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There is a summary of veganism that follows the principle that we shouldn't take sentient things and change their lives for our own ends. There are several impo

There is a summary of veganism that follows the principle that we shouldn't take sentient things and change their lives for our own ends. There are several important bits and nuances but the overarching point is to not have a world view where you see anything and prioritize what you can get out of it, regardless of the suffering you cause. Sometimes you hear it summarized as "they arent here for us". It is an interesting philosophical bit and it combines pretty standard modern morality with a pointed concept of not discriminating by species and instead trying to use the ability to suffer as when you decide if you should exploit something. In this paradigm the reasons not to rape or enslave people are the same as the reasons not to rape or enslave other animals. This still has plenty of inconsistencies and weird bits, both theoretically and practically. Silly questions like eating braindead people stymie both sides until you get into the weeds about stuff like dignity. Would the theoretical cows in the hitchhikers guide that WANT to be eaten be ok to eat? Is it ok to have second hand animal products, especially if they are high quality and will prevent additional exploitation/consumption? One of the most sticky conundrums I personally chew on is if this means we should actively try to prevent suffering, not just choose to personally try to avoid causing it. If the former, that means trying to make other people change their beliefs and behave in a way that is pretty objectively worse for them in society, which starts to edge toward causing suffering if you squint. It is easy to fall into trying to reason about which suffering is worse which is a terrible minefield where everybody loses. It's easy to SAY I value something no longer being tortured over my taste preference but is there a logical framework for that that can ever be objective and applied to harder problems? If it is only subjective then what makes it better than any other decision - people decide to eat pigs but not dogs every day but there is no more OR LESS reason behind that than the claim above. There might be answers but I haven't found them to be easy to pin down which is especially interesting because of how strongly I feel that not caring any hurting things is bad. tl;dr being vegan sucks

bnt123 2y ago
I think we can agree humans tend to see reducing suffering as a good thing, and that people who we believe have caused suffering are viewed with disdain. With that in mind, here's a framework: "given two choices, is there a choice that 1) reduces suffering, and 2) is not prohibitively expensive (or in some other way too difficult to make)". "Too difficult" or "too expensive" is obviously subjective, but I don't think having objective definitions is necessary here. An analogy that I like to illustrate this is: going shopping for clothes vs going shopping for food. Both tend to have ethics attached to them, e.g. with child labor for production of clothing, and slaughtering of animals for production of food. If you walk into a store to buy new clothes, and there are 2 sections of the store, 1 for clothes that were produced using child labor, and 1 for clothes that weren't, and both sections had clothes of the same price and quality, the decision of which section to shop in is very logical. This is how I see going shopping for food- you have sections for food that were produced using factory farming, and sections for food that weren't. Both sources of food are the same price and quality. So the decision to make about which source of food to buy is, again, a logical one. It's also a decision that most people in the developed world have to make every week, at least people who live in cities and do their shopping at grocery stores. While we unfortunately don't have visibility into whether our clothing is produced with child labor, many of us do know if our food comes from factory farms. In the US, the estimate is that over 95% of meat sold in grocery stores is factory-farmed. Why make the decision to buy that if you could easily avoid it?
- fragmede 2y ago
  Because people lie to make money and keeping up with everything is exhausting. Free-range is a term regulated by the FDA but who knows the last time a regulator came by and checked the farm that the chicken came from? How do you tell the difference between a farmer that actually cares and is doing their best to be free range, and a farmer that's doing the bare minimum to meet that regulated standard when you're in the supermarket looking at a package? Is there a difference between meeting the minimum because you really care about chicken vs meeting the minimum because you care more about money? Why is the minimum in the regulation set at that level? But more unfortunately though, they're not the same price and quality. Whole Foods is called Whole Paycheck for a reason. I can get cheaper food from a different store that's good enough.
  - bnt123 2y ago
    Sorry, when I was comparing the foods, I was talking about meat versus plant-based foods. The point I was trying to make is that buying plant-based can be framed as a logical decision.

bnt123 2y ago

I think we can agree humans tend to see reducing suffering as a good thing, and that people who we believe have caused suffering are viewed with disdain. With that in mind, here's a framework: "given two choices, is there a choice that 1) reduces suffering, and 2) is not prohibitively expensive (or in some other way too difficult to make)". "Too difficult" or "too expensive" is obviously subjective, but I don't think having objective definitions is necessary here. An analogy that I like to illustrate this is: going shopping for clothes vs going shopping for food. Both tend to have ethics attached to them, e.g. with child labor for production of clothing, and slaughtering of animals for production of food. If you walk into a store to buy new clothes, and there are 2 sections of the store, 1 for clothes that were produced using child labor, and 1 for clothes that weren't, and both sections had clothes of the same price and quality, the decision of which section to shop in is very logical. This is how I see going shopping for food- you have sections for food that were produced using factory farming, and sections for food that weren't. Both sources of food are the same price and quality. So the decision to make about which source of food to buy is, again, a logical one. It's also a decision that most people in the developed world have to make every week, at least people who live in cities and do their shopping at grocery stores. While we unfortunately don't have visibility into whether our clothing is produced with child labor, many of us do know if our food comes from factory farms. In the US, the estimate is that over 95% of meat sold in grocery stores is factory-farmed. Why make the decision to buy that if you could easily avoid it?

fragmede 2y ago
Because people lie to make money and keeping up with everything is exhausting. Free-range is a term regulated by the FDA but who knows the last time a regulator came by and checked the farm that the chicken came from? How do you tell the difference between a farmer that actually cares and is doing their best to be free range, and a farmer that's doing the bare minimum to meet that regulated standard when you're in the supermarket looking at a package? Is there a difference between meeting the minimum because you really care about chicken vs meeting the minimum because you care more about money? Why is the minimum in the regulation set at that level? But more unfortunately though, they're not the same price and quality. Whole Foods is called Whole Paycheck for a reason. I can get cheaper food from a different store that's good enough.
- bnt123 2y ago
  Sorry, when I was comparing the foods, I was talking about meat versus plant-based foods. The point I was trying to make is that buying plant-based can be framed as a logical decision.