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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44985 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Not sure if this is better for SQS but - What is the steelman argument against vegetarianism/veganism? I am especially interested in claims that aren't health-based, as I know quite a few very intelligent and well-sourced vegans who have thoroughly convinced me that most health based claims are false.

I'm not a vegetarian myself but I'm reasonably convinced that I should be one, it's more of a moral failing on my part that I eat meat, not a logical stance.

Steelman I don't know, but personally, I have one life and I refuse to let it go by unlived. Veganism, teetotallers, virgins before marriage, ardent cyclists, whatever have you -- all types of people who restrict themselves from arbitrary enjoyable behaviours and consider themselves smugly morally superior for it -- completely mystify me. I get why religious people give up on pleasure in life, they believe in a reward in the "next life", but for those without such a belief, denying oneself luxuries on this one and only go around you get in existence strikes me as extremely foolish. There's no greater tragedy than a life unlived -- or unenjoyed.

As far as moral weight of animal lives, well. Consider a trolley problem with a person on the set of rails the trolley is heading towards. How many cows would have to be on the other track before you refuse to pull the lever and divert the trolley towards them, and kill the human instead? If your answer is anything other than "1, and I'd have to flip a coin to decide who lives and dies", then you already morally weight animals as less than humans. All we're doing thereafter is haggling over the exact price.

Of course we are haggling over the price, it is the way of utilitarianism.

Just like we all are deciding to draw the line between personal hedonism and morally abhorrent behavior. Some people might not read a book at night to save electric energy, and some people might be okay with hunting humans for sport, but most of us fall somewhere in the boring middle ground.

All we're doing thereafter is haggling over the exact price.

I am firmly in this camp. For your trolly problem, cows specifically it would have to be... maybe 10,000? before I would consider it. Even then not sure I could go through with it depending on who the person was.

Cows generally have it pretty good though. And if it's relatively trivial (ie just doubling or tripling prices of meat) to eliminate vast swathes of suffering, I think it's worth it.

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