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>The vegans would survive because so much less of the overall space would be dedicated to farmland. Are you really sure about the "overall space" part? I mean

>The vegans would survive because so much less of the overall space would be dedicated to farmland. Are you really sure about the "overall space" part? I mean have you really examined it? Do you have direct experience, as in having lived in a farmland, Or have you talked to a farmer? Or have you closely listen to accounts of farmers on videos or essays?

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
No direct experience, just biology class. This was on the final that I took today :) Given a fixed amount of sunlight and a fixed time window, you've got W available Joules. Only X makes it into plant biomass. If you're eating a consumer, only Y makes it into animal biomass, and then only Z is available to the human. In all known cases W > X > Y > Z, generally by factors of 2 to 20. The vegans are going to need X/Y times less farmland to meet their energy needs. Maybe they need a bit more than that to account for the nutritional diversity they require, but I doubt that'll offset it. The biggest loss is gonna be W, and if you compare crops to grazing land it's pretty clear which one has more sun-facing chlorophyll.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  And, even if it did offset it, you've still achieved less antibiotics resistance and zoonotic pathogen (like COVID) risk. The closer our food is to us, the closer its pathogens are to our pathogens. Mammals are very close to us, biologically. Plants are about as distant as we can get. They're crawling with viruses, but we don't notice them since they're all designed for plant cells!
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  __MatrixMan__ , the biology class is a fair start. But isn't one of the core principles of what is considered 'good' science, experimentation, or what happens in practice?
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Experimentation, yes. Practice, maybe. Are you proposing that there's an ongoing experiment somewhere in practice that might inform my view? I'm open to that, but my impression of actual farmers is that they're bound by so many artificial constraints that their experience is unlikely to align with sound experiment design.
    - dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
      >Are you proposing that there's an ongoing experiment somewhere in practice that might inform my view? Yes, there are. Or at least relatively close to the thought experiment. I have seen them over the years. If I find a good article or a video I will post it.
- zamnos 3y ago
  (X - Z) is not necessarily < (Y - Z) for a given individual's choice of X vs Y though. If a vegan is judicious about picking nutritious food, (X - Z) > a lazy junk food-eating person who doesn't understand nutrition, only what tastes good's (Y - Z).
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I might be missing something, but the healthy-vs-unhealthy choices axis seems orthogonal here. Vegans and meat eaters both have their fair share of healthy and unhealthy people. The matter at hand is the necessary acreage that they have to dedicate to farming.
    - zamnos 3y ago
      > Vegans and meat eaters both have their fair share of healthy and unhealthy people. I don't take that as a given. Of course there are vegans who are unhealthy, but eating vegan is not straightforwards. You do actually have to do some amount of research to not develop problems eating vegan (B12 deficiency is a common side-effect of yolo eating vegan) and have some idea about nutrition. There is no such requirement to eating whatever. Unless you eat one thing exclusively (like an all-beef-and-only-beef diet), as an omnivore you'll get all the nutrients you need.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

No direct experience, just biology class. This was on the final that I took today :) Given a fixed amount of sunlight and a fixed time window, you've got W available Joules. Only X makes it into plant biomass. If you're eating a consumer, only Y makes it into animal biomass, and then only Z is available to the human. In all known cases W > X > Y > Z, generally by factors of 2 to 20. The vegans are going to need X/Y times less farmland to meet their energy needs. Maybe they need a bit more than that to account for the nutritional diversity they require, but I doubt that'll offset it. The biggest loss is gonna be W, and if you compare crops to grazing land it's pretty clear which one has more sun-facing chlorophyll.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
And, even if it did offset it, you've still achieved less antibiotics resistance and zoonotic pathogen (like COVID) risk. The closer our food is to us, the closer its pathogens are to our pathogens. Mammals are very close to us, biologically. Plants are about as distant as we can get. They're crawling with viruses, but we don't notice them since they're all designed for plant cells!
dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
__MatrixMan__ , the biology class is a fair start. But isn't one of the core principles of what is considered 'good' science, experimentation, or what happens in practice?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Experimentation, yes. Practice, maybe. Are you proposing that there's an ongoing experiment somewhere in practice that might inform my view? I'm open to that, but my impression of actual farmers is that they're bound by so many artificial constraints that their experience is unlikely to align with sound experiment design.
  - dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
    >Are you proposing that there's an ongoing experiment somewhere in practice that might inform my view? Yes, there are. Or at least relatively close to the thought experiment. I have seen them over the years. If I find a good article or a video I will post it.
zamnos 3y ago
(X - Z) is not necessarily < (Y - Z) for a given individual's choice of X vs Y though. If a vegan is judicious about picking nutritious food, (X - Z) > a lazy junk food-eating person who doesn't understand nutrition, only what tastes good's (Y - Z).
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I might be missing something, but the healthy-vs-unhealthy choices axis seems orthogonal here. Vegans and meat eaters both have their fair share of healthy and unhealthy people. The matter at hand is the necessary acreage that they have to dedicate to farming.
  - zamnos 3y ago
    > Vegans and meat eaters both have their fair share of healthy and unhealthy people. I don't take that as a given. Of course there are vegans who are unhealthy, but eating vegan is not straightforwards. You do actually have to do some amount of research to not develop problems eating vegan (B12 deficiency is a common side-effect of yolo eating vegan) and have some idea about nutrition. There is no such requirement to eating whatever. Unless you eat one thing exclusively (like an all-beef-and-only-beef diet), as an omnivore you'll get all the nutrients you need.