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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.
I would actually like to debate you on vegan/vegetarianism, because I have been unable to rigorously justify the ethics of eating meat to myself. I do it anyways, because I’m not a saint and morals are arbitrary anyways.
I’ll copy paste another comment I made in the thread:
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.)
This post shows a huge potential problem with veganism actually.
Ideological veganism of this type as does apply to Peter Singer's version is anti-human.
By trying not to be speciesist as you say and making animals and humans morally equivalent, you enter into valuing human life less, to make it more equal to animal life.
Hence Singer supporting infantcide, killing comatose.
Humanism, what you call speciesism, forms an ideological barrier that restricts anti human ideas from entering.
Ironically, what is often called anti-racism has some of the same problems. The fear of putting a group, such as whites first can lead to putting them last and is an aspect of our anti-white racist age. Which makes all the whining about white tribalism threat pretty immoral and ironically racist and a case of misaligned priorities. In the current circumstances, and in line of your own prejudices, you should be more afraid of that reality and the possibility of this increasing, rather than the opposite threat. Radicals rather than carefully opposing only what should be reasonably opposed have promoted antiwhite racism, in line with their own prejudices.
Similarly, but worse pro animal prejudice and anti human mistreatment is one of the promises of many advocates of veganism in combo with animal liberation. Less so for those which is more about their own personal preference and ethics and are much more restrained in their political vision.
Another thing to consider is that if animals are morally equivalent to human beings, then under that framing current humanity is engaging in mass murder of gigantic scale and is extremely monstrous. This false perspective could very well lead to supporting mass violence at its expense both to stop it, and to punish those engaging in using animal products (i.e human civilization as a whole). It is a path to self destruction and it isn't surprising that one of the biggest anti-natalist figures David Benatar who thinks humanity should stop giving births also adopts the framing of humanity as an oppressor of animals.
And of course would come along with totalitarianism where non veganism is ruthlessly persecuted both as a practice and as an ideology. Which could also come along with a lot of violence.
In regards to David Benatar:
The ideology of this not canceled academic who thinks humanity better not exist is in my view worse than many of the most advertised as worse ideologies in the world, including ones I directly sharply attacked. There is a connection with the marxist idea of utopia after destroying class enemy and class, or cultural marxism and destroying race and whites/whiteness/oppressive western civilization, and now for humanity as the oppressors to be eliminated by not reproducing. Benatar's is the worse version of this way of thinking. I certainly wouldn't trust people sharing Benatar's ideology with nuclear weapons, or biological research on diseases, or even A.I. research. Any veganism that comes anywhere close to Benatar's ideology should be treated with extreme intolerance.
It would be saner, less dangerous and better for advocacy of animal rights to be done under a perspective that rejects their moral equivalency to humans and is very careful not to be anti-human. Humanism is good actually and the speciesism framing is too absolute to not lead to such destructive paths. Hence, we would be better off if we outright blacklisted pro animal rhetoric that is anti-human and not careful. Especially the type that supports, or provides arguments that help justify harming various categories of human beings because they sympathize more with animals.
I mean, I agree with you on the potential implications of speciesism. But what arguments do you actually have against its validity as a moral concept? What convinces you to draw the line at human vs non-human, versus any other arbitrary boundary?
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