A discussion on TFES forum

[Jebus]

There was a guy named Theo at Vegoa in Portugal last week. He is vegan and believes the earth is flat. Was that you (Teo123 )or just an amazing coincidence?

[EquALLity]

^Probably not, teo lives in Croatia & hasn't used an airplane. Also, he doesn't believe Earth is flat anymore.

[brimstoneSalad]

Well, scientific consensus isn't a reliable authority either. Until a few decades ago, it was the consensus that babies couldn't feel pain.

That was not so much scientific consensus, as it was doctors being idiots, as they unfortunately often are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies#History

In the late nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth century[citation needed], doctors were taught that babies did not experience pain, and were treating their young patients accordingly. From needle sticks to tonsillectomies to heart operations were done with no anaesthesia or analgesia, other than muscle relaxation for the surgery.[citation needed] The belief was that in babies the expression of pain was reflexive and, owing to the immaturity of the infant brain, the pain could not really matter.[35]

Cope[33] considers it probable that the belief arose from misinterpretation of discoveries made in the new science of embryology. Dr Paul Flechsig equated the non-myelinisation of much of a baby’s nervous system with an inability to function.[citation needed]

It was generally believed that babies would not remember any pain that they happened to feel, and that lack of conscious memory meant lack of long-term harm. Scientific studies on animals with various brain lesions were interpreted as supporting the idea that the responses seen in babies were merely spinal reflexes. Furthermore, the whole effort of relieving pain was considered futile since it was thought to be impossible to measure the child's pain.[36]

This, coupled with a concern that use of opiates would lead to addiction, and the time and effort needed to provide adequate analgesia to the newborn, contributed to the medical profession's continued practice of not providing pain relief for babies.[37]

Doctors are not scientists; they are not credible authorities on the why's, how's, and what's. They are more like mechanics, who know how to fix physical injuries when broken. Their arrogance, unfortunately, often results in them projecting beyond their fields of expertise and interpreting things actual scientists have done. Caveat: #notalldoctors

Doctors are just as capable of misinterpreting medical science as you are capable of misinterpreting physics.

Scientific consensus does make mistakes, of course, but those mistakes are very rare. My point is that you are currently wrong in the vast majority of your claims. If you follow scientific consensus, you'll be wrong in closer to 1% of your claims, and maybe less.
There's no way to be 100% right 100% of the time unless you abstain from speaking, thinking, or making claims of any kind.

Scientific consensus gives you the best chance of being as right as possible as often as possible. That's the best you can hope for. If you play those odds, you will rarely ever be wrong.

And I don't really see why should we consider science reliable. Reality is simply the word we give to the world our senses give us access to. Why aren't our senses then the ultimate authority about reality?

Our senses are highly unreliable. We witness hallucinations, are subject to confirmation biases, perception biases, placebo, nocebo, etc.
Science is the most reliable method because it controls for those biases.

Think of some extreme cases. If somebody beliefs it's the scientific consensus that grass is red, and, of course, sees that it's green, is he justified to believe that the grass is red?

Yes, he should believe the consensus. He should assume something is wrong with his eyes or his brain. Such as that he is color blind, or has a brain injury of some kind. He should go to a hospital, they may find a tumor and save his life.
Study a little about how the brain works, and you will see the kind of delusions we can have are really bizarre.

Read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Mistook-His-Wife/dp/1491514078

Look, I understand why I was wrong to claim that the entire scientific community (or any other large community) was in a conspiracy, but I still don't understand why it's wrong to claim they are mistaken.

First, because the chance of them being mistaken is very very very low, and the chance of you being mistaken is very high.

Second, when the scientific community is mistaken, it's an honest mistake and there's typically a very good and interesting reason for it.
Whether you are right or you are mistaken, you're basically just guessing, which is not an honest methodology to trust as a way to know the truth about the universe.

https://xkcd.com/882/

You need to understand how science works, and where mistakes can come from.

If you do an experiment with 95% confidence, that means there's a 1 in 20 chance of it being wrong.
So, if you accept things with 95% confidence as being true, you will be wrong about 5% of the time.

If you do an experiment with 99.9% confidence, that means there's a 1 in 1,000 chance of being wrong.
So if you accept things with 99.9% confidence as being true, you will be wrong about 0.1% of the time.

You just have to accept that you're going to be wrong now and then. But you can reduce this chance of being wrong to as low as possible by believing scientific consensus instead of guessing for yourself. Scientists only form consensus on topics when the chances of being wrong are incredibly low.

So, why? The explanation I've heard is that theology presupposes the existence of god, and that it isn't based on solid evidence. But so does the astronomy pretty much presuppose the earth being round, and, at least to someone who has read all those ad-hoc hypotheses TFES made and doesn't know to explain why they are wrong, that doesn't seem to be based on solid evidence either, yet I was wrong to reject it.

Astronomy doesn't really presuppose the Earth is round, of course, it's based on evidence.
Theology does presuppose god, and it is not based on evidence.

Without understanding either of them, or the difference between science and religion, you would be wrong to reject religion.
You WERE wrong to be an atheist when you didn't understand the difference.

Only when you understand the methodological differences between science and religion are you right in rejecting religion and accepting science.

If you understand now that religion is basically just guessing and then building up ad-hoc explanations, and that the scientific method controls for biases (like personal belief) and follows actual evidence, then you would be right in rejecting religion and be an "agnostic atheist" (until religion provides real evidence, if it ever does).

Besides, mathematics presupposes Euclid's axioms, yet I think that nobody except Flat-Earthers denies them.

Math is based on logic and axioms, that's different from empirical science.

Great! That doesn't seem to work for me though. I read a lot about critical thinking on-line, yet, when I try to do it, it almost always confirms what I already believe. For example, I identified the explanation that sun rays appear to converge because of the perspective as an obvious example of an ad-hoc hypothesis, and therefore not trustworthy.

That's a problem in your thinking process, which is why, as I said, you should not come to your own conclusions. Instead, you should just trust experts -- until you become an expert.
If you want to study some field of science (one field, not all fields), you may eventually be qualified to come to a conclusion of your own.

So, why is then it right to buy yourself a mobile phone? For all you know, it might also have been made by slaves.

I avoid buying a new mobile phone unless necessary, since it's a waste of resources and money.
That slaves are manufacturing a significant portion of our goods is a myth, however. If you want to find out if the particular company you are buying from is rigorous in preventing forced labor, you can do a little research on it.

Sweatshops are real, but these provide people in poor areas jobs that they WANT, and help lift countries out of poverty. Sweatshops are a good thing (unlike animal agriculture).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/02/sweatshops-in-bangladesh-improve-the-lives-of-their-workers-and-boost-growth/

There are still slaves in the world, but mostly operate in undeveloped countries in much less attractive jobs than manufacture. And in manufacture, most "forced labor" isn't really forced, but underpaid and amounts to bad contracts and violations, like somebody running off with the wages and having a migrant worker chased off. It's not the kind of slavery you might imagine. These articles go into more detail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery

A significant portion of real slaves are in sex slavery and prostitution, or domestic servitude. Others are usually less overt, and deal more with contract violations.

Of the total number of 20.9 million forced labourers, 18.7 million (90%) are exploited in the private economy, by
individuals or enterprises. Out of these, 4.5 million (22% total) are victims of forced sexual exploitation, and 14.2
million (68%) are victims of forced labour exploitation, in economic activities such as agriculture, construction,
domestic work and manufacturing. The remaining 2.2 million (10%) are in state-imposed forms of forced labour,
for example in prison under conditions which contravene ILO standards on the subject, or in work imposed by the
state military or by rebel armed forces.3

http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public ... 182004.pdf

14.2 million cases of forced labor are in these areas, but table 2.3 here shows more of the breakdown:
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public ... 243391.pdf

Only about 5 million are employed in the full range of construction, manufacturing, mining and utilities in the Asia-Pacific region.
Manufacturing itself seems to be about a third of that. This is a little over 1.5 million people in forced labor out of at least hundreds of millions who may be making phones or garments at some point. And again, this usually amounts to being promised payment, and then being shorted.

Is not paying a prostitute after the fact rape? There may be a subtle distinction to be made there, and I would call it theft rather than slavery.

Anyway, the chances of a real slave having made anything you buy is pretty low, and even the chance of somebody who has been ripped off is pretty low, particularly if you buy a reputable brand.

The important thing to remember, as distinct from animal agriculture, is that there's real benefit to having phones, to engaging in trade trade, and to providing jobs that has to be weighed against the cost of very rare abuses. Animal agriculture is harmful all around.

My parents, whom I trust about how those animals are treated here, may not be trustworthy. They were shocked when I told them about animals being kept in factories in America, when I know, from the Internet, that factory farms also exist in Croatia. I really don't know what to think.

They probably haven't checked either. They just want to believe the animals are well cared for, or want you to eat eggs, so they may tell what they see to be a small "white lie" to get you to eat them because they think it's good for you (parents often do this, whether it comes to lying about the cruelties of the world, or Santa clause).
Whether they're kept in small cages or not, they are killed when their production drops, and the males are killed at birth.

It much better to not eat eggs or dairy, and to just take some supplements.

Weird. I was watching vegan bloggers every day for over a year now, and I thought I knew everything I needed to make an informed decision.

If your source is not informed, then you can't get good information from it. Most vegan bloggers aren't very smart (most people aren't very smart).

Only prophylactic use of antibiotics is banned. That doesn't mean they don't get antibiotics if it's medically necessary.

Any government ban that goes against veterinary practice is suspect. Politicians don't know veterinary medicine.

http://amrls.cvm.msu.edu/pharmacology/a ... c-purposes

Any reduction in recommended usage by veterinarians poses a risk. Antibiotics are used after surgeries or in response to exposure or stresses that increase risks of infections, which prevent the infection in the first place. You're still talking about increasing animal suffering in any case you withhold medical care, for treatment or prevention.
Farmers and vets aren't just feeding animals antibiotics for fun.

The best way to stop overusing antibiotics is to stop breeding so many animals, not legislate to reduce the quality of their care and increase their suffering and death from preventable diseases that may not be possible to adequately treat after they occur.

How does it lower the cost? They can do efficiently whatever they do with only one tractor. If they buy another tractor, they have to sell their products at a higher price to pay off that tractor. Plus, of course, that tractor needs to be sustained with fuel and repairings.

More unused tractors means more tractor parts cheaper. Their existing tractor already breaks down, and needs regular repairs and even replacing. More tractors means you can replace a broken tractor cheaper, or keep this extra as a backup so you don't lose time or money.
The point is that surplus materials available cheaper decrease costs. The farmers don't have to buy another tractor if they don't want or need it: they won't waste money on one. The option to do so at a low price is helpful.

There's a huge difference between empirical matters and mathematical ones which you can double check on paper. You were able to check your results when you figured out distance, which is a huge benefit. On something like economics where you can't confirm your results easily, you can't assume your reasoning is correct.

Wow! I thought that only someone who is satirical could say you can't trust the math.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrfF--cOeK8

You clearly didn't understand what I wrote. I did not say you can not trust math. You need to read more carefully.
I said figuring out something on your own that is purely mathematical is more reliable because you can check the results and your methods.

Not really. Most people who believe god is real do so because they trust their own reasoning.

And why is that bad? At least they are free thinkers.

Them just believing in some kind of god-like being may not be very harmful, but neither is is useful. For most people, "free thinking" is just a process of confirmation bias, and in many cases that means they just do whatever they want, which could be harmful. Further, when they stop "free thinking" and then draw their morality from scripture, that becomes even more of a problem.

Well, yes. I hadn't watch it very carefully.

This is a habit you have. You also don't read carefully.

So, why should the public opinion be more valuable than my opinion then?

As I already explained:
Scientific consensus > Public opinion > Your own opinion.

If your opinion is copying scientific consensus, then it becomes more valuable than public opinion. Otherwise, if you're figuring things out for yourself, it's probably more likely to fail.

Intuition is not really that bad. I would argue that science education, at least the way it's done in our school, makes people stupider.

Intuition is terrible. You had an intuitive idea of what science meant which was wrong. Instead of trusting scientific facts, you tried to use your intuition, which is what failed you.

A little bit of education can be more dangerous than none at all, because it can make you think you have competences you do not. But all of your mistakes came from bad intuition where you drew additional conclusions from what you thought science was.

Look at the famous case that inspired the research for the Dunning Kruger effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras.[3]

If that man didn't know anything about invisible ink, he would not have used his own reasoning and intuition to decide that lemon juice would make him invisible to cameras.
Knowing even a tiny bit of information caused his confidence in his reasoning and knowledge to be inflated such that he came to that conclusion.

To someone who actually uses his intuition, most of my arguments would appear outright ridiculous.

To somebody who trusted widely known facts and common knowledge, your arguments would be ridiculous.
The only intuition most people have which is close to right is to trust authority. Of course, they will often trust the wrong authority (They may trust religion instead of science, or trust their parents who know nothing about a topic rather than experts, or even trust some bad documentary about a conspiracy theory they saw on TV rather than credible sources).

So, what opinion should I take on moderate drinking? I was against it, and criticized people who were for it for going against most of the medical authorities.

If you don't know anything about it, don't have an opinion about it.
If you want an opinion on it, then do some research and believe the best experts you can find.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/alcohol/art-20044551
http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/moderate-drinking.htm
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/moderate-binge-drinking

How did I do that? I searched "moderate drinking" and I found the first three most credible links I could find.

1. Search. Find sources mainly from .gov, or credible health NGOs. Look for American or Canadian sources mainly. Be sure to search in English.
2. Read them.
3. If they all basically agree, then that should be your new opinion.
4. If you find credible sources that disagree, then your new opinion should be to not have an opinion on the topics they disagree on.

For example: if all sources say heavy drinking is bad, you agree on that. If some sources say moderate drinking is bad, and some say it's good, then you reserve your opinion about moderate drinking, but still agree on heavy drinking. A difference in opinion from credible sources usually means there's no consensus, so you shouldn't take sides yet (if you do, you're just guessing).

If you read those, you'll find that two of those links offer health information, and they both basically agree. If you don't drink, keep not drinking. If you want to drink, at least reduce the level to one a day for women, or two a day for men. The health risks of drinking outweigh the benefits.

It sounds like a mixed message: Drinking alcohol may offer some health benefits, especially for your heart. On the other hand, alcohol may increase your risk of health problems and damage your heart.

So which is it? When it comes to drinking alcohol, the key is doing so only in moderation. Certainly, you don't have to drink any alcohol, and if you currently don't drink, don't start drinking for the possible health benefits. In some cases, it's safest to avoid alcohol entirely — the possible benefits don't outweigh the risks.

And to be honest, I can't promise I will be good at arguing for veganism.

You can learn and improve. If you keep practicing, you'll become an expert eventually. I used to be an idiot. Nobody's born with competence and knowledge. You become a non-idiot by constantly correcting yourself when you're wrong, and accepting the correction of others.

[EquALLity]

After seeing how he treated Sam Harris, I don't trust him not to cherry pick and quote things out of context. It's very easy to manipulate people's words to make them look like they're lying, and misrepresent them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQqxlzHJrU0
The original interview with Cenk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Vlc5u46PA
(I believe Cenk went right back to misrepresenting him and giving a platform to slander right after the interview)

I agree that Cenk has a blindspot when it comes to certain issues regarding Islam, and that his biases have led him to treat Sam Harris unfairly to an extent, but he is usually very insightful and real.

You can't really take the quotes out of context. For example, one is:
"The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago."
But the reality of the internal report was that they didn't know, so that's just a lie.

Correlation does not equal causation. It's possible they look for reasons to attack people because they're pro-war (and think war solves problems), and they're involved with military contractors because they are also pro-war (for the same moral reasons/misconceptions).
More money is a very weak motivator for people who are already ridiculously rich.

But there was no problem to be solved with Iraq; there were simply no weapons of mass destruction there.

It's not about having money to buy stuff; it's about staying in power (which they need the money to do during elections- it's not like they're getting this money personally, so I don't know why you seem to be implying that).

[brimstoneSalad]

You can't really take the quotes out of context. For example, one is:
"The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago."
But the reality of the internal report was that they didn't know, so that's just a lie.

Nobody knows anything for sure in terms of military intelligence. Remember when we were discussing North Korea? This is all hearsay, third party information, and it's not inherently reliable.
The North Korean government is probably unfairly imprisoning people and turning a blind eye to abuses, but we don't know this 100%.

People act on information they think is true, and they thought this was true. Failing to convey nuance in the statement was wrong, but it didn't mean they were lying because they actually believed it.

But there was no problem to be solved with Iraq; there were simply no weapons of mass destruction there.

They thought there were. And anyway, they hated Saddam because of his cruel practices against the people of Iraq, and they thought it would be better without him. They were wrong, of course, and we know that now. It was a matter of ignorance and naivete.

They just knew he was a bad guy, and we have to get him, and of course he's building weapons because that's what bad guys do.
The whole thing needed nuance. Saddam wasn't pure evil, and he wasn't insane: he wasn't a good guy, but there were reasons he ruled with an iron fist (reasons we've since become all too familiar with given the violence that erupted after his fall).

It's not about having money to buy stuff; it's about staying in power (which they need the money to do during elections- it's not like they're getting this money personally, so I don't know why you seem to be implying that).

Why do they want to stay in power? To be rich? No. They think they're the good guys, and that they're doing the right thing, and leading the country in the right direction. They think the Democrats are wrong. That's why they want to win.

You always come back to ideological motivations in politics.

[teo123]

That was not so much scientific consensus, as it was doctors being idiots, as they unfortunately often are.

Well, yes, except that it was, for most of the people, impossible to determine what's the actual scientific consensus.

Yes, he should believe the consensus. He should assume something is wrong with his eyes or his brain. Such as that he is color blind, or has a brain injury of some kind.

And isn't it way more likely that he has mistaken beliefs of what scientific consensus is? Like, he misread something or read from some unreliable source? In my history book, for example, it's written that most of the scientists agree that global flood actually happened.

Astronomy doesn't really presuppose the Earth is round, of course, it's based on evidence.
Theology does presuppose god, and it is not based on evidence.

I don't think so. I think that theology and religion wouldn't exist without apologetics. It is based on evidence, just on very vague ones. Those ad-hoc hypotheses TFES makes make the astronomy appear just as pseudoscientific as theology is, unless, of course, you know exactly why those ad-hoc hypotheses are invalid.

If you understand now that religion is basically just guessing and then building up ad-hoc explanations, and that the scientific method controls for biases (like personal belief) and follows actual evidence…

Problem with religion and the flat earth theory is that it makes people think they are following the actual evidence, and that the mainstream science is biased.

Math is based on logic and axioms, that's different from empirical science.

So, do you think it's honest for the flat earthers to deny those axioms?

That's a problem in your thinking process, which is why, as I said, you should not come to your own conclusions.

And why have I been learning all that science in school if not to be able to come up with my own conclusions?

That slaves are manufacturing a significant portion of our goods is a myth, however.

So the fact that most of the farmers are cruel to animals could also be a myth, for all I know.

Animal agriculture is harmful all around.

And what do you think about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism#Criticisms
Those environmental arguments vegan bloggers use are very weak. We should either know how to respond to the counter-arguments or stop using them.

The best way to stop overusing antibiotics is to stop breeding so many animals, not legislate to reduce the quality of their care and increase their suffering and death from preventable diseases that may not be possible to adequately treat after they occur.

Now, I din't know how many of the farmers actually follow what vets say, but there are some alternative methods to antibiotics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_use_in_livestock#Research_into_alternatives
Like I've said, I was ignorant about such things because I was just watching the vegan bloggers.

I said figuring out something on your own that is purely mathematical is more reliable because you can check the results and your methods.

Well, science usually does make things purely mathematical.

As I already explained:
Scientific consensus > Public opinion > Your own opinion.

I meant, if you say that I am a moron, and that me winning the school competitions in natural sciences two years in a row means that most of the people are even dumber, why should the public opinion matter at all? I manage to get almost everything wrong, yet most of the people are even stupider, so why should their opinion be valuable?

Be sure to search in English.

How can I love my own nation then?

If you read those, you'll find that two of those links offer health information, and they both basically agree. If you don't drink, keep not drinking. If you want to drink, at least reduce the level to one a day for women, or two a day for men. The health risks of drinking outweigh the benefits.

Well, there is actually no such consensus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixrb25_UqKY
And she is not just making things up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_alcohol_consumption#Longevity
Those studies show that moderate drinking does way better than vegetarianism in decreasing mortality rate.
So, what now? Whether or not I start drinking, I am still guessing.

More research I do, more cognitive dissonance I feel. I know there are people who have done more research than I did and decided to go vegan, but there are also people who have done way more research than I did and decided to be religious.

[brimstoneSalad]

That was not so much scientific consensus, as it was doctors being idiots, as they unfortunately often are.

Well, yes, except that it was, for most of the people, impossible to determine what's the actual scientific consensus.

That is unfortunately true, because they don't know how or where to look, and they trust the wrong authorities (like school textbooks).

Preventing lies and propaganda from shouting over the truth is a hard problem.

And isn't it way more likely that he has mistaken beliefs of what scientific consensus is? Like, he misread something or read from some unreliable source? In my history book, for example, it's written that most of the scientists agree that global flood actually happened.

I've said middle and high school textbook writers tend to be ignorant and write without researching, just regurgitating propaganda... that's pretty extreme though. I have never seen anything that bad in a U.S. public school.
Are you going to a religious school?

It sounds like you can't really trust anything you're learning in school, which is unfortunate. If you want to learn, you'll have to do so on your own online.

Be sure to search in English.

How can I love my own nation then?

Unless you can find a way to love it in spite of the lies, ignorance, and delusion -- perhaps as you love your grandmother or mother despite their problems -- then you can not.
Your nation is not a credible source of information, and it seems they sit idly by while the church brainwashes students (directly or indirectly), or the government may even encourage this.

You are at a unique disadvantage.

You'll see EquALLity's textbooks have propaganda in them too, but not quite as overt.

I don't think so. I think that theology and religion wouldn't exist without apologetics. It is based on evidence, just on very vague ones.

Apologetics do not provide evidence, they provide persuasion.
If you want, please start a thread to discuss apologetics. All of their arguments are highly flawed, and any empirical "evidence" they provide is deception (like the claim in your textbook).
How that deception comes about is an interesting question.

So, do you think it's honest for the flat earthers to deny those axioms?

No.

And why have I been learning all that science in school if not to be able to come up with my own conclusions?

Being able to come to your own conclusions may be the ideal, but by having such poor quality education filled with lies and propaganda, it seems your school has failed you.

That slaves are manufacturing a significant portion of our goods is a myth, however.

So the fact that most of the farmers are cruel to animals could also be a myth, for all I know.

Did you ignore where I demonstrated that it was a myth with evidence and explained the context?

If you consider a person who is being paid the agreed upon amount for a service and who is free to leave at any time for a new job to be a slave, then everybody would be a slave.
If you consider killing animals for profit not to be cruel, that taking calves away from their mothers to not be cruel, and that a number of other standard practices are not cruel, then there would be farms exempted on those grounds.

http://www.henheaven.org/
This is the only egg "farm" (actually a sanctuary) I know of that is not cruel by a reasonable metric.
The only way to really get cruelty free eggs is to have your own pet chickens who were rescued rather than purchased. If they were purchased, that comes with its own cruelties.

Farmers themselves frequently go vegan. Do you think they're ignorant of the practices, are guided by exaggerations about the industry?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-last-pig_us_563918e4e4b0b24aee47d55b
http://freefromharm.org/animal-products-and-ethics/former-meat-dairy-farmers-became-vegan-activists/

Here are a few. There are many people who have grown up on farms and are under no illusions about how the industry works.

One of the most compelling arguments we see are ideological shifts. We can look at the reasoning and their personal experiences.
We can also look at recidivism among vegans, and see a very different picture of motivation and mindset.
For that, there are actually surveys:

http://faunalytics.org/how-many-former-vegetarians-and-vegans-are-there/
http://faunalytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Faunalytics_Current-Former-Vegetarians_Full-Report.pdf
http://veg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/TVA_Lapsed_Veg_Study-2015-01-20-FINAL.pdf
Examination:
http://www.theveganrd.com/2015/06/preventing-ex-vegans-the-power-of-ethics.html
http://veganoutreach.org/humane-research-council-survey-on-vegetarian-recidivism/
http://jacknorrisrd.com/vegetarian-recidivism-survey/

Some 1/3rd of people who go back to eating meat do so because their vegetarian diets were not adequate (for example, no B12, or not eating enough healthy plant fats, or not eating enough beans). Encouraging healthy and balanced vegan diets is and remains a very important part of vegan outreach. You can easily find stories of people claiming to suffer poor health from going vegan, and it's usually easy to identify why they do (High Carb Low Fat, a la Freelee and that crowd, is probably a major culprit).

It's very important to be a healthy vegan to stay vegan, but that means knowledge.

This is an important point too:

Interest in Re-adoption
More than a third (37%) of former vegetarians/vegans
indicated that they are interested in resuming a vegetarian/
vegan diet. Of these individuals, more than half (59%) said
they are likely or very likely to do so.

Form page 10 http://faunalytics.org/wp-content/uploa ... Report.pdf (linked above)

Ex vegetarians and vegans do not seem to have strongly negative views about it, and a third want to try again.

If you look at social trends, particularly among the meat eating public and journalists, you can see a growing positive attitude reflected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwKrtNr76BM

From Dawkins to Hank Green, insightful and intelligent meat eaters recognize vegetarianism or veganism as the right thing to do, even if they don't do it.

You don't see the same from other side of the issue. Anti-vegans offer very poor arguments filled with strawmen and logical fallacies, and appeals to moral relativism which they would never accept as arguments for other social ills.

And what do you think about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environme ... Criticisms
Those environmental arguments vegan bloggers use are very weak. We should either know how to respond to the counter-arguments or stop using them.

Read the full article itself, and see the sources, not just the criticism section.
Looks like anti-vegans had a field day misrepresenting some of those sources there.

This is one of the sources cited:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1329-y#/page-1

The potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the UK through healthy and realistic dietary change
[...]Further GHG emission reductions of around 40 % could be achieved by making realistic modifications to diets so that they contain fewer animal products and processed snacks and more fruit, vegetables and cereals.

That's clearly a reducitarian message: how did the idiot who summarized it miss that? Because he or she wanted to miss it.

Here's another one:
theconversation.com/its-not-enough-to-go-vegetarian-to-fight-climate-change-37763

Disclosure statement
Richard Eckard receives funding from the Department of Agriculture, Meat and Livestock Australia and Dairy Australia.

Of course.
What does the article actually say, though?

What the evidence shows is that becoming vegetarian might help reduce your personal footprint – but it will be better to focus on a range of solutions if we want to have an impact on climate change.

There is no "might" about it, that's what the evidence says. And of course there are other causes of climate change too; we need to focus on all of them to fight global warming. Personal change, such as diet, just happens to be the easiest for an individual to do.

A focus solely on changing diet patterns runs the risk of becoming embroiled in the same moral arguments we’ve witnessed between the developing and developed economies on equitable greenhouse emission reduction targets and contributions to the Green Climate Fund.
Both these issues have stalled international climate negotiations, with the developed world (wealthy) being accused of dictating to the developing world (poor) that they cannot aspire to the same standard of living as has been enjoyed by the West while we created the climate change problem.
In the rather politically-charged debate on how to deal with climate change, the focus on vegetarianism as a solution to global warming also runs the risk of being dismissed as another line of attack for animal rights activists.

At no point does he really contradict any of the evidence or offer any additional insight. Vegans are not broadly saying that people in third world countries with no other food sources have to go vegan or die: some people don't really have the option because they do not have secure food sources.
He's also conceding that vegetarianism is good for the environment, but saying that "oh no, if you argue that then people might dismiss it as being motivated by animal rights". It doesn't defeat the point.
He then goes on to spend time discussing speculative infrastructure to reduce output, and imagining that fish is going to fill the growing demand for meat in Asia, and making bad comparisons to dairy from vegetables rather than legumes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_of_land

It's easy to tear these arguments apart. The ones that are not blatantly dishonest (like government sources) make modest claims and ones from practicality, and people just misquote them. Others use red herrings, and outright bad analogies and what-ifs.

The bottom line: Follow the sources.
99% of the times people are just exaggerating and misquoting them.

Now, I din't know how many of the farmers actually follow what vets say, but there are some alternative methods to antibiotics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibioti ... ternatives
Like I've said, I was ignorant about such things because I was just watching the vegan bloggers.

Now you're being dumb again. Did you read that? The keywords being "studied" and "researched".
Yes, there may be alternatives some day. That does not equate to them being used now, or being the norm today.

Meat can also be grown in-vitro, made with cell cultures with no animal cruelty. Some day it may be, and when that day comes then there will be few if any good reasons not to eat it when it's made that way.

That day is not today. The possibility of improving the system some day does not excuse participation in the system today.

It's great to support these advances too -- I strongly support in vitro meat -- but in the meantime we should be vegan.

The same applies to the environmental arguments. There are a few hypothetical and experimental ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from animals and increase efficiency. That's not how it's done today, though, so it is not an argument to contradict the vegan environmental argument made today.

I said figuring out something on your own that is purely mathematical is more reliable because you can check the results and your methods.

Well, science usually does make things purely mathematical.

No it doesn't. Science relates to physical empirical data through mathematics; it's abstracted, so it's harder to understand. When you come to the wrong conclusion because you misunderstood the science, you can't just easily check it on paper.

Take your line distance equation: you can easily just measure the line in front of you on paper with a ruler and find out if you're wrong (physical, but still simple and numerical), or try it on different lines and see if it works on those too. You can also construct a mathematical proof to show your line equation works, and as long as you didn't mess up somewhere that's valid.
It's also usually safe, without measuring, to just apply the equation iteratively (say, to the sides of a triangle); if they relate to each other properly, it's probably right.

Science involves more abstraction and interpretation to physical reality which is much harder to confirm, particularly if you misunderstood the science to begin with. You will be unable to easily correct yourself: the only way to do so is with actual scientific experimentation.
Remember when I was telling you that you can buy a precise clock, or a telescope, good camera, etc. and explained experiments you could do?
That's a far sight harder than just checking the length of a line, or applying the equation in a different way to test it, which you can do on a piece of paper without getting up or buying anything.

I meant, if you say that I am a moron, and that me winning the school competitions in natural sciences two years in a row means that most of the people are even dumber, why should the public opinion matter at all? I manage to get almost everything wrong, yet most of the people are even stupider, so why should their opinion be valuable?

They didn't think the Earth was flat or that airplanes didn't exist, did they?
Now that you are learning more science, your opinion may slowly advance beyond public opinion in terms of reliability, particularly in your country. The reason for that is only that it is more in line with scientific consensus.

If you read those, you'll find that two of those links offer health information, and they both basically agree. If you don't drink, keep not drinking. If you want to drink, at least reduce the level to one a day for women, or two a day for men. The health risks of drinking outweigh the benefits.

Well, there is actually no such consensus.

I just showed you how to find what the consensus probably is.

AGAIN, consensus doesn't mean 100% agreement.
Just read this would you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus

That was general advice about alcohol for the general public. There are certain older people who are at high risk of heart disease, such as because they eat too much saturated fat and cholesterol and have a genetic predisposition, for whom one drink a day may be useful.

Despite epidemiological evidence, many have cautioned against recommendations for the use of alcohol for health benefits. A physician from the World Health Organisation labeled such alcohol promotion as "ridiculous and dangerous".[61][62] One reviewer has noted, "Despite the wealth of observational data, it is not absolutely clear that alcohol reduces cardiovascular risk, because no randomized controlled trials have been performed. Alcohol should never be recommended to patients to reduce cardiovascular risk as a substitute for the well-proven alternatives of appropriate diet, exercise, and drugs."[63] It has been argued[who?] that the health benefits from alcohol are at best debatable and may have been exaggerated by the alcohol industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term ... lar_system

Physicians who recommend alcohol to non-drinking patients do so against current recommendations of mainstream health bodies. More evidence in the future may change these recommendations, but as of now it's fringe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixrb25_UqKY
And she is not just making things up.

Like most things, there are RISKS along with benefits. The benefits of moderate alcohol consumption are modest and contested, and the risks are well known. Many of these were meta analyses, which are weak evidence because they are subject to various experimental and publication biases.

She talks about the consensus here: https://youtu.be/Ixrb25_UqKY?t=507
Did you actually watch the whole video?

Notice how she agreed that what I linked to and said was the consensus?
Again, consensus isn't 100%. There are people who disagree with it.

The most important quote she gave to give you perspective on the actual opinion of those who disagree with consensus:

The overwhelming evidence suggests that physicians should counsel lifelong nondrinkers at about 40 to 50 years of age to relax and take a drink a day, preferably with dinner

Are you 40 to 50 years of age? No? Then don't jump off the wagon just yet based on this advice.
When you are older and your risk of stroke and heart attack rise, only then would this advice apply to you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term ... #Longevity
Those studies show that moderate drinking does way better than vegetarianism in decreasing mortality rate.
So, what now? Whether or not I start drinking, I am still guessing.

1. That study is limited to late life alcohol consumption.
Read the abstract damnit: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20735372
Wikipedia lists its sources, are you capable of clicking a link?
This does not apply to you yet.

2. And again, limited studies, and not consensus. Follow consensus. Consensus says if you drink moderately, you can keep doing that. If you're a heavy drinker, you should reduce or quit. If you don't drink, don't start drinking.

As more research comes in on the effects, the consensus may change. If it does, then you can start drinking.
Consensus is the most reliable advice you can get. Follow it and you will rarely go wrong.

The minority voice against consensus is that when you reach 40 years old, you might consider having one drink a day.
None of this suggests that you should start drinking now at all.

More research I do, more cognitive dissonance I feel. I know there are people who have done more research than I did and decided to go vegan, but there are also people who have done way more research than I did and decided to be religious.

Consensus is that a properly planned vegan diet is adequate and may provide health benefits. No health reason to eat meat, dairy, etc.

Consensus is that animal agriculture contributes to about as much global warming as the entire transportation industry. It's not the exaggerated 50% some vegans cite, but that's still the biggest and most meaningful change we can easily make.

Consensus is that most animals that are farmed (aside from oysters, for example) are intelligent, sentient/conscious beings who suffer.
You can look into standard practice to find these animals are killed for eggs and dairy too, and in what amounts.

Here you can see based on agricultrual input that milk is not as bad as eggs and meat, but it's still much worse than vegetables:
http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc/ (that is disregarding the direct animal deaths from dairy's subsidy on beef and veal, which are harder to compute)

It's not that complicated to see that veganism is the moral choice.


In terms of religion, that's typically a matter of personal faith, not evidence. Most people believe that god can neither be proved nor disproved, and it's about faith. A significant number of scientists also believe in religion (although they believe in a different version from the theists you know which is less hostile to science: closer to deism, with metaphorical interpretations of scripture).
Religion is more so a matter of philosophy and use of logic and reasoning than of empirical evidence. Consensus on god, and questions of who actually has the authority and expertise to form such a consensus, is much weaker.

We can discuss that if you start a thread on it as I suggested. There are huge differences between how religion is dealt with and scientific knowledge.

[teo123]

I think I will actually go vegan when I grow up, now I just don't have enough strength and confidence and willpower to so strongly confront my parents, my grandparents and probably even my doctor. I've obviously misunderstood what veganism is. I thought it was something compatible with flat-earthism and what I thought atheism was. I am having a hard time now accepting that almost everything I used to believe is false and that all that studying in school was in vain. I don't think I have anything more to say but thank you.

[brimstoneSalad]

I think I will actually go vegan when I grow up, now I just don't have enough strength and confidence and willpower to so strongly confront my parents, my grandparents and probably even my doctor.

Ask them if they can accept ostroveganism, or bivalveganism, which is vegan + some oysters (if you buy them canned, it's pretty cheap).
That's much less harmful than eggs and dairy. Oysters probably aren't sentient, and they're much better for the environment.

https://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eating-oysters-and-mussels/
https://sentientist.org/2013/06/15/oystersmusselspt2/

The morality is probably the same as veganism.

I've obviously misunderstood what veganism is. I thought it was something compatible with flat-earthism and what I thought atheism was.

What do you mean by "compatible"?

Veganism is a mainstream ethical, environmental, and health position based on science, but that doesn't mean people can't go vegan for other reasons too.
You can avoid killing animals because you're afraid their ghosts will literally come back to haunt you, and you might be vegan -- you just wouldn't be a very rational one.
Just like a person can be an atheist because of ethics and science, or an atheist because he or she thinks Christians are teh suck and likes heavy metal music.

Any position with good reasons to hold it will inevitably also have some people who hold it for the wrong (bad) reasons.
The sme does not apply in reverse: some positions only have bad reasons to hold them, and no good ones.

[teo123]

And how do you know if something is ethical or not? Aren't the philosophers the actual experts on the issue? There seems to be no consensus among them at all. Only 60% of them of them think it's wrong to eat meat from mammals, and most of them still do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_eating_meat#Morals
And what if what I've been told in school is actually true? Seriously, which country is more likely to be corrupt: the small Croatia or the big USA? It takes only one person to corrupt the whole government, so, since USA has way more people, USA is way more likely to be corrupt.
I knew about this funny case with McArthur Wheeler even before I became a Flat Earther, I just didn't think that same could happen to me, because I am an excellent student and successful on competitions. Anyway, that case shows that doing the experiments doesn't help those who don't think logically, as you say it does. Namely, he tried to test his lemon-juice hypothesis and it seemed to work.
And I don't understand how do you mean that science doesn't make things purely mathematical? How is engineering done then? I mean, if you know Bool's algebra, you can figure out by yourself how does an electronic circuit add, subtract, multiply or divide binary numbers. While I am not quite certain, I think that it's quite similar for other types of engineering.
And I think that people who have, let's say, backyard chickens have more illusions about how is factory farming done. I haven't found any study about it, but that's what I concluded by talking with people about these things.
And, about that your suggestion not to make any conclusions by yourself if you can find out what the scientific consensus is, what about when you don't have access to the scientific consensus? Most of the people don't do that, yet they manage to make good day-to-day decisions. It's very hard for me to tell what they do when intuition starts telling them that airplanes don't exist, but, still, they do make conclusions for themselves, and most of them are, judging by the marks at school, less smart than I am.
And do you trust your intuition when it tells you that somebody is lying or being a lunatic?