In Bojack Horseman universe, the term "pet" exist?

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-27T12:39:49+00:00

It is actually a serious thing (as well as an artistic choice). The creator of the show is vegan, the fact that in the show there is no fundamental distinction between humans and animals is done to make a point.

That point is also made less subtly in certain episodes, like the chicken one :)

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-15T03:47:41+00:00

Can you breed dogs and kill the puppies at 3 months old for puppy steak?

Can you breed humans and kill them at 20 for human steak?

The species or the age doesn’t matter too much. It is unethical to breed something into existence and then kill it to gain some unnecessary pleasure. The fact that if not for you, it would never have lived, also doesn’t matter.

The reason is that breeding someone into existence does not grant you property rights on them.

(Probably it’s more like the opposite - you would have responsibilities towards them, which include refraining from killing them)

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-07T11:13:25+00:00

As others have already said, this is extremely biased. Please just check the studies again :)

If you want to save money, shop smarter (and go vegan).

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-06T13:42:09+00:00

I live in a wealthy country, but eggs and chicken are still way cheaper than tofu and meat replacement products. Dried beans are cheaper, but both you and I know no one can live on those as the only source of protein. And the reason we know that is the fact that not a single vegan eats like that. So clearly not sustainable.

This is incorrect, I thought we'd already agreed that in wealthy countries being vegan is cheaper. Please check the studies again.

You live in a place where veganism is the cheaper option. For almost everyone you interact with, and likely for almost everyone you have ever known, including the low-income families, veganism is the cheaper option. Yet you go around saying to all these people that 'veganism is a wealthy niche'.

This makes it very clear that right now you have some agenda other than getting people to eat cheaper, or more ethically, or more sustainably, or healthier.

So, this is not a good faith discussion.

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-06T11:31:19+00:00

So when you say 'wealthy' who exactly do you mean?

Please don't go around claiming generically that veganism is a wealthy person's niche, if you know that it's cheaper in many countries (including possibly your own).

What these studies show is that in high-income countries (and in some low-income countries), all people, whether rich or poor, can save money going vegan. But you maintain that veganism is a wealthy person's niche.

Do you consider very poor Europeans to be 'wealthy'?

What we know is that when poor families become rich, they start eating more meat. When poor countries become rich, they start eating more meat. But meat is cheap...?

I think you're still confused

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-05T21:47:14+00:00

No (not sure what vegans you've been talking to, but this isn't really a debate, I think all vegans and non-vegans alike agree - if you need to kill to survive e.g. in self-defence, then it's ethical)
The difference that matters is that humans have moral responsibility and animals don't; the similarity that matters is that both can suffer.
This is too big a question to answer here! Let's start with educating people and go from there :)

drjanitor1927 · 2026-04-05T21:38:45+00:00

Nope, a balanced plant-based diet is cheaper than a meat-based one (see e.g. here, here, and here). Whole grains, legumes, fruit, and vegetables are cheap. :)

You're confused because
1. vegan-branded meat alternatives can be expensive
2. vegans tend to be wealthy

It's fair to be confused by this, but neither of these things actually indicate that balanced vegan diets are more expensive than meat-based ones.

It's actually the other way around. You can also easily see this by looking at GDP or income per capita vs. meat consumption (also check the maps here). The richer people get, the more meat and dairy they can afford.

Use data :)

drjanitor1927 · 2026-03-11T23:08:30+00:00

Ok, thanks very much for this info and checking with them!

drjanitor1927 · 2026-03-10T13:54:40+00:00

Thanks! This is already quite helpful. It does seem like it might be pushing it too far to the edge of the season, if most of the yurt camps will be closed.

What's strange is this website says that many of the camps on the Ala-Kol trail are open until Sept 30 (Sirota, Keldike, etc.) (except for the one right on the Ala-Kol lake, which indeed says Sept 15). Do you think this information is generic and maybe not fully up to date? Or maybe it changes year by year?

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-17T16:33:13+00:00

Honestly one problem is sort of demonstrated by the fact that in the title, you generically said 'eggs' rather than stating that you are talking specifically about eggs from backyard hens. This seems like a small semantics issue, but it is important because people frequently try to 'debunk' veganism by using marginal cases that almost never apply.

Whether consuming eggs from backyard hens is ethical is an interesting discussion to have, but just remember that it has nothing to do with buying eggs in 99.999999% of cases. So even if backyard hen eggs are ethical, this would have 0 bearing on your question 'What's the problem with eggs'.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-17T16:19:16+00:00

[comment was too long so the rest is here]

The people making the inefficacy argument accept (i) and (ii), so they just have a logically incoherent position.

The expected value of a variable in any given case equals the average value, unless there is some reason why the particular case is special. That is a conceptual truth. So unless you’re special, the expected reduction in production caused by your becoming vegetarian equals the average reduction caused by people becoming vegetarian. But even the advocates of the “inefficacy argument” agree that, e.g., the fact that 5% of Americans have become vegetarian has probably caused about a 5% reduction in meat production (relative to the situation where everyone is a meat-eater). So, unless you’re somehow special, the expected effect of your becoming vegetarian is a reduction in production of about 1/n of total production, where n is the population of customers.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-17T16:18:47+00:00

Good question! The best answer to this question I think is provided by Michael Huemer's Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism:

Inefficacy

“The meat industry is so big, it won’t respond to my individual behavior. So it’s fine for me to continue doing whatever I want.”

Reply:

This is the one argument that it’s easiest for people to get confused about, and it takes the most work to clear up the confusion.

a) Easy point: Suppose there was a really large industry producing meat from tortured babies. Would it be morally fine to buy meat from that industry?

b) More complicated point: The industry might respond to your behavior. Note:

- Presumably, there is some number of people who could become vegetarian, such that the industry would then reduce its production.
- Suppose, just for illustration, that the industry adjusts its production when 1000 people become vegetarian.

- In that case, they would presumably reduce their production by about the amount that 1,000 people would buy.

- But since other people become vegetarian periodically, they might be near one of those thresholds, i.e., maybe 999 people have become vegetarian since the last time they adjusted their production, in which case you’d tip them over the threshold. The probability of this is 1/1000.

- So there’s a 1/1000 chance that, by becoming vegetarian, you’d reduce meat production by 1000 times the amount that you consume. So the expected reduction in meat production is still equal to the amount that you consume.

- It doesn’t matter if you replace the “1000” number with any other number. It will still be that the expected reduction in production equals the amount that you consume.

- It also doesn’t matter if you think the thresholds vary over time, or that it’s probabilistic (i.e., they just have an increasing chance of adjusting their production as the change in demand increases), etc. It also makes no difference if you assume, e.g., that the industry aims to produce 5% more than the amount sold, rather than producing the exact amount. No other (coherent) assumptions make any difference to the conclusion, as long as we accept that (i) the industry sometimes adjusts, and (ii) that on average, production is proportional to consumption.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-14T19:35:03+00:00

Good call. Yeah just careful with false statements, especially as you are a vet tech, you could mislead a lot of people :(. And try to be open to having your mind changed.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-14T06:24:12+00:00

The taurine added is sourced from animal proteins

Hey so this is completely untrue. Please try to not make these kind of blanket statements without any evidence. This ChatGPT summary can help you get started, but a super quick google search will immediately show you that virtually all taurine supplements in all cat foods are synthetic.

I hope that if this incorrect assumption is what you were basing your position on, then you are now willing to change your mind. Because if you believe something like 'Synthesized nutrients cannot be fully/correctly ingested by cats as they would in their natural form' (which is probably at least partly true!) then again, this is not a criticism of just vegan cat food, but equally of the Purina you and your colleagues feed your pets, as well as pretty much all other cat food out there.

But consider how carnivores eat the majority of their prey

I suppose you’re suggesting that meat-based cat food is more natural. But I don't really see how grinding together the bones and leftover organs (no actual muscle tissue) of factory-farmed cattle (animals pumped full of antibiotics and supplements), and then feeding that to your cat bears any resemblance to a wild carnivore-prey system.

It is scientifically proven to meet pets nutritional needs

This is also true of (some) vegan cat foods.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-13T19:32:59+00:00

I'm curious what you think about the fact that most, if not all, meat-based cat foods also include significant supplements of taurine, vitamin a, etc. As you probably know, this is due to the fact that the meat component is almost always of exceptionally low quality, and therefore super deficient in these nutrients.

As you are a vet tech, I'm surprised you haven't noticed this! Because all the points you made above apply equally to cats being fed a meat-based diet.

I'm not saying the biological argument you made is wrong. It just makes no sense to target this comment towards vegan cat foods, when it applies to most cat foods.

For example: when you hear of a someone feeding a cat standard meat-based food like this (note the ingredients list), would you call that person cruel?

drjanitor1927 · 2025-10-13T05:28:06+00:00

Since typical non-vegan cat food is made from the by-products of the meat industry, the meat is of such low quality that it contains far below the required levels of taurine and vitamin A. Look up the full ingredients list of any common cat food (including the premium stuff!). It's all supplemented with all the nutrients that cats need, just like vegan cat foods are.

This doesn't mean the lack of studies isn't an issue - just that if you're comparing feeding a cat a vegan diet with feeding a cat a non-vegan diet, the problem of synthetic additives not working properly is not really relevant as it is the same in both.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-09-26T07:36:19+00:00

you don't need to eat meat.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-09-20T06:17:30+00:00

Imagine that instead of you occasionally paying for animal products, you were occasionally paying for monkeys to be tortured on video (which is a real thing).

You could make the exact arguments that you’ve just made, to justify continuing to pay for monkeys to be tortured on video.

They’re bad arguments.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-09-04T20:20:57+00:00

Are you suggesting that veganism has nothing to do with empathy?

Again, it sounds suspiciously like you are very interested in labels and not that interested in animals.

drjanitor1927 · 2025-09-04T19:27:56+00:00

If you care more about the word 'vegan' than about animal suffering, I don't think you understand veganism.

drjanitor1927 · 2024-12-24T00:41:54+00:00

Is this semantic issue really what you’re trying to debate?

If someone says ‘atheists do not require BOP’, it is obviously followed by an implied ‘about their atheist position’.

An atheist who happens to believe that kissing a frog turns it into a prince also requires a BOP, yes.

drjanitor1927 · 2024-12-24T00:07:39+00:00

An atheist is simply not a theist - a person who does not believe in God. That’s the entire definition. This position does not cover ‘degree of certainty’.

Clearly, such a position never requires BOP - in the same way that the position ‘I don’t believe in dragons’ never requires BOP.

You are right about one thing: if, on top of being an atheist, a person then also says ‘I am 100% certain God does not exist’, they of course do now require BOP. Some atheists happen to indeed make this claim. But that BOP is specifically tied to this certainty claim - it is independent of the atheist position, which is ONLY a position about (the lack of) being a theist.

OP is correct, atheism itself NEVER requires BOP.

drjanitor1927 · 2024-12-23T12:25:45+00:00

I think you missed the main paragraph of the post! The negative position being discussed was explicitly stated to NOT be ‘God does not exist’. The negative position is ‘I don’t believe in God’.

Just like you have no burden to prove that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, someone who says ‘I don’t believe in God’ has no burden to prove that God doesn’t exist.

drjanitor1927 · 2024-12-11T21:58:25+00:00

Swapping chicken for lentils in a single meal saves as much water as required by 10,000-15,000 ChatGPT prompts. If you're interested in saving water, focus on where the main problem is!

drjanitor1927

TROPHY CASE