This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Bipartisan Consensus Against... Lab-Grown Meat?
This was not a tweet I expected to see today:
-Senator John Fetterman
Lol. LMAO even.
I am not a person that cares much about the suffering of animals, especially not the ones that taste good. Still, strictly speaking, the suffering is not an integral part of the process. If it could be removed, all else being equal, that would not decrease my utility in any way. I am agnostic on lab-grown meat. If it tastes good, is cheap, and is of comparable healthiness to legacy meat, I will eat it.
I can't help but be reminded of the law of undignified failure. Cultured meat has been a staple of the tech-futurist utopian memeplex for years, if not decades. Gallons of digital ink have been spilled discussing the feasibility and/or inevitability (or lack thereof) of cultured meat on places like the Effective Altruism Forum. Skimming through the top results, I don't see, "what if the proles hate our guts so much that they ban cultured meat out of spite?" on anyone's "factors to consider". It's also a harsh lesson that even the most positive-seeming improvements have to face-off against reliance interests who want things to stay the same. There is a lobby for everything.
I don't think the main point against eating animal meat is the fact that it kills animals, but the impact on environment and the land efficiency. To eat a pound of beef, you need the cow to eat a lot of grass, which takes a lot more land than producing a pound of vegetables. Moreover, cows produce a lot of CO which has a huge climate impact.
Cows don't "produce" CO2, they're part of the biological carbon cycle, like rotting leaves and compost piles. All the carbon a cow emits comes from vegetation that got it from the air only a few months before. It neither adds nor removes carbon from the cycle.
Intentionally conflating the exogenous release of geologically sequestered carbon through fossil fuels with the natural carbon cycle is unforgivably dishonest vegan propaganda that needs to be stomped out thoroughly.
Whoever told it to you is a malicious liar you should hunt down and punish for trying to fuck with your understanding of the world.
Yes it is a cycle, but if you replace a cycle where the carbon exists 500 years as a tree and 70 years as CO2 by a cycle where it exists 1 year as corn, 14 years as a cow and 70 years as CO2 it has a huge impact on the quantity of CO2 in the air.
Anyway oil is also natural, it did not magically appear under the ground. It's just a very long cycle.
And by the way I don't care about vegans, anyone thinking bees should consent to give you their honey is dumb
Cows don't eat trees (much) though -- they eat grass, and after a year that grass is turning back into CO2 one way or another.
The land used for the grass and the cereals could be used for something else (growing trees, for example). And by eating the grass and anything green in the grass cow do prevent trees to grow.
Moreover the grass produces CO2 if it's not eaten by some other animal while the cow produces CH4. CH4 has a stronger greenhouse effect than CO2 and then it quite rapidly degrades and becomes CO2.
Again, biological carbon cycle. Even the massive reforestation of agricultural land in the last century has only been a one-time temporary reduction in atmospheric CO2. Trees don't magically suck carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it out of the biosphere; only some species of shelly plankton do that. And the very, very slow work of bogs creating coal deposits.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link