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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25791 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.

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.

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