4 ms·

Personally, I don't find it persuasive or constructive to start a thought experiment with "what would happen if this thing that will never happen actually happe

Personally, I don't find it persuasive or constructive to start a thought experiment with "what would happen if this thing that will never happen actually happens." Instead, I think you just get divisive click bate. Vegans will click thinking, "damn right!" Non-vegans will likely ignore it, thinking, "okay loony." I think a stronger argument would lead with a direct fact or point of alarm. For example, "every non-vegan is contributing <blah> to greenhouse gasses."

52-6F-62 9y ago
This. My first reaction was: `Severe anemics might start having to carry blood packs? Schedule regular transfusions?` It's kind of a silly question, regardless. If the whole of America went vegan at once, what would happen to the resulting last generations of overpopulation of meat and dairy cattle? Would their meat be harvested for other purposes or be allowed to rot once they died out? There are so many variable points to even approach it hypothetically that it just gets ridiculous, and would contribute very little.
ndh2 9y ago
Did you even read the "article"? You seem to be replying to the headline only.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Yes, and please read the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
  - ndh2 9y ago
    Sorry if I jumped to conclusions here. The reason was this sentence. > Vegans will click thinking, "damn right!" Non-vegans will likely ignore it, thinking, "okay loony." The study that referred to in the article is displayed in a way that won't sit well with any vegan. Since we can't read the study, we don't know much more.
- pc86 9y ago
  > You seem to be replying to the headline only. Are you new at HN? This is 80% of the comments in any thread on any topic that isn't Haskell or an undergraduate-level academic paper.
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Can you clarify what gives you the impression that I did not read the article? Did you notice that it says: “Our logic was to start at the extreme scenario [and work backward from that],” says Robin White, the study’s lead author and an animal sciences researcher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. She and fellow animal sciences researcher Mary Beth Hall, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, began by estimating the impact of converting all land now used by the livestock industry to cropland for human food.
logfromblammo 9y ago
How about we also consider some less extreme hypotheticals, such as what might happen if everyone substituted Tenebrio meat for their Bos meat consumption. I think they taste fine, but the spouse gets super-squicked at just the thought of me eating them. Apparently, it's just fine if the turtle eats them. That's an unfair double-standard right there. We're both opportunistic omnivores, after all. And the vegan police can't exactly stop me from throwing grain meal in a bucket and raising my own beetles, so the 100% vegan thing won't be happening anyway.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  Why even go that far. Just hypothetisize having everyone only consume white meat and not red meat, the latter of which is both more taxing on the human physique, not just on the environment.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    It's a lot easier for the food cops to find a backyard chicken coop than an indoor beetle-raising operation. And let's be honest with ourselves; in order to enforce 100% veganism, there will have to be "war on meat" food cops. I'm not going to stop eating meat unless someone literally puts a gun in my face, and then I will start again right after the gun is out of my face, and the gun-pointer is done roasting in my buried Morlock3000(TM) barbecue. It's technically not cannibalism if I feed the unfortunate Eloi to carnivorous insects and then eat the bugs, right?~ You can't force people to stop eating meat, and the veganism ecological argument will never be convincing enough to get 100% acceptance. You get far more traction out of finding ways to make the existing lifestyle status quo less damaging to the ecosystem. So now you're back to reducing the impact of the global beef herd in ways that don't involve reducing it all the way down to zero head of cattle.
    - Apocryphon 9y ago
      > It's a lot easier for the food cops to find a backyard chicken coop than an indoor beetle-raising operation. Wasn't so hard in the new Blade Runner

52-6F-62 9y ago

This. My first reaction was: `Severe anemics might start having to carry blood packs? Schedule regular transfusions?` It's kind of a silly question, regardless. If the whole of America went vegan at once, what would happen to the resulting last generations of overpopulation of meat and dairy cattle? Would their meat be harvested for other purposes or be allowed to rot once they died out? There are so many variable points to even approach it hypothetically that it just gets ridiculous, and would contribute very little.

ndh2 9y ago

Did you even read the "article"? You seem to be replying to the headline only.

dogruck 9y ago
Yes, and please read the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
- ndh2 9y ago
  Sorry if I jumped to conclusions here. The reason was this sentence. > Vegans will click thinking, "damn right!" Non-vegans will likely ignore it, thinking, "okay loony." The study that referred to in the article is displayed in a way that won't sit well with any vegan. Since we can't read the study, we don't know much more.
pc86 9y ago
> You seem to be replying to the headline only. Are you new at HN? This is 80% of the comments in any thread on any topic that isn't Haskell or an undergraduate-level academic paper.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Can you clarify what gives you the impression that I did not read the article? Did you notice that it says: “Our logic was to start at the extreme scenario [and work backward from that],” says Robin White, the study’s lead author and an animal sciences researcher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. She and fellow animal sciences researcher Mary Beth Hall, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, began by estimating the impact of converting all land now used by the livestock industry to cropland for human food.

logfromblammo 9y ago

How about we also consider some less extreme hypotheticals, such as what might happen if everyone substituted Tenebrio meat for their Bos meat consumption. I think they taste fine, but the spouse gets super-squicked at just the thought of me eating them. Apparently, it's just fine if the turtle eats them. That's an unfair double-standard right there. We're both opportunistic omnivores, after all. And the vegan police can't exactly stop me from throwing grain meal in a bucket and raising my own beetles, so the 100% vegan thing won't be happening anyway.

Apocryphon 9y ago
Why even go that far. Just hypothetisize having everyone only consume white meat and not red meat, the latter of which is both more taxing on the human physique, not just on the environment.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  It's a lot easier for the food cops to find a backyard chicken coop than an indoor beetle-raising operation. And let's be honest with ourselves; in order to enforce 100% veganism, there will have to be "war on meat" food cops. I'm not going to stop eating meat unless someone literally puts a gun in my face, and then I will start again right after the gun is out of my face, and the gun-pointer is done roasting in my buried Morlock3000(TM) barbecue. It's technically not cannibalism if I feed the unfortunate Eloi to carnivorous insects and then eat the bugs, right?~ You can't force people to stop eating meat, and the veganism ecological argument will never be convincing enough to get 100% acceptance. You get far more traction out of finding ways to make the existing lifestyle status quo less damaging to the ecosystem. So now you're back to reducing the impact of the global beef herd in ways that don't involve reducing it all the way down to zero head of cattle.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    > It's a lot easier for the food cops to find a backyard chicken coop than an indoor beetle-raising operation. Wasn't so hard in the new Blade Runner