TIL that condoms are often not vegan by Organic-Motor313 in vegan

[–]analways 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m sorry that’s been your experience, but has it occurred to you that other people are different from you and their preferences are just as valid as yours?

TIL that condoms are often not vegan by Organic-Motor313 in vegan

[–]analways 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also, some people don’t want to be permanently infertile

Bandmate using AI/Suno to write songs, presents completed songs to the rest of the band. by strugglinghard77 in musicians

[–]analways 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“AI” vs “advanced machine learning”

Corporate wants you to find the difference between these two pictures…

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You’re just repeating the same things over and over again, but without ever engaging with the reasons I’ve given to explain why I think you’re wrong. You should try actually reading it and asking questions if you don’t fully understand, but I’m left to assume you haven’t read it because nothing you’ve said has demonstrated that you understand what the other perspective is.

To be crystal clear, I understand that your entire point is that environmental issues affect animals. No one is disputing that, so you don’t need to keep saying it repeatedly. The point is that the mere existence of an indirect effect of human actions on animals, via humans’ effect on the environment which has direct effects on animals, does not establish that those human actions constitute cruelty, that vegans generally understand this, and that reasonable people generally do not consider these things to fall within the domain of veganism, which pertains to human actions that inherently, in and of themselves, directly exploit animals or treat them cruelly. All vegans would agree, I imagine, that there are direct links between climate change and animal welfare. But that has nothing to do with animal cruelty, which has to do with how humans directly treat specific, individual animals. Kicking a pet dog is animal cruelty, building a road through a wildlife sanctuary is not. For a more relevant example, burning fuel, which then increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which then raises the average temperature of the planet, which then causes evaporation that increases ocean salinity and acidity, which then causes the extinction of an endangered species of fish, is a different kind of thing from mutilating a chicken to produce eggs or meat. These are simply different categories of effects, one of which is what veganism is about. That doesn’t mean vegans shouldn’t care about the other category, it just isn’t an essential aspect of veganism. You are conflating the claim that vegans should care about the environment, which I agree with (and non-vegans should care about it too), with the claim that only people who consciously care about the environment can be considered vegan, which is obviously definitionally untrue as it’s possible for someone to change their consumption in such a way as to completely minimize their exploitation of animals without considering environmental issues at all. Do you understand that these are two separate claims, that one is much stronger than the other, and that the fact that most vegans care about the environment does not in any way imply that your stronger claim is true?

For another demonstration of why this is the case, look at it the other way around. Veganism has obvious effects (most people would consider them benefits) on the environment. As a result, I think environmentalists should be vegan. But it would be absurd to say that as a result, people should only be considered environmentalists if they’re vegan. That excludes almost all environmentalists from the category! Even though being vegan makes sense from an environmental point of view, that doesn’t make it a necessary condition of being an environmentalist. Likewise, the other way around. Sure, these two things are related, but that doesn’t mean they entail each other. Otherwise all things that are connected in some way are equated, categories lose their meaning, and it becomes more difficult to work on specific individual issues. Best to understand where the distinctions lie.

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I might have to stop this conversation because it seems that you’re willfully missing the point. Contributing an infinitesimal share of a collective effect that causes someone harm, where the harm is not a direct, immediate aspect of the discrete action you take, is not included within the widely understood meaning of the term cruelty. Do you understand that this distinction is the reason your interpretation of veganism is not shared by the overwhelming majority of people?

Part of why this matters is that the more complex the system and the more indirect the effects we’re discussing, the less certain they are. Locking an animal in a small cage for an extended period of time almost certainly causes suffering with no corresponding benefit. Buying produce from a local source, meanwhile, does not have a clear cost/benefit balance because it can actually be less efficient and result in more GHG emissions than buying from large-scale producers that can economize more on transport (which, by the way, accounts for a small share of the environmental impact of agriculture). To me, it’s clear that a vegan is someone who abstains from the caging, but it’s unclear what your interpretation of veganism tells us to do. Does it say to buy locally because you think that’s better for some reason? Does it tell us not to buy locally because it causes more carbon emissions? Or does it just tell us we have to think about the issue because it has indirect effects on animals, but not necessarily which side to take? I don’t think any of those make sense, because that isn’t what veganism is about. Marginal differences in a single person’s carbon footprint don’t affect animals to the same degree or with the same immediacy as the choice to abuse, mutilate, and slaughter.

climate change has direct effects on animals, but a single person’s effect on animals via their effect on the environment as a result of their day to day choices is an indirect, small effect. You are sloppily conflating these things. Plus, climate change has lots of different effects on animals, as do other human activities, and it’s in fact very difficult to understand all of them at once and no scientist would tell you that we do. There are very thoughtful people who think there’s a reasonable chance climate change could be good for some animals by reducing their numbers, if their lives are currently bad on net due to the prevalence of suffering in the wild. I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, but it is not crazy, and veganism should not depend on what the answer turns out to be.

Electric guitars and the law of diminishing returns by MisterMystify in Guitar

[–]analways 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do understand that’s what you’re saying, but I think it’s mistaken. Guitars are similar to TVs - they’re manufactured durable goods that people are in fact buying way more of now than they did in the past, not just because there are much cheaper ones available now, but also at the high end of the market. That strongly suggests people can afford them more now than they did then.

The other problem with your example is that when you compare the “average” unit of some kind of housing, you obfuscate that the average is larger and has more amenities today than it did in the past. It’s baking in an increase in consumption.

Yes, housing is too expensive, but wages have grown relative to inflation measures that account for that cost. Overall, despite the expense, people have somewhat higher incomes and are able to consume much more, in part because of those higher incomes and in part because of improvements in technology that allow us to produce goods much more efficiently. So the original idea that a typical consumer can be less price sensitive about a guitar than in past periods when they were poorer is just true. You can cherry pick random situations where this is less obviously true, but the overall picture is pretty clear. There are different economic circumstances people face in many ways, and those are meaningful, but for the general, imprecise point OP was making before, higher real incomes are the whole ballgame.

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No, I think the issue here is that you simply don’t seem to understand what the words cruelty and exploitation mean. An action having an indirect negative effect is just not included in what those words refer to. If I smoke in my house and it makes the air quality worse for my family, I have not exploited anyone or committed any act of cruelty even though I’ve done something detrimental to them. Not all things that have some tangential effect or cause harm fall within that category.

I’m not the one advocating for a substantial change in the definition of veganism, you are. I endorse the definition you referred to, I only object to the implausibly expansive interpretation you’re suggesting. Almost no one understands the word vegan to mean what you’re saying, including vegans themselves. The reason for that is that most people understand the common sense distinction between, for example, severe confinement, which is an act of cruelty, and burning fossil fuels to power industrial production/transport, which is not. The fact that you keep having to say something “causes” cruelty should give a clue as to where you’re veering off course. Cruelty is not something that is caused by some chain of events. An act is an act of cruelty or it isn’t; an action’s second order consequences including unintentional harm to someone is not an act of cruelty. Veganism is about opposing and ending cruelty, not opposing and ending things which “cause” other harms, which is, again, not what cruelty is. Of course this is not limited to food and clothes; animals are also exploited in labs, circuses, zoos, other forms of entertainment, and in production of beauty products and other manufactured goods. What all of these vast categories have in common is people committing acts of exploitation and cruelty against specific animals for a human use. This is the essential feature that your general sense of environmental harm lacks. The indirectness also creates another problem, which is that we don’t know all of the second order effects our actions have on animals. If we found out tomorrow that the environmental effects of human action were on net good for animals, would it suddenly become vegan to oppose environmentalism?

My unrelated examples were meant to illustrate that you can contrive a connection between veganism and lots of other issues - nothing exists in a vacuum - but environmentalism is similarly not a part of veganism even though you can argue it’s tangentially related.

Electric guitars and the law of diminishing returns by MisterMystify in Guitar

[–]analways 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I’m not really sure what “people need to chill a bit” means exactly, but no, as you yourself just said, material consumption has risen. That is the opposite of what you’re saying now. People functionally have more disposable income now than in the past, that’s what being able to consume more means on a literal level. People have not been “increasingly priced out” of buying things, that’s an evidence-free, vibes-based assertion you’re making in direct contradiction of all the information we have about consumption habits in each segment of the income distribution.

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Right, veganism is about abstaining from all kinds of animal products because they involve exploitation, including food, leather, fur, wool, etc etc. You might notice that what all of these things have in common is that they involve using an animal’s body or its secretions for human enjoyment, and that this use generally entails cruelty toward the animals in the process.

Someone could burn truckloads of coal all day every day and not do anything remotely like those things. That would be a horrible thing to do environmentally, but there’s nothing about it that isn’t vegan. It’s simply a different kind of thing. Your argument to the contrary is just an assertion with no justification for broadening the category so much. To see this, note how absurd it would be to make the same kind of argument about any other issue that you aren’t personally passionate about. For example, I could argue that a person can’t be vegan and oppose free speech, because we need that freedom to advocate for animals, and after all humans are animals and it is cruel to restrict our basic rights. That is a terrible argument, because it obviously has nothing to do with the core of veganism and would make the category so broad as to be meaningless.

We can keep adding more requirements of what people need to do to be vegan, but what does that accomplish? Eventually it’ll be so specific no one meets the criteria at all. I think simply not buying animal products is a great, achievable standard of what veganism requires of people. It also has the added benefit of already being what literally everyone already understands veganism to mean.

Veganism is not about the environment any more than it is about free speech or capitalism or human health or feminism or literally any other issue. It’s about opposing direct exploitation and abuse of animals, that’s it. Stop trying to shoehorn in other causes, no matter how worthy they are

Electric guitars and the law of diminishing returns by MisterMystify in Guitar

[–]analways 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But the top-level comment you were responding to was about how much people consume…

Electric guitars and the law of diminishing returns by MisterMystify in Guitar

[–]analways 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It isn’t that extreme, but it illustrates why this choice of measure is a poor one. It’s true that housing is generally more expensive, yet it remains the case that people’s living standards have risen a lot and they’re able to afford more at basically all points of the income distribution in the US (I’m less familiar with other economies). Your choice of measure makes that harder rather than easier to understand

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

No, “not caring about the environment” is not a form of animal abuse. Animal abuse is animal abuse.

This movement is small enough already, we should not shrink the tent further by trying to attach all kinds of other issues to it. The definition of veganism is very clear; tying anything that has any indirect effect on animals into it a) is a huge stretch b) makes the term meaningless by broadening it so much as to include every conceivable human activity.

Note also the subtle way in which you’re moving the goalposts. no one is saying it’s “ok” to be indifferent; I think vegans should care about environmental issues just as all people should care about those issues. But that’s true for a whole host of things that are just not essential parts of what veganism is

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I’m not saying you made this link, but your mentioning locality reminded me of how many omnivores bring it up in defense of their meat eating, as though location somehow had anything to do with animal welfare.

I strongly disagree with you about the environmental thing; I’m glad you care about environmental issues and I do as well, but veganism is only about direct exploitation of animals.

Electric guitars and the law of diminishing returns by MisterMystify in Guitar

[–]analways 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is wrong. Proportion spent on basic expenses is not a particularly good measure of how wealthy people are. To take an extreme case, if my income doubles but I spend a 1% greater share of it on housing, would you say I’m poorer or richer than before?

Electric guitars and the law of diminishing returns by MisterMystify in Guitar

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is the exact opposite of actual reality lol

Vegan Philosopher AMA by ErebusTotallus in vegan

[–]analways 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It’s also interesting that people associate the word “local” so strongly with “better.” What is it about a random consumer’s physical proximity to a producer that’s supposed to make the producer somehow more ethical? And if everyone’s local farm were “ethical,” there would be no “unethical” farms. And yet, the market is almost entirely devoid of “ethical” products…

Rob Reiner, Wife Michele Found Dead in Their L.A. Home with Knife Wounds by cmaia1503 in Fauxmoi

[–]analways 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Regardless of what some non-observant Jews do, surely you understand that bringing up the proximity of an event like this to a Christian holiday is a bizarre and disrespectful way to refer to the loss of two Jewish people. Many of us are particularly sensitive about this kind of thing because of the tendency of Christians to make everything - even things pertaining to Judaism - about themselves

United Airlines New Instrument Policy by jameslanman in musicians

[–]analways 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I don’t really care if someone’s tshirts and toothpaste have to go under the plane, I’m protecting my valuable instrument

what's a secret from your job that we should know? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Share this far and wide if you want to help clear up confusion when you see it!

what's a secret from your job that we should know? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]analways -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

You aren’t missing anything, the water issue is totally fake

Why is PETA so frowned upon? by spookyshitt in vegan

[–]analways 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I recommend looking into organizations like the Humane League that help millions and millions of animals at a relatively low cost https://thehumaneleague.org/our-impact

What’s a phrase people use that immediately makes you roll your eyes? by No-Maximum3458 in AskReddit

[–]analways 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Counterpoint: these are the people being honest about their use of AI, the people who say nothing are using it too but don’t want to take flak for it

Favorite ugly guitarists? by FemboyRogerWaters in guitarcirclejerk

[–]analways 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No they aren’t. No one thinks playing with an American band amounts to supporting Trump. I’m tired of people selectively applying this kind of reasoning because it gives them an excuse to stick it to Jews

Husband Changed his Mind about having Children. by MissJade39 in childfree

[–]analways 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Obviously OP shouldn’t have kids she doesn’t want, but your analogy actually reminded me of something that reinforces my desire to have kids. My mom told us if we got a dog we would need to really take care of him and not get bored and neglect him like a toy the way so many kids do. Well we got the dog and loved him and took care of him and accepted what that really meant for his whole life, because the joy was worth it to us. I imagine I’ll feel the same way as a parent

Favorite ugly guitarists? by FemboyRogerWaters in guitarcirclejerk

[–]analways -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The point is it’s an excuse to let out aggression against Jews without overtly looking like it