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I think everybody has this sort of cognitive dissonance, albeit perhaps in different amounts; we just allocate it differently. And I think society is set up to

I think everybody has this sort of cognitive dissonance, albeit perhaps in different amounts; we just allocate it differently. And I think society is set up to help that. For example, I like animals and I eat meat. Would I kill a cow? No, but I'm happy to eat a burger. I've worked to get relatively comfortable with unresolved cognitive dissonance, so I can at least recognize my hypocrisy here. But I think it's way easier for people to refuse to think about it. As with distributed systems, coherence is hard and expensive. Being rational about something, as opposed to just rationalizing, is long, slow work. We don't live in an age of patience. But perhaps one will come again, and until then we can at least try to be exceptions.

croes 2y ago
If you won’t kill a cow but like eating burger that’s not cognitive dissonance.
- ada1981 2y ago
  Sure it is.
  - elygre 2y ago
    I cannot kill a cow, but I’m happy there are people who can. I also cannot build trains or houses, but I am an ardent supporter of a rain-proof roof.
    - dagw 2y ago
      Those are two different uses of 'cannot'. I know how to kill a cow, but 'cannot' bring my self to do it. I 'cannot' build a train because I don't know how to, but if I did I would be happy to do so.
      - mindslight 2y ago
        Do you know how to "kill" a cow in the sense of turning most of it into edible food rather than merely letting it go to waste? If not, then I'd call that a similar type of aversion.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      I mean killing a cow is easy, but they weigh like 150kg and efficiently butchering the carcass is the hard part.
    - ada1981 2y ago
      I’m sure there are people who consume child pornography with the same stance. One sentient being paying another stronger sentient being to exploit a weaker non consenting sentient being for “pleasure” the first sentient being with no concern for the experience of the exploited.
  - sodality2 2y ago
    Maybe if you're principally opposed to killing cows for meat, yet still eat burgers, but not if you simply could not be bothered to actually kill the cow.
- oortoo 2y ago
  If you think harming animals unnecessarily is wrong, but still eat meat, then yes thats cognitive dissonance. The meat industry is the single most prolific source of animal abuse in the world. Factory farms are basically auschwitz for animals. Buying meat and then getting upset at someone who kicked their dog etc. is a pretty clear cut example of dissonance because you are saying that animal abuse is wrong, but your actions indicate you have no problem with it.
  - Forgeties79 2y ago
    I get what you’re saying but you’re kind of discounting how much proximity to an action matters. There’s a big difference in how a murder happening in front of me/somebody I know impacts me vs. knowing there was a murder of somebody I don’t know somewhere out there probably while I wrote this comment. both are equally tragic, both do not occupy my mental or emotional in space the same way
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Comparing animal cruelty with what is pretty widely seen as one of the single most horrific things humans have ever done to each other serves to weaken your argument for people that don't already agree with you, not strengthen it. I know comparisons are a tempting tool, since they're a very effective way of communicating a lot of information and, more importantly, an impression very economically. But part of what made the holocaust so horrible is that people were being treated like animals. It's like trying to argue that dogs should be kept inside by saying "What if you made your toddler sleep outside in a dog house?", it's a comparison that defeats itself. If your goal is to feel righteous on the internet and demonstrate your strong love for animals, by all means proceed. If your goal is to change hearts and minds, reconsider your rhetoric; you'll have much more luck if you tune it to people that don't already agree with you,
    - sotix 2y ago
      There’s a reason why Isaac Bashevis Singer and Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz have made the comparison of factory farming to the holocaust. Factory farming is arguably the single most horrific thing humanity has done period. Its scale is terrifying. > part of what made the holocaust so horrible is that people were being treated like animals. It's like trying to argue that dogs should be kept inside by saying "What if you made your toddler sleep outside in a dog house?", it's a comparison that defeats itself. "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka" – Isaac Bashevis Singer "I believe as long as man tortures and kills animals, he will torture and kill humans as well—and wars will be waged—for killing must be practiced and learned on a small scale". – Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
- wpietri 2y ago
  I find it frustrating when somebody replies as if they've only read one sentence in a paragraph. I also said, "I like animals and I eat meat." I thought that was pretty clear, but if you'd like me to beat the point to death, the cognitive dissonance is between my fondness for animals, cows included, who I would never personally hurt and don't want to see killed, and my fondness for a good cheeseburger. Could I come up with some contrived rationalization which somehow includes both? Sure, I have in the past, and many meat-eaters do. But ultimately I saw through my own bullshit here. Cows aren't essentially different than horses or dogs, but I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog. This doesn't make any logical or moral sense; it's just what I grew up with and am used to. When I think about it, I experience cognitive dissonance. For some that dissonance resolves into becoming vegetarians; for others they just refuse to think about it, or become dickish anti-vegetarians. I'm only different in that I have worked to get more comfortable with that sort of dissonance, as it's important to me to see things as clearly as I can.
  - RajT88 2y ago
    > I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog. Horse is good, and while they are noble and majestic, so are cows (which are also cute to boot). I think the same of fish, and while less cuddly, I still feel a tiny bit conflicted about taking one's life just to eat when I do it. Dogs are family for me. I'd probably be OK with wolf or coyote or similar. I don't begrudge anyone how they want to align their morals with how and what they eat.
    - wpietri 2y ago
      Sure. I don't begrudge them either. I'm just pointing out that feeling of conflict. I think how we respond to that is important. And bringing it back to the original post, I think his MAGA fisherman just getting mad or changing the topic is an example of a bad way to handle it.
  - everforward 2y ago
    In the instance of cow vs dog or horse, it’s only cognitively dissonant if you try to reduce it to a context-free universal truth. With context, it’s simply “we should not eat animals we keep as pets”, where “we” needs to be contextualized to the person and culture. I keep dogs as pets, and therefore should not eat them. Other people don’t keep dogs as pets and are free to eat them. More generally, we shouldn’t kill things we love. Pets are loved, and shouldn’t be killed for food. Farmed animals are a means to an end, not an object of affection. Other contexts apply too, for the pedantic. Starvation is a context that would make eating pets okay, so on and so forth. A lot of morality is contextual. If a good friend is going through a break up, I should care and be supportive. If a stranger like Taylor Swift is going through a break up, I have no moral obligation to care or be supportive (though it would be kind to do so anyways). Morality is contextualized by my relationship to that person.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
9rx 2y ago
> Would I kill a cow? No, but I'm happy to eat a burger. You have to eat. If a burger is the best choice in front of you, it is reasonable to make that choice. Likewise, if a certain party is the best choice in front of you during an election, it is equally reasonable to choose it. Such decisions always require making tradeoffs. However, the original comment seems to imply that it is not only a case of voting for a party, but also carrying out activism for that party. This is akin to you eating a burger while protesting with PETA proclaiming the evils of killing cattle. That may be still cognitive dissonance, but to a very different degree.
- wpietri 2y ago
  > You have to eat. If a burger is the best choice in front of you, it is reasonable to make that choice. Ok. Now try that sentence with "leg of a dog". Does that still feel reasonable? I think the difference isn't that one is more moral, it's that one is more familiar. I also don't think he was talking about activists. There are plenty of "hardcore MAGA" types who are pretty passive about it. And even there that doesn't necessarily involve cognitive dissonance. I know plenty of people who vote for Democrats that are able to oppose it on certain particulars while still deciding it's the best voting option. But I think MAGA in particular is a cult of personality, which is very hard to justify intellectually.
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    > Ok. Now try that sentence with "leg of a dog". Does that still feel reasonable? Yes. If dog legs are readily available in the store then sure.
    - skylurk 2y ago
      Last week I met a guy who traveled to China cause he wanted to try dog. It was kinda too weird to do it at home, but he was really curious.
    - wpietri 2y ago
      Turns out this varies widely by culture. In many places, it's taboo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat If you'd like a different example that gets the same feeling, try substituting something else considered treif in your culture, like "roasted eyeballs" or "a human hand". My point being that people who are used to eating some kinds of meat see it as perfectly reasonable, but that has a lot to do with what they've been socialized to. In contrast, raised in vegetarian cultures often find eating any meat equally horrific. Which is the position I find intellectually most rational.
thrance 2y ago
I don't think it's cognitive dissonance if you recognize the issue. Also, you can both enjoy a good burger and be disgusted at the idea of killing a cow yourself. As you said, it's simply an hypocrisy (of which I am guilty too). From Wikipedia [1], (emphasis mine): > In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
- wpietri 2y ago
  > I don't think it's cognitive dissonance if you recognize the issue. Well I recognize the issue and still experience a feeling of dissonance. Indeed, I work to be able to be tolerant of that feeling, because I think it's important in pursuing deeper understanding. If you have a better term I'm all for it. But I think the "unknowingly" there is meant more as the general case rather than an absolute limit on the term.
  - thaneross 2y ago
    Violating ethical beliefs when they are inconvenient is what I'd call "moral hypocrisy". Practically everyone is guilty of it to varying degrees.
jmull 2y ago
Just a side note, but what happened to "hypocrisy"? It used to mean having behavior that contradicts your stated beliefs. Now it seems to mean an apparent contradiction between behavior and belief if you ignore real distinctions. I don't like because it weakens the word and loses an important concept -- we don't have a good way to express real hypocrisy vs. fallaciously construed hypocrisy.
- wpietri 2y ago
  It's also an important word, albeit not a very useful one in this age: For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who were it proved he lies Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors' eyes; -- W B Yeats, "To A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing"
- Chris2048 2y ago
  I'd argue there is no "hypocrisy" her because it involves politics. There isn't the option to micromanage gov policies, there are two options taken as package deals - red or blue. MAGA react to questions like this as Dems react to questions like "what is a woman?". EDIT: to be clear, they react as if the inconvenient question is in bad faith.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    How is that in anyway a comparable example? Do Democrats hold policy positions that would be particularly flummoxed by trans people existing?
    - Chris2048 2y ago
      Yes, and the number of them treating the question as if it's a trick is proof of that. It's also not a question of "trans people existing", so that's a misdirection/straw-man.
      - XorNot 2y ago
        Such as? You seem sure these exist, but are refusing to elaborate when the motivating example is quite clear ("I love nature and the outdoors and think protecting it is important... That's why I vote for the party who's platform is to remove those protections"). What exactly is meant to be a similar problem here that exists depending on the answer to that question?
tw04 2y ago
I would guess if you were starving to death you wouldn’t think twice about killing a cow. There’s nothing wrong with fundamentally valuing life but also consuming it for sustenance. I’m guessing you wouldn’t vote for a law to torture cows while also saying you value a cow’s life. That is essentially what the outdoorsmen are doing when voting for a politician that’s trying to remove environmental protections.
- wpietri 2y ago
  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying there's a dissonance. And I'm saying it's important that we recognize that we all experience this dissonance, and that we should face it rather than just "get mad or change the subject".
watwut 2y ago
I do not want to kill a cow personally, but I am aware meat I eat comes from cows. I would be against law that would make cow killing illegal. Not wanting to do something personally and accepting it happens for food is not cognitive dissonance. In general, I am ok with killing animals for food. If you killed a cow just for fun or sport, you are an asshole and I am against it. I feel no cognitive dissonance here. Likewise, I am pro cleaning shit out of places. I prefer when someone else does it.
- wpietri 2y ago
  If you want to understand my point about dissonance, you might substitute "dog" for "cow". Or you could look at why you wouldn't kill a cow. For me, I would feel pretty awful about it. I think, for example, about the time I had to take a dog in to be put down. It was necessary, and there was no other choice. But it was fucking awful to take that dog in and have it killed. Cows are lovely animals in person, and I would feel like I was betraying one to kill it. So for me there would be a lot of cognitive dissonance generated by killing a cow to get food when I have plenty of less murdery ways to get food. I avoid a lot of that dissonance by outsourcing the job, but some of it's still there.

croes 2y ago

If you won’t kill a cow but like eating burger that’s not cognitive dissonance.

ada1981 2y ago
Sure it is.
- elygre 2y ago
  I cannot kill a cow, but I’m happy there are people who can. I also cannot build trains or houses, but I am an ardent supporter of a rain-proof roof.
  - dagw 2y ago
    Those are two different uses of 'cannot'. I know how to kill a cow, but 'cannot' bring my self to do it. I 'cannot' build a train because I don't know how to, but if I did I would be happy to do so.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      Do you know how to "kill" a cow in the sense of turning most of it into edible food rather than merely letting it go to waste? If not, then I'd call that a similar type of aversion.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    I mean killing a cow is easy, but they weigh like 150kg and efficiently butchering the carcass is the hard part.
  - ada1981 2y ago
    I’m sure there are people who consume child pornography with the same stance. One sentient being paying another stronger sentient being to exploit a weaker non consenting sentient being for “pleasure” the first sentient being with no concern for the experience of the exploited.
- sodality2 2y ago
  Maybe if you're principally opposed to killing cows for meat, yet still eat burgers, but not if you simply could not be bothered to actually kill the cow.
oortoo 2y ago
If you think harming animals unnecessarily is wrong, but still eat meat, then yes thats cognitive dissonance. The meat industry is the single most prolific source of animal abuse in the world. Factory farms are basically auschwitz for animals. Buying meat and then getting upset at someone who kicked their dog etc. is a pretty clear cut example of dissonance because you are saying that animal abuse is wrong, but your actions indicate you have no problem with it.
- Forgeties79 2y ago
  I get what you’re saying but you’re kind of discounting how much proximity to an action matters. There’s a big difference in how a murder happening in front of me/somebody I know impacts me vs. knowing there was a murder of somebody I don’t know somewhere out there probably while I wrote this comment. both are equally tragic, both do not occupy my mental or emotional in space the same way
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  Comparing animal cruelty with what is pretty widely seen as one of the single most horrific things humans have ever done to each other serves to weaken your argument for people that don't already agree with you, not strengthen it. I know comparisons are a tempting tool, since they're a very effective way of communicating a lot of information and, more importantly, an impression very economically. But part of what made the holocaust so horrible is that people were being treated like animals. It's like trying to argue that dogs should be kept inside by saying "What if you made your toddler sleep outside in a dog house?", it's a comparison that defeats itself. If your goal is to feel righteous on the internet and demonstrate your strong love for animals, by all means proceed. If your goal is to change hearts and minds, reconsider your rhetoric; you'll have much more luck if you tune it to people that don't already agree with you,
  - sotix 2y ago
    There’s a reason why Isaac Bashevis Singer and Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz have made the comparison of factory farming to the holocaust. Factory farming is arguably the single most horrific thing humanity has done period. Its scale is terrifying. > part of what made the holocaust so horrible is that people were being treated like animals. It's like trying to argue that dogs should be kept inside by saying "What if you made your toddler sleep outside in a dog house?", it's a comparison that defeats itself. "In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka" – Isaac Bashevis Singer "I believe as long as man tortures and kills animals, he will torture and kill humans as well—and wars will be waged—for killing must be practiced and learned on a small scale". – Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz
wpietri 2y ago
I find it frustrating when somebody replies as if they've only read one sentence in a paragraph. I also said, "I like animals and I eat meat." I thought that was pretty clear, but if you'd like me to beat the point to death, the cognitive dissonance is between my fondness for animals, cows included, who I would never personally hurt and don't want to see killed, and my fondness for a good cheeseburger. Could I come up with some contrived rationalization which somehow includes both? Sure, I have in the past, and many meat-eaters do. But ultimately I saw through my own bullshit here. Cows aren't essentially different than horses or dogs, but I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog. This doesn't make any logical or moral sense; it's just what I grew up with and am used to. When I think about it, I experience cognitive dissonance. For some that dissonance resolves into becoming vegetarians; for others they just refuse to think about it, or become dickish anti-vegetarians. I'm only different in that I have worked to get more comfortable with that sort of dissonance, as it's important to me to see things as clearly as I can.
- RajT88 2y ago
  > I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog. Horse is good, and while they are noble and majestic, so are cows (which are also cute to boot). I think the same of fish, and while less cuddly, I still feel a tiny bit conflicted about taking one's life just to eat when I do it. Dogs are family for me. I'd probably be OK with wolf or coyote or similar. I don't begrudge anyone how they want to align their morals with how and what they eat.
  - wpietri 2y ago
    Sure. I don't begrudge them either. I'm just pointing out that feeling of conflict. I think how we respond to that is important. And bringing it back to the original post, I think his MAGA fisherman just getting mad or changing the topic is an example of a bad way to handle it.
- everforward 2y ago
  In the instance of cow vs dog or horse, it’s only cognitively dissonant if you try to reduce it to a context-free universal truth. With context, it’s simply “we should not eat animals we keep as pets”, where “we” needs to be contextualized to the person and culture. I keep dogs as pets, and therefore should not eat them. Other people don’t keep dogs as pets and are free to eat them. More generally, we shouldn’t kill things we love. Pets are loved, and shouldn’t be killed for food. Farmed animals are a means to an end, not an object of affection. Other contexts apply too, for the pedantic. Starvation is a context that would make eating pets okay, so on and so forth. A lot of morality is contextual. If a good friend is going through a break up, I should care and be supportive. If a stranger like Taylor Swift is going through a break up, I have no moral obligation to care or be supportive (though it would be kind to do so anyways). Morality is contextualized by my relationship to that person.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

9rx 2y ago

> Would I kill a cow? No, but I'm happy to eat a burger. You have to eat. If a burger is the best choice in front of you, it is reasonable to make that choice. Likewise, if a certain party is the best choice in front of you during an election, it is equally reasonable to choose it. Such decisions always require making tradeoffs. However, the original comment seems to imply that it is not only a case of voting for a party, but also carrying out activism for that party. This is akin to you eating a burger while protesting with PETA proclaiming the evils of killing cattle. That may be still cognitive dissonance, but to a very different degree.

wpietri 2y ago
> You have to eat. If a burger is the best choice in front of you, it is reasonable to make that choice. Ok. Now try that sentence with "leg of a dog". Does that still feel reasonable? I think the difference isn't that one is more moral, it's that one is more familiar. I also don't think he was talking about activists. There are plenty of "hardcore MAGA" types who are pretty passive about it. And even there that doesn't necessarily involve cognitive dissonance. I know plenty of people who vote for Democrats that are able to oppose it on certain particulars while still deciding it's the best voting option. But I think MAGA in particular is a cult of personality, which is very hard to justify intellectually.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  > Ok. Now try that sentence with "leg of a dog". Does that still feel reasonable? Yes. If dog legs are readily available in the store then sure.
  - skylurk 2y ago
    Last week I met a guy who traveled to China cause he wanted to try dog. It was kinda too weird to do it at home, but he was really curious.
  - wpietri 2y ago
    Turns out this varies widely by culture. In many places, it's taboo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat If you'd like a different example that gets the same feeling, try substituting something else considered treif in your culture, like "roasted eyeballs" or "a human hand". My point being that people who are used to eating some kinds of meat see it as perfectly reasonable, but that has a lot to do with what they've been socialized to. In contrast, raised in vegetarian cultures often find eating any meat equally horrific. Which is the position I find intellectually most rational.

thrance 2y ago

I don't think it's cognitive dissonance if you recognize the issue. Also, you can both enjoy a good burger and be disgusted at the idea of killing a cow yourself. As you said, it's simply an hypocrisy (of which I am guilty too). From Wikipedia [1], (emphasis mine): > In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

wpietri 2y ago
> I don't think it's cognitive dissonance if you recognize the issue. Well I recognize the issue and still experience a feeling of dissonance. Indeed, I work to be able to be tolerant of that feeling, because I think it's important in pursuing deeper understanding. If you have a better term I'm all for it. But I think the "unknowingly" there is meant more as the general case rather than an absolute limit on the term.
- thaneross 2y ago
  Violating ethical beliefs when they are inconvenient is what I'd call "moral hypocrisy". Practically everyone is guilty of it to varying degrees.

jmull 2y ago

Just a side note, but what happened to "hypocrisy"? It used to mean having behavior that contradicts your stated beliefs. Now it seems to mean an apparent contradiction between behavior and belief if you ignore real distinctions. I don't like because it weakens the word and loses an important concept -- we don't have a good way to express real hypocrisy vs. fallaciously construed hypocrisy.

wpietri 2y ago
It's also an important word, albeit not a very useful one in this age: For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who were it proved he lies Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors' eyes; -- W B Yeats, "To A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing"
Chris2048 2y ago
I'd argue there is no "hypocrisy" her because it involves politics. There isn't the option to micromanage gov policies, there are two options taken as package deals - red or blue. MAGA react to questions like this as Dems react to questions like "what is a woman?". EDIT: to be clear, they react as if the inconvenient question is in bad faith.
- XorNot 2y ago
  How is that in anyway a comparable example? Do Democrats hold policy positions that would be particularly flummoxed by trans people existing?
  - Chris2048 2y ago
    Yes, and the number of them treating the question as if it's a trick is proof of that. It's also not a question of "trans people existing", so that's a misdirection/straw-man.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      Such as? You seem sure these exist, but are refusing to elaborate when the motivating example is quite clear ("I love nature and the outdoors and think protecting it is important... That's why I vote for the party who's platform is to remove those protections"). What exactly is meant to be a similar problem here that exists depending on the answer to that question?

tw04 2y ago

I would guess if you were starving to death you wouldn’t think twice about killing a cow. There’s nothing wrong with fundamentally valuing life but also consuming it for sustenance. I’m guessing you wouldn’t vote for a law to torture cows while also saying you value a cow’s life. That is essentially what the outdoorsmen are doing when voting for a politician that’s trying to remove environmental protections.

wpietri 2y ago
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I'm saying there's a dissonance. And I'm saying it's important that we recognize that we all experience this dissonance, and that we should face it rather than just "get mad or change the subject".

watwut 2y ago

I do not want to kill a cow personally, but I am aware meat I eat comes from cows. I would be against law that would make cow killing illegal. Not wanting to do something personally and accepting it happens for food is not cognitive dissonance. In general, I am ok with killing animals for food. If you killed a cow just for fun or sport, you are an asshole and I am against it. I feel no cognitive dissonance here. Likewise, I am pro cleaning shit out of places. I prefer when someone else does it.

wpietri 2y ago
If you want to understand my point about dissonance, you might substitute "dog" for "cow". Or you could look at why you wouldn't kill a cow. For me, I would feel pretty awful about it. I think, for example, about the time I had to take a dog in to be put down. It was necessary, and there was no other choice. But it was fucking awful to take that dog in and have it killed. Cows are lovely animals in person, and I would feel like I was betraying one to kill it. So for me there would be a lot of cognitive dissonance generated by killing a cow to get food when I have plenty of less murdery ways to get food. I avoid a lot of that dissonance by outsourcing the job, but some of it's still there.