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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.
Strong disagree. The reason we have few vegans and anti-car people is because those ideas always crumble under pressure. The reason, "[w]hat 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[,]" is because generally these positions are based on emotion rather than logic and almost always develop within bubbles where they don't get challenged. Its almost like being an anti-slavery advocate in 2023 America. What kind of real debate skills do you have? You just assume slavery is bad, everyone else around you assumes the same, so if some sincere pro-slavery advocate came around, you would be confused and, in 99.99% of cases, your only "plan" would be to go with ad hominem attacks. We see this pattern quite often with certain online topics that are associated with left of center groups.
Huh, I'm pretty surprised to see anti-car in this bucket (though I don't feel particularly negatively towards vegans either). I've been around this forum and its predecessors for about a decade IIRC, back when the "discursive style" was quite a bit better[1], and I would say I hate cars. I drive plenty when I'm back in my hometown (LA), and even enjoy it, but would prefer to see equalization with other forms of transport of the gargantuan subsidies it gets for its enormous use of real estate, destructive right-of-ways, and effect on local health via air pollution. Driving is fun, but building a society around driving walkable/bikable/transitable distances is quite obviously insane, and I definitely hate it.
Given that you think these ideas "always crumble under pressure", I'm curious why you think this is so obviously wrong. I'm hoping you have an actual answer to this, and that this isn't just a (ironic, given the thread topic) sign of the precipitous decline of the intellectual quality of this community.
[1] from the perspective of autistic intellectual honesty and open-mindedness
Well, since you lead off with a false premise, its not going to end up going all that well for you. We spend less per passenger mile on cars than busses or trains.
Less flippantly, the problem with the premise is that every other form of transit has extreme failure modes when it isn't in an absolutely ideal environment. Walking has the issue of it being hard to go any significant distance quickly. Biking too. Both fail at the important task of lugging around lots of consumer goods (as does public transit in many ways) and also those two fail the weather test. Transit also often fails the weather test because getting to it requires exposure to the elements. When it doesn't, it requires expensive shelters, paired with frequent stops. The frequent stopping is a detriment to the system as a whole because it makes your transit slow, often meaning much slower than a car.
Turning to public transit only, it suffers from an intermittency problem. Buses and trains can't come all the time, as is they already are losing to cars on a fuel per mile basis. This pairs with inconsistency to create a crises in commuting. Sure, if the bus always came at 8, and always got me to the train at 8:10, and that train always came at 8:15 and got me to work at 8:30, hunky dory. But that isn't how it works. Sometimes two buses come at 7:56 and 7:58, then one at 8:15. Now you missed that 8:15 train and have to wait till the 8:45 train, that is delayed, and now you're very late. So its the TSA problem at the airport, except every day of your life. OTOH, cars are simple. You leave 2 minutes late, you are 2 minutes late, more or less. There's no transfers, no cutoffs, etc. You don't know how many times I've seen a train leaving the station right as my bus is pulling into the station only to see the next one is coming in 25 minutes, on a line that is supposed to run every 10 during rush hour.
And then there is the next major problem with public transit, which is lack of directness. Because they are financially irresponsible even when simply transporting people in a hub and spoke system to the major downtown areas, they are downright impossible to operate while connecting spokes. So, lets say you live in Lil Ireland, and have a friend in North Burgandy. A 20 minute drive, being a hypothetical 30 minute bus, but no such bus exists. Instead, you need to take a 30 min bus to Corpopolis, then a 20 min train to South Burgandy, and a 10 min bus to North Burgandy. And you have to hope you don't have long layovers in between.
But how does XXX town make it work? They probably don't. You probably just don't visit people out of your neighborhood that often. This is enforced with violence, or by some sort of violence-adjacent policy that keeps a neighborhood's "character" pure. The kind of things which would face endless lawfare in most of America. Plus you make more of your own food, live in a smaller home, smaller room, etc.
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