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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44937 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.

It's wrong to kill humans. But it's fine to kill ants. Plausibly, every non-human animal species is closer to ants along the relevant axes than they are to humans. So it's fine to kill non-human animals for the same reasons it's fine to kill ants (whatever those reasons actually turn out to be).

Plausibly, every non-human animal species is closer to ants along the relevant axes than they are to humans.

Genetically, cows (80% similarity to humans) seem to be on the halfway point between fruit flies (80%) and other humans (99.9%), while some other other mammals (e.g. dogs 94%) are even more similar.

So your "relevant axes" are not genetics or sentience (which some humans lack and some other animals might have). Or number of neurons.

To paraphrase your mode of reasoning:

  1. Killing women is wrong.

  2. Killing Stalin is fine.

  3. There are axes on which men in general are more like Stalin than like women.

  4. These are the relevant axes.

  5. Therefore, killing men is just as fine as killing Stalin.

I think that 0.-2. are uncontroversial.

Step three is highly debatable.

Step four is also debatable, why should a life at the halfway point between Stalin/ant and the woman/human not be half as worth preserving as a woman/human?

Also, how do I turn that automatic formatting off?

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