About vegans

[Aegon]

I've slowly progressed toward vegetarianism. I've cut out red meat, and I only eat meat (chicken) for dinner a few times a week. It's just so easy to grill up some chicken though, I doubt I'll ever be strict about bot eating it. I do think it is healthier getting my protein from other sources though. Maybe I'm wrong. Whatever.

I need to look more into vegetarian meals and options before I decide.

Update: I've been pescetarian for a while now. Cant give up shrimp

[bennyboy]

Was the suffering I would feel by being forced to live off rabbit chow while reading your brilliant objections....to eating...... calculated into that end result?

If a predator suffers by not being able to engage in predation, which suffering counts?  There are plenty of predatory activities I can think of where the suffering of the prey would receive far more weight than that of the predator-- i.e. all human crimes. Robbers suffer from a lack of funds (maybe even food and shelter). Rapists suffer blue balls perhaps.

I'm not arguing against meat eating, but I think the conflation of a desire for yum with a desire not to be shot through the heart and eaten isn't a particularly good one.

Anyway, the truth is simple enough-- "I care more about the eating of the food than the death of the animal from which I get it, so I will eat the food."  You don't really need a metric at all unless you are Sam Harris.

---

I've slowly progressed toward vegetarianism. I've cut out red meat, and I only eat meat (chicken) for dinner a few times a week. It's just so easy to grill up some chicken though,  I doubt I'll ever be strict about bot eating it. I do think it is healthier getting my protein from other sources though. Maybe I'm wrong. Whatever.

I need to look more into vegetarian meals and options before I decide.

Update: I've been pescetarian for a while now. Cant give up shrimp

How about lobsters?  

[bennyboy]

I want to make an argument for vegetarianism that I call "pet extension."

I've bonded with my dogs.  I had them as puppies, brought them home in a beanie in the car, pulled them out to the cooing of my family.  I've seen people like cats-- selfish little pricks, really, not social in a way that matters much to me.

I reckon almost all mammals will fall somewhere in there.  If I brought a baby deer home, my family would coo over it.  I'd give it a name, realize it had a personality, shed a little tear over it.

So that's how we should think of animals-- not "rats with antlers," that's so bigoted.  Think of them as pets who haven't been given a name yet!

[The Grand Nudger]

Pets are just a reserve rack of standing ribs. 

Ideally, though..yeah..if a producer treated their livestock more like pets questions of ethics would lose alot of their oomph. The same is true of game animals to an extent, though the management of deer in order to preserve (and control) their number has quixotically lead to an epidemic of chronic wasting disease.

They are rats with antlers btw...just mean, dirty animals, lol. A plague on our forests, at present. I can see how people might not know that, if their exposure is limited to bambi, and the specimens at the zoo.

[Bob Kelso]

I want to make an argument for vegetarianism that I call "pet extension."

I've bonded with my dogs.  I had them as puppies, brought them home in a beanie in the car, pulled them out to the cooing of my family.  I've seen people like cats-- selfish little pricks, really, not social in a way that matters much to me.

I reckon almost all mammals will fall somewhere in there.  If I brought a baby deer home, my family would coo over it.  I'd give it a name, realize it had a personality, shed a little tear over it.

Bring a baby deer to my home and we’ll let it grow up a bit before making jerky. Mmm... deer jerky.

So that's how we should think of animals-- not "rats with antlers," that's so bigoted.  Think of them as pets who haven't been given a name yet!

In the words of a guy I once knew at a Christian game dinner I once attended “There’s a place for all of God’s creatures... next to the potatoes. Someone pass the elk rib”.

I only disagree with one notion from that phrase now lol

[Aegon]

I want to make an argument for vegetarianism that I call "pet extension."

I've bonded with my dogs.  I had them as puppies, brought them home in a beanie in the car, pulled them out to the cooing of my family.  I've seen people like cats-- selfish little pricks, really, not social in a way that matters much to me.

I reckon almost all mammals will fall somewhere in there.  If I brought a baby deer home, my family would coo over it.  I'd give it a name, realize it had a personality, shed a little tear over it.

So that's how we should think of animals-- not "rats with antlers," that's so bigoted.  Think of them as pets who haven't been given a name yet!

For me, the sentience of the animal is a big deal. Cows are basically big dogs. If I dont need to eat mammal meat I won't.

I was never a huge fan of lobster. Too expensive. Too much work, honestly. Ever order a whole lobster? I feel like I was on a demolition project.

[The Grand Nudger]

The smarter we think an animal is, the more carefully we tend to treat them.

[The Valkyrie]

What about vegetable rights?

We pull them from the warm ground, skin them and cook them while they're still alive.

It's inhumane! Or possible incarrot!

[robvalue]

What about vegetable rights?

We pull them from the warm ground, skin them and cook them while they're still alive.

It's inhumane!  Or possible incarrot!

I know you’re just playing here, but some people do actually try to use this as a real argument. Silly though it is, I heard a particularly good counter in an Onision video. He observed that by eating meat, you’re effectively killing way more plants than eating them directly, because of the amount the animals eat. So even if eating plants was bad, eating them directly is still better.

The other option is to die, of course.

[The Grand Nudger]

A flawed argument, but it touches on something inescapably true.  No matter what you choose to eat, many things will die on account of that decision.  Countless more..regardless of what you choose, will suffer and live.

(agriculture is and has been the primary locus of death for plants -and- animals the world over, driving a mass extinction)