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For me, the answer was yes. I stopped eating pigs first, and then cows and other mammals, and then octopi (octopodes?). I've been cutting back further on chicke

For me, the answer was yes. I stopped eating pigs first, and then cows and other mammals, and then octopi (octopodes?). I've been cutting back further on chicken and fish, too, though I eat a lot of eggs and some dairy still. I don't know that it's morally right or something, but it doesn't cost much and the potential upside seems high enough to do it.

throwaway5752 5y ago
It helps the planet, is good for my health, reduces deaths of sentient beings to feed me, has greater trophic efficiency... and the big thing is that vegetarian food and vegan food tastes good. I still eat meat periodically, but I feel much better and happier since I've reduced my meat consumption greatly.
- philipswood 5y ago
  At some stage my son was wilfully damaging plants. As part of the discipline to make him stop I showed him videos of plants sped up. It becomes a bit harder to deny that they aren’t the inanimate objects we perceive them to be because they are slow when you see them react to stimuli and they show what seems to be intent. Although it certainly isn’t a consensus opinion there is a real possibility that (given that the nervous system specialises what normal tissues can also do) plants are considerably more “conscious” than we give them credit for. They have been proven to be able to communicate. There are even suggestions that they could “see” without specialised eyes. I’m not sure where this would leave moral vegans. Besides attempting a diet of fruit - we clearly need to kill to survive. PS: To clarify my own positioning on this - I eat meat. I occasionally go vegetarian for health or spiritual reasons. I do believe we can and should strive to minimise cruelty, waste and environmental damage and impacts. The lives of some livestock are significantly better than that of many wild creatures and it can be a humane choice given that they would not exist without our intervention. That said I don’t think that we are currently near the level of responsibility that we could be. Our levels of cruelty, waste and environmental impact are unacceptably high and will seem barbaric to our descendants.
  - WaxProlix 5y ago
    This is a lot of very commonly repeated speculative talking point soup when people are trying to rile up vegans. I'm not a vegan, and I'm not saying you're being disingenuous here, but if you use these lines to try and engage vegans at some point and don't get the level of engagement you're looking for, it's because this kind of both-sides moral equivalence between meat eating and plant eating is pretty common in the needling-vegans scene :) That said, if we think there's a continuum with humans, dolphins, apes, and maybe octopuses on one side, and fungi & prokaryotes or something on the other, then plants (and maybe shellfish?) are certainly 'better' to kill and eat than cats, eg.
    - hackernewds 5y ago
      What logic makes plants better to kill than cows, better than octopi, better than cats? because vegans might the argument uncomfortable doesn't render it invalid either
      - dayglo 5y ago
        If I gave you a live chicken, a head of broccoli, what would happen when you tried to cut up each one with a carving knife? You instinctively know what fear and pain are, and minimising those things is the point of veganism. If plants feel their fear and pain far slower, then much less of it is happening.
        FiberBundle 5y ago
        It's also entirely implausible, from an evolutionary perspective, that plants should have developed the capacity to feel pain on a scale similar to other organisms given that they haven't developed the ability to move away from situations that might cause them pain (pain being a proxy for survival risk).
        philipswood 5y ago
        Keep in mind that instead of fight or flight plants have a range of internal chemical responses available to minimise damage and that this does make pain plausible: Videos of plants calcium signalling response to damage: https://news.wisc.edu/blazes-of-light-reveal-how-plants-signal-danger-long-distances/ https://news.wisc.edu/blazes-of-light-reveal-how-plants-sign... Plants responding to sounds of herbivore (dare we say “predator”) insects: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-014-2995-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-014-2995-6 Even plant “vision” is becoming more plausible: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggies-with-vision-do-plants-see-the-world-around-them/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggies-with-visi... You can find a lot more material in this vein. My point is that we are “animalists” and not very well predisposed to recognising the true nature of plants given how different they are to us.
ComputerGuru 5y ago
> though I eat a lot of eggs and some dairy still. See, I feel like this just erodes from your argument. There’s not necessarily any trauma at all to the chickens or the cows involved in the production of eggs or milk. Trying to group that with the consumption of meat feels just very irrational.
- prteja11 5y ago
  Do you believe that there’s no trauma involved in the dairy and egg industry? Spend a few minutes watching this about dairy. https://youtu.be/roIWg4ntj9k https://youtu.be/roIWg4ntj9k Earthling Ed also has videos about egg industry, but the gist is make chicks are crushed in a meat grinder alive.
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    That’s greed enabled by modern capitalism and general “don’t ask don’t tell” apathy. That’s not how milk and eggs were produced for the majority of mankind’s existence after the transition from hunter/gatherer to farming.
- ornornor 5y ago
  Yes there is. Egg farms grind male chicks alive. They burn off the tip of the hens beak without anesthesia (which we know is high in nerves) so they don’t fight each other in captivity; which they don’t do nearly as much in nature because surprise surprise they’re not as stressed. Hens laying eggs every single day of their lives (because they’re taken away daily) live much much shorter lives and develop physiological issues more often. When they’re finally exhausted after a few short years and stop producing as much, they’re turned into chicken nuggets or broth cubes. Cows producing milk are constantly inseminated. Maybe they don’t care or maybe it’s a form of rape. Nevertheless, their calves are taken away from them shortly after they’re born (so they don’t eat the milk instead of the factory) and slaughtered. Cows call for their missing baby for several days. Dairy cows are also living much much shorter lives (imagine how long a human that does nothing but give birth would live) and are turned into hamburgers afterwards. Not to mention cheese which need casein to be made and that can’t be obtained without killing cows as it’s the acid in their stomach, basically. So, yes, eating milk or eggs doesn’t directly require the animal to die. But it’s so close and it enables such a cruel, abhorrent, and revolting meat industry that it’s impossible in my opinion to ethically justify eating eggs and milk (let alone meat or fish)

throwaway5752 5y ago

It helps the planet, is good for my health, reduces deaths of sentient beings to feed me, has greater trophic efficiency... and the big thing is that vegetarian food and vegan food tastes good. I still eat meat periodically, but I feel much better and happier since I've reduced my meat consumption greatly.

philipswood 5y ago
At some stage my son was wilfully damaging plants. As part of the discipline to make him stop I showed him videos of plants sped up. It becomes a bit harder to deny that they aren’t the inanimate objects we perceive them to be because they are slow when you see them react to stimuli and they show what seems to be intent. Although it certainly isn’t a consensus opinion there is a real possibility that (given that the nervous system specialises what normal tissues can also do) plants are considerably more “conscious” than we give them credit for. They have been proven to be able to communicate. There are even suggestions that they could “see” without specialised eyes. I’m not sure where this would leave moral vegans. Besides attempting a diet of fruit - we clearly need to kill to survive. PS: To clarify my own positioning on this - I eat meat. I occasionally go vegetarian for health or spiritual reasons. I do believe we can and should strive to minimise cruelty, waste and environmental damage and impacts. The lives of some livestock are significantly better than that of many wild creatures and it can be a humane choice given that they would not exist without our intervention. That said I don’t think that we are currently near the level of responsibility that we could be. Our levels of cruelty, waste and environmental impact are unacceptably high and will seem barbaric to our descendants.
- WaxProlix 5y ago
  This is a lot of very commonly repeated speculative talking point soup when people are trying to rile up vegans. I'm not a vegan, and I'm not saying you're being disingenuous here, but if you use these lines to try and engage vegans at some point and don't get the level of engagement you're looking for, it's because this kind of both-sides moral equivalence between meat eating and plant eating is pretty common in the needling-vegans scene :) That said, if we think there's a continuum with humans, dolphins, apes, and maybe octopuses on one side, and fungi & prokaryotes or something on the other, then plants (and maybe shellfish?) are certainly 'better' to kill and eat than cats, eg.
  - hackernewds 5y ago
    What logic makes plants better to kill than cows, better than octopi, better than cats? because vegans might the argument uncomfortable doesn't render it invalid either
    - dayglo 5y ago
      If I gave you a live chicken, a head of broccoli, what would happen when you tried to cut up each one with a carving knife? You instinctively know what fear and pain are, and minimising those things is the point of veganism. If plants feel their fear and pain far slower, then much less of it is happening.
      - FiberBundle 5y ago
        It's also entirely implausible, from an evolutionary perspective, that plants should have developed the capacity to feel pain on a scale similar to other organisms given that they haven't developed the ability to move away from situations that might cause them pain (pain being a proxy for survival risk).
        philipswood 5y ago
        Keep in mind that instead of fight or flight plants have a range of internal chemical responses available to minimise damage and that this does make pain plausible: Videos of plants calcium signalling response to damage: https://news.wisc.edu/blazes-of-light-reveal-how-plants-signal-danger-long-distances/ https://news.wisc.edu/blazes-of-light-reveal-how-plants-sign... Plants responding to sounds of herbivore (dare we say “predator”) insects: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-014-2995-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-014-2995-6 Even plant “vision” is becoming more plausible: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggies-with-vision-do-plants-see-the-world-around-them/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/veggies-with-visi... You can find a lot more material in this vein. My point is that we are “animalists” and not very well predisposed to recognising the true nature of plants given how different they are to us.

ComputerGuru 5y ago

> though I eat a lot of eggs and some dairy still. See, I feel like this just erodes from your argument. There’s not necessarily any trauma at all to the chickens or the cows involved in the production of eggs or milk. Trying to group that with the consumption of meat feels just very irrational.

prteja11 5y ago
Do you believe that there’s no trauma involved in the dairy and egg industry? Spend a few minutes watching this about dairy. https://youtu.be/roIWg4ntj9k https://youtu.be/roIWg4ntj9k Earthling Ed also has videos about egg industry, but the gist is make chicks are crushed in a meat grinder alive.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  That’s greed enabled by modern capitalism and general “don’t ask don’t tell” apathy. That’s not how milk and eggs were produced for the majority of mankind’s existence after the transition from hunter/gatherer to farming.
ornornor 5y ago
Yes there is. Egg farms grind male chicks alive. They burn off the tip of the hens beak without anesthesia (which we know is high in nerves) so they don’t fight each other in captivity; which they don’t do nearly as much in nature because surprise surprise they’re not as stressed. Hens laying eggs every single day of their lives (because they’re taken away daily) live much much shorter lives and develop physiological issues more often. When they’re finally exhausted after a few short years and stop producing as much, they’re turned into chicken nuggets or broth cubes. Cows producing milk are constantly inseminated. Maybe they don’t care or maybe it’s a form of rape. Nevertheless, their calves are taken away from them shortly after they’re born (so they don’t eat the milk instead of the factory) and slaughtered. Cows call for their missing baby for several days. Dairy cows are also living much much shorter lives (imagine how long a human that does nothing but give birth would live) and are turned into hamburgers afterwards. Not to mention cheese which need casein to be made and that can’t be obtained without killing cows as it’s the acid in their stomach, basically. So, yes, eating milk or eggs doesn’t directly require the animal to die. But it’s so close and it enables such a cruel, abhorrent, and revolting meat industry that it’s impossible in my opinion to ethically justify eating eggs and milk (let alone meat or fish)