5 ms·

Suppose we discover that plants have a concept for pain. What will vegans do in this case? Eat purely synthetic food?

by yomly 10y ago

newscracker 10y ago
Not necessarily. Whatever vegans eat today still contributes to cruelty to animals to some extent (like animals used for farming, animals killed in the process of growing and harvesting plants, etc.). Being vegan is about causing significantly lesser harm and doing things that many may consider inconvenient. Even if plants are shown to suffer from pain, if one is inclined to reduce suffering, it still makes sense to eat plants directly than feed them to animals and eat those animals. The conversion inefficiency is of the order of five times or higher - that is, to produce a unit quantity of meat, at least fives times that amount of plants have to be fed to the animals (this is a very general and inaccurate figure - depending on what one compares, this could be very different and be a lot higher too). In general, eating animals still kills significantly more plants than eating plants directly. Of course, if plants are irrefutably shown to suffer pain, then there will be more focus over time in finding alternatives to eating them, like synthetic food. Whatever be the approach, it's impossible for anyone to exist without causing harm to others (intentionally or unintentionally). Doing nothing (possibly claiming hopelessness or futility) is not better than doing something.
- Swizec 10y ago
  > The conversion inefficiency is of the order of five times or higher - that is, to produce a unit quantity of meat, at least fives times that amount of plants have to be fed to the animals This is the part I never understood about veganism, maybe you can help. As a global apex superpredator, wouldn't you rather reap the rewards of the rest of the ecosystem doing that work for you than doing it yourself? Or do you think there's a way we can produce those 5x plants efficiently enough to feed you without going 2nd hand? Or is the argument that with modern farming we're already producing those pkants anyway, and the meat step is unnecessary? Is it more economical to deal with logistics of 5 units of plants or 1 unit of meat? These are the questions that keep me up at night and I haven't found a satisfactory answer that wasn't mired with propaganda.
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  - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
    The argument is that you eat one of those 5 units, and the other 4 are available for the hungry. Feeding livestock rather than people is the problem. That argument isn't airtight -- there are certainly issues of logistics -- but there's no propaganda. A second argument is environmental: farming takes land (deforestation), water and fertilizer, and it pollutes via runoff and ghg emissions, so the less production needed, the better. Also, livestock produce worse runoff and emissions than vegetable or grain farming. "Reaping the rewards of the rest of the ecosystem" isn't sustainable for 7 billion people.
    - eveningcoffee 10y ago
      "Reaping the rewards of the rest of the ecosystem" isn't sustainable for 7 billion people. And whose fault is this, that there are 7 billion people living in the world? I would say that this race to the bottom is not sustainable. What if every family will get sustainable and will not have more than two offspring (on average)?
      - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
        Er yeah, fine, but placing blame doesn't change our current situation or inform whether it might be wise to restrain meat consumption. People are already here and need food, space, clean air and water, and climate stability.
        eveningcoffee 10y ago
        Well, I was not much placing blame but rather I was pointing out that in fact we are in the war and this war is not engaged by the guns. So lets take India for example. Can India in fact afford to loose its edge in fertility or when it does, does it risk to be overthrown by its historical enemy that has been engaging genocide against its population for many centuries? From another point, in fact you are telling me that I have to change my behaviour because of the people who do not even consider to change their hostile practises. Yes, I may have to, but do you consider it fair, reasonable? Lets take for example Egypt, whose population has raised from 20 million in 50s to 80 million today. This population is comparable to Germany, whose population has stagnated. If we compare arable land of these countries then it is 196,460 km^2 in Germany against only 35,350 km^2 in Egypt. Are you suggesting that Germans should give up their sausages so that people living in Egypt can again double their population regardless of their actual capacity to feed them? What I suggest here is that instead of putting blame on sustainable nations, it should be instead agitated for the so far irresponsible nations to constrain their birth rate such that we can have stability in the population growth.
psifun 10y ago
Is there anything in this article that speaks to sensation? If there is, I didn't see it.
runeks 10y ago
How would we ever be able to discover if something knows what we call "pain"? I think the more we learn about life, the more we will see that it's a spectrum, and can't really be divided into sentient and non-sentient. I see little difference between a tiny insect fledgling in apparent pain and a leaf releasing a chemical as a response to damage. The mechanical reaction happens because the insect can move and the chemical reaction because the planet cannot. Sentience would appear to be about the ability to move around, which through evolution causes moving life forms to experience pain in response to damage, because it causes them to move away from and avoid the threat. It appears we expect to be able to judge the internal experience of a life form by looking at it. And if it moves, like us, we call it "sentient".
- yomly 10y ago
  I was indirectly hinting towards this through my posturing. Much of our concepts sentience and intelligence strike me as egotistical and conceited. After all, on the scale of galaxies do our efforts amount to much more than noise? Are we to planets all that different to bacteria on us?
  - yomly 10y ago
    Adding to that - arguably, haven't rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes almost achieved more than us in terms of expansion when we take into account their scale? Or influenza for that matter? I recall a scientific study that suggested the (perceived) passing of time is relative to the size of an organism.[0] So perhaps we can only notice or appreciate phenomena that occur on a timescale that is relative to our size. It's true that with modern techniques we can now study things but our ability to value or appreciate things diminish as the time scale departs from ours... [0]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24078179 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24078179
amelius 10y ago
If you look at a time-lapse video of a plant reacting to e.g. a light or shadow, it already looks quite sentient. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHe7y8cy-7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHe7y8cy-7Y
- justifier 10y ago
  an aside.. your link reminded of one of my favourite adventure time episodes: food chain(o); directed by masaaki yuasa "to a plant, a day is short" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6DlinOXfZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6DlinOXfZg (o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Chain_(Adventure_Time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Chain_(Adventure_Time)
thevardanian 10y ago
Eating meat is actually (Animal suffering) + (Plant suffering) so taking out animal suffering is still reducing the amount of total suffering. Dharmic religions have argued this for centuries. The conclusion isn't to eliminate suffering from this world, but to reduce it as much as possible. To have as little of an impact on this world as possible, and to live in harmony with the nature as much as possible. Jains for example can take it to an extreme where they even filter out microbiologic organism by wearing a mask, and use a broom to sweep the ground in front of them so that they remove living organism from their path. Admittedly to me that is an outrageous extreme, but it does make a point nonetheless.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  But not eating is even less suffering. that is one hell of a dilemma.
  - thevardanian 10y ago
    That's not the point. But then again people go to great lengths, and twist through mental obstacles just to defend their silly dogmas. It's OK. Willful ignorance is only arrogance, and that never lead to any kind of good result.

Suppose we discover that plants have a concept for pain. What will vegans do in this case? Eat purely synthetic food?

by yomly 10y ago

Suppose we discover that plants have a concept for pain. What will vegans do in this case? Eat purely synthetic food?

Not necessarily. Whatever vegans eat today still contributes to cruelty to animals to some extent (like animals used for farming, animals killed in the process of growing and harvesting plants, etc.). Being vegan is about causing significantly lesser harm and doing things that many may consider inconvenient. Even if plants are shown to suffer from pain, if one is inclined to reduce suffering, it still makes sense to eat plants directly than feed them to animals and eat those animals. The conversion inefficiency is of the order of five times or higher - that is, to produce a unit quantity of meat, at least fives times that amount of plants have to be fed to the animals (this is a very general and inaccurate figure - depending on what one compares, this could be very different and be a lot higher too). In general, eating animals still kills significantly more plants than eating plants directly. Of course, if plants are irrefutably shown to suffer pain, then there will be more focus over time in finding alternatives to eating them, like synthetic food. Whatever be the approach, it's impossible for anyone to exist without causing harm to others (intentionally or unintentionally). Doing nothing (possibly claiming hopelessness or futility) is not better than doing something.

Swizec 10y ago
> The conversion inefficiency is of the order of five times or higher - that is, to produce a unit quantity of meat, at least fives times that amount of plants have to be fed to the animals This is the part I never understood about veganism, maybe you can help. As a global apex superpredator, wouldn't you rather reap the rewards of the rest of the ecosystem doing that work for you than doing it yourself? Or do you think there's a way we can produce those 5x plants efficiently enough to feed you without going 2nd hand? Or is the argument that with modern farming we're already producing those pkants anyway, and the meat step is unnecessary? Is it more economical to deal with logistics of 5 units of plants or 1 unit of meat? These are the questions that keep me up at night and I haven't found a satisfactory answer that wasn't mired with propaganda.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
  The argument is that you eat one of those 5 units, and the other 4 are available for the hungry. Feeding livestock rather than people is the problem. That argument isn't airtight -- there are certainly issues of logistics -- but there's no propaganda. A second argument is environmental: farming takes land (deforestation), water and fertilizer, and it pollutes via runoff and ghg emissions, so the less production needed, the better. Also, livestock produce worse runoff and emissions than vegetable or grain farming. "Reaping the rewards of the rest of the ecosystem" isn't sustainable for 7 billion people.
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    "Reaping the rewards of the rest of the ecosystem" isn't sustainable for 7 billion people. And whose fault is this, that there are 7 billion people living in the world? I would say that this race to the bottom is not sustainable. What if every family will get sustainable and will not have more than two offspring (on average)?
    - Jill_the_Pill 10y ago
      Er yeah, fine, but placing blame doesn't change our current situation or inform whether it might be wise to restrain meat consumption. People are already here and need food, space, clean air and water, and climate stability.
      - eveningcoffee 10y ago
        Well, I was not much placing blame but rather I was pointing out that in fact we are in the war and this war is not engaged by the guns. So lets take India for example. Can India in fact afford to loose its edge in fertility or when it does, does it risk to be overthrown by its historical enemy that has been engaging genocide against its population for many centuries? From another point, in fact you are telling me that I have to change my behaviour because of the people who do not even consider to change their hostile practises. Yes, I may have to, but do you consider it fair, reasonable? Lets take for example Egypt, whose population has raised from 20 million in 50s to 80 million today. This population is comparable to Germany, whose population has stagnated. If we compare arable land of these countries then it is 196,460 km^2 in Germany against only 35,350 km^2 in Egypt. Are you suggesting that Germans should give up their sausages so that people living in Egypt can again double their population regardless of their actual capacity to feed them? What I suggest here is that instead of putting blame on sustainable nations, it should be instead agitated for the so far irresponsible nations to constrain their birth rate such that we can have stability in the population growth.

psifun 10y ago

Is there anything in this article that speaks to sensation? If there is, I didn't see it.

runeks 10y ago

How would we ever be able to discover if something knows what we call "pain"? I think the more we learn about life, the more we will see that it's a spectrum, and can't really be divided into sentient and non-sentient. I see little difference between a tiny insect fledgling in apparent pain and a leaf releasing a chemical as a response to damage. The mechanical reaction happens because the insect can move and the chemical reaction because the planet cannot. Sentience would appear to be about the ability to move around, which through evolution causes moving life forms to experience pain in response to damage, because it causes them to move away from and avoid the threat. It appears we expect to be able to judge the internal experience of a life form by looking at it. And if it moves, like us, we call it "sentient".

yomly 10y ago
I was indirectly hinting towards this through my posturing. Much of our concepts sentience and intelligence strike me as egotistical and conceited. After all, on the scale of galaxies do our efforts amount to much more than noise? Are we to planets all that different to bacteria on us?
- yomly 10y ago
  Adding to that - arguably, haven't rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes almost achieved more than us in terms of expansion when we take into account their scale? Or influenza for that matter? I recall a scientific study that suggested the (perceived) passing of time is relative to the size of an organism.[0] So perhaps we can only notice or appreciate phenomena that occur on a timescale that is relative to our size. It's true that with modern techniques we can now study things but our ability to value or appreciate things diminish as the time scale departs from ours... [0]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24078179 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24078179

amelius 10y ago

If you look at a time-lapse video of a plant reacting to e.g. a light or shadow, it already looks quite sentient. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHe7y8cy-7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHe7y8cy-7Y

justifier 10y ago
an aside.. your link reminded of one of my favourite adventure time episodes: food chain(o); directed by masaaki yuasa "to a plant, a day is short" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6DlinOXfZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6DlinOXfZg (o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Chain_(Adventure_Time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Chain_(Adventure_Time)

thevardanian 10y ago

Eating meat is actually (Animal suffering) + (Plant suffering) so taking out animal suffering is still reducing the amount of total suffering. Dharmic religions have argued this for centuries. The conclusion isn't to eliminate suffering from this world, but to reduce it as much as possible. To have as little of an impact on this world as possible, and to live in harmony with the nature as much as possible. Jains for example can take it to an extreme where they even filter out microbiologic organism by wearing a mask, and use a broom to sweep the ground in front of them so that they remove living organism from their path. Admittedly to me that is an outrageous extreme, but it does make a point nonetheless.

SubiculumCode 10y ago
But not eating is even less suffering. that is one hell of a dilemma.
- thevardanian 10y ago
  That's not the point. But then again people go to great lengths, and twist through mental obstacles just to defend their silly dogmas. It's OK. Willful ignorance is only arrogance, and that never lead to any kind of good result.