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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25796 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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Don't know why I'm stumbling on this post from /u/satirizedoor now a year later and nearly two years after the original post that I made. I still call myself vegan, but I do eat oysters now. I have come to find most vegans, including my past self, as annoying as you: there is a lack of real reflection as to what the goals of the movement are, and if the individual actions that vegans advocate are actually effective at accomplishing those goals. Total cessation of animal suffering is as impossible as it would be totalitarian (some vegans advocate for GMOing away all predators). Some amount of meat eating will always be part of human culture, and is frankly, indistinguishable and perhaps better than what goes on in the wild. My problem in reality is with industrial factory farming. It would be far better for these animals and the planet if we merely advocated for reduction in meat consumption, but that position isn't really justifiable outside of utilitarianism. Most people are not utilitarian I think, which makes it difficult to advocate for a position that fails on consequentialist/deontological grounds. The fact is that some people don't think animals have moral worth, while others do. There's very little ability to reason across that line, despite pretty good scientific evidence that most farm animals do have some rudimentary reasoning and emotional abilities equivalent to that of a small child. To vegans like myself, this evidence is helpful but rather superfluous. My beliefs about animal consciousness come from personal interactions I've had with animals. For those who aren't vegan, evidence of reasoning and/emotional reactions isn't sufficient evidence of consciousness or moral worth. Being able to solve puzzles or display emotions isn't very good evidence that there's something going on inside of another creature.

I'm still convinced that veganism isn't harmful for performance, at least in endurance sports. Plenty of endurance athletes at the highest levels are at least mostly vegan. However, I think that performance enhancement is a different question that I don't think has really been settled scientifically. There are without a doubt certain plant-based substances that are performance enhancers (beet juice), but I don't think this says anything about the efficacy of the diet as a whole. A cycling YouTuber that I vaguely follow, Dylan Johnson is vegan for recovery reasons, as plant-based diets are apparently much less pro-inflammatory than meat-based diets. I can't say I'm fully convinced by this: I think the real culprit in inflammation may be macronutrient ratios. Diets high in fat, which many vegans also have, seem to be particularly pro-inflammatory, at least in animal models. There's also good evidence that high protein consumption is linked to decreases in lifespan, but again this isn't exclusive to meat-eating populations.

I am more shocked by how skewed most user's idea of a healthy body weight is. I'm closer to 160 now, but a 150 with a height of 6' put me at a very normal BMI of 20. I recognize that this weight makes it very difficult to be a strongman, but that's not my goal, nor the goal of most Americans. It is an absurd position to tell me that I am a twig or emaciated at that weight when I am well within the bounds of a healthy BMI.

If imitation meats were a bit higher quality, a bit cheaper, and reliably available I'd switch to them without hesitation. I always try the newest offerings on the market; we aren't quite there yet, but I feel like we're getting progressively closer.

I've already stopped eating mammals. It started with pigs over a decade ago, then all mammals about 5 years ago. Just birds and fishes. I might eat a lizard but its never come up.

I might eat a lizard but its never come up.

I've had alligator nuggets before. Tastes just like chicken.

I recall making the point that athleticism and endurance performance were not wholly synonyms when the original post mas made. The qualifier of "at least in endurance sports" is appreciated. I would probably concede, not actively harmful, controlling for macro nutrient composition and micro-nutrient availability.

Its interesting you cite a gravel cyclist in your discussion. I see marathon distance running as one of the sports where it is the least sub-optimal. Cycling nutrition was a area where there was surprisingly little systematic study. It seems like not that long ago World Tour teams were only doing like 60 g/hour of carbs, while 120 g/hour is normal now. Given that, it does seem possible that the state of the art will change. That being said, Dylan Johnson is certainly cutting against the grain of what the World Tour teams apparently think is optimal. Honey is a common binder and carb source for rice cakes for Pro teams. I think most teams also allow riders milk with their coffee, even during the Tour. Whey is an extremely common ingredient in post-race recovery drinks, you see it featured in essentially every Tour nutrition interview where they disclose whats in the drink.

Looking at the very top level of gravel riding, arguably the Monuments like the Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, and Strade Bianche were the top level of gravel before gravel was a category. Based on the UCI Gravel World Championships it seems like the classics riders are still at least one level above those in the UCI Gravel World Series. All this to say Pogi and Cancellara are clearly levels above Dylan Johnson (who is very very good). I'm very sure I've seen video or photos of them drinking either flat whites or cappuccinos. I think I even recall a video of Cancellara eating fish back in the Leopard-Trek days, and one where Pogačar has beef in his fridge. It doesn't seem likely that adopting a vegan diet is the key to optimal gravel riding performance. Not necessarily actively very harmful, but I'm actually a bit surprised Johnson claims it's for performance reasons.

I think he has said that it's mainly for recovery and weight management reasons. It's very difficult to gain weight when you are primarily eating high volumes of vegetables. Tour riders probably have much more effective ways of maintaining and losing weight with precision that semi-pro athletes like Dylan Johnson don't have access to (mainly thinking a team of nutritionists). In terms of recovery, the same is probably true, although that does suggest that there aren't any particularly big advantages to maintaining a strict vegan diet. The healthiest cohorts in pretty much any dietary meta-analysis aren't vegetarians or vegans, but pescatarians or people who follow the mediterranean diet, which contains some amount of eat. This suggests both that some amount of meat is healthy for you, and also probably that most of the recovery/reduced inflammation gains come from cutting down on meat consumption, not eliminating it. I doubt that most riders have a very meat heavy-diet (they need lots of carbs for performance reasons, and meat has almost 0 carbs), so Dylan's alpha by being more strictly plant-based is likely quite low.

In terms of my own performance, I'm starting to think that it's time to think about locking down a source of eggs from local chickens that I know are treated-well and thinking about introducing fish low in the food chain (like Sardines or anchovies) that I don't feel ethically conflicted about and seeing if that makes any difference. For now though certainly going to keep eating oysters.

I’m a utilitarian, but even granting human-level moral worth to animals, I have no problem with cannibalism, in principle (avoiding the brain for health reasons, etc), so eating human-like animals is obviously fine. You are what you eat. The closer to us the life form, the more nutritious. It’s unnatural to eat grass and wood like vegans do. Say no to exophagy.

I was thinking about that watching Ravenous, where cannibalism gave you super strength and eternal life. There’s a great contemplative moment in the middle of the film where the hero lies in the woods wounded, while seasons pass and the cannibal just enjoys nature. In the end cannibalism was a tortured metaphor for colonialism and capitalism. Fine, those things are obviously awesome and bring eternal blissful life and immeasurable wealth. But cannibalism as a metaphor for the fire of life itself would work too. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Those who walk away from omelas are the latter. Are you so self-hating that you would scorn your own meat?

It is an absurd position to tell me that I am a twig or emaciated at that weight when I am well within the bounds of a healthy BMI.

By what measure? By whoever wrote the BMI definition(probably some ascetic quack), yes. By the light of modern science, no. BMI of 20 for a man is severely underweight imo (any connection to the topic above purely coincidental). All meta studies find lowest mortality in a BMI range of 25–30. Mortality for the (lower than BMI 20) is as high as the (higher than BMI 35) group.

Indeed I just looked up the lancet meta-analysis and a BMI of 25-27 seems optimal! That's a little messed up that they're still setting the threshold that low for "healthy", as the curve is quite steep between 20 and 25 and much less steep on the other side.

Link for those interested: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(18)30288-2/fulltext

Happy to save a life. I beg you, eat something. But not too fast or you’ll pass out.

I already told you about my cousin’s vegan girlfriend who died of thinness at 29. That really opened my eyes to the danger of vegetables.

I mean I have gained 10 pounds since that post, which puts me at closer to 22.

Does that data take into account fat to muscle ratio?

Not in this study. It's just a giant meta analysis on 3.6 million Britons. I think they just collected BMI and cause of death data from the NHS. I would imagine that higher muscle mass decreases all-cause mortality risk though.

I don't care about the moral worth of non-human animals, if they didn't want me to eat them, they should have been less tasty.

On a more serious note, I have no innate preference for cruelty, I simply do not care. If lab-grown meat (or even meat substitutes) tasted just like meat, and were cheaper, I'd eat them with equanimity.

I have a cousin in the UK who is a vegan, initially to get laid (his ex was vegan), but apparently the moral draw remained. He's stuck fast to it, even if his current soon to be fiancé is merely vegetarian. He's not preachy, when we meet, he makes sure to look for mutually acceptable options, and I have no issue with his lifestyle. I can see it makes his life significantly harder, but that's his choice. I introduced him to an Indian friend of mine in Edinburgh, who started lecturing him on nutritional deficits. I pointed out that he looked perfectly healthy to me, and if there were the kinds of serious issues he was positing, the man would have been dead by now. Each to their own, and me to a plate of bacon rashers please.

I don't care about the moral worth of non-human animals, if they didn't want me to eat them, they should have been less tasty.

I recall you cared a great deal about a dog, if I’m not confusing you with someone else.

You are correct. But the apparent contradiction doesn't exist. It might seem to: On one hand, I profess a functional indifference to the moral worth of non-human animals; on the other, I admit a deep and abiding love for my own dogs, to the point where I would have few qualms about visiting significant unpleasantness upon anyone who harmed them.

This isn't so much a contradiction as it is a clarification, best captured by amending my original statement: I don't care about the moral worth of most non-human animals. The ones in my circle of concern are a rounding error, statistically speaking - 99.99999...% of them fall outside it.

My moral framework isn't a flat, universalist plane where all entities of a certain class are assigned equal value. It’s better modeled as a series of intensely-felt concentric circles.

For example:

I love my mother. I would inflict what the law might term 'grievous bodily harm' upon anyone who purposefully hurt her. This is a non-negotiable axiom of my existence.

And yet, I do not, as a rule, love the mothers of other people. I might feel a general, abstract goodwill toward the concept of motherhood, especially in an era of demographic decline. I might even feel a pang of sympathy hearing a story about a stranger's ailing mother. But my level of emotional and practical investment is, let's be honest, functionally zero. My strong protective instinct is parochial; it does not generalize. I suspect for most people, it operates the same way. I suspect you love your mother more than you love mine.

This model extends to almost everything. I am willing to be taxed (in theory, if the system were effective) to prevent my phone from being snatched on the streets of London. I am not, however, moved to donate to an anti-thievery initiative in Nigeria. My concern is a function of proximity and personal stake. I disagree with Singer when it comes to the failures of a Newtonian model of ethical obligations, a child drowning in front of me compels me to act far stronger than one in Australia. The latter is, as far as I'm concerned, not my business.

This brings us to the dogs. My dogs are my dogs. The pleasant-looking labrador I met near St. Pancras station today received some affectionate scratches because he was a "good boy" and reminded me of my own, but my moral obligation began and ended there. If a restaurant in Sichuan province serves dog, my sole practical concern is ensuring my pups never wander off unattended if we visit.

As I've outlined elsewhere, my moral system is built not on a universalist foundation, but on a framework that approximates it through the mutual respect of property and sovereignty. It's a system designed for a world of bounded sympathies.

Calling a beloved pet "property" sounds cold, I know, and perhaps it’s an imprecise shorthand. They are a special class of entity within my sphere of sovereignty, one imbued with immense sentimental value, more akin to an irreplaceable family heirloom or a child than to a fungible commodity like a chair. But they exist within that sphere, and my duties toward them are products of that relationshipof ownership, stewardship, and affection. The cow destined for a steakhouse does not.

A committed utilitarian might call this a classic cognitive bias, a failure to apply the principle of impartiality, a failure of my moral software. I do not care, who gave them the right to dictate objective morality? But I find this model to be more descriptively accurate of how most humans actually operate, and perhaps more prescriptively stable than a universalism that demands a level of saintly, impartial concern that almost no one can consistently achieve.

So the paradox resolves cleanly. My dogs are loved not because they are dogs, but because they are mine. My concern for them is an exception that proves the rule*: my moral landscape is not flat, but mountainous, with peaks of intense personal obligation surrounded by vast plains of practical indifference. It's not a universalist's map, but I find it an honest and livable one.

*That phrase, for once, applied correctly.

I'd say that I am mostly with you here. I however have an additional position which can give animals moral worth - if they impact humans. This is I think Kantian position, where animal moral worth is derivative from humans. E.g. we give pets more moral worth compared to nonpets, because killing pets impacts their owners orders of magnitude more. Additionally animal cruelty by perpetrator may make them more cruel to people, so we may regulate that behavior somewhat. Of course this argument can be hijacked by somebody claiming any animal suffering causes them a lot of harm. So it is not a sure thing, but it is directionally correct for me so we can have some basic prescriptions when it comes to animal cruelty while not morally equating [some number of] animals to humans as some rationalists do.

At the end of the day, most moral systems reduce to normality, outside of edge cases which are, well, edge cases. If you're not cooking my dog, and I'm not feeding yours poison, we'd get along regardless of the underlying reasons.

Veganism is fine for adults but there is med literature on how it stunts infants and kids due to nutrient deficiencies

This claim is lacking in nuance.

My understanding of the scientific/medical consensus is that a well-planned vegan diet isn't harmful to kids. (I pray that even the most committed vegan mom doesn't refuse to breast feed her child on those grounds, but then again, people try to make their cats vegan).

This represents an additional challenge, you have to be very careful to ensure that your kids don't end up missing B12 etc. It is simply easier to feed them the same stuff everyone else eats and not worry about it too much. In other words, a quantitative instead of qualitative issue.

I looked up a bunch of citations, but I'm too drunk/busy to format them. I will dig them up later if you really want them.

Im sure with perfect adherence to a special diet plan you are correct, but as someone in the medical field I’m sure you’re aware there’s a wide gap between recommended use and typical use of anything. Typical vegan diets are not healthy for kids, and typical vegan diets are what the modal vegan kid is eating. Studies show the typical vegan kid is stunted, and that’s a bad thing.

It’s not good for the elderly either, where veganism is associated with risk for bone fractures, sarcopenia, anemia, and depression.

Maybe all of this could be eliminated with the perfect vegan diet. Maybe Real Veganism Has Never been Tried. I don’t really care, I only care about what empirical works for most people.

Breast feeding is vegan according to most vegans as the mother is consenting to having her milk taken.

Forgive me my ignorance, but isn't India largely vegan/vegetarian?

The Indians I work with say its about 30%. Work has sent me to Hyderabad a couple of times, and a few other cities like Chennai and Delhi for shorter periods, and this % seems like its large enough that its much easier to actually be a vegetarian there. My coworkers there always just used the shortened term "veg", which was also the label used on menus and food packaging. My veg coworkers from the US always enjoyed being sent to Hyd for a while as you could reasonably expect effort to be put into the veg offerings almost everywhere, though we could all do without the heat and humidity of India in July/August, though Hyd seemed not as bad as some other cities. Also you can get beef in India if you really want to; ask the Muslims about it. You can generally identify them by their names in many cases I've found.

A common misconception, I'm afraid. I think it's somewhere around 20-40%. Vegans are as rare as teeth on a hen, Jains have their own weird dietary restrictions, they don't eat any vegetables that grow beneath the soil, so even potatoes and onions are verboten.

Most Indians eat meat, though the majority wouldn't have beef. Of course, when that large a proportion of the populace won't touch meat, the rest of us are forced to accommodate them.

It’s not uncommon, although it isn’t the majority, for native English speakers to use ‘meat’ to mean specifically beef and refer to chicken, sausage, ham, Turkey etc with the specific term. I’m wondering if that’s the origin of the confusion?

I occasionally see "meat" and "poultry" treated as separate categories, but mostly in older sources and even they seem to tacitly concede the two are closely related. I've never knowingly met anyone in person who thought it was an important distinction. This is the first I've ever heard of pork products not counting as "meat", though. Where do you see this usage?

My two cents from old cooking books - poultry was treated as inferior type of "meat". Many recipes had additional ingredients - such as bacon or ham or other "higher" level meats added to poultry in order for it to be considered a proper meat meal.

It is a very working class usage. I'm definitely willing to believe that it's a regionalism, but it seems like I've heard it used by Australians or English or something- maybe it's something that convergently evolves in regional dialects as a lower class colloquialism.

Is that more common in French, viande meaning meat but not chicken etc.

Is that thé origin? I had assumed it was an old French word for game meat or some such- I’m used to viande being a word for a meat without a specified name, viande de boeuf sounds nearly as strange as viande de poullard and I’d assume it was referring to bison meat or something.

I don't know what you guys are talking about, "Viande de boeuf, viande de poulet" is very common french.

It’s very unusual Cajun.

Maybe? I think it's unlikely, Westerners tend to have rather flanderized views of what it's like in India. We aren't all vegetarian sadhus chanting om while shitting on the street outside Taj Mahal.

Vegetarian. In India, they refer to normal foods as "non-veg", and it's a mirror image of vegetarians in the rest of the world.

Indians L O V E milk though.

Vegetarians still aren't a majority.

(And the majority of Indians are actually lactose intolerant, even if we love milk. Around 60% of the population, if a quick Google suffices)

Is this regional? I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in Mumbai and was surprised both at the commonality of ice cream/milk related shops, and how everything was vegetarian by default.

Yes. The more Aryan ancestry, the lower the rates, as you'd expect from descendants of pastoralist nomads.

The further south you go, the more pure the Dravidian ancestry. Mumbai is halfway in-between, and Maharashtra is an unusually strict vegetarian state.

This is exactly the realization I've come to. Nothing I will say will convince you to adopt my moral position because it's not a logical position to hold (like any and every moral proposition). Rather than heckle people who will not be receptive, it would be much better for vegans to strategize about practical ways to reduce average meat consumption by focusing on non-moral incentives that can actually be debated, such as removing subsidies for animal ag, encouraging the development of lab grown meat, etc.

Among those few other intelligent species, there are honorable animals and dishonourable ones. Honorable animals are both intelligent and have moral worth. Dolphins are dishonorable. Orangutans are honourable. Chimpanzees are dishonorable. Elephants are honorable. Humans are mostly honorable, especially for omnivores.

Among the meat animals, octopuses are morally neutral, although they are regular cannibals, and I have no qualms with eating an animal that eats its own kind. That said, I consider octopus the least justifiable regularly consumed meat to eat. Likewise, pigs (including wild boar) are often honorable, but are also cannibals at high frequency, and if even they eat each other all the time, then so can I.

Most other meat (and other) animals are not intelligent, and so lack the same moral valence in either direction.

I honestly can't tell if you're taking the piss here, but somehow this comment makes me think of David Brin's Uplift series.

So is eating humans also OK, since humans have been known to engage in cannibalism?

In any case, you are missing the point that jdizzler brought up. Your arbitrary judgement of a species to be "dishonorable" doesn't justify breeding and raising tens of millions of them in horrible conditions.

Indeed. No justification is needed at all.

I consider cannibalism rather uncivilized, so no. As Arjin says, though, I wouldn’t consider a predator species trying to eat me uncivilized, even if I would do everything to prevent it.

So is eating humans also OK, since humans have been known to engage in cannibalism?

Only for non-hamans. This seems to track, while I would defend myself from a wolf, bear, lion, etc., I would hardly begrudge them wanting to eat me.

I would not consider Gustav thé crocodile to be evil- but at the same token, I would consider it morally obligatory to kill him if at all possible, because humans are so far above crocs in the great chain of being that it’s not worth having thé discussion.

Dishonorable animals are permissible for human consumption. If humans eat humans, then humans are dishonorable. Therefore, humans are permissible for human consumption.

A wolf doesn't care about 2rafa's notion of honorable species and will happily eat just about anything.

Except eating your own kind brings dishonor, so no, that does not make it ok for human consumption.

The fact that other animals don't care for our notions of honor is irrelevant, the whole point of this framework is to judge them regardless. It works the same way for humans, murderes, rapists, traitors, etc., also don't care for our notions of honor.

But we've already established that humans eat humans. So the dishonor is already here.

Why? What percentage of humans are cannibals today?

What percentage of pigs are cannibals today?

More comments

Axioms:

  • A1: Some humans commit murder against other humans
  • A2: Murder is categorically dishonorable

Postulates:

  • P1: If any member of a group commits a dishonorable act, then all members of that group are dishonorable
  • P2: It is honorable to murder those who are dishonorable

Lemma 1: Humans are dishonorable Proof: By A1, some humans murder. By A2, murder is dishonorable. By P1, since some humans commit dishonorable acts, all humans are dishonorable.

Theorem: It is honorable to murder humans Proof: By Lemma 1, humans are dishonorable. By P2, it is honorable to murder the dishonorable. Therefore, it is honorable to murder humans.

Or, to progress further:

Axioms:

  • A1: Some humans commit murder against other humans
  • A2: Murder is categorically dishonorable

Postulates:

  • P1: If any member of a group commits a dishonorable act, then all members of that group are dishonorable
  • P2: It is honorable to murder those who are dishonorable
  • P3: Performing an honorable act makes one honorable

Lemma 1: Humans are dishonorable Proof: By A1, some humans murder. By A2, murder is dishonorable. By P1, since some humans commit dishonorable acts, all humans are dishonorable.

Lemma 2: It is honorable to murder humans Proof: By Lemma 1, humans are dishonorable. By P3, it is honorable to murder the dishonorable. Therefore, it is honorable to murder humans.

Lemma 3: Humans who murder other humans become honorable Proof: By Lemma 2, murdering humans is an honorable act. By P3, performing an honorable act makes one honorable. Therefore, humans who murder other humans become honorable.

Theorem: Humans oscillate between dishonorable and honorable states Proof: By Lemma 1, humans begin as dishonorable. By Lemma 3, they become honorable through murder. But having become honorable, they are no longer valid targets for honorable murder (by P2). However, their past dishonor persists by P1, creating a paradoxical state.

I hope this illustrates how ridiculous this whole line of reasoning is. You may substitute murder for cannibalism here.

Look at this nerd, writing a proof with lemmas to win an Internet argument. You love to see it. :D

More comments

You're getting it!

You don't need to write so much to show that 2rafa's argument is risible, though I appreciate the rigorous formalization. I'd like to think the ridiculousness is apparent from my much briefer comments.

More comments

"Yes, I murdered and butchered and ate my neighbor, but in my defense, he was not an honorable member of his species. He was a total jerk. He played loud music at night, send unsolicited dick pics to women, parked in the disabled parking spot. Surely there is nothing wrong with killing someone so dishonorable for food."

I have no qualms with eating an animal that eats its own kind.

So it is ethical to be a meta-cannibal who only eats cannibalistic humans. Bertrand Russell would then ask if meta-cannibals are allowed to eat other meta-cannibals.

If your attitude was widespread, it would also open the possibility of breeding animals to be less honorable to make their consumption more widespread. Like breeding Elephants which do not keep the sabbath, or fuck their daughters, or are rapey or eat their dead, or whatever other conduct is dishonorable.

https://www.themotte.org/post/2368/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/354022?context=8#context

"Yes, I murdered and butchered and ate my neighbor, but in my defense, he was not an honorable member of his species. He was a total jerk. He played loud music at night, send unsolicited dick pics to women, parked in the disabled parking spot. Surely there is nothing wrong with killing someone so dishonorable for food."

Provided he also did not return his shopping carts, I would vote to acquit.

Orangutans are honourable. Chimpanzees are dishonorable.

Apes together Right Honourable

Belugas are Right Honorable

It is interesting that my British English phone only autocorrected that -o to -ou.

Your classification of honorable/dishonorable is totally foreign to me. Out of all the animals you list, I would have classified dolphins as the most "honorable". Is there really a major culture/ethnicity that thinks eating dolphins is okay but eating octopus is bad? It's hard for me to imagine.

"The rabbit has a pleasant face,
His private life is a disgrace
I really could not tell to you
The awful things that rabbits do."

What will make vegetarianism/veganism more widespread among ordinary people is not all the preaching in the world, it's the price of meat. Meat has gone up in price very fast here in Ireland, to the point that a morning radio show had butchers(!) on telling people how to make it go further, to buy (relatively) cheaper cuts, bulk meals out with lentils etc.

People may not give a damn about the moral worth of a cow or a pig, but if beef and bacon are too dear to buy the usual cuts and instead they're eating mince bulked out with lentils in stews and so forth for family meals, it's a lot easier to move towards "more veggies, less meat" in ordinary diet.

I think another way to move the needle is to make eating vegan convenient enough that the average person can eat vegan without too much added effort— no need to scour the ingredient list for obscure ingredients that are derived from animals, restaurants having multiple options that are specifically vegan and are not salad or steamed veggies. As it is now, the choice to be vegan specifically comes with a lot of extra cognitive load. You have to constantly look at ingredients, you have to call ahead or visit the website of restaurants to see if they have a vegan option and be grateful if one exists even if you don’t want that, it’s the only place nearby you can go eat with your friends and not have to bring in food.

This is how gluten-free took off. Until a person could actually have bread products, pastas, desserts, and common foods, being gluten-free was only done if you couldn’t process gluten properly and had no choice. No one else chose to make do with only meat veggies and potatoes, never ever having a dessert. Now, there are gluten free pizzas, cakes, cupcakes, muffins, breads, and a fair assortment of processed convenience foods that don’t have gluten. It’s a bit more expensive, but you aren’t feeling deprived by it.

This is how oat/soy-milk versus cow-milk was normalized in Germany. Now in the big cities almost every cafe has the option to use oatly (and near students/university oatly is the normal option).

There are some startups in Berlin trying to make casein protein from yeast. With casein one could make cheese (mozarella, gouda, cottage cheese, camenbert etc) virtually indistinguishable from cow-cheese. The current cheese alternatives all suck, especially on pizza, and are nutritionally worthless with almost no protein.

Dolphins practise gang rape.

I second @4bpp - this anthropomorphising of animals is and pretty much always will be extremely suspect. Mallards are one of these infamous species that supposedly participate in gang rapes - several males will pursue a female and attempt to forcibly mate with her, and as a result males' penises can shoot out with surprising speed, whereas females' vaginas will be corkscrew-shaped so as to make it more difficult to mate. Clearly something to feel disgusted about, right?

Except that female mallards actually covertly elicit this behaviour by intentionally flying over the territory of other males and initiating a chase, drumming up a fight over her, and the corkscrew turns of female mallards' vaginas actually are meant to let her influence the males which get to fertilise her egg.

Do mallards deserve death for this? Does the concept of "rape trauma" exist in such a species? Should the very emotionally-laden human concept of rape even apply? If it doesn't, how can you even tell what is rape and what is not in the animal kingdom? Animals in many cases are basically alien species and should be treated as such.

Some women not-so-deniably elicit rape 'threats' too.

That's fascinating. I knew about mallard forced copulation, but I didn't know that the hens tried to elicit it. Science factoid providers not wanting to victim-blame mallards, maybe?

Reminds me of boxing hares.

this anthropomorphising of animals is and pretty much always will be extremely suspect

I agree in general, but moral judgement does seem like the one area where this could be justifiable, at least for some moral frameworks.

Do mallards deserve death for this?

I don't know, but it makes me feel a whole lot better about ordering the Peking duck.

Thoroughly unbased, you don't need a moral excuse to order Peking duck. It's delicious! I would eat a human if it tasted like Peking duck.

Still, I think the point stands - animals can't be anthropomorphised so easily, and behaviour that's aesthetically displeasing to us as humans can't necessarily be judged as immoral within its context.

Cannibals from Papua New Guinea tell us that human flesh tastes just like pork. "Long pork", if you will. I like bacon, and I'm not averse to alternative sources. Maybe lab-grown meat will let me have a me-burger, kinda removed the ethical downsides.

Maybe lab-grown meat will let me have a me-burger, kinda removed the ethical downsides.

I would do that. To be honest I'm not inherently against the idea of eating human meat; this has always seemed to me like a nonsensical moral line people draw.

In fact there are hypothetical situations where I think it's only rational to do so - if I was in a survival situation involving a lack of food and somebody died, I would be a proponent of eating the body. Seems very anti-utilitarian for others to die just for the sake of a moral taboo.

As an aside, how was London?

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It's been done! Multiple times, even.

Though I'm tickled by the implication that the safest place in the world from cannibals is the Middle East.

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Anthropomorphising animals is natural, it’s probably fundamental to the way humans see and comprehend the world around us, it far predates civilization. We are animals and they exist in the context of our shared environment.

In the same way that we assign some moral value to human strangers far away (even if it is less than we assign to ourselves, our families, etc), we assign some moral value to non-human animals too.

Just as with people, their behavior is obviously part of this. Even independently from their interactions with humans (a dog that bites vs a dog that doesn’t), those ‘closer’ to us intellectually (dolphins, elephants) and both intellectually and physically (great apes) have greater moral valence because we know that they have greater reasoning faculty, and therefore that the kind of moral standards we apply to young or intellectually impaired humans might begin to apply.

General free will debate acknowledged, it is fairer to describe a chimpanzee as ‘cruel’ than a mallard. The dismissive might say that each is acting within its nature when it does something nasty, but the same is true of humans. With greater reasoning ability comes more understanding of consequence and empathy, which is seems likely many of these animals have in some form.

Anthropomorphising animals is natural, it’s probably fundamental to the way humans see and comprehend the world around us, it far predates civilization.

It's certainly natural, but that doesn't mean it's accurate. We developed psychological projection to help us assess the states of other humans, and even then it kind of sucks as a tool. I for one believe we have already met aliens, and coexisted with them for 200,000 years straight. There might be one in your living room right now.

Animism is natural. It's an outgrowth of our tendency to anthropomorphise everything, including natural phenomena. Is it immoral to offend the river spirits? You can't assert a harm you don't know exists.

those ‘closer’ to us intellectually (dolphins, elephants) and both intellectually and physically (great apes) have greater moral valence because we know that they have greater reasoning faculty, and therefore that the kind of moral standards we apply to young or intellectually impaired humans might begin to apply. ... With greater reasoning ability comes more understanding of consequence and empathy, which is seems likely many of these animals have in some form.

I don't see how a species having intelligence and reasoning faculty means human morality suddenly becomes applicable to it though. Human empathy and morality is not universal and is a consequence of our specific evolutionary trajectory, and you can't reason yourself into your most base-level moral principles or your emotional reactions to things, they just are. There is no reason why every intelligent animal should share it. I'm almost certain you've heard of the orthogonality thesis before (given that you're here), quite obviously this does not just have to apply to AI; it can apply to any agent at all.

I've long spoken about presentism and the projection of current moral values onto the past when it comes to historical analysis. When it comes to animals who barely even share the most basic of cognitive characteristics with us, I reject any attempt to moralise whatsoever. How can you even begin to judge something as a moral violation when it is not clear that the supposed aggrieved party would even consider it as a violation either, morally or emotionally? The range of possible minds is likely vast beyond belief, and all of humanity exists in a very tiny corner of that possibility-space.

Are dogs aliens? I must admit I've never seen a wolf piloting a flying saucer, but my lab has sent many a normal saucer flying. Unfortunately, they were only domesticated between 20-40k years ago, not 200k.

Dogs sure, but also cats, fishes, turtles, snakes, anything people own as pets and that you could conceivably find in a living room. Some of them can barely be considered "domesticated" (I would say even something as pedestrian as cats actually fits this definition of "barely domesticated" and are basically one step away from being straight-up feral in the manner of their wild counterparts, see Gwern's post about cats here for a firehose of info about how dogs are indisputably superior to cats. Yes this is a fact). Then there's of course the fully wild animals we routinely coexist with like mice, rats or birds.

@Hoffmeister25 I wasn't talking about other humans or referring to them as aliens, though I get your takeaway - the wording is a bit vague and I could see how it could be interpreted that way in retrospect. That being said, "alien" is not too far distanced from how I see most people. Freudian slip maybe.

I think @problem_redditor was referring to “other humans” as aliens.

On one hand, you and 4bpp give accurate and reasonable reasons to oppose anthromorphizing animals by applying human ethics to them.

On the other hand, topical dolphin memes.

So. Many. Topical. Dolphin. Memes.

Dean's personal photo unrelated.

Yeah, consigning them to death over that seems like a pretty wanton projection of human values onto animals where there is little evidence that they would or should share them. By that standard, we would have nothing to say back if AI/aliens/some bizarro tribe of humans condemned our civilisation for some unknown-unknown moral failing such as encouraging paternal investment in daughters, or not engaging in performative child sacrifice as in that old Yudkowsky story.

If you believe in objective morality, or at least morality provided by something external (probably god), that's not automatically a problem.

In fact, the fact that they wouldn't share these moral sentiments would be a pretty good case that they are not honorable

It’s not about consigning them to death; I don’t believe we know enough about the natural world to morally eliminate a species unless humanity itself is threatened, in which case one’s first duty to one’s own kind applies. But it is about how we relate our own moral narratives to the animal world.

I have come to find most vegans, including my past self, as annoying as you: there is a lack of real reflection as to what the goals of the movement are, and if the individual actions that vegans advocate are actually effective at accomplishing those goals. Total cessation of animal suffering is as impossible as it would be totalitarian (some vegans advocate for GMOing away all predators).

I'm going to take this as an invitation to go off on a tangent, I think.

I have run into reflections on the idea of using genetic engineering to eliminate predation in the past. Predation plausibly causes suffering, at least for prey animals. If you could modify all carnivores to become herbivores, should you do it?

There's an interesting tension I see sometimes around what the goal of environmental conservation should be. In many cases we seem to instinctively idealise 'the wild' or natural conditions. The goal of conservation is to minimise human impact on the environment and return animals to something as much like their natural environment as possible. But as with vegans, or some EA types, we sometimes see a different idea - that the most ethical goal is rather to minimise suffering, including animal suffering.

These two goals seem in tension. The wild includes quite a lot of suffering. Which goal should win out?

I was recently watching a documentary about a wildlife rescue in Tasmania. The hosts visited a man who runs a sanctuary that rescues, raises, and breeds injured or endangered animals. He releases some of those animals back into the wild, while some stay in the sanctuary for all their lives. It occurs to me to wonder what some of those animals would have preferred. It seems plausible that, if a Tasmanian devil could talk, it might prefer to stay in the sanctuary, where it has safe and clean places to sleep, has food provided at regular intervals for minimal effort on its part, and even has breeding opportunities orchestrated for it. If it makes sense to talk about a Tasmanian devil's quality of life, this devil's quality of life seemed to go down as a result of being released into the wild. So, having built animal-utopia, should we push animals out of it? Why?

Well, we might cite lots of instrumental reasons, like wanting these animals as part of the wild ecosystem long-term, or even practical ones, like not having the resources to look after all animals all the time and wanting instead to rotate animals through care on the basis of need. However, in practice I think we have some sort of teleological belief. It is right for Tasmanian devils to hunt on their own and make their lives independently in the wild. It is, for lack of a better term, their nature. It is thus in many circumstances morally better that a creature be exposed to risk and suffering than that it not be.

And if we embrace that conclusion, does that tell us anything about what we think about morality for human beings? You may, if you wish, insert some science-fictional speculation here about whether it would be good for humans to be pampered by more powerful beings, perhaps artificial intelligence, in the way that we have the capacity to pamper rescued animals. Is our own case different from that of the animals?

if a Tasmanian devil could talk, it might prefer to stay in the sanctuary, where it has safe and clean places to sleep, has food provided at regular intervals for minimal effort on its part, and even has breeding opportunities orchestrated for it

Do humans want to stay in prison, even "Club Med" type prison? Or institutions like mental hospitals and detox clinics? A wild animal might prefer a life in the wild, the same way that even the nicest prison would not suit a lot of people. Heck, we even have homeless people refusing to go into shelters not just because of the dangers and restrictions, but because they prefer living their own lives even on the streets.

Prison sucks though. The Tasmanian Devils are getting expert and attentive care with the goals of meeting their needs as best as we can.

They even get laid! And not sexually or violently assaulted.

The lack of freedom and movement is analogous to prison, but basically nothing else is.

Homeless people is a better analogy, although shelters dedicate WAY less effort/money to making the homeless happy than sanctuaries do for their animals.

Wild animal suffering is one of the most discussed topics in ethics, it’s not like it’s a dead zone for academic philosophy.

I would argue that it is also one of the least actionable topics. On priors, I would expect that most suffering is not even in the context of predators but just animals having a long and painful death due to disease or the environment becoming unable to sustain them (e.g. starvation, rising saline concentration in a drying pond). The blind idiot god who designed them cares not for making their end painless.

However, at the moment I would rather be reborn as the median wild mammal than as the median mammal kept by humans. Fitting all the wild animals with suicide implants (or gene-editing them to that effect) is something which can wait until we have made sure that farm animals have a good life.

And if we embrace that conclusion, does that tell us anything about what we think about morality for human beings? You may, if you wish, insert some science-fictional speculation here about whether it would be good for humans to be pampered by more powerful beings, perhaps artificial intelligence, in the way that we have the capacity to pamper rescued animals. Is our own case different from that of the animals?

I think it would be great to have nigh limitless wealth and power. If I want adventure, excitement and risk, there would be all kinds of ways to enjoy myself with elaborate, exotic video games. I think that an aesthetic critique of a post-singularitarian future has crept into people's conceptions, people imagining a kind of skinnyfat, sedentary, drooling heroin addict with tubes in his arm and a VR-headset fused to his skull in a perpetual high. Or a glorified pet micromanaged by Windows pop-ups.

That need not be the case. If it goes well (a very big if), it could be the exact opposite. Perfect, posthuman fitness. Motion and energy beyond anything anyone has ever experienced, variety of experiences beyond our conception. Pure organic joy. Reality remade physically as if it were mere code. De facto deities with ever-shrinking limitations.

The difference between a Tasmanian devil and a human is that the latter is worth more and provides. Humans contribute to humanity whereas most animals do not. There's no obligation to defang lions for the sake of deer because deer aren't doing anything for us. I think that real morality is about reciprocity and potential reciprocity rather than suffering.

I don't think many people would disagree with the idea that it would be great to have all sorts of power, but I'm not sure I see that as addressing the issue raised? The question isn't so much about raw ability as it is about the sorts of life-contexts that make those lives morally worthwhile.

As empowered posthumans we probably could entertain ourselves endlessly with exotic video games, but then, today people are entirely capable of entertaining themselves endlessly with video games. Posthumanity adds nothing to the moral question. Is it a good life if you dedicate your life to video games? On what terms could such a life be considered good? Does it make a difference whether we're talking about gaming as competition (i.e. devoting your life to pro gaming, to excellence in a particular competitive endeavour), gaming as entertainment (i.e. something like a streamer, the gamer as professional entertainer for an audience), or just gaming for pure private enjoyment? I think the moral questions one asks there are the same regardless of whether we're talking about you or I today or whether we're talking about superpowerful virtual demi-gods.

Is it a good life if you dedicate your life to video games?

Depends on how good the game is. A posthuman game might well be more complex, dynamic and interesting than our lives.

The most popular games today like fortnite or LoL are closer to the skinner-box, dopamine VR-headset future. They have to be cheap to run so they're not going to be that fantastic.

Whether it's competition, entertainment of others or enjoyment I see greater complexity and resources as an unalloyed good in terms of video-game value. At minimum it should be better than 'sit in an office and do various manipulations of text.'

That's an interesting, because it is very alien to my intuitions. Is a pleasure more morally worthy if it is more subtle or complex, or takes more intellectual capacity to appreciate? That doesn't seem obvious, to me. That would imply that, for instance, a young child's pleasure at a bowl of ice cream for dessert is among the unworthiest of all pleasures. Or that my pleasure at a fresh breeze on a beautiful day is particularly contemptible. It seems to be that the complexity or subtlety of a pleasure does not reliably correlate with its moral worthiness. There are some very simple, even child-like pleasures that strike me as paradigmatically worthy (a beautiful sunset, a tasty meal, a smile from someone you love), and some very complex pleasures that strike me as worthy (contemplating advanced mathematics, stellar physics), and some that I struggle to rank (meditating on the nature of God, say). Likewise, however, I can think of very simple pleasures that seem obviously unworthy (wireheading is the classic example), as well as complex pleasures that seem unworthy (anything you've ever been tempted to call intellectual masturbation).

When I judge particular pleasures or joys as worthy or unworthy, my intuitions do not seem to clearly correlate with its complexity, or the intelligence required to enjoy it. It seems like other criteria are involved.

More important than that, though, is the question of, regardless of the quality of the pleasure sought, whether pleasure-seeking by itself is sufficient to make a life morally good. Enjoying pleasures is definitionally going to be more pleasant than doing boring office-work, but the defence of office-work would presumably be in terms of its flow-on effects. Office-work, assuming it's a real job and not just make-work, is aimed at in some way serving others or producing something for others - self-gratification is not the goal, as it is with entertainment. Does that make a difference? We might also ask about character formation. Filling in expenses reports may not be as fun as playing your favourite game, but it may have different impacts on one's character.

Ultimately my position is not that pleasure is inherently unworthy or bad to experience, or that humans should not enjoy pleasurable activities, but it is that a life dedicated wholly to seeking pleasures is morally empty and contemptible. It even strikes me as something unlikely to successfully produce great pleasures, in many cases; I tend more to the school of thought that says that pleasures come alongside or as the byproducts of other endeavours, which must be sought for their own sake. I wouldn't want to follow that principle off a cliff - I don't think there's anything wrong with, say, going to see a film because you want to enjoy yourself - but in terms of the overall direction of a person's life, I think it is helpful.

Well eating ice cream all day gets boring fast.

Eating ice cream as a self-reward after achieving something is better, now we're adding more complexity to the experience as a whole which is broadened beyond just ice cream. Songs are good but songs played at the right time in the film are better. The smile from someone you love is another example, it's more than just a smile because of that added background and context.

Likewise with video games. There's some value in Pong but the simplicity really limits it. You're doing the same thing again and again. If you were doing more and different things at a greater level of depth, without skinner box mechanics to trick the brain into coming back...

but it is that a life dedicated wholly to seeking pleasures is morally empty and contemptible

Wouldn't it be worse for an incompetent to be sticking his nose into a well-running machine earnestly trying to help yet only ever causing more problems? That activates my sense of aversion and cringe. In a world of strong and benign superintelligences, there will probably be nothing that a once-human can do to produce any kind of wealth or benefit. The astrophysics-specialist bots will do all the pondering of the stars at a massively superhuman level, the poetry bots will make poems better than any human or machine could, the engineer-bots will do all the engineering. They were purpose designed to be the absolute best at those things. One could imagine a loverengineer-bot too that spins up a perfect partner specifically for you. If you want a challenge and excitement, there's challenges, reverses, drama...

Having one's heritage be an ape generalist is probably a structural deficiency when it comes to 'ability to do things'.

Our idle pleasure seeker in a post-singularitarian reality would still be a great mind and capable of great feats by our standards but there'd be nothing to contribute. I just don't see how this can be a bad ending if everything you want is on tap, including all the best human experiences and post-human experiences that are even better.

I'd tend to think that any pleasure endlessly reiterated would become contemptible. There is something disconcerting or even pathetic about obsessive repetition. That's part of why we find the Skinner box so repulsive.

I would agree that it would be bad for a person to be incompetently trying to interfere with work done by a superior, though for me I don't find the superintelligence hypothetical particularly illuminating. The world is already full of examples of competent and incompetent people. It would be absurd for me to try to insert myself into, say, the cockpit of an aeroplane - I know nothing about piloting and the attempt would only embarrass me.

What would constitute a good life in a world where there is genuinely nothing that needs to be accomplished? I'm not particularly sure. I do not expect such a world to ever occur in this life - sorry, I'm pessimistic about artificial superintelligences - so for me that question seems most relevant as a question about heaven, and there I'm happy to admit to ignorance. Right now I'm not so much pushing for any particular answer as just saying that endless self-pleasure seems insufficient, as an answer, to me.

Uh, I hope posthumans wouldn't be aging or dying, for one. I think that's a pretty big deal, every hour I play of a video game becomes a painful tradeoff as my life expectancy becomes ever shorter. Leaving aside everything else, it would be very nice not have thanatochrony be an issue.

We could be much smarter, and thus able to enjoy far more complex and strategic games. I don't think someone with mental retardation would enjoy Crusader Kings of Civ, even at the baby difficulties.

We could be faster, be it mentally or when it comes to physical reflexes. That would make games that rely on that more enjoyable.

We could have immense amounts of computing power, such that the lines between virtual and real become blurry, and you could live a billion years doing whatever your heart desires, without being able to tell your experience apart from reality.

We could be more physically durable, so that Airsoft with real guns might be on the cards. We could back ourselves up to external storage, such that we could play recreational nuclear warfare with H-bombs. (Someone will make nuclear tennis from Infinite Jest into a real thing)

Is it a good life if you dedicate your life to video games? On what terms could such a life be considered good?

The answer to that is mu. If someone enjoys video games, then a good life for them involves video games. If they don't, it doesn't.

What is "good" about gardening? Or painting? Or getting into debates with strangers on the internet?

What is laudable about being a doctor when the AI can do your job better? What is so great about travel when you can catch a flight to anywhere in the world and get there in less than 24 hours? What if it takes no time at all, subjectively, and we send a scan of your brain to Enceladus at the speed of light?

I do not rely on the approval of others to define my interests. I hope others have the courage to do the same.

I'm still not sure how any of that changes the question any?

I didn't mention death at all, so I don't know why you bring it up, and everything else there is just... irrelevant. Okay, sure, the posthumans can have bigger numbers. We can posit that the experience is arbitrarily more entertaining. How does that change any of the ethical questions? What ethical difference does it make whether we're talking about playing Crusader Kings or an arbitrarily more complex super Crusader Kings? What is the relevant ethical difference between regular tennis and nuclear tennis? It seems like zero to me.

You can, as you do at the end of your post, just dismiss the question and assert an answer. But why should that answer be compelling? If your position is that there are no external criteria for a good life and the only thing that matters is self-approval, I think it's reasonable to reflect a bit on why you feel that's the case.

Consider the counterfactual, or inverse case:

If you were offered the opportunity to remove 40 IQ points and half your lifespan, would that help in any way? Is there a particular reason the status-quo is privileged?

How does that change any of the ethical questions? What ethical difference does it make whether we're talking about playing Crusader Kings or an arbitrarily more complex super Crusader Kings? What is the relevant ethical difference between regular tennis and nuclear tennis? It seems like zero to me.

To the extent that you ask me to involve ethics in the question, my thrust is that most ethical theories tend towards eudaimonia, and some people really enjoy games. The same principle applies to enjoyment of just about anything really, though I suspect Marvel movies are best enjoyed while severely concussed.

In other words, most moral theories kinda like it when people have fun, all else being equal.

You can, as you do at the end of your post, just dismiss the question and assert an answer. But why should that answer be compelling? If your position is that there are no external criteria for a good life and the only thing that matters is self-approval, I think it's reasonable to reflect a bit on why you feel that's the case.

There are no universally compelling arguments. If it doesn't compel you, I genuinely can't do better than sigh/shrug. In this case, I have interrogated a rather related question, namely the concept of universal morality. My genuine takeaway from doing that is to come to the conclusion that there's no reason to believe such a thing exists, and even if it did, no plausible way to know that we've found it. The same applies to questions of objective/universal criteria for leading a fulfilling life.

Eventually, most of the "real" challenges that humanity faces will be, at least in my opinion, rendered obsolete. That leaves just about only games to pass the time. They can be complicated games, they might be of relevance to the real world (status games, proof of work or competence), but they're still games we play because we've run out of options. I think this isn't a thing to complain about, once we get there. Our ancestors struggled to survive so that we wouldn't have to.

Eventually, most of the "real" challenges that humanity faces will be, at least in my opinion, rendered obsolete. That leaves just about only games to pass the time. They can be complicated games, they might be of relevance to the real world (status games, proof of work or competence), but they're still games we play because we've run out of options. I think this isn't a thing to complain about, once we get there. Our ancestors struggled to survive so that we wouldn't have to.

Forget "eventually"; I think we often fail to appreciate that we're already there, in the first world. Almost none of the "challenges" that our primitive ancestors faced are in any way familiar to us. They worried about whether they would starve next winter; I wonder whether I can justify being lazy and ordering Door Dash today. They might have been permanently crippled from an uncleaned surface cut; I would slap a band-aid on it and take a Tylenol. They banded together and learned to fight so the next tribe over wouldn't kill them all and take their stuff; I put my money into a stock brokerage.

Aging is IMO the one major challenge that hasn't been conquered yet (although we're still living twice as long as evolution intended). In almost every other way we're living the lives of Gods.

I was going to write that myself if I wasn't so lazy. Thank you/curse you for scooping me, and I obviously agree.

If you were offered the opportunity to remove 40 IQ points and half your lifespan, would that help in any way? Is there a particular reason the status-quo is privileged?

I didn't say that we shouldn't seek that kind of power. I'm not arguing that it's bad. I'm arguing that it's irrelevant to the moral question I posed.

The question of whether a morally good human life can be found in merely entertaining one's self does not seem like one that's particularly changed by the intelligence of the human being in question. Whether you live to 40 or 80 or 200 does not seem to have any bearing on it.

I understood you to be suggesting that something about posthuman entertainments would change the nature of the answer - that perhaps it would be bad for you or me to spend our lives self-amusing with video games, but that it might be good for us to spend our lives self-amusing with video games, if we were much more intelligent or powerful.

I'm willing to entertain the possibility, but I think you need to spell out the difference for me. Why would that make any difference?

My moral intuitions, at least, are that it wouldn't make much difference. To take a fictional example: in the setting Exalted, the gods occupy themselves by playing the Games of Divinity, which appear to be extremely entertaining and may be contributing to the gods' quality of life. Nonetheless my intuition is that the Games are contemptible, or that by choosing to amuse themselves in this way (especially when they might otherwise be engaged in other tasks, such as repairing or improving Creation, or caring for their mortal followers) the gods are in some way moral failures. The vastly superior power, knowledge, and immortality of the gods does not seem to redeem the Games, at least to me. So if I consider a scenario in which we were the gods with the super-games, it seems similar to me.

I think animals have moral worth and emotional experiences that are "cognate" to those humans experience, and am still not a vegan or even a vegetarian. In part this is because I think that some nontrivial percentile of experiences that farmed animals have are actually better (by their value function) than those of wild animals, and we have the capability in principle to make it so for all farmed animals in expectation. For this reason, I do choose to pay a premium for animal products from superior farming conditions where it is feasible to do so.

As a related thought experiment, if I imagine aliens encountered pre-industrial humanity and "domesticated" it in a Truman show sort of setup where humans could live healthy, fulfilled and danger-free lives until age 60 and then would be culled for meat, I don't think the "culled for meat" part is the one that would morally offend me about the setup, and the parts that would offend me are more applicable to our imminent glorious AI future than they are the case of our livestock.

I'm still convinced that veganism isn't harmful for performance, at least in endurance sports.

I was strictly vegan for 11 years. The whole food plant based kind. I lost a lot of weight at first and then started gaining. I was running and lifting 3x a week so I was confused about the weight gain. I wasn't beer belly fat but I was pretty sure it didn't seem like typical muscle gains. My doctor wasn't sure, he said I looked like a muscular guy but we still ordered a DEXA scan.

My DEXA said I was 31% body fat!

More alarmingly it said my bone density z-score was -2.0 (!!)

That meant 97.7% of my age and sex adjusted peers had higher bone density than me.

Was that caused by 11 years of strict veganism? I don't know but I was totally convinced to experiment after that. I went omni after that and started drinking whey protein shakes. I noticed right off the bat I put muscle on almost immediately. Like over the next 3-4 months I felt my arms and legs get tighter in my clothes and started racking up PRs in deadlifts and squats and bench press.

But more importantly, repeated DEXA scans every year showed a recovery in z-score. From -2.0 to -1.3 to -1.0 this year. I'm still low, but it at least shows I'm gradually rebuilding bone density and also losing it less quickly than my peer group now. Whew.

This is obviously not rigorous but to be a fairly active vegan dude and have such a terrible z-score, like worse than what the median fucking American has who doesn't do any health related thing at all, it's hard not to finger the drastic dietary delta with the median American as the cause.

Veganism is a product of modernity that I imagine only exists due to industrial petro farming. The Jain are the closest I can think of, but they do dairy. Veganism is an impoverishing luxury diet.

I do not think animal suffering is a good, or even neutral thing, exactly, but I don’t think it’s in the same category of human suffering- it’s an ordinary evil similar to soil degradation from mono cropping or similar. No, I don’t see gorillas or elephants or whales as meaningfully different in that regard, even if they’re as smart as a child. I don’t care if harambe or dumbo or shamu are as smart as a child they don’t have the moral worth of one, it’s a qualitative difference not quantitative. To my way of thinking elephants are rarer than rats and so killing one should be a much higher bar to clear, but there isn’t a moral problem with shooting a depredating elephant from a helicopter in the same way that there isn’t a moral problem with setting a rat trap.

That’s why I don’t worry about shrimp eyestalk ablation or farrow crates. Doing these things for no reason would be profoundly evil. Doing them to have affordable animal protein is as necessary as tilling fields; and having almost everyone in society eat meat every day is a straightforwardly good thing so much so as to be miraculous, for child development reasons if nothing else.

To my way of thinking elephants are rarer than rats and so killing one should be a much higher bar to clear, but there isn’t a moral problem with shooting a depredating elephant from a helicopter in the same way that there isn’t a moral problem with setting a rat trap.

I think I disagree. There's a point of rarity, or even just majesty, at which I'm more upset by the death of an animal than the death of a human.

I'd consider it worse to kill a critically endangered species than to kill a random human. Because killing the endangered species gets closer to robbing and harming every human forever (leaving aside scifi Jurassic park stuff) while the death of any individual human probably doesn't.

Where exactly I draw that line, I'm not sure. Definitely when a critically endangered species population is almost unviable, every kill is one step closer to extinction.

But examining my feelings, I'd probably also be more upset by a dead bald eagle than a dead person, depending on the person, for purely symbolic patriotic reasons.

Would you be upset about the extirpation of cockroaches(don’t give me crap about them being ecologically necessary- ants will do it instead)? How about some species of critically endangered beetle or banana slug that requires trained personnel to distinguish from a much more widespread species?

For me thé answer to both is clearly ‘no’, even if I would be upset about the extinction of elephants or tigers or blue whales.

Probably not. I would probably, though not strongly, feel worse about hearing that a nepalese kid died than that a species of fly in the Amazon died out. Though, at this point, we're talking about very very very very minor degrees of caring to begin with.

On the other hand, I'm clearly going to feel more upset at the news that 1,000 rhinos were poached than at the news that 1,000 Bangladeshis died somehow or other.

I'm not sure what the equation looks like exactly. I could probably be persuaded by an ecologist that some species I don't care about now is actually really interesting/necessary/unique/whatever such that I value it above the dead foreigner.

I'm just rejecting the idea that every single human life is more valuable than every single animal life. I don't think that is the case, either intrinsically or by intuitive feeling or by revealed preferences of people. Even an ethos argument built around the depravity of individuals, I'm not sure I get there: I'd probably think someone who poached bald eagles was a worse person than the median murderer.

Now I'd probably sign on for the idea that every single human being is allowed to value their own or their loved ones lives above every single animal life as a general rule. But globally, I don't value them that way, and no one else does either.

Achilles to Lycaon:

You too, my friend, must die: why so sad? Patroclus, a far better man, has died. Or look at me, how big and fine I am, my father’s a great man, and a goddess bore me, yet death and remorseless fate await me too

And the same goes for all the species on this planet. Most of them are extinct already. Sure is nice to have more kinds of animals, for curiosity's and novelty's sake, but if I had to put a price on keeping any specific ones around, I'd place it around a day's wage for the ones that actually noticeably live nearby, and zero for everything else. Maybe a little more for bees, bumblebees and cicadas, which I personally enjoy, and some species of bird. And some species are just plain useful, of course - I'd hate to see cows, potatoes, cofee beans, apples or humans go. But these aren't endangered species.

Going further abroad and looking at the endangered exotics - too bad. If they can't survive the anthropocene on their own, but people want to have them - that's what pets and zoos are for. If that isn't an option because elephants and whales and panda bears are too hard to maintain, then they can join the billions of species that have gone before. 99% of all species that ever existed are gone. Eventually it will be 100%.

@RenOS

This is remarkably unresponsive to my comment. I didn't say, at any point, that extinction of any species was of infinite value. I said that an increased chance of extinction of certain species was more valuable than one human life in some cases, which is the contra to @hydroacetalyne who stated that

I don’t care if harambe or dumbo or shamu are as smart as a child they don’t have the moral worth of one, it’s a qualitative difference not quantitative.

I don't think you value every human life at a higher value than you place every animal life, and I don't think most people do.

You might not value the life of a rare Rhinoceros infinitely, but I'm fairly certain based on my knowledge of you, South, that you do value it more highly than you value the life of a random 3rd worlder.

You wrote:

I'd consider it worse to kill a critically endangered species than to kill a random human. Because killing the endangered species gets closer to robbing and harming every human forever (leaving aside scifi Jurassic park stuff) while the death of any individual human probably doesn't.

That's quite general about critically endangered animals, you don't make it clear that you only mean specific ones. So it seemed relevant to me to point out that in many cases you're not really robbing anyone of anything since it's just a variation of a common, non-endangered animal.

Likewise, the "scifi jurassic park stuff" isn't really scifi anymore, we're already doing it in a limited capacity.

Likewise, the "scifi jurassic park stuff" isn't really scifi anymore, we're already doing it in a limited capacity.

Has this actually been done? I'm aware of people talking about it, but not of it actually happening.

But sure, I'll cop to both of us using extreme examples: you're thinking of "endangered species" that are slightly different varieties of Vole, which yes I probably don't much care about; while I'm thinking of things like megafauna and butterflies and stuff I would care about. I don't really care about every kind of crawfish; I do care about the rhinoceros.

Has this actually been done? I'm aware of people talking about it, but not of it actually happening.

See Colossal Biosciences and their Dire Wolf project. Regardless at which point you consider it "true de-extinction", they have demonstrated how you can modify key genome locations of a related species to the original of the species you want to de-extinct, and that these modifications do indeed generate the desired traits that species is known for. At the moment it's, as said, quite limited (they only made 20 edits with large phenotypic impact), but from here it's mostly just a question of doing this repeatedly to get arbitrarily close to the original species. And dire wolfs have gone extinct in ancient times; It should be much easier with contemporary animals due to the better availability of varied genomic information and more closely related species you can start from. That approach is probably not viable for every extinct animal, though.

To the second paragraph, I guess my opinion is probably close enough; I'd be lying if I claimed that I consider every human life more valuable than every extinction imaginable.

This is remarkably unresponsive to my comment.

Yeah. It's just what came to mind.

Eh. Species have been dying out (and splitting off) since forever, and our technology to re-breed them gets ever better, especially for those we have non-ancient samples. Especially since the majority of endangered species are just small variations of very similar, non-endangered species that is simply more competitive, sometimes even so closely that they can crossbreed.

I think this is the crux of the disagreement. We both have axiomatically different reasons for holding our positions. There’s no reasoning across that gap. I’m not going to convince you, and you aren’t going to convince me.

However, it seems from the last paragraph that if we could provide adequate amounts of meat/protein with less suffering you would be in support of that. As would I think most users on this form. That seems like a much more fruitful focus of vegan political efforts than the bullshit that PETA wastes its funding on.

Sûre, I eat hunted meat when practical- and happily point this out to ethical vegans- for health and animal cruelty reasons. I have western-typical ideas about eg dogfighting even if I think no-kill shelters are impractical and cause too many problems.

I'm still convinced that veganism isn't harmful for performance, at least in endurance sports. Plenty of endurance athletes at the highest levels are at least mostly vegan.

The gourmet vegan diet available to people with time and money (so that all macros are hit and they have a wide variety of plant proteins) is not the typical vegan diet I see among regular people.

I'm closer to 160 now, but a 150 with a height of 6' put me at a very normal BMI of 20.

I'm 6'2" and was 155 for a long time. I look skeletal in those pictures. I don't look much better in later photographs where I was 170. That's a 20-22 BMI. I'm not going to tell you you're a twig or emaciated, but it was a terrible look for me.

I'm 6'2" and was 155 for a long time. I look skeletal in those pictures. I don't look much better in later photographs where I was 170. That's a 20-22 BMI.

BMI is a flawed metric to begin with, but especially so for tall people. And the medical establishment knows that, too, because it's pretty obvious. If you take any random population and plot their weight vs. their height, you won't get a height^2 parabola as your best fit. It's much closer to height^2.5. Which is entirely unsurprising to me, I never understood why anyone would assume that width/depth of the human body correlate strictly linear with height...

But classic BMI has momentum now, people know it and understand it. Most of them don't carry a lot of muscle, and aren't significantly more than a standard deviations from the mean in height. So I guess it's fine.

Still, using the waist-to-height ratio instead is probably an easy fix, and gives more reliable results, even for tall and/or muscular people.

I find that for most things having a reasonable for normal people and easy to use system is better. I can plug my height and weight into an online calculator and get my BMI. And unless you’re dealing with someone outside the 1σ of height or muscle mass BMI is good enough. And people that BMI doesn’t work for will be high level NCAA D1 athletes, pro athletes, or extremely tall people and they and their health providers can understand where BMI is wrong and do something else or correct for it.

For most people, an excessively complex measurement doesn’t work because they won’t use it.

True, but this was in response to a man who's 6'2" (and as such scratching the 2σ barrier) and questioning his BMI.

Waist-to-height ratio is arguably even easier: easier to measure, easier to calculate, more reliable.

The gourmet vegan diet you’re referring to is available to most regular vegans, though. Rice and beans are, famously, among the cheapest things in the grocery store, veggies aren’t expensive, and even the expensive parts like avocados are still cheaper than meat.

Regular vegans don’t eat like gourmet vegans, I suspect, for the same reasons regular meat eaters don't eat like my home-cooked French-Mexican fusion food made with wild game.

French-Mexican fusion food

Vive L'Empereur Maximilian!

home-cooked French-Mexican fusion food made with wild game

I would like to humbly submit a request for you to share a recipe at some point.

Probably a difference in bone density. I have to think I have lighter bones, which probably explains all the stress fractures in college.

That’s got to be it; I think I might have given you or someone else here a hard time about being 6’0” & 160 as when I’m the same height and the last time I was that weight I was a cross country runner in high school and super skinny. I was in good cardiovascular shape but I had essentially no upper body strength.

The difference for me is that I have never broken a bone, I’m likely a true outlier in bone density. During college I gained a lot of weight but started lifting heavy and my best health I was like 225 & 20% body fat which means even with literally no fat I’d be heavier than 160lbs.

I wasn’t even that jacked, but I’m also primarily German / Nordic with significant west African admixture and I’d been athletic my whole life so I think I’m just genetically very dense both in terms of musculature & bone.

Funny enough when I gained all that weight I did it by cutting out all land based meat entirely; it was all fish, eggs, beans, and rice which got me in the best shape of my life.

Yea I think it's gotta be genetic because those injuries were from the days I was chowing down on steak/hamburgers every night at the college dining hall, so unlikely that it was from diet.

We could do a Mr Glass / Unbreakable cosplay lol

True story; in college me and my buddies were fucking around in the park at night and my friend jumped out of a tree and accidentally did a flying knee with his full weight right to my collarbone from 10ft up, hurt like shit but I got up and we kept messing around, went and got beers.

Next morning I went to class and then went to work. My shoulder was killing me but I just kept working.

Finally after a week without it getting better I went to the doctor after my girlfriend wouldn’t let up.

Turns out I had a hairline fracture and I had been just walking around like it was nothing. Only time I’ve ever “broken” something.

Both my girls are built like tanks too, so it’s definitely genetic.

I remember watching Earthlings in college and it serving as the last straw before my attempt at veganism, which eventually shifted to vegetarianism, which eventually shifted all the way back to me eating meat again. The way humans treat animals on a global scale cannot be morally justified, so I don't even try to justify it. If there are practical policies we can implement to reduce suffering without upending entire industries then I'd be happy to contribute.

As far as the nutritional aspect, I'm not learned up enough on micronutrients, absorption, macros, etc. to go toe to toe with people, but what little I do know about nutrition makes me think the vegan diet still isn't where it needs to be to keep people at their optimal level of health.

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