ComplexP2 wrote:
I think I see your point here. And I also dont see a way to overcome those downsides of meat production, aside from getting rid of it. That is clearly something to think about.
I was just wondering why it shouldnt be enough to reduce meat consumption.
There are more environmentally sustainable ways to produce meat; like tightly regulated hunting where feeding is banned.
And local operations running on human waste streams.
As far as hunting is concerned (putting aside the ethics), it simply is not possible to produce enough to feed people meat even occasionally (by your standards) given the world population.
Regulations impose tight limits on sustainable hunting, and permits can sell out quickly.
If you applied for a hunting permit, you would get 'sustainable meat' for yourself, but another person would miss out, and end up going to the grocery store instead.
Becoming a hunter instead of buying meat doesn't reduce the burden- it just shifts it to another consumer. So, in fact, it isn't a sustainable election after all.
If you live in a location where overpopulation of certain hunted animals is a problem, and they never sell out of hunting licenses, and you don't feed, then you can make the argument from environmental sustainability.
Only a small handful of people, mostly living out in the middle of nowhere, can make that argument.
Local operations running on human food waste streams- like feeding kitchen and restaurant waste to animals- can be more sustainable.
Growing insects in this way can be particularly sustainable.
If you do some research on it, you'll find insects as food is a huge new thing in sustainability.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... s-beetles/
Nobody can call you wasteful if you raise insects on your kitchen scraps and eat them.
But to take it down to a level where it does no (relevant) harm, meat would be horribly expensive.
Non-insect meat anyway, yes. It would be very expensive, and still not sustainable due to thermodynamics. You just can't feed that many animals, to use the animals to feed humans. The bigger the animal is, the more wasteful.
Insects are small, they grow fast, and they convert plant into meat very efficiently.
Insects are also less intelligent than birds and mammals- so there's that too.
So an alternative and more promising way would be to convert people to vegeterianismn (does this word even exist?). And since dairy leaves us with the same problem (as TVA said below), people should convert to veganism? Is that right so far?
Right, it's either that, or insects, for the most part.
I think i need more information about this. In particular, how beneficial a vegan society would really be. So thanks for the links so far, i'll definitively have a look at them.
BUT: In general, I dont consider information of "Pro" sites (in this case: pro vegan sites) as trustworthy. I would suggest to refer to neutral sites when ever it is possible.
The environmental stuff is just basic biology and thermodynamics.
"Pro" sites are mostly just putting all of the information in one place. What kinds of neutral sites are you looking for?
All major environmental organizations, and major NGOs agree on this point. The U.N. Agrees.
Governmental organizations which are industry independent, like the EPA, also agree.
The USDA is owned by farm lobbies, because its job is to promote agriculture, and the most powerful forces in agriculture today are corn and soy- the vast majority of which is wasted by being fed to animals instead of directly to humans. That's the only reason they still recommend people eat meat- because it's their job to sell meat. You might as well go to the butcher for your nutritional advice. It may be similar with other countries' agricultural bureaus.
Animal agriculture, as a rule of thumb, only produces about 10% of the protein consumed as meat- the rest of the biomass becomes CO2, CH4 (methane), and various kinds of fecal runoff. That's not propaganda, it's basic biology.
Building a complex organism takes a lot of energy, and at every stage along the line, there is loss of nitrogen (protein), and carbohydrates/lipids (energy, and other building blocks) due to natural inefficiencies of biological systems, imperfect digestion, etc.
This is why insects are more efficient (they're simpler, and grow faster), and bacteria are even more efficient (almost 90%, I believe).
Yes, they do suffer. But is going vegan an effective way to stop this kind of suffering? I think going vegan, unless not everyone does, doesnt help much.
This isn't an all or nothing world.
Every person who goes vegan reduces animal suffering a little bit. Every animal you don't eat is an animal who didn't have to suffer that terrible life and death.
You aren't responsible for everybody else's actions- you're only responsible for your own actions.
Why don't we say "there will never be world peace, so we might as well support any war that financially benefits us"?
That's not how ethics works. Ethics is about doing the best you can, with your ability. The world will never be perfect, but we can each contribute to making it suck a little less.
Well, I think we need to go a step further into the topic "what is suffering?": Is suffering the ability to feel pain? What does pain mean? What about insects breaking apart on my windshield and bacteria bursting by cleaning powder? Do/Can they suffer, too?
Suffering is not the only thing that matters. Philosophers are not widely concerned with "suffering".
You could kill somebody painlessly in his or her sleep. Would that be an OK thing to do, because there was no suffering?
What if the person was homeless, and had not friends or family to mourn him or her? Would it then be OK?
It's not OK, because the person wanted to live, and didn't want to die- you imposed your will over another's.
Animals are sentient, and they do not want to die.
Killing them painlessly is better than tormenting them and making them feel pain, but it is still not the right thing to do.
Remember the golden rule- a rule which is not from Christianity, but which makes up an ancient realization of basic ethics- would you want to be killed painlessly for somebody else to eat? Despite that they had no need to do it, and they just thought you tasted good?
It's not morally appropriate to kill something that doesn't want to die.
But as I said, there is a smooth transition between (self-)consciousness and non-(self-)consciousness. So it definitely is very hard to tell, if a cow has a personality or not. And as far as I know, science would say, that it doesnt.
So the question is: Is killing a non-self-conscious being a murder? (and what the hell is a murder?) If not, why should one even care if such a being suffers? (please consider this as a philosophical question, rather than my opinion!). Again, we might have to go deeper into the "suffering" topic.
You seem to have a very mystical view of self-consciousness.
Please allow me to divest you of that.
Consciousness is a non-rigorous term which has no scientific meaning, beyond the niche medical usage of a patient being conscious/unconscious.
Please stop referring to "consciousness" as if it had some scientific meaning. You might as well be appealing to souls, guardian angels, and the fruit of knowledge of good and evil from the garden of Eden and original sin for as much credibility as the notion has.
Sentience is what matters, and sentience derives from- forms- the basis of intelligence. It is rooted in receipt of sense perception by a brain capable of processing it, understanding it, and making use of it to improve behavior.
Organisms are more or less intelligent- and that is something we can and do test for. It's not one of those big questions that are mysterious to science.
There are things that are not sentient, because they have zero intelligence- it is not a smooth gradation out to infinity where things never reach zero.
Rocks have zero intelligence. Plants have zero intelligence (yes, Zero). Bacteria and other microorganisms have zero intelligence.
The only point where intelligence becomes non-zero is where there forms an adaptive neural network to process incoming information and change behavior based on effect.
This can be tested by certain forms of operant conditioning, or presenting situations in which an organism must change its behavior in order to reach a goal, a positive stimulant, or avoid a noxious stimulant. In short, it must be possible to teach the organism.
Every sentient organism can be taught. However, some very small organisms may just be very difficult to teach.
There is a "gray area" in sentience. That gray area does NOT include cows.
The gray area is along the lines of very small animals (like mites), some kinds of worms, and things like that- and it's just because they haven't been tested, or the responses to tests are not conclusive.
Larger insects have some intelligence, and can learn:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801537/
If you want to assume that organisms in the gray area- the actual gray area which has been established by the current limits of scientific testing- are not sentient, then that's fine.
It is not a question as to whether cows are sentient. And "consciousness" is not a thing- aside from informally to say whether or not the cow is alert or anesthetized/asleep in veterinary medicine.
Like I said, you might as well say "Science hasn't proved cows have souls, so we should assume they don't and that therefore it's OK to kill them"
Because science hasn't proved that ANYTHING has a soul, because it's not a coherent concept, and it's not testable. Like this idea of "Self-consciousness"
It's meaningless.
All sentient beings are inherently self-aware; it's what comes with sensation. Sensation and intelligence doesn't work without self awareness.
There ARE some things that happen along the line of increasing intelligence.
As intelligence increases, the animal becomes better able to grasp certain concepts, like how a mirror works (dogs don't), or miniature representations of a room (apes can). They begin to be able to think in more abstracts. At a certain point, animals also begin to be able to use grammar, without just directly associating words with meanings.
There is something special that happens in those with a higher intelligence called a "theory of mind"
As far as we can tell, most other animals don't have it. Human children don't have it. Just some humans really have it. And it basically comes all at once.
That's something that's more concrete and coherent as a concept, and that has proven more testable at the higher level (because it seems to occur after substantial language ability).
There are other thresholds of concepts, which divide humans- at certain points of intelligence, some humans gain the ability to grasp relativism (others never do). Some humans grasp the concept that there are things that they can not or do not understand that may be understandable (most humans seem not to). Some humans achieve a degree of meta cognition, in understanding how their own minds work, granting them insight into their own mental states (most humans do not). Some humans can understand relativity, others simply can not grasp the concept. Some can understand quantum mechanics- for others, it's forever out of reach.
There are any number of thresholds of intelligence that grant access to new and higher concepts of reality.
We could choose any one of these things, and by arbitrary dictate say "If you have this, you're worthy of moral consideration. If you don't have it, you're not worthy of moral consideration and we can kill you or torment you without any moral qualms".
But doing so would be wrong (both immoral, and incorrect) because arbitrary ability has nothing to do with moral value- sentience does.
I mean, in general I agree to you, but its such a hard thing to go vegan in those times, since there are no(?) alternatives to milk and eggs and stuff. I'm just wondering, if there is anything you could buy at a bakery, that is vegan?
Yes. Most bakeries in the world have bread without milk and eggs. Typical baguettes do not contain egg or milk. Usually only pastry items contain these.
I only bring this up, because sometimes, in your "stupid xy comments" videos, you present comments and call them stupid, where i think: "What the hell? This guy just asked a question and needs some explanations. Why does he call that stupid?". I think you should be more sensitive in the future.
I tend to agree, but at the same time, using strong language like that can encourage people to watch the videos and respond. Sometimes only a strongly worded view will be noticed.
