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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.)
Gladly.
Your argument is fundamentally utilitarian, and utilitarianism leads to insanity or tyranny.
On the side of the suffering, utilitarianism quickly devolves into making things up. I'm pretty sure animals experience pain, but that's vague. At the decision-making level, you must assign some number of qualia to their pain, if you want to trade it off against a human action. The problem is this number is totally made up. Make up a number in one direction, and it's OK to torture animals for sport (bullfighting), make up a number in another direction, and you're a Jain. Both numbers are of course completely made up with no reference to reality.
The second order effects get stranger. If you're in the business of making up qualia, you could find yourself morally obligated to kill predators, worrying about the suffering of subatomic particles, etc. That way leads insanity and SBF.
On the side of the morally responsible, utilitarianism quickly devolves into tyranny. If you've appointed yourself the arbiter of the moral balance of the universe, you might find yourself starting out by murdering ranchers, and end up with the Repugnant Conclusion, murdering unhappy children, and ending up at Stalin.
Utilitarianism is fundamentally unbounded.
I choose reciprocity. I will act with honor towards those who act with honor towards me. I'm entirely OK with raising those who act without reciprocity towards me in cages. In the case of animals, for meat. In the case of people, those cages are called prison. In the case of people, I'm against killing them (the death penalty), because I believe the system for judging them is fallible, and I want the convicted and accused to have the chance to prove their innocence. Since I am against killing them, I can't kill them for food.
Would I eat a murderer, if it was 100% certainty that he was guilty? That's an interesting question that I hadn't gotten to until now.
For now, I find the arguments for vegetarianism unconvincing, and I'm going to leave the Chesterton's Fence of meat eating up - but I'm not sufficiently convinced to stop thinking about it.
Just to follow up in case you’re still interested: I just concluded a nice discussion with aquota where we both acknowledged it comes down to power and realpolitik rather than any higher ethical cause.
If you’re able to come up with a loftier rationale as to why the moral line should be drawn specifically at the species boundary, I would still love to hear it.
Thanks. I was interested. To me the moral line is drawn at reciprocity, because morality is between actors. I have no moral obligation to a rock or a plant. If an animal or an alien is capable of reasoning from principles to determine reciprocal actions to my actions, then they are moral actors. If they aren't moral actors, then morally they are no different than a rock or a plant.
Ah I see what you mean now. I haven’t encountered this specific line of reasoning before, so thanks for introducing it to me.
I’m curious about a couple of follow-up questions: if animals aren’t moral actors, are animals entitled to any amount of ethical treatment? Or is it moral to torture animals for any or no reason at all?
And are only the humans that are moral actors deserving of moral rights? Would it be fine to kill an orphaned infant before it has developed enough moral understanding to be a moral agent of its own?
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