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I suppose it's slightly more animal friendly. On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food m

I suppose it's slightly more animal friendly. On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. Working towards one final giant culling of all unnaturally engineered animals and just continuing on with a small number of animals to live reasonably natural lives and produce goods for realistic, high, prizes to be consumed as a luxury or exotic thing. Sorry, I'm a dreamer I guess, continuously disappointed by a world that doesn't seem to be able to set any significant goals nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit and likely at the cost of the rest of the world.

slothtrop 6y ago
Nothing's ever enough for vegans. > Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. There is increasingly more of that all the time. > On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Another step? They aren't getting any more optimized, if anything new available options are scaling that back in favor of more land-use, open space, slower growth. > Sorry, I'm a dreamer I guess, continuously disappointed by a world that doesn't seem to be able to set any significant goals nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit and likely at the cost of the rest of the world. You're free to consume whatever you want. EDIT: my opening sentence is not fair. But it invited a lot of response. That can walk a thin line but in this case I figure it worked out. If my post were purely inflammatory, then it would be counter-productive but I don't see it that way.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. is that surprising? most vegans I know care more about the animals' quality of life than whether or not they end up getting slaughtered. this is a large part of why they are vegans and not merely vegetarians. interestingly, I find that they tend to be pretty accepting of hunting.
- kevinmgranger 6y ago
  Assuming all vegans feel the way the person you're replying to is a bit of a broad brush, no?
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    It's a broad one. We've been here often, if for the sake of argument you control for issues that are brought forth like suffering or the environment, the overwhelming response will default back to saying those thing actually didn't matter because meat is murder anyway. Granted "some vegans" would be more precise, but that's still the sentiment.
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - deleted 6y ago
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    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      The parent didn't indicate they were a vegan at all, they just described an ideal. You were just so ready to attack vegans that you don't appear to have read what they wrote.
      - slothtrop 6y ago
        > you don't appear to have read what they wrote. I don't see how you could surmise that.
- eplanit 6y ago
  Soon Jainism will become popular, is my prediction. Someone will package twigs and leaves as a Jainist snack pack and make a fortune.... I'd better get started! /s
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    VC pitch: We'll make money on the supplements our customers have to take.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- tashoecraft 6y ago
  Nothing is ever enough for anyone. Look at any discussion here. "This software should be fully free without ads", "this license isn't permissive enough", it's not distrbuted, it's not blockchain, it is blockchain, it's written in java. And I think it's fine. We need people on the extremes in order to put pressure and advance things, as extremes rarely get implemented, but meeting in the middle does.
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    > We need people on the extremes After 2020, I'd like to see more in the middle. I think extremes are overrepresented.
    - lisper 6y ago
      Human nature is very hard to change. What we really need is a societal mechanism that somehow forces (or persuades) those on the extremes to compromise. The U.S. Constitution was designed to be such a mechanism, but it doesn't seem to be standing up well to new technologies.
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        seems to me the constitution is pretty much working as designed. during polarized times, it makes it very difficult to change things. if you believe all the terrible things written about trump in the news (I do, with some reservations), it's sort of remarkable how little damage he managed to do. we (probably) just elected joe biden, who is almost the definition of a compromise candidate.
        lisper 6y ago
        > it's sort of remarkable how little damage he managed to do I think it's much too early to assess the totality of (let me put this in the least inflammatory way that I can think of) Trump's long-term impact. At the very least, he has re-formed the American judiciary, delayed action on climate change by four years, and eroded or eliminated many of the societal and governmental norms that are essential for the functioning of our society (e.g. accepting the results of elections). But even now, we have North Korea with ICBMs and more nuclear weapons than before, Iran closer to a nuclear weapon than before, and probably a hundred thousand people or so dead from Covid who might not have died if Trump had not politicized the wearing of masks. That's not "little damage" by my reckoning. There are also a few hundred innocent children who were forcibly separated from their parents and likely will never see them again because of shoddy record-keeping. Despite the relatively small numbers, the sheer monstrousness of this makes it impossible to sweep it under the rug. Trump effectively abandoned the moral high ground that America has held since the end of World War II. America is no longer perceived as a reliable partner, leader of the free world, and beacon of hope. I suppose reasonable people can disagree in their assessment of the long-term impact of this, but in my book, that's not "little damage." [ADDENDUM] Something else Trump has done is form a significant contingent of the citizenry who now equate the interests of the country with Trump's personal interests, i.e. who believe Trump when he says that we face existential threats that he alone can fix. Ironically, they do this in the name of patriotism and freedom, utterly oblivious to the historical precedents that show time and time again that cults of personality lead to tyranny and ruin. Thankfully, we have not yet crossed that threshold. But we were standing on the brink, and it won't take much to bring us back to it. [ADDENDUM2] There's also this: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/william-barr-lame-duck-execution-spree-is-unprecedented.html?via=recirc_engaged https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/william-barr-lam...
- dzolob 6y ago
  As long as animals are treated as commodities instead of sentient beings, yeah, nothing is going to be enough for vegans. Empathy is a great quality to cultivate.
  - balabaster 6y ago
    Empathy is great, but unfortunately it's not a fix. There's only so much empathy we can have for the environment around us without giving away everything and getting nothing in return. Having empathy for the needs of your fellow human beings is still empathy, even if it comes at the cost of empathy for animals. Empathy for animals at the cost of empathy for your fellow humans is no more a solution than the other way around. So empathy just doesn't fix everything.
    - the_gastropod 6y ago
      That's a false dichotomy. Who's advocating for less empathy for humans?
      - overboard2 6y ago
        The people who want humans to live with as limited a footprint as possible, their standard of living be dammed
      - balabaster 6y ago
        Nobody's advocating less empathy for humans, what I'm suggesting is that according to spoon theory, there's only so much in a day you can give a shit about before you burn out [YMMV]. I'm suggesting that when you put all your empathy into caring for one thing at the cost of another, typically yourself, it's a hard path to walk. Empathy as a fix all, isn't. There needs to be balance between what's reasonable, feasible and practical, for our environment, for the eco-system and for us as humans. Empathy for sure is necessary, but it's only part of the solution, not the whole solution.
        layoric 6y ago
- wpietri 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. That's a weird complaint on a site about eternal disruption, eternal improvement of things that are basically fine already. I'm an omnivore, and I'm comfortable with it. But that doesn't keep me from recognizing the ethical issues with killing and controlling other beings to survive. I really appreciate people pushing the envelope on this. If I could eat basically the same diet but have it all be from a replicator, I'd do it in a heartbeat. So keep pushing, vegans!
  - JacobSuperslav 6y ago
    Hacker News, where technology > empathy
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      I value ethics and empathy deeply but, I don't understand vegans and vegetarians. Their biggest line of defense is "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food". That's sadly right. And they implicitly say that "eating plants are OK because, plants are not animals and they're just happen to grow. They don't feel, they don't understand". On the contrary, there's a growing mountain of research revealing that plants can communicate, issue warnings about diseases and bug infestations. They so-called get stressed when it rains, and their metabolisms startle during fast light changes (like eclipses). More shockingly, they release all the nutrients they store when they sense they're going to die, so other plants can thrive from their remains and nutrient stocks (writing this really moves me). This is complete opposite of "plants are well, just alive wood" hypothesis. When I share this research with vegans and vegetarians, their response is: crickets. Moreover, most hardcore ones suggest that we don't ever need meat to thrive or live a healthy life however, we've evolved that far because we consumed meat. Meat made us and, same people are ignorant of this fact. I can understand that we need to grow these animals more ethically. This is why I always try to buy ethically produced food. I understand that these animals are adding great amounts of greenhouse gases. I can understand that we may live well with less meat. However, we need to understand, some of these animals are evolved under our reign and they may not survive outside farms for long. The cattle are grass puppies now and are essentially "useful pets". We need to understand where we are to move forward. Ignorance and fight won't take us anywhere. We need to talk openly and need to put our prejudice aside. We need to learn and understand first.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  "Nothing's ever enough for vegans." I stopped reading right there. - non-vegan with low tolerance for counterproductive comments
- kaycebasques 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. No need for a blanket prejudiced statement like this.
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    I'll rescind it the day I see a vegan suggest there is such a thing as ethical meat/egg consumption. It will never happen.
    - kaycebasques 6y ago
      I don't have a problem with someone who raises a chicken, uses the chicken's natural existence to improve the local environment (fertilizer, etc.), lets that chicken have a life similar to its life in nature, and gives it a lifespan that isn't dramatically shorter than what it experiences in nature. Eating that chicken and its eggs seems fine to me because that seems like a mutualistic relationship. Asking me to endorse factory farming is tough because it provides literally none of those things, all of which seem like pretty reasonable definitions of a decent life for a creature. If you can verify that the chicken/eggs you bought came from that situation, I don't have a problem with that. I know a lot of brands claim an image like this, but let's be honest, no one is verifying that before purchasing because we know it's probably not true. In other words, I am a vegan, and I just suggested a situation of ethical meat/egg consumption. As I said before, I think you're prejudiced towards vegans and don't really understand what we're about. I suggest listening more to what vegans have to say about veganism rather than what meateaters have to say about it.
      - slothtrop 6y ago
        > I suggest listening more to what vegans have to say about veganism rather than what meateaters have to say about it. That is precisely what brought me to my conclusion. > As I said before, I think you're prejudiced towards vegans and don't really understand what we're about. To the extent that I see the vocal base as having an absolutist view compared to yours, yes. If you're insinuating more connotations associated with your choice of words prejudice, no. You don't know me. That view is not terribly dissimilar from my own, so I'll grant I understand it well. Congrats on defying my expectations. I was confident you would not.
- WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. Getting human slaves out of the food production process is a great first step, but I like to think that we'll eventually spot inflicting pain on _any_ animal to produce our food.
- cute_boi 6y ago
  > "You're free to consume whatever you want." Most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. You're not free to consume whatever you want. It may be legal but not ethical.
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    You're taking this to mean far more than it obviously is meant to mean.
- bitwize 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. Causing zero harm to animals is enough. It's totally within reach, too. You just have to take responsibility and DO IT.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    If you go by the actual definition of what defines an animal, it is literally impossible not to constantly harm animals. Either the rabbits caught in the threshers, the tiny organism we step on, the mites on our face we consume unknowingly. Even the strictest Jainist can't stop from annihilating an uncountable number of tiny animals that live in, on and around us. (though to their credit, they sure do try).
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    Thanks for proving my point :)
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    Sent from by device built my slave labour in China.
- dariusj18 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. Just to jump in with an additional point, vegans would never be ok with this. I believe you might be thinking vegetarians, which as a vegetarian, this is good news, and is enough for me.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  fuck off
- mamon 6y ago
  > Nothing's ever enough for vegans. The most funny argument used by vegans is: "we are closer to nature". There's nothing more natural than animals eating each other. And no, humans are not herbivores. Some primates might be, but human evolution started the moment our monkey ancestors decided to get off the tree and eat meat. By promoting veganism you're trying to undo the last 3-5 millions of years of human evolution. Talk about Catholic Church pushing us back to Middle ages... /s Another argument that I hate: by not eating animals you reduce suffering. If we take that to it's logical conclusion, the only way for you to not cause any sufferning is to die. That's why Buddhists (for whom "reducing suffering" is a religious imperative) came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu Life is an infininte circle of joy, pleasure, sadness, suffering, death... If you try to eliminate one of them you are against the life itself.
chrisjarvis 6y ago
"be the change you want to see in the world" - Gandhi "If not you, then who?" - Hillel, first- century Jewish scholar "would you like some cheese with that whine?" - my mom
- srean 6y ago
  Please, its Gandhi. No ill will intended, its a common mistake.
  - chrisjarvis 6y ago
    noted, thanks.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  Nitpicking the Hillel quote, the message is correct but to prevent misinformation spreading on the web I feel like correcting. Hillel is quoted in the Mishna[0] as saying, "If I am not for me, who is for me? If I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when?"[1] If Hillel said "if not you, then who?" I have not found a source, but I believe this is a common interpretation of his first sentence. Then again, maybe he was talking about self care and not taking responsibility. I don't know. [0] Avoth 1.14 [1] Translation by me, the wording is terse and open to interpretation so I tried to be faithful to the text and not inject my own interpretation
  - chrisjarvis 6y ago
    I have no idea thanks for the extra information! it’s a quote I’ve always liked. When I googled who said it Hillel came up.
    - names_are_hard 6y ago
      Yeah the internet is awesome at mangling and misattributing quotes. The fact that the original is easily found online doesn't help because it's in a foreign language. Fortunately it's pretty rudimentary Hebrew and it doesn't take an expert to understand, just someone who can read the language. Hillel's saying immediately preceding this one is in Aramaic...good luck dropping that in Google Translate :)
HighlandSpring 6y ago
What's so "dreamy" about making animal based nutrition something reserved for the privileged few?
dirtyid 6y ago
In terms of animal protein, aren't eggs basically optimized food machines? For more efficiency, one would have to go down to insects with better conversion ratio.
theloosifer 6y ago
So clearly you’re strongly pro-life as well?
corndoge 6y ago
> Working towards one final giant culling of all unnaturally engineered animals For what purpose?
golergka 6y ago
> nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit You, as a consumer, directly dictate to companies what is profitable and what's not by what you choose to buy and what you choose not to buy. Dichotomy of profit and ethics doesn't make any sense: profit is a signal which among other things also includes information about what consumers think if ethical or unethical, and how important it is to them.
- mbil 6y ago
  Everything profitable is ethical? I disagree. Supply chains are opaque and complex and there’s a diffusion of responsibility by the time you reach the level of decision-making consumers. I may give money to a company that is doing something unethical without my really knowing or thinking about it.
  - golergka 6y ago
    > Everything profitable is ethical? I never made this claim, as ethics in this case is subjective: some things are ethical in some eyes and unethical in others, and profitability is the mechanism of reaching consensus between these views. Your point about transparency is valid, I have to admit. However, I don't think that it applies in the case of food production: most meat and animal products consumers are well-aware that in order to get meat, you need to kill someone, and if you want to keep milk and eggs as cheap as possible, you can't afford to treat the animals well.
    - mbil 6y ago
      > I never made this claim Sorry, you're right. That's what I took away from your claim that profit encodes a signal for ethicality. I still am not sure I agree with the idea that profit represents a consensus for whether or not something is ethical. Specifically _because_ money is involved it seems like the equation is muddied. In the food production case, more ethical choices often come with a higher price tag. E.g., I believe that cage-free eggs are more ethical, but when I was broke I would buy the cheaper eggs because I was financially incentivized to do something I found less ethical, if only in a small way. And even now, if I am in a rush to buy eggs and the store is out of cage-free, I'll still make the less-ethical decision to do what is cheaper (in terms of energy). I wouldn't say that people's ethics are determined by how much money they have, but rather people may believe that one product option is more ethical than another, but considerations about money and convenience make them sometimes behave less ethically than they would without those constraints.
kelnos 6y ago
I think this just depends on your values and moral code, and there's no clear right or wrong here. I personally do not see a problem with using animals as food. If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans. There are certainly a lot of problems with the sustainability and humane-ness of our livestock farming, but I don't see "become vegetarian/vegan" as the only solution, or even necessarily a desirable one. But getting into a meat vs. no meat debate here isn't ever going to be productive, so that's all I'll say. I had not known that male chicks are killed after birth in such numbers, and the practice does make me sad. But I also recognize that a lot of people just don't have any kind of emotional response to this sort of thing, and that's ok too. It's great that people are building new technologies to allow us to keep doing what we're doing, but with better treatment of the animals involved, and less waste.
- Razengan 6y ago
  > If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans. If there’s a larger “food chain” on the interstellar scale where some intelligent species mass-consume others, would it be “good enough” for some aliens to farm humans like we do animals?
  - zo1 6y ago
    It's all good and well to argue about it while we're at the top of the food chain. No guarantee that'll always be the case, though.
  - nkrisc 6y ago
    Sure. Though we'd probably mount an armed resistance to the idea, successful or not. The animals on the farm are welcome to do the same if they don't like being farmed.
    - missingrib 6y ago
      This is satire?
    - 6y ago
colechristensen 6y ago
There’s a moral difficulty here where western societies care a lot about the beginnings of things and can’t stomach things ending, as if the only desirable world is one in which we all experience immortal bliss until the heat death of the universe. Every living thing exists by consuming other living things in some way or another. Every living thing has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most animals are at least in small ways, consumers of animals. There is moral value in striving to maximize the quality of life in all its stages, that does not necessarily have to exclude death for a purpose. Everything dies whether by accident, disease, predation, of degradation by age. Thinking things were better off not existing or better off dying of organ failure instead of being eaten doesn’t always make sense to me.
- LesZedCB 6y ago
  indeed this is why it's not conflicting for a vegan to be an organ donor. the problem is that we create beginnings for unnatural endings.
- mkolodny 6y ago
  > Thinking things were better off not existing or better off dying of organ failure instead of being eaten doesn’t always make sense to me. Would you rather live a long life and then die of organ failure, or get eaten when you're three years old? Most people value getting to live longer. So, if we apply our own principles to other animals, there's value in letting animals live longer rather than killing and eating them.
  - parineum 6y ago
    That isn't the choice. It's billions of chickens get to live 3 years and get eaten or a million chickens die of liver failure. But I think you're missing the parent's point. Death isn't cruel. Suffering is cruel and can only be experience by living things. This kind of philosophy is a pretty active subject currently. The debate is, generally, maximizing happiness vs. minimizing suffering. The former creating more suffering overall and the latter creating less happiness overall.
- lmilcin 6y ago

slothtrop 6y ago

Nothing's ever enough for vegans. > Would be more interested in seeing more means of producing tasty food without using animals and at reduced costs to the environment. There is increasingly more of that all the time. > On the other hand it just seems like another step into the direction of turning the chickens into optimized food machines. Another step? They aren't getting any more optimized, if anything new available options are scaling that back in favor of more land-use, open space, slower growth. > Sorry, I'm a dreamer I guess, continuously disappointed by a world that doesn't seem to be able to set any significant goals nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit and likely at the cost of the rest of the world. You're free to consume whatever you want. EDIT: my opening sentence is not fair. But it invited a lot of response. That can walk a thin line but in this case I figure it worked out. If my post were purely inflammatory, then it would be counter-productive but I don't see it that way.

leetcrew 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. is that surprising? most vegans I know care more about the animals' quality of life than whether or not they end up getting slaughtered. this is a large part of why they are vegans and not merely vegetarians. interestingly, I find that they tend to be pretty accepting of hunting.
kevinmgranger 6y ago
Assuming all vegans feel the way the person you're replying to is a bit of a broad brush, no?
- slothtrop 6y ago
  It's a broad one. We've been here often, if for the sake of argument you control for issues that are brought forth like suffering or the environment, the overwhelming response will default back to saying those thing actually didn't matter because meat is murder anyway. Granted "some vegans" would be more precise, but that's still the sentiment.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - deleted 6y ago
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  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    The parent didn't indicate they were a vegan at all, they just described an ideal. You were just so ready to attack vegans that you don't appear to have read what they wrote.
    - slothtrop 6y ago
      > you don't appear to have read what they wrote. I don't see how you could surmise that.
eplanit 6y ago
Soon Jainism will become popular, is my prediction. Someone will package twigs and leaves as a Jainist snack pack and make a fortune.... I'd better get started! /s
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  VC pitch: We'll make money on the supplements our customers have to take.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
tashoecraft 6y ago
Nothing is ever enough for anyone. Look at any discussion here. "This software should be fully free without ads", "this license isn't permissive enough", it's not distrbuted, it's not blockchain, it is blockchain, it's written in java. And I think it's fine. We need people on the extremes in order to put pressure and advance things, as extremes rarely get implemented, but meeting in the middle does.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  > We need people on the extremes After 2020, I'd like to see more in the middle. I think extremes are overrepresented.
  - lisper 6y ago
    Human nature is very hard to change. What we really need is a societal mechanism that somehow forces (or persuades) those on the extremes to compromise. The U.S. Constitution was designed to be such a mechanism, but it doesn't seem to be standing up well to new technologies.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      seems to me the constitution is pretty much working as designed. during polarized times, it makes it very difficult to change things. if you believe all the terrible things written about trump in the news (I do, with some reservations), it's sort of remarkable how little damage he managed to do. we (probably) just elected joe biden, who is almost the definition of a compromise candidate.
      - lisper 6y ago
        > it's sort of remarkable how little damage he managed to do I think it's much too early to assess the totality of (let me put this in the least inflammatory way that I can think of) Trump's long-term impact. At the very least, he has re-formed the American judiciary, delayed action on climate change by four years, and eroded or eliminated many of the societal and governmental norms that are essential for the functioning of our society (e.g. accepting the results of elections). But even now, we have North Korea with ICBMs and more nuclear weapons than before, Iran closer to a nuclear weapon than before, and probably a hundred thousand people or so dead from Covid who might not have died if Trump had not politicized the wearing of masks. That's not "little damage" by my reckoning. There are also a few hundred innocent children who were forcibly separated from their parents and likely will never see them again because of shoddy record-keeping. Despite the relatively small numbers, the sheer monstrousness of this makes it impossible to sweep it under the rug. Trump effectively abandoned the moral high ground that America has held since the end of World War II. America is no longer perceived as a reliable partner, leader of the free world, and beacon of hope. I suppose reasonable people can disagree in their assessment of the long-term impact of this, but in my book, that's not "little damage." [ADDENDUM] Something else Trump has done is form a significant contingent of the citizenry who now equate the interests of the country with Trump's personal interests, i.e. who believe Trump when he says that we face existential threats that he alone can fix. Ironically, they do this in the name of patriotism and freedom, utterly oblivious to the historical precedents that show time and time again that cults of personality lead to tyranny and ruin. Thankfully, we have not yet crossed that threshold. But we were standing on the brink, and it won't take much to bring us back to it. [ADDENDUM2] There's also this: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/william-barr-lame-duck-execution-spree-is-unprecedented.html?via=recirc_engaged https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/william-barr-lam...
dzolob 6y ago
As long as animals are treated as commodities instead of sentient beings, yeah, nothing is going to be enough for vegans. Empathy is a great quality to cultivate.
- balabaster 6y ago
  Empathy is great, but unfortunately it's not a fix. There's only so much empathy we can have for the environment around us without giving away everything and getting nothing in return. Having empathy for the needs of your fellow human beings is still empathy, even if it comes at the cost of empathy for animals. Empathy for animals at the cost of empathy for your fellow humans is no more a solution than the other way around. So empathy just doesn't fix everything.
  - the_gastropod 6y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. Who's advocating for less empathy for humans?
    - overboard2 6y ago
      The people who want humans to live with as limited a footprint as possible, their standard of living be dammed
    - balabaster 6y ago
      Nobody's advocating less empathy for humans, what I'm suggesting is that according to spoon theory, there's only so much in a day you can give a shit about before you burn out [YMMV]. I'm suggesting that when you put all your empathy into caring for one thing at the cost of another, typically yourself, it's a hard path to walk. Empathy as a fix all, isn't. There needs to be balance between what's reasonable, feasible and practical, for our environment, for the eco-system and for us as humans. Empathy for sure is necessary, but it's only part of the solution, not the whole solution.
      - layoric 6y ago
wpietri 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. That's a weird complaint on a site about eternal disruption, eternal improvement of things that are basically fine already. I'm an omnivore, and I'm comfortable with it. But that doesn't keep me from recognizing the ethical issues with killing and controlling other beings to survive. I really appreciate people pushing the envelope on this. If I could eat basically the same diet but have it all be from a replicator, I'd do it in a heartbeat. So keep pushing, vegans!
- JacobSuperslav 6y ago
  Hacker News, where technology > empathy
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    I value ethics and empathy deeply but, I don't understand vegans and vegetarians. Their biggest line of defense is "animals are alive and they have feelings and senses, we abuse them for food". That's sadly right. And they implicitly say that "eating plants are OK because, plants are not animals and they're just happen to grow. They don't feel, they don't understand". On the contrary, there's a growing mountain of research revealing that plants can communicate, issue warnings about diseases and bug infestations. They so-called get stressed when it rains, and their metabolisms startle during fast light changes (like eclipses). More shockingly, they release all the nutrients they store when they sense they're going to die, so other plants can thrive from their remains and nutrient stocks (writing this really moves me). This is complete opposite of "plants are well, just alive wood" hypothesis. When I share this research with vegans and vegetarians, their response is: crickets. Moreover, most hardcore ones suggest that we don't ever need meat to thrive or live a healthy life however, we've evolved that far because we consumed meat. Meat made us and, same people are ignorant of this fact. I can understand that we need to grow these animals more ethically. This is why I always try to buy ethically produced food. I understand that these animals are adding great amounts of greenhouse gases. I can understand that we may live well with less meat. However, we need to understand, some of these animals are evolved under our reign and they may not survive outside farms for long. The cattle are grass puppies now and are essentially "useful pets". We need to understand where we are to move forward. Ignorance and fight won't take us anywhere. We need to talk openly and need to put our prejudice aside. We need to learn and understand first.
chrisweekly 6y ago
"Nothing's ever enough for vegans." I stopped reading right there. - non-vegan with low tolerance for counterproductive comments
kaycebasques 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. No need for a blanket prejudiced statement like this.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  I'll rescind it the day I see a vegan suggest there is such a thing as ethical meat/egg consumption. It will never happen.
  - kaycebasques 6y ago
    I don't have a problem with someone who raises a chicken, uses the chicken's natural existence to improve the local environment (fertilizer, etc.), lets that chicken have a life similar to its life in nature, and gives it a lifespan that isn't dramatically shorter than what it experiences in nature. Eating that chicken and its eggs seems fine to me because that seems like a mutualistic relationship. Asking me to endorse factory farming is tough because it provides literally none of those things, all of which seem like pretty reasonable definitions of a decent life for a creature. If you can verify that the chicken/eggs you bought came from that situation, I don't have a problem with that. I know a lot of brands claim an image like this, but let's be honest, no one is verifying that before purchasing because we know it's probably not true. In other words, I am a vegan, and I just suggested a situation of ethical meat/egg consumption. As I said before, I think you're prejudiced towards vegans and don't really understand what we're about. I suggest listening more to what vegans have to say about veganism rather than what meateaters have to say about it.
    - slothtrop 6y ago
      > I suggest listening more to what vegans have to say about veganism rather than what meateaters have to say about it. That is precisely what brought me to my conclusion. > As I said before, I think you're prejudiced towards vegans and don't really understand what we're about. To the extent that I see the vocal base as having an absolutist view compared to yours, yes. If you're insinuating more connotations associated with your choice of words prejudice, no. You don't know me. That view is not terribly dissimilar from my own, so I'll grant I understand it well. Congrats on defying my expectations. I was confident you would not.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. Getting human slaves out of the food production process is a great first step, but I like to think that we'll eventually spot inflicting pain on _any_ animal to produce our food.
cute_boi 6y ago
> "You're free to consume whatever you want." Most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. You're not free to consume whatever you want. It may be legal but not ethical.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  You're taking this to mean far more than it obviously is meant to mean.
bitwize 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. Causing zero harm to animals is enough. It's totally within reach, too. You just have to take responsibility and DO IT.
- standardUser 6y ago
  If you go by the actual definition of what defines an animal, it is literally impossible not to constantly harm animals. Either the rabbits caught in the threshers, the tiny organism we step on, the mites on our face we consume unknowingly. Even the strictest Jainist can't stop from annihilating an uncountable number of tiny animals that live in, on and around us. (though to their credit, they sure do try).
- slothtrop 6y ago
  Thanks for proving my point :)
- LunaSea 6y ago
  Sent from by device built my slave labour in China.
dariusj18 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. Just to jump in with an additional point, vegans would never be ok with this. I believe you might be thinking vegetarians, which as a vegetarian, this is good news, and is enough for me.
toiletfuneral 6y ago
fuck off
mamon 6y ago
> Nothing's ever enough for vegans. The most funny argument used by vegans is: "we are closer to nature". There's nothing more natural than animals eating each other. And no, humans are not herbivores. Some primates might be, but human evolution started the moment our monkey ancestors decided to get off the tree and eat meat. By promoting veganism you're trying to undo the last 3-5 millions of years of human evolution. Talk about Catholic Church pushing us back to Middle ages... /s Another argument that I hate: by not eating animals you reduce suffering. If we take that to it's logical conclusion, the only way for you to not cause any sufferning is to die. That's why Buddhists (for whom "reducing suffering" is a religious imperative) came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu Life is an infininte circle of joy, pleasure, sadness, suffering, death... If you try to eliminate one of them you are against the life itself.

chrisjarvis 6y ago

"be the change you want to see in the world" - Gandhi "If not you, then who?" - Hillel, first- century Jewish scholar "would you like some cheese with that whine?" - my mom

srean 6y ago
Please, its Gandhi. No ill will intended, its a common mistake.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  noted, thanks.
names_are_hard 6y ago
Nitpicking the Hillel quote, the message is correct but to prevent misinformation spreading on the web I feel like correcting. Hillel is quoted in the Mishna[0] as saying, "If I am not for me, who is for me? If I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when?"[1] If Hillel said "if not you, then who?" I have not found a source, but I believe this is a common interpretation of his first sentence. Then again, maybe he was talking about self care and not taking responsibility. I don't know. [0] Avoth 1.14 [1] Translation by me, the wording is terse and open to interpretation so I tried to be faithful to the text and not inject my own interpretation
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  I have no idea thanks for the extra information! it’s a quote I’ve always liked. When I googled who said it Hillel came up.
  - names_are_hard 6y ago
    Yeah the internet is awesome at mangling and misattributing quotes. The fact that the original is easily found online doesn't help because it's in a foreign language. Fortunately it's pretty rudimentary Hebrew and it doesn't take an expert to understand, just someone who can read the language. Hillel's saying immediately preceding this one is in Aramaic...good luck dropping that in Google Translate :)

HighlandSpring 6y ago

What's so "dreamy" about making animal based nutrition something reserved for the privileged few?

dirtyid 6y ago

In terms of animal protein, aren't eggs basically optimized food machines? For more efficiency, one would have to go down to insects with better conversion ratio.

theloosifer 6y ago

So clearly you’re strongly pro-life as well?

corndoge 6y ago

> Working towards one final giant culling of all unnaturally engineered animals For what purpose?

golergka 6y ago

> nor pursue them at large scale unless it's for profit You, as a consumer, directly dictate to companies what is profitable and what's not by what you choose to buy and what you choose not to buy. Dichotomy of profit and ethics doesn't make any sense: profit is a signal which among other things also includes information about what consumers think if ethical or unethical, and how important it is to them.

mbil 6y ago
Everything profitable is ethical? I disagree. Supply chains are opaque and complex and there’s a diffusion of responsibility by the time you reach the level of decision-making consumers. I may give money to a company that is doing something unethical without my really knowing or thinking about it.
- golergka 6y ago
  > Everything profitable is ethical? I never made this claim, as ethics in this case is subjective: some things are ethical in some eyes and unethical in others, and profitability is the mechanism of reaching consensus between these views. Your point about transparency is valid, I have to admit. However, I don't think that it applies in the case of food production: most meat and animal products consumers are well-aware that in order to get meat, you need to kill someone, and if you want to keep milk and eggs as cheap as possible, you can't afford to treat the animals well.
  - mbil 6y ago
    > I never made this claim Sorry, you're right. That's what I took away from your claim that profit encodes a signal for ethicality. I still am not sure I agree with the idea that profit represents a consensus for whether or not something is ethical. Specifically _because_ money is involved it seems like the equation is muddied. In the food production case, more ethical choices often come with a higher price tag. E.g., I believe that cage-free eggs are more ethical, but when I was broke I would buy the cheaper eggs because I was financially incentivized to do something I found less ethical, if only in a small way. And even now, if I am in a rush to buy eggs and the store is out of cage-free, I'll still make the less-ethical decision to do what is cheaper (in terms of energy). I wouldn't say that people's ethics are determined by how much money they have, but rather people may believe that one product option is more ethical than another, but considerations about money and convenience make them sometimes behave less ethically than they would without those constraints.

kelnos 6y ago

I think this just depends on your values and moral code, and there's no clear right or wrong here. I personally do not see a problem with using animals as food. If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans. There are certainly a lot of problems with the sustainability and humane-ness of our livestock farming, but I don't see "become vegetarian/vegan" as the only solution, or even necessarily a desirable one. But getting into a meat vs. no meat debate here isn't ever going to be productive, so that's all I'll say. I had not known that male chicks are killed after birth in such numbers, and the practice does make me sad. But I also recognize that a lot of people just don't have any kind of emotional response to this sort of thing, and that's ok too. It's great that people are building new technologies to allow us to keep doing what we're doing, but with better treatment of the animals involved, and less waste.

Razengan 6y ago
> If that's good enough for all the other omnivores and carnivores in the food chain, it's good enough for humans. If there’s a larger “food chain” on the interstellar scale where some intelligent species mass-consume others, would it be “good enough” for some aliens to farm humans like we do animals?
- zo1 6y ago
  It's all good and well to argue about it while we're at the top of the food chain. No guarantee that'll always be the case, though.
- nkrisc 6y ago
  Sure. Though we'd probably mount an armed resistance to the idea, successful or not. The animals on the farm are welcome to do the same if they don't like being farmed.
  - missingrib 6y ago
    This is satire?
  - 6y ago

colechristensen 6y ago

There’s a moral difficulty here where western societies care a lot about the beginnings of things and can’t stomach things ending, as if the only desirable world is one in which we all experience immortal bliss until the heat death of the universe. Every living thing exists by consuming other living things in some way or another. Every living thing has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most animals are at least in small ways, consumers of animals. There is moral value in striving to maximize the quality of life in all its stages, that does not necessarily have to exclude death for a purpose. Everything dies whether by accident, disease, predation, of degradation by age. Thinking things were better off not existing or better off dying of organ failure instead of being eaten doesn’t always make sense to me.

LesZedCB 6y ago
indeed this is why it's not conflicting for a vegan to be an organ donor. the problem is that we create beginnings for unnatural endings.
mkolodny 6y ago
> Thinking things were better off not existing or better off dying of organ failure instead of being eaten doesn’t always make sense to me. Would you rather live a long life and then die of organ failure, or get eaten when you're three years old? Most people value getting to live longer. So, if we apply our own principles to other animals, there's value in letting animals live longer rather than killing and eating them.
- parineum 6y ago
  That isn't the choice. It's billions of chickens get to live 3 years and get eaten or a million chickens die of liver failure. But I think you're missing the parent's point. Death isn't cruel. Suffering is cruel and can only be experience by living things. This kind of philosophy is a pretty active subject currently. The debate is, generally, maximizing happiness vs. minimizing suffering. The former creating more suffering overall and the latter creating less happiness overall.
lmilcin 6y ago