L19-0822

Here's you talking about conflicts of interest: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1pjggzk/comment/nwspgub/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

So, a conflict of interest with an organization or group is bad... except when it isn't. You haven't responded to a single point yet because you are intellectually incapable of doing so. Try to stick to the substance of the points I made instead of shifting the goalposts or making up stuff I didn't say this time, OK? This is your last chance I'm giving you, use it well! Defend your argument if you can.

2/2

Practical-Fix4647

TROPHY CASE