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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24584 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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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.

The first few Quakers who took a stand against slavery were pretty annoying too. In reading about their early forms of activism one can’t help but be struck by how PETA-like some of their tactics were.

Anyway, there really isn’t really a non-annoying way of telling someone a message equivalent to “Hey actually, to all animals you’re more evil than Hitler. Animal lives matter. Have you considered being not animal Uber-Hitler??”

And that's the core of my problem.

I suspect there might be good arguments for veganism, but they appear to be buried under a huge mass of emotional appeals and AWFL social status games.

If you lived in the 1600s and were totally fine with slavery, what non-emotional appeals could someone make to sway you against slavery?

Do you have any particular reading recommendations about these quaker antics? I spent a year as apart of a quaker meeting, and always heard about the anti-slavery stuff, but never from anything like a primary source.

There's a section in What We Owe the Future about Quaker early slave abolitionism. This isn't the full section but rather a quick teaser from https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/owe-future-bookbite/36216/

Instead, an important cause for abolition was shifting moral sentiments in the 1700s in the US, especially the contributions of Quaker abolitionists. Perhaps the most fascinating of the Quaker abolitionists was Benjamin Lay, who stood at just four feet tall and called himself Little Benjamin, likening himself to little David who killed Goliath. Lay lived in a cave just outside Philadelphia and boycotted all goods produced by enslaved people. He once stood outside a Quaker meeting in the snow and bare feet with no coat. When passersby expressed concern, he explained that enslaved people were made to work outside for the whole winter dressed as he was. Lay played an important role in Quaker opposition to slavery, which, in turn, played an important role in abolition.

More about Benjamin Lay from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay but also not quite everything mentioned in the book

He first began advocating for the abolition of slavery when, in Barbados, he saw an enslaved man commit suicide rather than be hit again by his owner. His passionate enmity of slavery was partially fueled by his Quaker beliefs. Lay made several dramatic demonstrations against the practice. [...barefoot in snow thing above...] On another occasion, he kidnapped the child of slaveholders temporarily, to show them how Africans felt when their relatives were sold overseas.[8]

In Burlington, New Jersey, at the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers, dressed as a soldier, he concluded a diatribe against slavery, quoting the Bible saying that all men should be equal under God, by plunging a sword into a Bible containing a bladder of blood-red pokeberry juice, which spattered over those nearby.[9][10]

He did stuff like this his whole life, apparently.

I wouldn't buy the book for a deep dive on Quaker abolitionism though, it isn't that.

Hey actually, to all animals you’re more evil than Hitler. Animal lives matter. Have you considered being not animal Uber-Hitler?

I mean there is a smuggled premise that animals have something like moral equivalence to humans. It's a kind of hack of empathy and personification that we don't like admitting that animals just don't have moral equivalence. It's the same instinct that makes you cringe when a doll's head is ripped off. Hitler was killing people who have moral equivalence to humans, the argument is much simpler.

Isn’t animals not having moral equivalence just another axiomatic assumption you can make? How would you prove that someone is in the wrong for assigning moral equivalence to chickens?

And supposing you value humans more due to our intelligence, does that mean it is more ethical to make unintelligent humans suffer than intelligent ones? You can substitute any other attribute other than intelligence here.

If instead you go the route of saying “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at humans because I am speciesist, but all other animals are fair game,” can’t someone else arbitrarily tighten that circle further and say “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at whites because I am racist, but all other humans and animals are fair game”?

Is there an argument that both allows you to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food, without also allowing someone else to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food? (Disregard how inefficient and pointless factory farming humans for meat would be, this is just a question about the ethics of it.)

How would you prove that someone is in the wrong for assigning moral equivalence to chickens?

I wouldn't, it's none of my business what weird other people value unless they make it my business by attempting to impose their beliefs on me.

And supposing you value humans more due to our intelligence

Intelligence is an important but not the only reason I place moral weight on human life.

does that mean it is more ethical to make unintelligent humans suffer than intelligent ones

Marginally yes. And yes, as I know where you intend to go with this if you find a human with pig level intelligence then I'd barely consider them human and my opposition to their subjugation would primarily be aesthetic. A disgust of the type that causes me to oppose incest or bestialities that have been philosophically spherical cowed to cause no harm.

If instead you go the route of saying “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at humans because I am speciesist, but all other animals are fair game,” can’t someone else arbitrarily tighten that circle further and say “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at whites because I am racist, but all other humans and animals are fair game”?

People already do that with race and I oppose it. The arguments over what moral line we draw is a live debate and I don't find this line of reasoning any more convincing from vegans trying to get me to include nonhumans than from racists trying to get me to exclude Laotians or whomever.

Is there an argument that both allows you to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food, without also allowing someone else to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food?

I presume you meant one of these to say humans. And yes, the argument is that humans are not morally fungible with animals. Not one chicken, not ten chickens, not infinity chickens.

the argument is that humans are not morally fungible with animals. Not one chicken, not ten chickens, not infinity chickens.

And we’re back to the starting point, aren’t we?

What arguments do you present for drawing such a moral line between humans and animals?

You're the one including the premise in your argument, it's on you to prove this, not me to prove the negative.

  • There is a moral difference between hurting humans and hurting animals
  • There is a moral equivalence between hurting humans and hurting animals

I don’t see how one side is inherently more of a “positive” claim than the other. Regardless, if you take the position of moral difference by default, how do you respond to the Nazi who says “There is a moral difference between gassing Aryans and gassing Jews”?

Hey actually, to all animals you’re more evil than Hitler. Animal lives matter. Have you considered being not animal Uber-Hitler?

I flagged the premise as being smuggled in here and lodged my disagreement. I know it wasn't you who did it but that's the point where it needed to be proved.

Regardless, if you take the position of moral difference by default, how do you respond to the Nazi who says “There is a moral difference between gassing Aryans and gassing Jews”?

I would disagree with them on the basis that Jews and Aryans are both human and that human life is sacred. If I needed to ground out that human life is sacred I would say that I and all my loved ones are humans and I have a vested interest in their lives not being forfeit. If they were in power and planned on gassing Jews I would shoot them if able.

More comments

If instead you go the route of saying “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at humans because I am speciesist, but all other animals are fair game,” can’t someone else arbitrarily tighten that circle further and say “I am arbitrarily drawing the line at whites because I am racist, but all other humans and animals are fair game”?

Is there an argument that both allows you to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food, without also allowing someone else to ethically kill or factory farm animals for food? (Disregard how inefficient and pointless factory farming humans for meat would be, this is just a question about the ethics of it.)

Well if someone made the 'racist' argument I would tell them good luck with the law, which cares not about your bizarre dietary principles. But really my argument, which I think solves the dilemma in your second paragraph, is that I won't eat anything that can argue for its life. Humans are the only creatures that can do so to my knowledge, so I won't eat humans. If chickens or pigs developed that ability I don't think I'd be able to eat them either.

Well if someone made the 'racist' argument I would tell them good luck with the law, which cares not about your bizarre dietary principles.

Sure, but we’re not debating the law as it is, only theoretical morality. Veganism is not the law in most (or all?) places on earth, but that doesn’t stop some people from arguing for that.

I won't eat anything that can argue for its life

This sounds like a more refined version of “it’s okay to eat sufficiently unintelligent things.” Does this extend to human infants, non-verbal highly autistic adults, or anyone else whose intelligence falls below the threshold of arguing for their own existence?

I don't think you need full moral equivalence for vegan arguments to work. You just need a sufficient ratio. Even of chickens have only 1% of the moral value of humans the suffering we inflict upon them in factory farms is a great evil. On the other hand if chickens have 10^-100 times the moral value of humans its trivial. Unfortunately we are far from the point where we can actually compute such a ratio with any authority (though many have tried) so often the arguments fall back to intuition and emotion.

I reject even putting it on the same scale. It implies what you then go on to exploit, that they are at all fungible - this would require some kind of argumentation.

Even of chickens have only 1% of the moral value of humans

In practice, it's not even close to this.

Anyone who would direct a trolley problem trolley at one person to save 100 chickens is someone I would consider an aberrant moral monster.

Personally, I would be extremely suspicious of anyone who would save ANY number of chickens over a single human. But anyone who puts the number at anything less than 100,000 is actually mind-boggling to me.

You don’t have to go even that far. Eating a lot of meat is a luxury (I think some small amount is necessary for health) so given that the choice is wants vs morals, there’s no good moral reason to choose to eat large portions of meat.

I don’t think that requires the trolley directed at humans, and I wouldn’t do that.

There is. The moral reason is that I want to, and anything I want to do is more moral than anything I don't. I have an overwhelming moral responsibility to myself to maximise the enjoyment of the single, limited lifespan I have. A life un-lived is the most immoral thing imaginable; it is a waste of the single most precious gift any of us can ever receive.

Maybe I’m not understanding you but I’m not sure how not having meat as the main dish of your meal is that much of a diminished enjoyment. Most of the time, for me, I don’t miss it. I don’t say no entirely to meat, I’m just not making it the star of the meal.

I don't think there's a valuable moral lesson to be learned from me sending a trolley at 7.888 billion humans to divert it away from my children.

In a society where everyone was raised from birth to be vegan it’d be equally obvious a chicken is worth more than 0.1% of a human and anyone who said otherwise would be considered morally abhorrent.

Having personally witnessed vegans in real life comparing eating eggs to the Holocaust: you could just not do that. Just skip the Holocaust and Hitler rhetoric. Say "they really suffer and it comes at a real moral cost to eat a vegetarian lunch with a bit of egg". Jumping to the wild Holocaust and Hitler rhetoric isn't convincing anyone. The wilder the rhetoric, the less convincing it is.

The wilder the rhetoric, the less convincing it is.

They are not at that stage with respect to where the populace is. At this juncture of activism the goals are to wedge regular animal-welfare arguments into the Overton window. Wild rhetoric is helpful here not because you believe it, but because now you'll judge less extreme versions of the same basic tenet as inherently more reasonable by contrast.

Even there, convincing is a long ways away. The stage they are at in the activist pipeline is normalization.

Even under that light, the wild rhetoric is not helpful. Approximately everyone who encounters a vegan like that is so put off by the arguments that they become impossible to convince in the future, even if the arguments are more sane. They go "oh this is the same thing as (crazy guy), I'm not going to listen". All the extremists do is ensure that everyone they rant to will never be a vegan.

Indeed. I don't expect it convinces anyone to go vegan.

At the same time, when they see something like we should make pork 15% more expensive to allow pigs more space, they are now going to anchor that as differently. That no longer qualifies as the wackiest animal welfare thing they've heard.

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