Convince me to go vegan

[vdofthegoodkind]

You clearly have no interest in becoming a vegan. You are simply trying to find holes in the vegan argument (something you have failed at miserably). If ever you do become interested in becoming a vegan, do some research and come back with specific questions. This whole thread is absolutely ridiculous.

Another person who just asserts I am wrong without providing any arguments as to why. Do you not realize how ignorant that makes you look?

[brimstoneSalad]

As far as I'm aware herbicides are, if not directly deadly, also significantly harmful to some forms of animal life.

This is true of things used in organic farming (such as the fungicides), which are both less able to target the fungus so more dangerous to animals, and which have to be sprayed in larger amounts.
I think there is a reason to avoid poorly regulated organic farming (aside from just the poor yields).

Modern herbicides and fungicides are pretty safe, though. The active ingredients are carefully regulated and are safer in the concentrations sprayed than the inactive ingredients (like the surfactants) that linger. The EPA makes sure that pesticides used in conventional farming have short biological half-lives and don't cause damage to wildlife; I don't think there's reason to believe that's a significant harm. It used to be before stricter regulation, but I don't think it's meaningful now.

That means that there's over 350 million vegans, and somehow there nothing underway to gather funds and gather such data.
Willfull ignorance if you ask me...

Parsimony and Effective altruism: I think such funds would be better dedicated to helping with the main issue right now, which is the obvious problem of animal agriculture, and even palm oil.
While I am interested in these questions, I believe that devoting such funds to research like that would be a selfish pursuit of personal purity since the greater good is not to be done by focusing on such minutiae.

I will continue to mention how sustainable oysters are, my concerns for palm oil, and how current cultivars and methods of rice production may not be very sustainable (we really need GMO rice), as well as the general practical sense of limiting fruits and veggies to reasonable health-promoting portions and focusing on whole grains and bean products and just recommending people buy cheaper plant food options and avoid organic.

But beyond those general common sense outliers, I'm spending my time promoting a reducetarian/vegetarian/vegan message when it comes to diet.

Other non-dietary issues are larger than the smaller variation within that general dietary heuristic, and I think devoting even the time to research of those small differences would be a waste at this point if limited to my actions, and that adding that on to an outreach message would overwhelm people and result in worse outcomes.

We should be talking about grass lawns and home insulation, and for f*ck's sake nuclear power.

Diet offers a huge bang for your buck when you make those general changes that are obvious, but even the research needed to determine a more optimal diet would be a waste and I don't think it would benefit outreach in any way (even to those small percentage who are most concerned with avoiding the most harm).

Once we sort that big issue out and most people are well on their way to reduce and eliminate animal product use, something like this may be the next frontier.
I look forward to that if I ever see it.

Most forms of animal agriculture currently in existence yes. A form of animal agriculture where a good life is guaranteed, the animals are completely pasture-based (aka no pesticides used for bringing them up), followed by a painless death... Not so sure.

Violation of interests is a concern if they're being killed before what would be near the ends of their lives (or at least the point where there was no more happiness to be had from life, as we do with pets and even loved ones in some places).

That said, let's imagine we dealt with that too: animal agriculture is inherently inefficient, and it lowers the carrying capacity of the Earth.
I think human lives are more valuable than an increased domesticated animal population.

Unless people were eating such small amounts that the wasted resources were comparable to other diversions like taking up painting for enjoyment, I think it's hard to argue for meat as harmless recreation. I do think we need to be mindful of the resources we use for recreation and choose and learn to enjoy lower impact activities, but with respect to the options available today this difference isn't very significant unless your recreation is cruising around town for fun in a car (very wasteful & risks human life, and even illegal in many areas) or flying around the world all the time for tourism.

On top of that I'm not even sure that the number WOULD be greater. There hasnt ever been decent research done into the effects of harvesting itself for instance.

There has, actually. A few studies, some using counts. In another they put radio trackers on mice (which you mention later). Not many were killed, and mostly by predators because the cover was removed. In those that count animals, they found that in farms with green space at close intervals that provide shelter for small animals the decreased populations in the fields are correlated to increased populations in those areas and there's not much of a discrepancy if any. That is, predation is an easy problem to solve by providing cover IF we want to solve it.

Harvesting isn't really a significant issue even with predation, but I agree we need to change the way we farm and should look to methods like alley cropping.

However, it's not clear the predation during harvesting doesn't just make predators' lives a little easier that day, and that they wouldn't otherwise have just spent more time looking for and catching some other small animal. You'd have to ask if and by how much it actually increases the population of predators.

I've had vegans cite this study to me as "proof" that it's negligeable, but in my opinion it's exactly the opposite.

When you look at the calories, it is. Remember that the most harmful methods are also yielding the most calories per area of land. Farming vegetables and with trees isn't the same.

Suppose I place a walking rack of mine at a crosswalk while entering a shop on that corner.

I'm going to skip this stuff because I'm a consequentialist; you don't have to explain it to me.
I'm sure your explanation will be useful to others reading the thread, though, so it's still useful to provide it for others.

Don't know about that, given the whole raw-till-four cult and whatnot. I see so many vegans on youtube eating ridiculous amounts of fruits and vegetables, and given their subcount and their comment sections, it's reasonable to assume they influence a lot of their followers into similar diets. Having had that incorporated into the definition of veganism would've stopped shit like that dead in its tracks before it ever came to be.

I think that's a very visible fringe on youtube. I'd hever heard about that nonsense until pretty recently.

I agree it could have avoided that stuff, and that those diets are probably worse than yours, I just don't think they're very prevalent.
The invisible majority eat a more reasonable diet, and they're self selecting: it's hard to imagine most of the raw-til-four cultists keep that stuff up for long.

Quite sure that's mostly in part due to the lack of animal welfare regulations in the current industry.

They're inevitable accidents due to the speed they operate at.

And by the way, which 'misses' are you talking about? Boltguns to the head? Quite sure if you dont immediately die from a boltgun to the head, you're not really gonna feel a lot of pain from the 'miss' either. Headinjuries generally stun victims enough to make the immediate experience of pain pretty much nonexistent as far as I'm aware.

You'd have to check out some of the videos. It's inevitable with slaughter, if you do it enough you'll mess up. It's more common with chickens than with cows due to the sheer number and speed/automation.

So the majority of the stupidity of that argument would be attributed to them again conflating modern day animal agriculture with a form of animal agriculture compatible with reducetarianism, rather than just accepting and rejecting the same reason in two different contexts.

If people reduced enough, then slaughter could be done more carefully, but we'd also need better regulations and ones that were enforced.
I mean, if there were few enough animals killed, you could even get a slaughter cam in place. Police should have body cams, so should slaughter houses for accountability.

This argues for tentative veganism, though.

I said: "My individual choice literally has no effect on how many animals get killed. It is only collectively that this difference in suffering will shine through."
'Literally' these days can be used as both 'literally' and 'figuratively', mine was the latter obviously.

OK, well if it literally does have an effect, that's ethically significant.

Ofcourse you have a statistical impact. But we're talking about 3 billion people that eat meat on a regular basis. Probabilistically my behavior will have no effect on how many animals get killed. Or better yet, on how many animals have to suffer through what animals currently have to suffer through in modern day animal agriculture.

No, it will literally (and I mean literally) have a probabilistic effect.

And this is all that is needed for moral relevance.

If you blindfold yourself and shoot into a crowd, from an ethical perspective you're equally guilty whether you got lucky and didn't hit anybody, or killed a bunch of people.
Probability matters.

Likewise we're equally guilty of killing an animal when we drive even when we get lucky and didn't hit one, and the person who got unlucky and hit one is equally innocent to us.

Because there is no such thing as omniscience in ethics, or certain knowledge of consequences, all ethically relevant judgement is probabilistic.

I'm asking here in this thread for the argument for veganism, which is abstaining from products derived wholly or partly from animals (with a little special sidenote reserved for palmoil). If you use the jainist argument for just accepting that and reject it for going even further, it would again fall into the arbitrary category.

I don't reject going further, although I don't necessarily agree with all of the conclusions of jainism, I know your point. I am a pragmatist, so there are arguments for stopping short in certain areas IF it makes you a better advocate. If eating a bit of meat once a year allowed you to say you're not vegan and thus made you a more effective advocate for radical reducetarianism then you should do that... but no more than what's necessary to achieve that goal. I don't think that eating a bite of meat a year makes somebody a better advocate, though; I think it limits your options, I'm already able to advocate well for reducetarianism by being non-judgmental, and I can help some people think better of vegans and as a vegan I can help other vegans use better methods (veganism has a lot of cultural capital which I don't want to throw away).

A good person is one who works on being better. That means making ethical progress.

A Texan who grew up on steak and went vegetarian is a better person than some Californian who was raised vegan and never felt anything but complacent with respect to doing more.

Moral character is about movement and effort, not just where you happened to start off or end.
Veganism isn't an end point, but it's one of those destinations along the road that you will probably pass if you're working on becoming a better person.
I think it would suit you, and you'd be one of the good ones.

But as made clear repeatedly by you, you dont seem to see veganism as this black and white, dogmatic, cultist thing, like most vegans on youtube and like the actual definition of veganism, so that kinda nullifies the use of this topic

The vegan society definition is pretty pragmatic; it already has those implications, it's just not explicit about it.

[vdofthegoodkind]

This is true of things used in organic farming (such as the fungicides), which are both less able to target the fungus so more dangerous to animals, and which have to be sprayed in larger amounts.
I think there is a reason to avoid poorly regulated organic farming (aside from just the poor yields).

Modern herbicides and fungicides are pretty safe, though. The active ingredients are carefully regulated and are safer in the concentrations sprayed than the inactive ingredients (like the surfactants) that linger. The EPA makes sure that pesticides used in conventional farming have short biological half-lives and don't cause damage to wildlife; I don't think there's reason to believe that's a significant harm. It used to be before stricter regulation, but I don't think it's meaningful now.

Do you have any data that backs this up? I mean a quick glance at the environmental impact of pesticide use on wikipedia and the first few other links on google gives off the impression that you're downplaying the harmfulness of it (granted it's just wikipedia but still...). If you have some decent articles or studies on hand, I'd love to read more into it (but too lazy to go looking for it in depth myself).

Parsimony and Effective altruism: I think such funds would be better dedicated to helping with the main issue right now, which is the obvious problem of animal agriculture, and even palm oil.
While I am interested in these questions, I believe that devoting such funds to research like that would be a selfish pursuit of personal purity since the greater good is not to be done by focusing on such minutiae.

I will continue to mention how sustainable oysters are, my concerns for palm oil, and how current cultivars and methods of rice production may not be very sustainable (we really need GMO rice), as well as the general practical sense of limiting fruits and veggies to reasonable health-promoting portions and focusing on whole grains and bean products and just recommending people buy cheaper plant food options and avoid organic.

But beyond those general common sense outliers, I'm spending my time promoting a reducetarian/vegetarian/vegan message when it comes to diet.

Other non-dietary issues are larger than the smaller variation within that general dietary heuristic, and I think devoting even the time to research of those small differences would be a waste at this point if limited to my actions, and that adding that on to an outreach message would overwhelm people and result in worse outcomes.

We should be talking about grass lawns and home insulation, and for f*ck's sake nuclear power.

Diet offers a huge bang for your buck when you make those general changes that are obvious, but even the research needed to determine a more optimal diet would be a waste and I don't think it would benefit outreach in any way (even to those small percentage who are most concerned with avoiding the most harm).

Once we sort that big issue out and most people are well on their way to reduce and eliminate animal product use, something like this may be the next frontier.
I look forward to that if I ever see it.

Not necessarily. Dedicating funds to turn more (generally unwilling) people vegan (which has a high level of harm reduction per person) would not necessarily yield more rewards than dedicating some funds to turn (generaly completely willing if in line with the definition of veganism) people to an even more optimal diet (which has a lower level of harm reduction per person). Which might I add would be a 1 time expenditure and then you got your heuristically optimal diet "forever", while funding the combat against animal agriculture is an ongoing battle that has nowhere near an ending in sight.

Violation of interests is a concern if they're being killed before what would be near the ends of their lives (or at least the point where there was no more happiness to be had from life, as we do with pets and even loved ones in some places).

What I meant was more animals might be killed/harmed prematurely by pesticides than would be killed by animal agriculture in that form of animal agriculture. And those pesticide deaths/harms would be significantly worse than the painless deaths in benign animal agriculture, thus violating less interests overall.

That said, let's imagine we dealt with that too: animal agriculture is inherently inefficient, and it lowers the carrying capacity of the Earth.
I think human lives are more valuable than an increased domesticated animal population.
Unless people were eating such small amounts that the wasted resources were comparable to other diversions like taking up painting for enjoyment, I think it's hard to argue for meat as harmless recreation. I do think we need to be mindful of the resources we use for recreation and choose and learn to enjoy lower impact activities, but with respect to the options available today this difference isn't very significant unless your recreation is cruising around town for fun in a car (very wasteful & risks human life, and even illegal in many areas) or flying around the world all the time for tourism.

I'm quite sure my suggested diet-optimalisations vs veganism would increase the carrying capacity of earth also to a quite significant extent. So still not a nonarbitrary argument for veganism imo

There has, actually. A few studies, some using counts. In another they put radio trackers on mice (which you mention later). Not many were killed, and mostly by predators because the cover was removed. In those that count animals, they found that in farms with green space at close intervals that provide shelter for small animals the decreased populations in the fields are correlated to increased populations in those areas and there's not much of a discrepancy if any. That is, predation is an easy problem to solve by providing cover IF we want to solve it.

Harvesting isn't really a significant issue even with predation, but I agree we need to change the way we farm and should look to methods like alley cropping.

However, it's not clear the predation during harvesting doesn't just make predators' lives a little easier that day, and that they wouldn't otherwise have just spent more time looking for and catching some other small animal. You'd have to ask if and by how much it actually increases the population of predators.

I've actually looked into this, and I stand by my statement. Keyword to note is 'decent'.

When you look at the calories, it is. Remember that the most harmful methods are also yielding the most calories per area of land. Farming vegetables and with trees isn't the same.

I was looking at the calories.

I think that's a very visible fringe on youtube. I'd hever heard about that nonsense until pretty recently.

I agree it could have avoided that stuff, and that those diets are probably worse than yours, I just don't think they're very prevalent.
The invisible majority eat a more reasonable diet, and they're self selecting: it's hard to imagine most of the raw-til-four cultists keep that stuff up for long.

Dont know about it being "fringe" within the (online) vegan community. We're talking about the biggest vegan youtube channels here that promote that kind of diet. Freelee, sorsha, vegan gains once upon a time, etc. Dont think there exist bigger vegan youtubers than them.

They're inevitable accidents due to the speed they operate at.

I know, hence 'more regulation'.

You'd have to check out some of the videos. It's inevitable with slaughter, if you do it enough you'll mess up. It's more common with chickens than with cows due to the sheer number and speed/automation.

Why would I check out the videos when I can have you write up a cliff-noted description?

If people reduced enough, then slaughter could be done more carefully, but we'd also need better regulations and ones that were enforced.
I mean, if there were few enough animals killed, you could even get a slaughter cam in place. Police should have body cams, so should slaughter houses for accountability.

I can agree with that.

This argues for tentative veganism, though.


OK, well if it literally does have an effect, that's ethically significant.

No, it will literally (and I mean literally) have a probabilistic effect.

And this is all that is needed for moral relevance.

If you blindfold yourself and shoot into a crowd, from an ethical perspective you're equally guilty whether you got lucky and didn't hit anybody, or killed a bunch of people.
Probability matters.

Likewise we're equally guilty of killing an animal when we drive even when we get lucky and didn't hit one, and the person who got unlucky and hit one is equally innocent to us.

Because there is no such thing as omniscience in ethics, or certain knowledge of consequences, all ethically relevant judgement is probabilistic.

The extent to which this is significant (given the probabilities involved) puts you in the 'saint' category imo. And if you wanna be a saint, you should go way beyond mere veganism as I stated previously. Which again makes this an arbitrary argument for tentative veganism itself.

I don't reject going further, although I don't necessarily agree with all of the conclusions of jainism, I know your point. I am a pragmatist, so there are arguments for stopping short in certain areas IF it makes you a better advocate. If eating a bit of meat once a year allowed you to say you're not vegan and thus made you a more effective advocate for radical reducetarianism then you should do that... but no more than what's necessary to achieve that goal. I don't think that eating a bite of meat a year makes somebody a better advocate, though; I think it limits your options, I'm already able to advocate well for reducetarianism by being non-judgmental, and I can help some people think better of vegans and as a vegan I can help other vegans use better methods (veganism has a lot of cultural capital which I don't want to throw away).

I dont really understand where youre going with this. It's not because of advocacy effectiveness that Im rejecting the currently presented arguments for veganism.

A good person is one who works on being better. That means making ethical progress.

A Texan who grew up on steak and went vegetarian is a better person than some Californian who was raised vegan and never felt anything but complacent with respect to doing more.

Moral character is about movement and effort, not just where you happened to start off or end.

Those are just assertions.

Veganism isn't an end point, but it's one of those destinations along the road that you will probably pass if you're working on becoming a better person.
I think it would suit you, and you'd be one of the good ones.

I think you have an incorrect impression of me as a person.

The vegan society definition is pretty pragmatic; it already has those implications, it's just not explicit about it.

Disagree. Without the explicitness, and given the widespread abuse of that definition by vegans in practice it's led to, moral integrity should compell the vegan society to update their definition to something along the lines of: "in dietary terms it denotes the practice of abstaining from products that cause more suffering to sentient beings than equally easily accessible and nutritionally equivalent alternatives do".
That is of course IF it truly has "excluding cruelty and exploitation as far as is possible and practicable" at the heart of its message and not "abstaining from animal products" allthewhile using the former as a steel-man to hide behind when criticized.

[brimstoneSalad]

Do you have any data that backs this up? I mean a quick glance at the environmental impact of pesticide use on wikipedia and the first few other links on google gives off the impression that you're downplaying the harmfulness of it (granted it's just wikipedia but still...). If you have some decent articles or studies on hand, I'd love to read more into it (but too lazy to go looking for it in depth myself).

Fear mongering is very popular, but the fact is that pesticide use has diminished and yields are higher than ever due to good management.
The EPA has also banned or restricted harmful pesticides when there's evidence of harm.

That's one of the most biased and fear-mongering Wikipedia articles I've read, but it ultimately gets a few points right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_pesticides

Each pesticide or pesticide class comes with a specific set of environmental concerns. Such undesirable effects have led many pesticides to be banned, while regulations have limited and/or reduced the use of others. Over time, pesticides have generally become less persistent and more species-specific, reducing their environmental footprint. In addition the amounts of pesticides applied per hectare have declined, in some cases by 99%. However, the global spread of pesticide use, including the use of older/obsolete pesticides that have been banned in some jurisdictions, has increased overall.[4]

Global pesticide use may be a greater concern. I think the dangers of organic farming are more pressing right now.

The point was only that pesticide use isn't necessarily a great indication of harm, there are still many variables in how they are used.

Not necessarily. Dedicating funds to turn more (generally unwilling) people vegan

Most of it is teaching people HOW to be vegan. There's already a significant portion of the population who are willing.

would not necessarily yield more rewards than dedicating some funds to turn (generaly completely willing if in line with the definition of veganism) people to an even more optimal diet (which has a lower level of harm reduction per person).

If you're talking about focusing on something like 1% of the population -- who aren't exactly signed up to a mailing list -- I don't think so.

In terms of changing the message: no, I don't agree more complexity would be useful. That's why I agree that spreading a vegetarian and reducetarian message can be good too.

Now is not the time to focus on more than vegan. Maybe once ten percent of the population is, we can get to the "next level".

I'm quite sure my suggested diet-optimalisations vs veganism would increase the carrying capacity of earth also to a quite significant extent. So still not a nonarbitrary argument for veganism imo

Your diet is specifically recommending consumption of a certain amount of a product known to be inefficient.

Veganism isn't doing that.

Ostrovegan may be a good argument, but there is no reason to advocate for consumption of a certain amount of beef, for instance.

I've actually looked into this, and I stand by my statement. Keyword to note is 'decent'.

Then that would mean we have no data and should reserve judgement on deaths from plant agriculture specifically, not that we should default to some assumption that all agriculture is equal. We do know there are direct deaths from animal agriculture. If we have no data on plant agriculture, then that's all that we can count.

I was looking at the calories.

Can you show me the data you're talking about?

Dont know about it being "fringe" within the (online) vegan community. We're talking about the biggest vegan youtube channels here that promote that kind of diet. Freelee, sorsha, vegan gains once upon a time, etc. Dont think there exist bigger vegan youtubers than them.

And I had no idea who those people were. I don't think most vegans know who they are.

Vegan Gains is better now. Freelee is old news.
I don't know what Sorsha advocates.

Up and coming advocates are moving away from the high carb nonsense.

Why would I check out the videos when I can have you write up a cliff-noted description?

A picture is worth a thousand words. You can spend five minutes and see the mechanisms and how they mess up, or I could spend an hour explaining it and you could spend ten minutes reading what I wrote. I think you watching a couple videos is win-win and saves everybody time.

The extent to which this is significant (given the probabilities involved) puts you in the 'saint' category imo. And if you wanna be a saint, you should go way beyond mere veganism as I stated previously. Which again makes this an arbitrary argument for tentative veganism itself.

I already agreed that we should do more as we can.
And I said veganism isn't any kind of end point; it's a point along the road which you should reach (and pass) if you're working on becoming a better person.

None of that is an argument against going vegan.

I dont really understand where youre going with this. It's not because of advocacy effectiveness that Im rejecting the currently presented arguments for veganism.

Why do you reject it? I think I've addressed your concerns.

Veganism is only an arbitrary stopping point IF you consider it a stopping point.

A good person is one who works on being better. That means making ethical progress.

A Texan who grew up on steak and went vegetarian is a better person than some Californian who was raised vegan and never felt anything but complacent with respect to doing more.

Moral character is about movement and effort, not just where you happened to start off or end.

Those are just assertions.

Do you disagree with what I said?
If so, why?

If moral character is about achieving an arbitrary stopping point, then it has no meaning.
Goodness of character is a force, not an arbitrary position. That's the only way character judgement is coherent.

I think you have an incorrect impression of me as a person.

How so?
You'd advocate 30 bananas a day?

Disagree. Without the explicitness, and given the widespread abuse of that definition by vegans in practice it's led to, moral integrity should compell the vegan society to update their definition to something along the lines of: "in dietary terms it denotes the practice of abstaining from products that cause more suffering to sentient beings than equally easily accessible and nutritionally equivalent alternatives do".
That is of course IF it truly has "excluding cruelty and exploitation as far as is possible and practicable" at the heart of its message and not "abstaining from animal products" allthewhile using the former as a steel-man to hide behind when criticized.

Maybe they should. I don't think abuses are as prevalent as you think they are though. I think you're getting the wrong impression from the internet from a very vocal minority, and particularly from youtube.

It's not an easy thing for them to update their definition, such a change would come with its own problems, and I think we'd need good evidence on the efficacy of a new definition.

I think it's just easier and more effective to add new terms, like sustainatarian etc. which spreads the information better, gets people thinking more, and gives them more choices so they can employ a stepwise approach to moral progress. People want to collect labels like scout badges, and an all-encompassing system (I would argue) is counterproductive because it makes that kind of progress too continuous and works against human psychology.

While vegan does implicitly include that, I would even argue that it perhaps should not, and should limit itself to standards for direct harm to make the definition more clear and delineate one step among many that people should take toward a more ethical life... now the margins are pretty fuzzy.

I'm not sure on that, though, so I'm inclined to leave it alone for the time being until we have a lot more evidence.

[vdofthegoodkind]

Fear mongering is very popular, but the fact is that pesticide use has diminished and yields are higher than ever due to good management.
The EPA has also banned or restricted harmful pesticides when there's evidence of harm.

That's one of the most biased and fear-mongering Wikipedia articles I've read, but it ultimately gets a few points right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_pesticides

Global pesticide use may be a greater concern. I think the dangers of organic farming are more pressing right now.

The point was only that pesticide use isn't necessarily a great indication of harm, there are still many variables in how they are used.

I ask again, do you have some good data on hand of what you're claiming? (or can you refer me to a thread on this forum that contains this data?)

Most of it is teaching people HOW to be vegan. There's already a significant portion of the population who are willing.

Fair enough.

If you're talking about focusing on something like 1% of the population -- who aren't exactly signed up to a mailing list -- I don't think so.
In terms of changing the message: no, I don't agree more complexity would be useful. That's why I agree that spreading a vegetarian and reducetarian message can be good too.

Now is not the time to focus on more than vegan. Maybe once ten percent of the population is, we can get to the "next level".

I was obviously speaking hypothetically/theoretically. The majority of vegans I've come across revert to carnist-type logic when addressing the issue of animal deaths in other context than animal agriculture. In real life the vegan society adjusting their definition would lead to vegan civil war probably

Your diet is specifically recommending consumption of a certain amount of a product known to be inefficient.
Veganism isn't doing that.
Ostrovegan may be a good argument, but there is no reason to advocate for consumption of a certain amount of beef, for instance.

Here with "my suggested diet-optimalisations" I was actually referring to the maximally land-efficient plant-based type diet. Not a reductarian diet.

Then that would mean we have no data and should reserve judgement on deaths from plant agriculture specifically, not that we should default to some assumption that all agriculture is equal. We do know there are direct deaths from animal agriculture. If we have no data on plant agriculture, then that's all that we can count.

That I said those studies refuting harm had severe methodological flaws does not imply we have no data to assume plant agriculture kills shitloads of animals.

Can you show me the data you're talking about?

Quite sure it was the exact same data that you were looking at, given that you named that mice-radiocollar study and the studies with the population density counts.

And I had no idea who those people were. I don't think most vegans know who they are.

Vegan Gains is better now. Freelee is old news.
I don't know what Sorsha advocates.

Up and coming advocates are moving away from the high carb nonsense.

Fair enough.

A picture is worth a thousand words. You can spend five minutes and see the mechanisms and how they mess up, or I could spend an hour explaining it and you could spend ten minutes reading what I wrote. I think you watching a couple videos is win-win and saves everybody time.

A cliff notes description would probably be less than 30 words combined, something of the form "sometimes they do x and then y happens, which causes the animal suffering, sometimes they do z and then y happens which causes the animal suffering", but fair enough...

I already agreed that we should do more as we can.
And I said veganism isn't any kind of end point; it's a point along the road which you should reach (and pass) if you're working on becoming a better person.

I know you said that, but that doesnt change the fact that I myself am already aware of the other possibilities for improvement. For me to just stop at veganism is literally arbitrary as fuck.

None of that is an argument against going vegan.

Never claimed it was. Just said it's an argument against the argument FOR veganism.

Why do you reject it? I think I've addressed your concerns.

Veganism is only an arbitrary stopping point IF you consider it a stopping point.

See above.

Do you disagree with what I said?
If so, why?

No I don't disagree, but nor do I agree. It's just something you personally seem to believe, and apparently have no problem baldly asserting as a truth claim.

If moral character is about achieving an arbitrary stopping point, then it has no meaning.
Goodness of character is a force, not an arbitrary position. That's the only way character judgement is coherent.

More assertions.

How so?
You'd advocate 30 bananas a day?

That wasn't me referring to the "and you'd be one of the good ones". That was me referring to "I think it would suit you". With the former I indeed agree. IF I was a vegan, ofcourse I would be one of the good ones, because I'm about as rational and intellectually honest as they come. Funny enough I've actually been vegan for over 6 months at one point. (for arbitrary reasons fyi)

As for the "how so?". Among other things because I'm not the type of person that holds self-improvement as a personal value, nor am I someone who seeks to be as ethical as they can possibly be.

Maybe they should. I don't think abuses are as prevalent as you think they are though. I think you're getting the wrong impression from the internet from a very vocal minority, and particularly from youtube.

Am I or are you? Even in this topic there are randomers calling me an idiot and providing no arguments whatsoever. Granted I havent met that many vegans in my life, but all vegetarians I have met (and those are quite plentyful) hold quite similar dogmatic views as the vegans on the internet I've come across.
Where do you get your data that the majority of vegans are like you, and not like the ones I see? As far as my life experience goes, pretty much 98% of ALL people are complete illogical, idiotic dogmatists in one way or another, and that's a universal truth for pretty much any group of people I've come across so far. Don't see why that statistic would be any different in the vegan community. A community that at its base has quite "dogmatic" roots at that...

It's not an easy thing for them to update their definition, such a change would come with its own problems, and I think we'd need good evidence on the efficacy of a new definition.

I think it's just easier and more effective to add new terms, like sustainatarian etc. which spreads the information better, gets people thinking more, and gives them more choices so they can employ a stepwise approach to moral progress. People want to collect labels like scout badges, and an all-encompassing system (I would argue) is counterproductive because it makes that kind of progress too continuous and works against human psychology.

While vegan does implicitly include that, I would even argue that it perhaps should not, and should limit itself to standards for direct harm to make the definition more clear and delineate one step among many that people should take toward a more ethical life... now the margins are pretty fuzzy.

I'm not sure on that, though, so I'm inclined to leave it alone for the time being until we have a lot more evidence.

Moral integrity only comes into play when hard choices need to be made... If it was an easy choice, it wouldn't touch on the subject of moral integrity

[brimstoneSalad]

I ask again, do you have some good data on hand of what you're claiming? (or can you refer me to a thread on this forum that contains this data?)

I'd need to dig through the EPA literature for quotes on whatever you have issues with specifically. That would take some time.

Here's an overview:
https://www.epa.gov/endangered-species/assessing-pesticides-under-endangered-species-act

When registering a pesticide or reassessing the potential ecological risks from use of a currently registered pesticide, EPA evaluates extensive environmental fate and toxicity data to determine how a pesticide will move through and break down in the environment and whether potential exposure to the pesticide will result in adverse effects to wildlife and vegetation. We routinely assess risks to birds, fish, invertebrates, mammals and plants to determine whether a pesticide may be licensed for use in the United States.
EPA’s pesticide risk assessment and regulatory processes ensure that protections are in place for all populations of non-target species.

They explain their grading and what it means later on in the document.

I was obviously speaking hypothetically/theoretically. The majority of vegans I've come across revert to carnist-type logic when addressing the issue of animal deaths in other context than animal agriculture. In real life the vegan society adjusting their definition would lead to vegan civil war probably

That may be true.

When it comes to public outreach, we want to push just as hard to get maximal movement, but not hard enough to start any wars and impeded progress.
IMO the way slavery was ended in the U.S. was probably not the best way to go about it.

Here with "my suggested diet-optimalisations" I was actually referring to the maximally land-efficient plant-based type diet. Not a reductarian diet.

That's fine, but really we just don't have good data on that.
I'm not against this, but considering it would probably be too complex for public outreach I can't justify doing all of that research for my personal consumption and the few dozen people who might follow suit.
Also, it could change from year to year, as farming methods and cultivars are improved for different crops.

Then that would mean we have no data and should reserve judgement on deaths from plant agriculture specifically, not that we should default to some assumption that all agriculture is equal. We do know there are direct deaths from animal agriculture. If we have no data on plant agriculture, then that's all that we can count.

That I said those studies refuting harm had severe methodological flaws does not imply we have no data to assume plant agriculture kills shitloads of animals.

What data? Can you give me credible numbers on how many animals are killed for which crops?

And can you compare those to animal farming methods?

Quite sure it was the exact same data that you were looking at, given that you named that mice-radiocollar study and the studies with the population density counts.

There have been some caloric breakdowns based on those rough numbers:
http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc

Fair enough.

I would also add that the fact vegan gains quit high carb shows it's not very sustainable for most people.
It's probably a fad that will burn out.

A cliff notes description would probably be less than 30 words combined, something of the form "sometimes they do x and then y happens, which causes the animal suffering, sometimes they do z and then y happens which causes the animal suffering", but fair enough...

Chickens are hung on a conveyor belt, sometimes the machines aren't aligned perfectly because chickens are not cogs cast in a precision mold. No animal is. Misses will happen.
Likewise, human error can literally miss and blast off half a cow's face with a captive bolt gun.

I was looking for an image, but I don't want to look through this stuff...
here's one of a horse with a close brush with some kind of painless slaughter (not sure the type) if you want to see:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qJKAW1OpeZw/S8KUC5xdJzI/AAAAAAAAAwo/APwLJS9x2XE/s1600/EyelessHorse.jpg

I know you said that, but that doesnt change the fact that I myself am already aware of the other possibilities for improvement. For me to just stop at veganism is literally arbitrary as fuck.

I'm not saying you should stop at veganism.
We have enough data to go a little further than that personally, but it doesn't go that much further. Limiting fruits and veg and avoiding palm oil and focusing on whole grain and bean products. We start running into a lot of unknowns after that, at which point we should probably focus our efforts on other things.

Do you disagree with what I said?
If so, why?

No I don't disagree, but nor do I agree. It's just something you personally seem to believe, and apparently have no problem baldly asserting as a truth claim.

If moral character is about achieving an arbitrary stopping point, then it has no meaning.
Goodness of character is a force, not an arbitrary position. That's the only way character judgement is coherent.

More assertions.

These are not assertions, they are arguments for a semantically useful concept of what it means to be a good person, and what good motivations yield.

As for the "how so?". Among other things because I'm not the type of person that holds self-improvement as a personal value, nor am I someone who seeks to be as ethical as they can possibly be.

If you're the kind of person who only wants to be better than average, you've probably already achieved that.
If you don't care about being a better person, there's not much to argue.

Maybe in a couple years you'll revisit this and consider taking another step.

Am I or are you? Even in this topic there are randomers calling me an idiot and providing no arguments whatsoever. Granted I havent met that many vegans in my life, but all vegetarians I have met (and those are quite plentyful) hold quite similar dogmatic views as the vegans on the internet I've come across.

I'm talking about the high carbers. Most vegans have more sustainable diets just by accident of personal preference. Grain products and mock meats are popular, and incidentally also both sustainable as bean and grain products and useful for outreach through food evangelism (in the way 30 BAD isn't).

I don't doubt that most people are pretty dogmatic. You're familiar with my run-ins with Ask Yourself and his cult followers.

Don't see why that statistic would be any different in the vegan community. A community that at its base has quite "dogmatic" roots at that...

There is a bias for intelligence and questioning the status quo in vegans and vegetarians (unfortunately, we seem to be over represented by political radicals too which isn't always appealing to the mainstream).
Despite the tribalism, you might be surprised to find that a lot of vegans don't care about hunting, for example.

I'm not saying that bias is large enough to make it a majority, but it's more than average. You won't find that much variation and flexibility among evangelicals, for instance.

Moral integrity only comes into play when hard choices need to be made... If it was an easy choice, it wouldn't touch on the subject of moral integrity

I mean 'easy' in terms of parsimony. Less resource use so we can spend time on other things, path of least resistance, not "easy" in terms of "I'm lazy".

I think it's just easier and more effective to add new terms, like sustainatarian etc. which spreads the information better, gets people thinking more, and gives them more choices so they can employ a stepwise approach to moral progress.

[vdofthegoodkind]

I'll reply to your post some time later today, but I had one question. Given you're a consequentialist in terms of ethics you said, suppose a hypothetical world where we get our population under control and have a technological solution for the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Would you still object to a benign form of animal agriculture, or not?

I ask because in a scenario like that, land and resources not used for this benign type of animal agriculture will probably be left mostly unused given a controlled population, and thus freeing up more resources for more wildlife to inhabit those areas.
And let's face it, in terms of interests being met in the wild, a benign form of animal agriculture might actually have a leg up on that... (given ready access to food&water, no stress induced by constant fear of predation, no painfull death of being eaten alive, etc)

[brimstoneSalad]

I'll reply to your post some time later today, but I had one question. Given you're a consequentialist in terms of ethics you said, suppose a hypothetical world where we get our population under control and have a technological solution for the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Would you still object to a benign form of animal agriculture, or not?

If it's better than the alternative that's fine.

I ask because in a scenario like that, land and resources not used for this benign type of animal agriculture will probably be left mostly unused given a controlled population, and thus freeing up more resources for more wildlife to inhabit those areas.
And let's face it, in terms of interests being met in the wild, a benign form of animal agriculture might actually have a leg up on that... (given ready access to food&water, no stress induced by constant fear of predation, no painfull death of being eaten alive, etc)

I think people overestimate the benefits of captivity.
Stress from predation is of minimal concern in terms of well being. Animals seem pretty resilient to natural stressors they have evolved to endure (unlike confinement and boredom). Most large fauna don't die from predation today (take deer as an example).

Most suffering and death in the wild comes from very small animals that we don't farm anyway, and insects which I believe are barely sentient and probably not capable of suffering in the way we understand it.

It is conceivable that you could create a farm that was better than living as a wild animal, but wild animals (at least those of any significant size) seem to have it pretty good by comparison even to the nicest modern farms, and life span is longer.

It would make more sense to re-green those areas and then license hunters to kill only sick or wounded animals who would likely die a slow death from starvation thus improving welfare of wild animals by killing quickly those who would otherwise endure the most suffering.
I do not regard mercy killing as unethical, and if you eat the meat that would be fine too.

I think it's important to account for a wide margin of error to be sure that our actions are good, particularly when we have a bias in favor of performing those actions.
But I think such a system would do just that, and could probably meet the needs for an extreme reducetarian population.

[vdofthegoodkind]

I'd need to dig through the EPA literature for quotes on whatever you have issues with specifically. That would take some time.

Here's an overview:
https://www.epa.gov/endangered-species/assessing-pesticides-under-endangered-species-act

When registering a pesticide or reassessing the potential ecological risks from use of a currently registered pesticide, EPA evaluates extensive environmental fate and toxicity data to determine how a pesticide will move through and break down in the environment and whether potential exposure to the pesticide will result in adverse effects to wildlife and vegetation. We routinely assess risks to birds, fish, invertebrates, mammals and plants to determine whether a pesticide may be licensed for use in the United States.
EPA’s pesticide risk assessment and regulatory processes ensure that protections are in place for all populations of non-target species.

They explain their grading and what it means later on in the document.

Ill read it later, but will mention immediately that not only am I extremely weary of an organization currently led by a climate change denier, but another thing that I'm wondering about is whether or not all the food imported into the US was grown adhering to those pesticide standards.

That may be true.

When it comes to public outreach, we want to push just as hard to get maximal movement, but not hard enough to start any wars and impeded progress.
IMO the way slavery was ended in the U.S. was probably not the best way to go about it.

Overwhelmingly likely is true

That's fine, but really we just don't have good data on that.
I'm not against this, but considering it would probably be too complex for public outreach I can't justify doing all of that research for my personal consumption and the few dozen people who might follow suit.
Also, it could change from year to year, as farming methods and cultivars are improved for different crops.

Again, I was coming from the hypothetical standpoint that all vegans claim to want to exclude cruelty as far as is possible and practicable. Of course in real life the majority wouldn't follow suit, that was the whole point

What data? Can you give me credible numbers on how many animals are killed for which crops?

And can you compare those to animal farming methods?

Target species of pesticides for instance. Data on that is quite widely available. And again, it's a matter of comparing them to a hypothetical benign form of animal agriculture, not current modern day animal agriculture.

There have been some caloric breakdowns based on those rough numbers:
http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc

I highly suggest you check the data those graphs are based on for yourself, because it's total horseshit.

I would also add that the fact vegan gains quit high carb shows it's not very sustainable for most people.
It's probably a fad that will burn out.

I know, hence the 'once upon a time qualifier'.

Chickens are hung on a conveyor belt, sometimes the machines aren't aligned perfectly because chickens are not cogs cast in a precision mold. No animal is. Misses will happen.
Likewise, human error can literally miss and blast off half a cow's face with a captive bolt gun.

I was looking for an image, but I don't want to look through this stuff...
here's one of a horse with a close brush with some kind of painless slaughter (not sure the type) if you want to see:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qJKAW1OpeZw/S8KUC5xdJzI/AAAAAAAAAwo/APwLJS9x2XE/s1600/EyelessHorse.jpg

If you get a blow like that to the face you're not gonna be feeling a lot of pain. It's literally beyond idiotic that a second attempt wasn't made when the horse was undoubtedly knocked out after the first attempt, and the horse was put back in a barn for a photo-op -_-
As for the chickens, shitloads of new regulations would need to be put in place in that industry. Totally agree.

I'm not saying you should stop at veganism.
We have enough data to go a little further than that personally, but it doesn't go that much further. Limiting fruits and veg and avoiding palm oil and focusing on whole grain and bean products. We start running into a lot of unknowns after that, at which point we should probably focus our efforts on other things.

I know, but I'm asking for an argument for just veganism here.

These are not assertions, they are arguments for a semantically useful concept of what it means to be a good person, and what good motivations yield.

Without you first specifying they were arguments for a semantically useful concept of what it means to be a good person, they were just a bunch of bald assertions.
Aside from that, even adding the word "useful" in there is an assertion.

If you're the kind of person who only wants to be better than average, you've probably already achieved that.
If you don't care about being a better person, there's not much to argue.

Maybe in a couple years you'll revisit this and consider taking another step.

Indeed not that much to argue.

I'm talking about the high carbers. Most vegans have more sustainable diets just by accident of personal preference. Grain products and mock meats are popular, and incidentally also both sustainable as bean and grain products and useful for outreach through food evangelism (in the way 30 BAD isn't).

I don't doubt that most people are pretty dogmatic. You're familiar with my run-ins with Ask Yourself and his cult followers.

Fair enough

There is a bias for intelligence and questioning the status quo in vegans and vegetarians (unfortunately, we seem to be over represented by political radicals too which isn't always appealing to the mainstream).

Dont necessarily agree with that, I'd need to see data first. I could easily imagine that the numbers are actually the opposite when it comes to intelligence, given the increased potential for swaying less intelligent people with emotional arguments.

Despite the tribalism, you might be surprised to find that a lot of vegans don't care about hunting, for example.

Guess our encounters with vegans so far are tremendously different, because you're about the first one I've come across IN YEARS to claim to not care about hunting. (although you didnt explicitly claim to hold that position yourself)

I'm not saying that bias is large enough to make it a majority, but it's more than average. You won't find that much variation and flexibility among evangelicals, for instance.

Having a leg up on evangelicals Im willing to grant you on faith (no pun intended )

I mean 'easy' in terms of parsimony. Less resource use so we can spend time on other things, path of least resistance, not "easy" in terms of "I'm lazy".

Fair enough.

[brimstoneSalad]

Ill read it later, but will mention immediately that not only am I extremely weary of an organization currently led by a climate change denier, but another thing that I'm wondering about is whether or not all the food imported into the US was grown adhering to those pesticide standards.

A temporary setback, not terribly relevant yet (if it lasted a long time, standards could be considerably out of date).
Imported food: that's a good question. It probably isn't, but most imports also come from large companies that use best practices anyway, and there are at least tolerance levels that are regulated:
https://www.epa.gov/safepestcontrol/food-and-pesticides

In setting the tolerance, EPA must make a safety finding that the pesticide can be used with "reasonable certainty of no harm." To make this finding, EPA considers the toxicity of the pesticide and its breakdown products, how much of the pesticide is applied and how often, and how much of the pesticide (i.e., the residue) remains in or on food by the time it is marketed. EPA ensures that the tolerance selected will be safe. The tolerance applies to food grown in the U.S. and imported food.

So, dousing them with a large amount or using banned pesticides would probably be counterproductive.

Target species of pesticides for instance. Data on that is quite widely available. And again, it's a matter of comparing them to a hypothetical benign form of animal agriculture, not current modern day animal agriculture.

Can you provide some references? I can try to make a comparison for crops.

Also: you realize this does speak in favor of at least tentative veganism over any animal product consumption, right?

I highly suggest you check the data those graphs are based on for yourself, because it's total horseshit.

It doesn't include target species deaths for pest control. I don't think that data is as easily come by.

If you get a blow like that to the face you're not gonna be feeling a lot of pain.

You're going to be in a panic, and terrified. There's no guarantee something like that knocks you out, and if it does, not necessarily for more than a few seconds.
Trauma is complicated.

I know, but I'm asking for an argument for just veganism here.

That's like asking for an argument to just not rape women with penetration that doesn't also apply to a lesser degree to molesting them without penetration.
Any difference is a gradient of pragmatism.

There may be an argument for a stopping point on pragmatic grounds, but expecting it to fall exactly on the vegan heuristic is very unlikely.

I'm arguing that people should go vegan, and probably do a bit more than that, but that those arguments are going to be sequential and the fact that I'm using veganism at all as a step is mainly due to the cultural capital.

If you want arguments *just* for veganism, you'd have to look to deontologists. I don't condone those arguments, they're fraught with logical problems.

Without you first specifying they were arguments for a semantically useful concept of what it means to be a good person, they were just a bunch of bald assertions.
Aside from that, even adding the word "useful" in there is an assertion.

OK, well can you please engage with the arguments in good faith, to the extent they can be engaged with given whatever assumptions are necessary to do so?

Dont necessarily agree with that, I'd need to see data first. I could easily imagine that the numbers are actually the opposite when it comes to intelligence, given the increased potential for swaying less intelligent people with emotional arguments.

I think there are correlations with education, and also people "thinking outside the box" and questioning cultural norms.

I thought this was common knowledge.
Here are a couple links I don't have time to read again now (I usually read everything I link to) but I think I've read in the past:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6180753.stm
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-vegetarians-are-more-intelligent-meat-eaters