This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Just because they're annoying doesn't mean they're wrong - a meta-discussion
A few months ago a wild vegan appeared. He was almost self-parodically stereotypical: short, mid thirties, college-educated, and into endurance sports. He posted a reasonably well-argued case that veganism was not harmful to sporting performance, with the usual smug boasting of his numbers in endurance sports. At the end of his post, he finished with "what's your excuse?"
The entirety of his well-reasoned post was ignored, and he was dogpiled for that one final sentence.
Mottizens could immediately detect what was going on - he actually found the killing and eating of animals to be immoral, but didn't think that would be a convincing argument, so he tried to achieve his goal with another argument.
Both positions are actually worth considering. I'm open to the possibility that killing animals for food is wrong, and I'm open to the possibility that a vegan diet is not harmful to athletic performance. Hiding behind one to advance another, however, is deceitful.
I've actually tried to engage seriously with these ideas, and in my desire to see their own steelmen, I have tried to read some vegan sites. Usually I give up quickly, as they are full of the above argumentation - shifting goalposts, emotional appeals, hiding behind one argument to advance another, etc.
I wish I could say I have rejected vegetarianism because I engaged with their best arguments and found them wanting. Instead, I found their argumentation so annoying I ceased to engage with them.
I've had similar experiences with people who hate cars. Like anyone else who can do math, I have often found it absurd to use two tons of car and two liters of fuel to get two bags of groceries. I've also tried to mitigate some of these by moving to a New Urbanist development (with an unpleasant HOA, sadly), and I've got an electric car and solar panels on my roof. Sadly, this doesn't lead to any productive discussion, as I've discussed before.
Years ago, I remember a similar circular argumentative style among supporters of the ACA. They would say that people are afraid to start companies because they won't have health care, to which I'd reply "sure, how about two years of subsidized COBRA?". Then they'd point to catastrophic expenses, to which I'd say "sure, how about a subsidized backstop for all 1MM+ expenses for anyone who has a 1MM plan?", to which they'd change the argument again.
Of course, there's a pattern here. From what I can tell, many vegetarians have an (understandable) response to the raising, killing, and eating of animals. Some people seem to be terrified of owning and operating large machines, and they find private cars and single family housing to be socially alienating. Some people are emotionally disturbed by other people suffering from the health consequences of a lifetime of bad choices.
What these groups all have in common is a strong ability to signal these things emotionally to people similar to them and form a consensus, but also a generally terrible ability to discuss these things reasonably.
We don't have many vegans, anti-car people, or socialists here at The Motte - but that's not because their arguments are invalid, it's because the people attracted to those ideologies don't fit well with our particular discursive style. On the flip side, we have plenty of white nationalists, who seem to be able to adapt.
I'm confident that white nationalists are wrong. I have engaged with their best arguments, and found them wanting.
I'm only confident that vegans are annoying, because they are so annoying that I find it hard to engage with their arguments.
I think that's a blind spot for The Motte.
It is quite unpleasant to argue against the core assumptions of veganism in a way that is epistemically rigorous. One has to tear down the entire concept of ethics as it is typically understood, then rebuild some sort of timeless decision theory-based normative system that reproduces the common-sense undisputed norms of "ethical" human behavior, but hopefully without the gaping security hole of giving in to utility monsters and bottomless pits of suffering.
> But QuantumFreakonomics you wise sage, I inherently care about the suffering of all sentient beings. It is part of my utility function, and I don't want to change my utility function.
You are wrong about your own utility function. You do not inherently care about the subjective experience of shrimp in the Atlantic Ocean. I don't believe you. You are confusing type I goods (goods which have intrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their own sake) with type II goods (goods which have only extrinsic value, i.e. are valued for their ability to produce/acquire type I goods). Your own pleasure and your own lack of suffering are type I goods. The pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is not a type I good, but it is often (but not always) a type II good. Assuming that the pleasure and lack of suffering of anonymous random sentient creatures is a type I good is an error, as is assuming that it is always a type II good. No one wants to say this in polite company because it makes you sound like a massive asshole, but when no one has the guts to point this out you end up with people advocating to redirect the malaria net funding (which saved 100,000+ lives) to saving chickens instead.
I mean. I have to say I think you should do neither and just give the money to a car dealership for a Corvette.
More options
Context Copy link
When most people talk about Utilitarianism they’re talking about maximizing social utility, so this objection is completely irrelevant — the whole point of Utilitarianism is that you are maximizing something you don’t feel intrinsically!
You can, of course, object that social utility should assign zero weight to the shrimp’s utility function, but using your personal feelings to argue for the social utility function's weights should feel pretty unprincipled.
More options
Context Copy link
That's actually a good question. Maybe the actual root of the vegan vs carnist bloodmouth divide.
I have a very easy confident answer for myself. My family raised chickens when I was a kid. They hold, to within roundoff error, no moral worth. I watched a long vegan propaganda movie focused partially on chicken farming and heard Sam Harris' claim that chicken farming is an unrelenting moral travesty. I am unmoved. Chickens are such mean, spiteful little animals. To the degree they have any social awareness, it is to needlessly harm their fellows. Any injured chicken got relentlessly pecked on it's injury by it's fellows. They are demons, or the most Hollywood version of velociraptors, but real.
There's some enormous failure in empathy here. People wrongly projecting their human awareness and intellect onto chickens. Which I think to them feels like empathy, but is simply false.
Family also raised (and raises) chickens and I disagree your characterization of them as mean, spiteful demonic creatures. That's projecting human characteristics onto a rather dim animal species from the other direction.
Maybe your bunch was raising them en masse in tight battery conditions? In unrestricted free range conditions they form little distinct packs that wander around and roost together in a separate locations from other packs, some hens have stronger intelligence and better maternal skills than others, they'll readily adopt biddies from other species like guineas or ducks as well as orphaned chicken biddies. Some of them have noticeably different levels of fear or openness towards humans and other animals, they'll fight and form a pecking order, etc. Nothing like a dog, cow or goat but they definitely have some social awareness beyond killing their own wounded. Typical domesticated animal behavior, nothing I'd call nefarious. The phenomena of attacking wounded members of the same species, particularly during the initial injury when they're flailing about, is something I've witnessed in dogs and cattle as well - I think it's some kind of evolutionary quirk about silencing something that will attract predators or may be ill.
More options
Context Copy link
I honestly think we can blame Disney for a huge portion of this problem.
Antromorphism is a hell of a drug.
Let's call this the "Bambi's mom" problem.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Alternatively, you could just not be a pure utilitarian.
More options
Context Copy link
That's one of the pitfalls of atheism. As a Catholic, I just tell them that animals don't have souls and that they're meant to serve people. It's obviously a little more sophisticated than that, but that's the gist of it. God told Adam and Eve to "fill the earth and subdue it." This doesn't mean that wanton cruelty or destruction of nature is permissible, since it's still part of God's creation and under our stewardship, but it doesn't mean that every tree is sacred or that animals have the same status as humans.
If you want to take a more secular tack, I'd try to bait them into taking the "every tree is sacred" path. First, vegans eat plants. So find out what their justification is for eating plants that were once as alive as the animals were. I'm on my way out the door but I trust you can take the argument from there, but it's much easier if you have religion on your side. Then all of the sudden they're arguing against your religion which is much more daunting than than simply arguing against meat-eating. Since most people assume I'm not religious it usually stops them cold.
As a non-religious person, I just tell them that we conquered the food chain and earned the right to do whatever we want. We won. If chickens didn't want to be eaten they should have invented guns. They didn't.
A pig will readily devour my corpse with no compunctions. I am simply reciprocating.
I actually have pondered a more universalized application of this to utilitarians: I care as much about other people as they care about me.
For instance, if Nigeria and the US swapped economic places in a parallel universe, how much would they be doing for us? Realistically, this suggests being as selfish/altruistic as the average person, maybe correcting a bit for some bias. Likewise, most animals probably wouldn't mind much eating humans if they had the desire to.
IMO, this kind of mirrored-weight utilitarianism matches human intuition better than normal utilitarianism.
Do you think rich Nigeria wouldn't be doing a lot for african US?
No, I think they'd earmark the money and then steal it all. Of course you could say "Well what about a rich Nigeria that isn't corrupt", but there's really no end to changing the local culture once you let that cat out of the bag.
Once we said "switched places" it is up to argument how much of "being rich" we actually switch. A rich child of rich parents is not the same as a poor man who won 100 million in lottery.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I guess you should define "a lot".
I was mostly thinking along the lines of most of them presumably not earning-to-give and then donating almost of all of it to third world health charities - i.e. the Effective Altruist way.
I'm open to the idea that they would overall, as a country, do 50% more for us, or whatever.
I'm pretty sure most whites aren't Effective Altruists either.
My point is not saying "Americans are better than Nigerians." My point is that this kind of "mirrored-weight utilitarianism" avoids some of the unintuitive ethical results of normal utilitarianism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I doubt it, looking at a list of charitable donations as a percent of income it seems to be an Anglosphere thing with South Korea being the only exception.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's kind of how I feel about free speech; I'm not interested in protecting the speech of anyone who would try and censor me. Once you stop abiding by the covenant, you are no longer protected by it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, but this is pretty much equivalent to saying "As a Scientologist, I just tell them that Xenu said eating animals is ok". It makes no sense to anyone who isn't already on board with your religion. Meanwhile, while it makes sense to you, that probably doesn't matter because you're probably not trying to justify the behavior to yourself, you already feel ok with it.
More options
Context Copy link
In Catholicism, animals are usually described as having souls, but not rational, eternal, spiritual ones.
I think the answer is usually that plants don't suffer when you kill them. They see animals as part of a category of "things that experience and suffer" along with humans. Even the non-utilitarian vegans I've met seem to value suffering and experience as key to moral evaluation, in a way that deontologists and virtue ethicists don't tend to.
Of course, we can't really know if animals are conscious (just as I can't know if you are), so who knows -- maybe plants actually are conscious and do suffer. But I think the assumption of veganism is that our similarities to animals make it more likely they do, so we should be on the safe side and not harm them.
Not a vegan, but that's my steelman.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is a common cynical misinterpretation of utility functions. Even if humans were utilitarian, the point of utilitarianism is to maximize utility, not to maximize one's own subjective feeling of utility. I help others because they need help, not in order to experience the fuzzies associated with helping others. If there was a drug that gave me that feeling, I would not take it.
I started taking adderall recently in order to concentrate better. It gives me a feeling identical to what I feel when I accomplish something difficult. It's a great feeling, but means nothing to me without the substance of an actual accomplishment behind it. The most important thing to me in life is accomplishing great things, yet I take Adderall only very rarely.
Shrimp aren't type 1 goods for me, but people who share my values (which is nearly all of them to some extent) are.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link