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