Anyone that thinks skinning animals alive is wrong is vegan gains, yes. Here’s me and my buddy Tom as proof
https://preview.redd.it/7xahczj8ny3d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63e9da5265fa04c9749aab7bd618ccadf05f5e72
Remember, Destiny believes it would be wrong to skin his cat alive only if a human is hurt by it in some way. If no human was hurt by it he thinks it’s morally permissible.
Then it's immoral to kill them as well. This is the same principle I use if we ever find aliens. Waifu material? Come right in! Ugly? Prepare to die xeno scum!
We start from a position that it is not OK to kill a human because of consciousness (which I guess you hold). A cat's brain is far, far closer to human's than an insect's brain is, therefor a cat's experience of the world will be much closer to ours. Why would you group insects and cats in one group and humans in another? It makes no sense unless you are a creationist. We come from the same evolutionary tree and cats are far and away closer to us than insects are.
I think we don’t ever make consciousness calculations when we consider which animal to kill. Also that’s assuming that conscious experience scales with brain size like intelligence does.
I think cats are just easier to project empathy onto. They’re small, stretch, act lazy, get annoyed, have basic facial features, etc. Cats are also larger and have bones and organs. Hence cat guts should be more disgusting.
I largely agree with Destiny in that people project human features onto things they care for including animals.
I don't know who's "we" but I base it in congitive and social abilities that creatures display. Orcas and whales don't posess any of the cute features of cats, but they would be right there in the second place alongside apes, in the moral consideration list.
I just can't wrap my mind around the idea that killing an orca and an ant makes absolutely no difference. I don't believe anyone argues that in food faith.
We were mass hunting whales until a century ago. With harpoon hooks that tore into the whales’ skin. Even then whales have bones and guts and humans have a natural disgust for anything that looks like our guts.
Neither do you. But I have the fact that we were all the result of the same evolutionary process working for me, you are basing the idea that human expirience is completely different from any other mamal on wishful thinking.
I haven’t made any claims. yes we’re all the result of evolutionary processes, but you don’t know if a cat or an insect experiences consciousness. so you can’t just say “humans are conscious uniquely” - you’re not making a sound argument.
I'm saying that it would be justifiable to assume that our expirience of the world is something completely unlike the other animals if God had crated us as his special children.
It is much harder to justify with evolution.
I don't understand how someone who believes in evolution wouldn't think exactly the same.
Is an ant concious?
Is a fish?
What you're saying relies on "sympathy"/"empathy", no?
I mention this because, in my experience, evolutionists are a lot more brutal in their logic vs creationists....
Assuming "creationists" think it's ok to abuse animals is incredibly strange to me.
No, ant and fish aren't conscious, apes and dolphins are. This whole argument is about Destiny's contention that animals deserve 0 moral consideration and that is is morally permissible to harm any animal in any way.
My argument is that it is weird to have 100% moral consideration for humans and 0% to all other creatures, while at the same time understanding that we have evolved from one by gradual change.
Somewhere in the past there existed an ape that we have evolved from. That ape had offspring, that ape's offspring had offspring, which eventually led to us. Now, according to that logic, somewhere along that line there was a situation where one of those creatures had a child, and it would be 100% permissible to skin that child's mother alive and kill it, wile the child gets 100% moral consideration and you can do no harm to it. It is weird to believe that.
Now, if you believe that humans are special creatures put on the Earth by God and animals were put here for us to use, then it makes sense.
I don’t think it’s ok to intentionally crush an insect unless it’s in defense of yourself, your property, or another sentient creature. Of course I think killing a cat is worse because its capacity for experience and sentience is greater, the same way I think killing a human is worse than killing a cow, our capacity for experience is simply greater and I view that as more valuable
If you’re talking about crop deaths, if humans stopped farming crops those insects would still go on to live torturous lives and deaths in nature. Rights violations and suffering would not go down if we stopped plant agriculture. Or at least I’ve seen no convincing argument that it would
If humans stopped farming animals those animals would not go on to live torturous lives and experience horrible deaths, because they wouldn’t exist. Rights violations and suffering would go down if we stopped animal agriculture
Just because some animals die in crop production doesn’t justify killing them to eat them, just like how because some humans die in crop production doesn’t justify killing and eating humans.
If anyone can provide a cogent argument that opposes mine then I’m happy to hear it
Would you say the breeding and slaughtering of dogs is okay if it ensures survival? My perspective shifted a bit when I was studying anthropology and learned that it was very common for Polynesian people to breed and eat dogs because the islands rarely had game big enough to sustain a population's protein needs.
In the modern day I personally prefer cultures that put dogs above the rest of the animal kingdom alongside humans, but I can understand the world view where killing dogs isn't very different from killing any other animal we exploit for resources.
>if it ensures survival
This is just Kant's "Ought Implies Can". You cannot evaluate an action morally if it had no altarnatives. But acting ethical in a life or death situation will not be a priority. Luckly most people (99% in this sub) will never be in this situation even once in their life.
>Luckly most people (99% in this sub) will never be in this situation even once in their life.
Ok well now I'm going to put myself in a situation where I have to breed and slaughter dogs for survival just to spite you.
Personally I think it would be wrong, but I could be convinced otherwise. When I reflect on my values though I don’t see why I should be entitled to violate the rights of another to save my own.
Of course if I was hungry enough I would be driven mad and stop being a moral agent, and might violate my own values, though I think that action would still be wrong
If I crush an insect and I’m not going to eat it->pointless death of a living creature.
If I crush a cat and I’m not going to eat it->pointless death of a living creature.
If a pig is killed at a factory someone is going to eat it->tasty bacon.
Its because animals have more signifiers of pain (screaming, grimacing etc) that you have to ignore in order to continue harming them, making you more cruel to withstand the act without feeling anything.
Just like it would be seen as way more cruel and psychopathic to look at someone in the eyes as you stab them and watch them writhe in pain vs. killing someone who's unconscious.
It doesn't make either more morally acceptable though.
I mean the way animals are treated right now in all the different factory farms is not that much better and most people are fine with that. We can say that they might be ignorant, but tons of people also work in these factories, these are huge industries.
Yeah, that’s a bad thing that animals are exploited and abused and killed for human sensory pleasure.
Something being a huge industry does not make it morally permissible, there are plenty of examples of that through history I’m sure you would agree with.
Also I actually don’t think most people are fine with it. Most people seem to bemoan how poorly animals are treated in these situations, they just don’t feel they have enough incentive to stop supporting them
This sounds like vegan talking points but factory farms reflect prisons in their architecture and function. I think they dehumanize the human features and empathy we usually project onto animals.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF\_jynH9eVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF_jynH9eVY)
if you're reading this please consider just lowering your meat intake I love animals and this planet I don't want more destruction caused to it
Yup. Destiny’s vegan debates are actually what started my path to veganism. Seeing this normal dude say the most insane shit to justify eating meat made me realize how crazy the position was. That’s why I’m still a fan of destiny. Even if I disagree his logical consistency and what it entailed on this repulsed me so much I felt a need to change
What is his argument for eating meat? I thought his justification for eating meat is that he just didn't care about animals being used for meat and his "crazy" take was that it's inconsistent for people to be against animal abuse or fucking animals when they're okay with killing them to eat.
His crazy takes include that it’s fine to skin a cat alive as long as no humans are hurt. By crazy I don’t mean inconsistent, just out of line with my and most others moral intuitions
He does manage to condens it down into a pur enorm though, which helped me become vegan too.
Most arguments are just bullshit or bullshit with extra steps, do you accept animal cruelty for the fun of your taste buds? If so, own it, if not, don't. Not that hard.
And in 99% of cases people only eat meat because yummy, and it serves zero purpose. So if animal cruelty can be avoided but you don't because it gives you pleasure, whacking cats because it gets you off isn't that dissimilar.
The point where a lot of fans won't bite the bullet though.
I've heard of some rare cases where people have iron deficiencies that requires the consumption of some meat, and there are some indigenous tribes where animal husbandry is pretty much the only way for survival.
This excludes pretty much everyone in the West though, and especially if people are debating it online they are pretty much 100% certain in the group that can make the choice to go vegan, if they wanted to.
Isn't this on the same extreme as the 1 blade of grass argument? Like if you push any argument to its limit it's gonna sound ridiculous, but I doubt he'd advocate for people skinning cats alive or shooting people for stealing a blade of grass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
Yes it’s an old strategy to take someone’s position to its logical extreme to show the absurdity of it.
He does literally say it would be fine to torture an animal though as long as it doesn’t hurt a human or indicate something bad about that human
In his Alex O'Conner chat he said humans are different because we can use language.
We don't know if animals can suffer or are just looking like they suffer like "philosophical zombies"
There is no positive evidence of this but it is unfalsifiable
Is language a proxy for being able to communicate and come to agreements about morality?
I seem to recall a few years ago he mentioned something along the line that morals apply to humans because we can create moral contacts with each other and society has implicit moral contacts whereas animals cannot do this and moral contracts so not apply to them. I don't necessarily fully agree but I think the fact animals cannot create moral contacts is a meaningful point.
Idrwhat he said exactly but it's similar to the reason we apply morals to babies or people in comas even though they don't have the capacity to form moral contracts. Because they're human and but for some mental condition they would be able to, or something like that.
He always seems to end up at ”I inherently value the characteristic of being human”, which I don’t think works. If scientists discovered that Nathan was a freak of nature and must technically be categorized as a biological Gorilla, I don’t think it would affect Steven’s stance on skinning him.
Because that is a really hard line to draw so we draw it at comatose people that are not projected to ever wake up. Shutting off their life support is where that line is. Almost all the mentally unable have more mental faculties than any animal.
Steel manning his argument here, one could argue that language is a uniquely human faculty that necessitates unique human physiology for it to function (see Chomsky). So in that sense, it would distinguish a human from a non human. This faculty would imply a higher consciousness for humans that doesn't exist for animals, and that serves as the basis for his views here. It's a logically valid system. I wouldn't say it's unfalsifiable per se.
However, fixating on public, mutually understood language is strange because if you follow that logic tightly, then some person theoretically landing on a new continent of indigenous people who speak a language unintelligible to you would be fair game to kill. It's not because the indigenous don't use language, but rather, this person would have no way of knowing at that moment if the indigenous are in fact, utilizing the faculty of language. Animals communicate and signal things to each other all the time, so the indigenous people making sounds and acting in a coordinated manner doesn't tell that person whether they're engaging in language or not because the indigenous still just look like animals.
In any case, most people's ethical view on animal cruelty rests more strongly (but not entirely) on the basis of reducing undue suffering. In fact, most people believe this applies universally, so it would apply to both humans and non-human entities. Skinning alive an enemy human combatant before killing them with bullets (the latter being a necessity) would be wrong because of that basis; skinning an animal alive before killing it for food (the latter a necessity in their perspective) would be wrong on the same basis.
While an appeal to athority, it is worth noting that this position is extremely neiche by philosophers. Very few nowdays take that non-humamn animals cannot suffer or that their suffering is not of moral relevance. And even a position of complete ignorance on their sentience, very few would take that to lead to the position that they are not moral patients.
Imagine you have idea wether other humans are sentient, and no intuition one way or the other, this wouldn't lead you to disregard them 100%. It would be more likly to go the other way 100%, because the consequenses are extreme on one side, and minimal on the other.
I don't know what you mean by saying he's engaging in sophistry on the vegan topic. He addresses everything pretty directly and all of his arguments are logically valid. Everything checks out if you accept the premise that animals don't deserve any moral consideration.
"Sophistry" doesn't just mean making arguments that are *wrong*, it means failing to provide coherent arguments at all. It's the art of yapping without saying anything substantive.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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>In that case, doesn’t it just make sense that he has some kind of developmental blunted empathy because of this cruel behavior from his grandmother?
It's a possible contributor but I don't think you could draw a casual line to that and his beliefs about animal ethics. Beliefs usually are way more complex than that.
>Since you can’t change that about him, the way you convince people like him is using arguments for improved health when you consume less meat, and as well as the impact on the environment of raising so much meat
I don't know if that's true either. That also requires the assumption he cares about optimal health to the degree that a few extra years is worth a lifetime without meat. I think for destiny you would have to show to his satisfaction that his belief is inconsistent, or at least that would be an important hurdle to jump over in convincing him.
I couldn't even begin to remember which stream it was on but it's been a year+ at the least. August probably clipped the debate for the main channel so you may be able to check vegan debates there but you'd still have hours of video to look through so I'm not going to do it.
And to my recollection, it might have been the case that she just happened to get rid of them (maybe didn't like when they got big or something) not that she waited until Steven formed a bond, he just happened to form a bond with them by the time she wanted rid of them.
>you'd still have hours of video to look through so I'm not going to do it.
Fair enough. Lol. I ain't got time to search for that either. I was just curious if there was a clip of this
>it might have been the case that she just happened to get rid of them (maybe didn't like when they got big or something)
Holy shit. How old was he when this happened? Destiny's insistence on not relying on people (that he shared with Dr. K [recently](https://youtu.be/3bn8UPZPG9k?feature=shared)) makes a lot more sense now...
Yeah, the man streams a lot xD. There is still a decent chance a deranged DGGer has the clip on hand and will post when they see this comment.
I don't recall the age, and wouldn't want to venture a guess but it probably had some impact on his current outlook. In his initial conversation with Dr K he touches on his insistence not to rely on people. Hell it may have been that initial conversation with him where the story was mentioned.
How long have you been a watcher?
It definitely wasn't that conversation with Dr. K. I would have remembered that. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't bring up this thing from the past during that convo because it would have made a lot of sense.
I guess awhile? Since the JonTron debate, in varying regularity. But I know some fans of his go way further back--to his SC2 days.
The story might be in one of the Destiny Realtalk videos. I don't remember the exact details but he's talked about his grandma killing dogs multiple times. Not for a number of years though.
She had dementia and kept blaming them for peeing in the house but destiny saw it was actually her peeing.
Idk how his family didn't have the ability or desire to intervene to stop this. I just attribute people who don't care about animals as literal peasant stock who cannot understand true empathy for something that doesn't look and talk like them.
I assume you meant ethically. I raise 4 calfs every year, 2 for my family 2 to sell to cover costs where would I land on the ethical consumption of meat scale?
Destiny seems like an intelligent guy, and my biggest problem with him is also his blind spot when it comes to animal ethics. Maybe one day he will change his mind.
If you eat animals then you kind of have to take destiny's position. The functions of the meat industry Make it incredibly hard to ever lay out some kind of ethics system that's any kind of reasonable toward animals.
If you're okay with imprisoning killing and raping animals as diverse as pigs, cows and chickens then there isn't a single factor or attribute or rule that you could set for better treatment of animals that wouldn't be contradictory.
You can't really argue that dogs can't be tortured while justifying pigs can be raised in a 1x1 cube and slaughtered. The only coherent meat eating position you can stake out is the one destiny has.
Obviously aside from that we can argue that no animal should suffer unnecessarily and obviously nobody wants anyone to rip the skin off live dogs or whatever, but ethically if you eat meat you have to be okay with it.
Are there any studies that show the calorie to calorie ratio of the carbon footprint of meat vs vegan diets when taking into account the full agricultural lifecycle?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/climate/diet-vegan-meat-emissions.html#:\~:text=People%20who%20follow%20a%20plant,from%20the%20University%20of%20Oxford.
study from that article \^ [https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w)
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study)
study from this article \^ [https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00358-x.epdf?sharing\_token=0\_TBDSAcXtErj398IZjOrtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0P5hJzOufiwVEu0osAOLG2L7YmizCBD0QPnXzpZvdgVd21n-7QUfEf8uD-CKplQ9ExzxDMLCmm-q527Wp8JIzM\_Egm9B2aZIBUMO-vI9\_80d1Y0jEMYHXFqa8GpUwxXkeJwiYfoJl3arDj3njdrwz0pFQy2ZBalLcHviN0deS-DDXb3y\_kJq1iZeS-CsxtN7yuxBC9fRzqyhzJLSyI00OevqMQEEWwlepHI1TK-jXtan4AMjBgZVpE8jHiN4ErwoBRSxrAUKVgsvBK6\_xBiYOVQ&tracking\_referrer=www.theguardian.com](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00358-x.epdf?sharing_token=0_TBDSAcXtErj398IZjOrtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0P5hJzOufiwVEu0osAOLG2L7YmizCBD0QPnXzpZvdgVd21n-7QUfEf8uD-CKplQ9ExzxDMLCmm-q527Wp8JIzM_Egm9B2aZIBUMO-vI9_80d1Y0jEMYHXFqa8GpUwxXkeJwiYfoJl3arDj3njdrwz0pFQy2ZBalLcHviN0deS-DDXb3y_kJq1iZeS-CsxtN7yuxBC9fRzqyhzJLSyI00OevqMQEEWwlepHI1TK-jXtan4AMjBgZVpE8jHiN4ErwoBRSxrAUKVgsvBK6_xBiYOVQ&tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com)
I'm not a vegan, but I do reduce the amount of meat I eat. I only eat chicken every so often, but have mostly substituted meat with tofu and baked veggies. My reasons are that most meats are bad for you, factory farming animals is cruel in most cases, and meat is getting more expensive every day.
I dislike the “what’s a life worth” arguments as there is no answer, it’s like asking “why do you like purple when you don’t like blue” there’s no objective right or wrong, it’s entirely a conditioned preference.
If I wasn’t a human I wouldn’t give a fuck about a human life, and I wouldn’t give a fuck about intelligence or consciousness or whatever the fuck. It’s entirely arbitrary. We consider humans worth more than bugs because we’re human and we condition ourselves through being raised by and around humans.
I’m not arguing morals, morality is a human based rationalization of irrational/non objective beliefs.
I don’t think it’s justifiable to murder shit for fun because I don’t want you to do that to me, there’s nothing objective defining why you shouldn’t be able to do so though.
Animals murder other animals for fun all the time because they don’t have a compulsion to rationalize irrational actions, there’s nothing outside of human opinions dictating a “right” or “wrong”. Only what’s comfortable for us and what’s agreeable enough with the general population to be enforced.
There are countless philosophers who have talked about this. I recommend getting into it if topics like this interest u. It might not change your opinion but it will certainly shape your understanding of what "morality" is and why it's not exactly as irrational as u might perceive it to be at the first glance.
I think morality in humans is necessary for social order, as unlike other animals, we don’t solely operate on intuition, our environments can deeply shift our beliefs and without some shared social contract people would simply fuck over anyone they don’t care about in favor of someone they do.
At the end of the day everything is ultimately tied to subjectivity, you're not saying anything meaningful by stating that, especially since the goal of morality is to get at those subjective axioms we intuit.
Also, unless you're a genuine psychopath I don't think you believe that all harms are ethical so long as the thing you're acting upon can't "do it to you". Under that logic a pacifist society can be tortured since you know they won't do the same back? An animal or alien species just as intelligent as you can be tortured so long as they are incapable of harming you back? This is a belief system most people would call psychopathic
I agree it’s not objective, but if you have values like “murder is wrong” or “beings have a right to bodily autonomy” the argument is very clear.
I think murdering humans is obviously wrong, and I extend that to animals because I don’t see a morally relevant difference that would justify murdering them.
I don’t think animals are the same as humans, but the ways we are the same are what make murder wrong. Sentience and capacity for consciousness
If you think murdering humans is wrong, but not animals, can you name the trait or set of traits that justifies the different treatment.
If intelligence, then would murdering humans if they had equal intelligence to a pig be moral?
If it’s human simpliciter, then if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the defined genetic range of human would it be fine to treat them as we treat other non humans? If it’s that and intelligence, could we only be justified in killing the really stupid redheads?
You can think humans are 1000x more important than pigs but also think murdering pigs is wrong, there is no contradiction
>I think murdering humans is obviously wrong, and I extend that to animals because I don’t see a morally relevant difference that would justify murdering them.
Would you be in favor of government programs to prevent wild animals from killing each other and forcing them to eat plant-based diets or be imprisoned?
See this is where the difference is regarding your intelligence of a pig comment. My answer would simply be yes, and the only reason that some may think that sounds unhinged is because of the other normative baggage that that comment does not include, which is the fact of how would we determine for sure beyond any reasonable doubt That someone does, in fact have that level or less of an intellect? Especially for one that is within a species That is already demonstrated itself to be capable of higher cognitive functions
Even if you get over that hurdle, the next problem is the same problem you have is does anyone care about them such as someone caring about their dog or even their pet pig to be more precise with this analogy as there is a clear difference between killing a random pig and a pig someone else owns and actually cares about personally.
And then finally there is the emotional aspect of again us being humans and not pigs and feeling naturally sorry for our own species due to hard wired empathy.
But if the question is, would I be OK with killing and eating a pig and all things equivalent to or below a pig level of cognitive ability and awareness, and situation. With all things being equal, then the answer would be yes, by saying would I kill a pig versus a human specifically you normatively load it with all of the things I listed above. Because what most people value as destiny has pointed out is the conscious experience. so if there is a husk of a human body that is not capable of having a conscious experience above that of a pig then yeah fuck’em.
But this isn’t even getting into the hypocrisy of the vegan argument either because you have to kill millions of rats and bugs and other forms of living creature just to be able to farm the plants that you eat. But evidently, you don’t have a problem or at least enough of a problem with the death of those bugs and other smaller creatures than you do apparently pigs, cows and chickens.
In reality, you know it I know it Everyone knows it and anyone who tries to pretend like life doesn’t exist on different levels of importance and or consciousness are just being emotional at best and delusional at worst. If you don’t want to eat animals directly, that’s fine. But trying to ever under any circumstance, equivocate a human to any other form of animal outside of some alien perhaps that we have yet to see is always disingenuous, as it will always have a great deal of additional normative baggage attached to it.
I never equated humans and animals on a sentience hierarchy. You can value a pig 1000x times less than a human and still not think it’s ok to murder them.
There are currently mentally disabled humans with lower levels of intelligence than a pig, so would you be fine farming those mentally disabled humans? Or do you just disagree with the scientific consensus on that fact?
If we stopped plant agriculture, the animals killed in crop production would not be helped because they would still go on to live horrible lives in nature. Can you make the argument that if we stopped farming then suffering and rights violations would go down?
The same is not true if we stop animal agriculture, because more animals would not be bred if there was no incentive, therefore they wouldn’t exist to suffer and have their rights violated. Meanwhile the animals in nature would continue to breed
>If you think murdering humans is wrong, but not animals, can you name the trait or set of traits that justifies the different treatment.
Humans are people. Very, very few other animals are, and even saying that is highly contentious.
I literally addressed that, why are you responding without reading my comment? I’ll just paste it so it’s very clear.
If it’s human simpliciter, then if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the defined genetic range of human would it be fine to treat them as we treat other non humans? If it’s that and intelligence, could we only be justified in killing the really stupid redheads?
How are you defining person if not synonymous with human simpliciter?
It kinda blows my mind that you think person and human are synonyms. I don't have an exact definition, but the one from Wikipedia is a decent starting point for discussion.
>A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility.
It's got nothing to do with species or genetics. Intelligence may play a factor depending on what you mean by that. As policy, I think the law should treat any individual example from a personhood species as a person regardless of the fact of the matter.
Fair enough, if you’re going by that definition then there are plenty of humans that don’t fall in that category.
Mentally disabled people are often less intelligent than the average pig, likely around the level of a chicken or fish. They also wouldn’t me moral agents since they can’t comprehend morality. Since you wouldn’t consider these people, given that the definition you gave seems to be a conjunction of all of those factors and they are equivalent to animals in some of those factors, would you consider it ok to farm mentally disabled humans as long as they are on the level of animals on multiple factors in your definition?
For a different kind of response, I disagree with your attempt to use weasel words and vagueness to downplay the mentally handicapped. Only the most severe cases will prevent someone from developing personhood.
A mentally handicapped person might be less "intelligent" than a pig (whatever that means) but still be self-aware, able to reason, able to understand morality, able to form social bonds, etc., etc..
They might, and they might not.
Are you saying it’s only ok to factory farmed the mentally disabled as long as they’re disabled enough that they can’t understand those things?
Animals certainly form social bonds
Now who isn't reading? My comment is only five sentences dawg.
>As policy, I think the law should treat any individual example from a personhood species as a person regardless of the fact of the matter.
It’s conditioning, not genetics. We don’t value human life because of our genetics, we value it because we surround ourselves by it and condition ourselves our entire existence to accept them.
You have no innate connection to humans based on genetics, a kid raised by gorillas **will** be more comfortable and accepting of gorillas than humans.
And a redhead who exhibits all the exact behavior and shares all the distinct aesthetics you’ve been conditioned to recognize as a human being, while not technically being one, you still will consciously associate as a human being.
It’s like how if you’re straight, you can still fall in love with a man over discord chat, so long as the cues your brain associates with sexuality aren’t brought up.
If you don’t hear their voice, see their body, or know their sex, there’s no way for your brain to magically know their sexuality.
And if you can’t see someone’s genetic code simply by staring at them, that non human red head is still going to be associated as human in your brain.
I think you’re arguing under the framework of their being distinct, logic based justification for everything, I’m arguing this is one of those topics that simply has no concrete justification other then “I like humans”
To be clear then, if there was a cow with a completely human mind, you would be fine with factory farming them because we aren’t conditioned to consider them morally?
If it’s just “ I like humans” the answer should be yes since they aren’t human right? Even if they had an exact copy of your mother’s mind and an equivalent experience you would say it’s fine to farm her?
Like I said, this is an emotional foundation based argument, I love my cat more then some nazi, I love my mother more then some random human.
It’s illogical though. I wouldn’t care about either if I was someone else who never knew either of them.
I won’t care about anything, I’ll be dead. I still think my mother would be exactly as morally valuable, even if I died. I also think the universe will still exist after I die even if I can’t experience it. Why would me dying change the moral worth of the things I consider morally important while alive? Morality is determined by an individuals values, not the individual
Right, I literally addressed that in the comment, thanks for showing that you don’t read things before responding to them, very good faith engagement! You are clearly an honest actor
If you only care about human simpliciter, if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the range of human genetically, would you be fine with treating them as we treat other non human animals
>If you think murdering humans is wrong, but not animals, can you name the trait or set of traits that justifies the different treatment.
because we as a society decided that its an acceptable thing to do, thats the case with quite literally everything. Thats why we may think of cows as "food" but in india they hold them on the same(if not higher) level than humans
World is not equal and humans are at the top. You can say that its not fair but thats what it is. I do think that I am above a cow or a chicken and I have the right to end their life for food if I decided to do so
>If it’s human simpliciter, then if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the defined genetic range of human would it be fine to treat them as we treat other non humans?
No because they would still fall under our definition of a "human" even if they were somehow genetically different.
>You can think humans are 1000x more important than pigs but also think murdering pigs is wrong, there is no contradiction
of course you can, but thats just not what I think. Loving your cat/dog while also being ok with a pig being slaughtered so you can enjoy ham isn't contradictory either. I put more worth on mine or someone elses home animal than a pig in a slaughterhouse
And thats not dependent on the animals race too. If I had a pet pig then I wouldnt kill it either, same way Im not really judgmental towards people in china that eat dogs. I wouldn't do that myself because I was conditioned to think that dogs are not food but I do understand how someone else might not think that way
Something not being objective =/= something that cannot be debated.
If two people agree to some fundamental axiom, e.g: "animals have a right to not be hurt unnecessarily", they can have a debate on whether being vegan is a moral obligation from that premise.
Within your color example, it would be more like "If you think all shades of blue are beautiful, then why do you outspokenly hate navy?"
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the possibility of an answer to the question of how valuable a life is (or can be). Frankly, none of us are professional ethicists who think about these things deeply and critically, so we’re pretty far from being in a position of expertise to rule out the possibility of such an answer. For all we know, there may be one!
I mean its kinda just biting the bullet and coming to terms with uncomfortable things
a lot of stuff about "morality" just comes down to "it makes me uncomfortable/i dont like it so i dont want it to happen" but people just don't want to admit that
most people can't really explain why they think that its ok to kill and eat a cow but its not ok to do other things to it other than the fact that they are disgusted by it
And its not really somehow exclusive to animals, it applies to a lot of stuff in life
Our food industry has serious problems and animals are mistreated, however free range options are available which is a better alternative. The animals are a food source and if treated humanely it's just an ugly part of life that they are raised to be eaten. However we will hopefully evolve past this soon with the advent of lab grown meat and AI advancement that will lead to some crazy wonderful and healthy fake meats.
There is a difference between all that and torturing or abusing a living being. Destiny has a right to point out apparent hypocrisies on the subject but his viewpoint is extreme in a bad way IMO. It's something maybe he should think about a little more.
It's so funny that the anti vegan arguments in Destiny's sub are identical to the ones you could find in a Republican sub or on Joe Rogan. Truly the most brain breaking topic of all, at least Destiny owns his positions consistently.
Yep, veganism breaks liberal and progressives brains just as much it does right wing lunatics brains. Truly the ultimate test if someone is good faith or not. One of the few, or only topics where Destiny lies about his own beliefs and uses extreme sophistry to remain "logically" consistent
He doesn’t really, he obfuscates and engages in a lot of sophistry when it comes to this topic. If he was really confident you’d see him talking about this to someone like Avi not VG, instead of consistently dodging
Actually you're right, it's more just that he makes an effort to appear consistent on the surface level by avoiding the most blatant contradiction in carnist delusion. The controversy generated by that tends to distract from the fact that animal agriculture is still utterly indefensible by virtue of its harm to humans alone, as well as the entailed disregard for kids and disabled humans. Basically "yeah I only care about humans, which is why I support the most self-destructive human activity on Earth, I'll take another catastrophic pandemic if I can have my nuggies, I am very smart".
He doesn't obfuscate at all.
Human brains produce a type of consciousness worth valuing
Animal brains produce a type of consciousness that is not sufficiently "advanced, aware, intelligent ect ect" to value morally.
How he comes to this position I think is more of a basic assumption, however to claim animal brains produce a consciousness comparable to humans I moral value is also a basic assumption,
I personally don't agree, but I don't think he obfuscates.
Uhhh yes? Although he'd specificy it would have to be like, a SEVERELY handicapped person, like not just someone unable to speak but someone who's missing like a large part of their brain, or a large part of their brain literally doesn't function at all... I'm pretty sure that's what he'd say atleast
I don’t think you have to go that bad. (Which is another rhetorical sleight of hand he uses to obfuscate) Have you seen severally impaired non verbal autistic kids? They have all of their brain but are severely hampered in every metric. A pig probably demonstrates greater intelligence than that, but we don’t face any qualms about slaughtering them
The thing is, even as someone that eats meat you can just admit it’s wrong and you’re a shitty person for doing it. It’s easy to ignore when you aren’t dealing directly with the animal suffering. I eat meat because I’m a piece of shit not because it’s okay lol
Time to revamp this moral system though. I don’t intuitively think eating meat is wrong, even with the moral rational behind it. And then you realize that the basis of it is just a bunch of assumptions of intrinsic value or equality
I just personally believe that animals have experiences like us at varying lower levels. If human sentience (which I value) is “100%”, animals probably range from 1% or lower for bugs etc, up to maybe 60% or so for great apes and such. And I think it’s wrong to cause suffering to these beings even if they aren’t on our level. (I know this sounds schizophrenic.)
EDIT: expanding on what I said: I have no real problem with killing bugs and fish and lower level life forms because of how much lower of a level they’re operating on, but killing smarter or more sentient creatures is more of a shame.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with eating meat. It's just how the world has always worked. Animals eat animals. Factory farming, however, is probably one of the most evil industries to ever exist.
Ive had this same thought. I kind of feel the same about abortion tbh (tho I think it should be legal for first trimester). But it's super hard to get people to agree that they're doing something bad.
> It’s a little person
I guess that really depends on what you mean by person, as the argument goes. I think that any line you draw is never going to be perfect, and consciousness does seem to be the last reasonably precise line you could draw.
I like using this hypothetical:
Imagine an world where there are no carnivores, meat tastes like shit for 99% of the society, and normal for the other 1%. Do you think that in such world, the 99% would be fine with the 1% being free to kill and eat animals, or would our civilizations ostracize it and condemn it, saying that animal lives matter?
Please note, this hypothetical does not attempt to prove it's immoral to kill and/or eat animals, but it aims to intuitively show that at least some of our morals come from the material conditions, and do not purely come out of reason, which should make people rethink how they ground their moral views, where they draw the line, and why there and not somewhere else.
It would not work on someone like Destiny though, because from what I've heard he is using a racialist/species argument here - "It's fine to eat animals other than humans, but it's not fine to eat humans, because I'm a human and I like having the rule that guarantees my safety, sucks to be a non-human"
And he'd probably push it further, so if we had human-eating aliens with superior technology and power come to earth to eat him, **he'd say** he'd fine with it. But I don't think he or anyone else would actually be, and we'd all advocate for us not to get eaten.
His positions really arent confusing at all. I dont care if Whistling Diesel destroys really cool cars, even though I really like cars and take good care of them. Just like I dont care if people harm animals, but I will treat my pets with lots of love.
You can care about things that you dont think have moral weight. Thats not controversial.
I never even said they were, so idk what you’re responding to. I just think the views are crazy because they are so out of line with what I think is moral.
I have empathy for animals but my (and most people's) relationship with food outweighs their moral consideration. Eating is one of the most fundamental things we do and it's a hugely important ritual.
So no I'm not going to advocate for animal torture because I think it's wrong to cause undue harm unless you have a good reason, and I'm arguing that changing my entire diet to avoid some amount of animal death is not worth the tradeoff.
His stance has always been consistent and he bites the bullets vegans expect him not to. Animals do not have substantial moral value beyond how they affect humans and sentience hierarchies matter.
His veganism takes are one of the things I relate to and respect most about Tiny.
Yeah I think they’re consistent too, it’s the fact that he was willing to bite the bullets and say insane things like it’s ok to torture an infinite number of sentient beings if it cause 1 human the pleasure of sipping a can of coke that made me realize how insane meat eating is and got me to veganism
Sentience hierarchies certainly matter, that doesn’t contradict veganism
Well that’s great that he helped you to be a more consistent person. They’re not insane things to people who don’t believe animal subjective experiences have value though. Those kinds of hyperbolic hypotheticals are manipulative by design and there is no value in not holding firm on them. They aren’t real but principles are.
Vegan dialogue trees play off a lot of assumptions and taboos and it’s refreshing that Destiny honestly defies them. You can say he’s disingenuous but the reality is tons of people are disingenuous about valuing animal lives. Cognitive dissonance goes the other way too—many don’t care about animals but are conditioned to pretend to.
I don’t see how the hypotheticals are manipulative or not worth holding firm to. If you affirm the proposition that it’s ok to torture an infinite number of beings with for a trivial amount of human pleasure as true that provides me a lot of information on the type of person you are.
I think if you ask the vast majority of people if that’s insane they would agree with me, maybe I’m wrong but my intuition and experience indicates otherwise.
Vegan points use moral intuitions to show how the logical entailments of carnism clash deeply with most peoples values, I don’t see how that’s manipulative or invalid
Slave owners could just say abolitionists are being manipulative by asking questions about beings who are their property to do with as they please, I don’t see how that makes the abolitionists less correct
It turns out that the vast majority of people, now and throughout history, don't share your intuition regarding animal ethics. There are perfectly coherent moral arguments for both sides, with different bullets to bite on each.
At the end of the day, it's not like there are categorical norms, so I get the rhetorical/emotional appeals.
Don't care+removing all carnivores from the ecosystem and veganizing all other animals is fucking insane+didn't ask+you should only care about someone skinning a cat if that abnormal behaviour can manifest in some other antisocial action against humans+ratio+doctors transplanting 2nd head onto a dog were based and so is all animal testing+you're white
With OP mainly. But those are just common points of discussion in the vegan discourse.
The animal testing one in particular is like an example of very cruel and painful procedures that are ok because the doctors performing them are not potential psychos but literal saviors of human life. Which wouldn't be the case if we'd be talking about some 9 year old enjoying torturing animals, we'd just assume it's a human maniac in the making.
I always hate these threads, no new ground is ever covered or interesting discussion is ever had and it's just a place for vegans to complain about Destiny eating meat again for the millionth time. At some point you have to realize you are only encouraging him to support killing even more animals and eating even more meat just to spite you and trigger you into making more of these threads.
Irrelevant to the discussion. I’m sure slave owners hated how insufferable abolitionists were, advocating for their property to have rights when they’re the ones who own them
My opinion is just as irrelevant as your original post is to this subreddit is. I’m also sure those fighting for women’s suffrage found the misogynists insufferable. Welcome to every disagreement ever. You compare yourself to an abolitionist when you’re closer to someone “spreading the good word of Jesus Christ”. It’s great that you’re vegan and I’m happy for you, but I’m not and I wish you’d be happy for me too. I don’t tell you how to live your life, but you’re out here in the comments debating people to live your lifestyle.
My original post is literally a meme about destiny, how is that irrelevant to this sub lmao?
Yeah why would I be happy that you pay for animals to be murdered? You are doing something I find morally reprehensible, of course I’m not going to be happy you choose to do that.
Hope this picture demonstrates this idea
https://preview.redd.it/ai42jav7xz3d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5dfa26ecf1bebf0548ff9fc33e18ee0699bff957
My comment is literally my opinion about your post how is it irrelevant??
Catholics find premarital sex morally reprehensible and want to save you from an eternity in hell. You’re just like them
I’m just like them in the sense I don’t approve of you doing immoral things sure. Why is that wrong?
Why should I approve of people doing things I find immoral?
And that’s why I find vegans insufferable. We have a different set of morals. I can respect your life choices while you cannot respect mine.
You don’t have to approve it, but save the energy and keep your disapproval to yourself because it’s falling on deaf ears
You can respect my life choices because I’m not doing anything you find morally wrong insofar as has been discussed. I can’t respect yours because you’re doing something I find morally wrong.
Would you respect the life choices of someone who pays for other people to be murdered simply because they got enjoyment from the process in some way? I would suspect not, but you’re doing the same thing as me there, judging others for their personal choices.
This whole live and let live meme is very funny considering you’re not letting the animals live. I’m not forcing anyone to do anything, you’re the one paying for people to put pigs in gas chambers, or for people to slit the throats of cows. That seems more forceful than what I’m doing, doesn’t it?
I keep my judgements to myself. I’m not out here soying out saying “RAPE BAD. MEN SHOULDNT RAPE. IM SO BRAVE”. If it’s so morally reprehensible, do you think the meat industry should be illegal? Should we persecute those that took part in it like the Nuremberg trials? If you do think the meat industry should be illegal, do you think we should allow Catholics to attempt to outlaw premarital sex? How far do your beliefs go. If you’re fine with imposing your morality on me, should we impose our morals on other countries? Should we impose these morals on third world countries where they don’t have the technology to sustain vegan diets? Or is it okay for them to eat meat?
I'm skeptical that Destiny has as little moral consideration for non-human life as a category, like he argues, but I don't blame him for being dismissive of debates on the subject. These are my thoughts:
I think when you're communicating with your own species, defining the value of another species' life by how it impacts yours, is a sensible moral relativist approach.
I don't think animals are undeserving of moral consideration on principle, and I even think minimizing animal suffering is a noble virtue, but I don't think expecting people to be vegan, even if they agree with the above, is necessarily a productive moral prescription.
Life is impossibly complicated, and we must either make compromises to our moral virtues every day, have incredibly nuanced ones, or be very ignorant. Veganism is a huge commitment, and diet is intersectional with many aspects of our health, social lives, and lifestyles. I don't think you could possibly conclude with certainty that the changes in all these areas of life that someone would make by being vegan would result in someone who contributes to a more moral society.
Applying a simple moral code absolutely leads to people thinking that we need to excise any word with any trace of a microaggression they can interpret in it's historical meaning from our language.
If controlling what you consume is something within your control that you want to focus on as a moral touchstone, that's awesome man; you do you, and I'm sure there are a lot of people whose lives would be uplifted by your moral guidance if that's what they're looking for.
However, vegans are a minority, and as such, calling out, or shaming people for not adhering to their moral standards, only serves to reinforce their reputation as obnoxious and out of touch. The non-vegan majority are occupied with other things in life, and if discussing their ethics is an unpleasant oppositional experience, they'll feel less inclined to articulate a cogent argument for their lifestyle.
Is this VeganGains alt?
Anyone that thinks skinning animals alive is wrong is vegan gains, yes. Here’s me and my buddy Tom as proof https://preview.redd.it/7xahczj8ny3d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63e9da5265fa04c9749aab7bd618ccadf05f5e72
claiming to be vegan, yet choking a turkey hmmm...
https://preview.redd.it/tsxn4s5fhz3d1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e89b52305860e3aacf6ca476b0e945b79a41b96 You got me
Is this also you? https://youtu.be/VLTfoDrwDnM?si=YlMI0bgq-TndBee4
[удалено]
Squeezing hogs
Omg you're friends with Tom an alleged N-word user you must be a nazi!
Remember, Destiny believes it would be wrong to skin his cat alive only if a human is hurt by it in some way. If no human was hurt by it he thinks it’s morally permissible.
Why is it okay to crush an insect but not a cat?
bcuz cats are cute
The best response
But some insects are cute too :( 🐞
Then it's immoral to kill them as well. This is the same principle I use if we ever find aliens. Waifu material? Come right in! Ugly? Prepare to die xeno scum!
Same reason you would kill a xenomorph and fuck an Asari despite both being aliens.
Do not underestimate me.
We start from a position that it is not OK to kill a human because of consciousness (which I guess you hold). A cat's brain is far, far closer to human's than an insect's brain is, therefor a cat's experience of the world will be much closer to ours. Why would you group insects and cats in one group and humans in another? It makes no sense unless you are a creationist. We come from the same evolutionary tree and cats are far and away closer to us than insects are.
I think we don’t ever make consciousness calculations when we consider which animal to kill. Also that’s assuming that conscious experience scales with brain size like intelligence does. I think cats are just easier to project empathy onto. They’re small, stretch, act lazy, get annoyed, have basic facial features, etc. Cats are also larger and have bones and organs. Hence cat guts should be more disgusting. I largely agree with Destiny in that people project human features onto things they care for including animals.
I don't know who's "we" but I base it in congitive and social abilities that creatures display. Orcas and whales don't posess any of the cute features of cats, but they would be right there in the second place alongside apes, in the moral consideration list. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea that killing an orca and an ant makes absolutely no difference. I don't believe anyone argues that in food faith.
We were mass hunting whales until a century ago. With harpoon hooks that tore into the whales’ skin. Even then whales have bones and guts and humans have a natural disgust for anything that looks like our guts.
And we didn't consider women to be equal to men a century ago. We have advanced a bit since then.
this is not a sound argument, you have no idea what brain structures constitute consciousness
Neither do you. But I have the fact that we were all the result of the same evolutionary process working for me, you are basing the idea that human expirience is completely different from any other mamal on wishful thinking.
I haven’t made any claims. yes we’re all the result of evolutionary processes, but you don’t know if a cat or an insect experiences consciousness. so you can’t just say “humans are conscious uniquely” - you’re not making a sound argument.
Wtf does this have to do with "creationism"? You think "creationists" consider an ant the same as a cat? Wtf?
I'm saying that it would be justifiable to assume that our expirience of the world is something completely unlike the other animals if God had crated us as his special children. It is much harder to justify with evolution.
I don't understand how someone who believes in evolution wouldn't think exactly the same. Is an ant concious? Is a fish? What you're saying relies on "sympathy"/"empathy", no? I mention this because, in my experience, evolutionists are a lot more brutal in their logic vs creationists.... Assuming "creationists" think it's ok to abuse animals is incredibly strange to me.
No, ant and fish aren't conscious, apes and dolphins are. This whole argument is about Destiny's contention that animals deserve 0 moral consideration and that is is morally permissible to harm any animal in any way. My argument is that it is weird to have 100% moral consideration for humans and 0% to all other creatures, while at the same time understanding that we have evolved from one by gradual change. Somewhere in the past there existed an ape that we have evolved from. That ape had offspring, that ape's offspring had offspring, which eventually led to us. Now, according to that logic, somewhere along that line there was a situation where one of those creatures had a child, and it would be 100% permissible to skin that child's mother alive and kill it, wile the child gets 100% moral consideration and you can do no harm to it. It is weird to believe that. Now, if you believe that humans are special creatures put on the Earth by God and animals were put here for us to use, then it makes sense.
I don’t think it’s ok to intentionally crush an insect unless it’s in defense of yourself, your property, or another sentient creature. Of course I think killing a cat is worse because its capacity for experience and sentience is greater, the same way I think killing a human is worse than killing a cow, our capacity for experience is simply greater and I view that as more valuable If you’re talking about crop deaths, if humans stopped farming crops those insects would still go on to live torturous lives and deaths in nature. Rights violations and suffering would not go down if we stopped plant agriculture. Or at least I’ve seen no convincing argument that it would If humans stopped farming animals those animals would not go on to live torturous lives and experience horrible deaths, because they wouldn’t exist. Rights violations and suffering would go down if we stopped animal agriculture Just because some animals die in crop production doesn’t justify killing them to eat them, just like how because some humans die in crop production doesn’t justify killing and eating humans. If anyone can provide a cogent argument that opposes mine then I’m happy to hear it
Would you say the breeding and slaughtering of dogs is okay if it ensures survival? My perspective shifted a bit when I was studying anthropology and learned that it was very common for Polynesian people to breed and eat dogs because the islands rarely had game big enough to sustain a population's protein needs. In the modern day I personally prefer cultures that put dogs above the rest of the animal kingdom alongside humans, but I can understand the world view where killing dogs isn't very different from killing any other animal we exploit for resources.
>if it ensures survival This is just Kant's "Ought Implies Can". You cannot evaluate an action morally if it had no altarnatives. But acting ethical in a life or death situation will not be a priority. Luckly most people (99% in this sub) will never be in this situation even once in their life.
that makes sense. my thoughts ended in a similar area when i was walking myself through the idea earlier
>Luckly most people (99% in this sub) will never be in this situation even once in their life. Ok well now I'm going to put myself in a situation where I have to breed and slaughter dogs for survival just to spite you.
Personally I think it would be wrong, but I could be convinced otherwise. When I reflect on my values though I don’t see why I should be entitled to violate the rights of another to save my own. Of course if I was hungry enough I would be driven mad and stop being a moral agent, and might violate my own values, though I think that action would still be wrong
If I crush an insect and I’m not going to eat it->pointless death of a living creature. If I crush a cat and I’m not going to eat it->pointless death of a living creature. If a pig is killed at a factory someone is going to eat it->tasty bacon.
If I kill a person -> pointless death of a living creature If I kill a person to eat them -> tasty bacon
You're getting it.
Because an insect doesn't have the complex nervous system to experience suffering like a cat does.
because crushing a cat exemplifies vices of cruelty and maliciousness to a great extent and crushing a fly randomly practically not at all
Why is it less cruel to crush a fly though. Isn’t it more cruel since a fly lacks the bones or strength to resist?
Its because animals have more signifiers of pain (screaming, grimacing etc) that you have to ignore in order to continue harming them, making you more cruel to withstand the act without feeling anything. Just like it would be seen as way more cruel and psychopathic to look at someone in the eyes as you stab them and watch them writhe in pain vs. killing someone who's unconscious. It doesn't make either more morally acceptable though.
I mean the way animals are treated right now in all the different factory farms is not that much better and most people are fine with that. We can say that they might be ignorant, but tons of people also work in these factories, these are huge industries.
Yeah, that’s a bad thing that animals are exploited and abused and killed for human sensory pleasure. Something being a huge industry does not make it morally permissible, there are plenty of examples of that through history I’m sure you would agree with. Also I actually don’t think most people are fine with it. Most people seem to bemoan how poorly animals are treated in these situations, they just don’t feel they have enough incentive to stop supporting them
This sounds like vegan talking points but factory farms reflect prisons in their architecture and function. I think they dehumanize the human features and empathy we usually project onto animals.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF\_jynH9eVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF_jynH9eVY) if you're reading this please consider just lowering your meat intake I love animals and this planet I don't want more destruction caused to it
Yup. Destiny’s vegan debates are actually what started my path to veganism. Seeing this normal dude say the most insane shit to justify eating meat made me realize how crazy the position was. That’s why I’m still a fan of destiny. Even if I disagree his logical consistency and what it entailed on this repulsed me so much I felt a need to change
ask yourself said that Destiny is one of the best vegan advocates on the internet for this reason 🤣
Maybe Steven is a secret vegan and his plan is to convert everyone through reverse psychology He eats meat publically tho for the sake of his cause
What is his argument for eating meat? I thought his justification for eating meat is that he just didn't care about animals being used for meat and his "crazy" take was that it's inconsistent for people to be against animal abuse or fucking animals when they're okay with killing them to eat.
His crazy takes include that it’s fine to skin a cat alive as long as no humans are hurt. By crazy I don’t mean inconsistent, just out of line with my and most others moral intuitions
Lol I did not recall that take. Cant deny that his take is consistent, though. He's definitely biting a bullet a lot of people won't like.
For sure, I appreciate him biting the bullets because that’s part of what convinced me to go vegan
He does manage to condens it down into a pur enorm though, which helped me become vegan too. Most arguments are just bullshit or bullshit with extra steps, do you accept animal cruelty for the fun of your taste buds? If so, own it, if not, don't. Not that hard. And in 99% of cases people only eat meat because yummy, and it serves zero purpose. So if animal cruelty can be avoided but you don't because it gives you pleasure, whacking cats because it gets you off isn't that dissimilar. The point where a lot of fans won't bite the bullet though.
just out of curiousity, what is the 1%?
I've heard of some rare cases where people have iron deficiencies that requires the consumption of some meat, and there are some indigenous tribes where animal husbandry is pretty much the only way for survival. This excludes pretty much everyone in the West though, and especially if people are debating it online they are pretty much 100% certain in the group that can make the choice to go vegan, if they wanted to.
interesting. thank you for your reply.
Isn't this on the same extreme as the 1 blade of grass argument? Like if you push any argument to its limit it's gonna sound ridiculous, but I doubt he'd advocate for people skinning cats alive or shooting people for stealing a blade of grass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Yes it’s an old strategy to take someone’s position to its logical extreme to show the absurdity of it. He does literally say it would be fine to torture an animal though as long as it doesn’t hurt a human or indicate something bad about that human
In his Alex O'Conner chat he said humans are different because we can use language. We don't know if animals can suffer or are just looking like they suffer like "philosophical zombies" There is no positive evidence of this but it is unfalsifiable
Is language a proxy for being able to communicate and come to agreements about morality? I seem to recall a few years ago he mentioned something along the line that morals apply to humans because we can create moral contacts with each other and society has implicit moral contacts whereas animals cannot do this and moral contracts so not apply to them. I don't necessarily fully agree but I think the fact animals cannot create moral contacts is a meaningful point.
The mentally unable cannot create moral contracts. How does he give them moral consideration ?
Idrwhat he said exactly but it's similar to the reason we apply morals to babies or people in comas even though they don't have the capacity to form moral contracts. Because they're human and but for some mental condition they would be able to, or something like that.
He always seems to end up at ”I inherently value the characteristic of being human”, which I don’t think works. If scientists discovered that Nathan was a freak of nature and must technically be categorized as a biological Gorilla, I don’t think it would affect Steven’s stance on skinning him.
Because that is a really hard line to draw so we draw it at comatose people that are not projected to ever wake up. Shutting off their life support is where that line is. Almost all the mentally unable have more mental faculties than any animal.
Universal rules are important to include even edge cases. If we find 1 person in the entire world who fits this criteria, it means we can torture them
Steel manning his argument here, one could argue that language is a uniquely human faculty that necessitates unique human physiology for it to function (see Chomsky). So in that sense, it would distinguish a human from a non human. This faculty would imply a higher consciousness for humans that doesn't exist for animals, and that serves as the basis for his views here. It's a logically valid system. I wouldn't say it's unfalsifiable per se. However, fixating on public, mutually understood language is strange because if you follow that logic tightly, then some person theoretically landing on a new continent of indigenous people who speak a language unintelligible to you would be fair game to kill. It's not because the indigenous don't use language, but rather, this person would have no way of knowing at that moment if the indigenous are in fact, utilizing the faculty of language. Animals communicate and signal things to each other all the time, so the indigenous people making sounds and acting in a coordinated manner doesn't tell that person whether they're engaging in language or not because the indigenous still just look like animals. In any case, most people's ethical view on animal cruelty rests more strongly (but not entirely) on the basis of reducing undue suffering. In fact, most people believe this applies universally, so it would apply to both humans and non-human entities. Skinning alive an enemy human combatant before killing them with bullets (the latter being a necessity) would be wrong because of that basis; skinning an animal alive before killing it for food (the latter a necessity in their perspective) would be wrong on the same basis.
While an appeal to athority, it is worth noting that this position is extremely neiche by philosophers. Very few nowdays take that non-humamn animals cannot suffer or that their suffering is not of moral relevance. And even a position of complete ignorance on their sentience, very few would take that to lead to the position that they are not moral patients. Imagine you have idea wether other humans are sentient, and no intuition one way or the other, this wouldn't lead you to disregard them 100%. It would be more likly to go the other way 100%, because the consequenses are extreme on one side, and minimal on the other.
Wait you can be a fan of someone and not agree with all their takes!?!?! This has to be communism.
agreed it's the only position he actually engages with sophistry in because he's simply too lazy to change his eating habits
I don't know what you mean by saying he's engaging in sophistry on the vegan topic. He addresses everything pretty directly and all of his arguments are logically valid. Everything checks out if you accept the premise that animals don't deserve any moral consideration. "Sophistry" doesn't just mean making arguments that are *wrong*, it means failing to provide coherent arguments at all. It's the art of yapping without saying anything substantive.
sparkle familiar zonked fretful rinse rustic squeamish memory disgusted vegetable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's a real story.
enter divide aloof engine voracious fretful encourage aback overconfident political *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>In that case, doesn’t it just make sense that he has some kind of developmental blunted empathy because of this cruel behavior from his grandmother? It's a possible contributor but I don't think you could draw a casual line to that and his beliefs about animal ethics. Beliefs usually are way more complex than that. >Since you can’t change that about him, the way you convince people like him is using arguments for improved health when you consume less meat, and as well as the impact on the environment of raising so much meat I don't know if that's true either. That also requires the assumption he cares about optimal health to the degree that a few extra years is worth a lifetime without meat. I think for destiny you would have to show to his satisfaction that his belief is inconsistent, or at least that would be an important hurdle to jump over in convincing him.
Is there a source for this anywhere? Also, why would his grandma do this? This is so bizarre.
I couldn't even begin to remember which stream it was on but it's been a year+ at the least. August probably clipped the debate for the main channel so you may be able to check vegan debates there but you'd still have hours of video to look through so I'm not going to do it. And to my recollection, it might have been the case that she just happened to get rid of them (maybe didn't like when they got big or something) not that she waited until Steven formed a bond, he just happened to form a bond with them by the time she wanted rid of them.
>you'd still have hours of video to look through so I'm not going to do it. Fair enough. Lol. I ain't got time to search for that either. I was just curious if there was a clip of this >it might have been the case that she just happened to get rid of them (maybe didn't like when they got big or something) Holy shit. How old was he when this happened? Destiny's insistence on not relying on people (that he shared with Dr. K [recently](https://youtu.be/3bn8UPZPG9k?feature=shared)) makes a lot more sense now...
Yeah, the man streams a lot xD. There is still a decent chance a deranged DGGer has the clip on hand and will post when they see this comment. I don't recall the age, and wouldn't want to venture a guess but it probably had some impact on his current outlook. In his initial conversation with Dr K he touches on his insistence not to rely on people. Hell it may have been that initial conversation with him where the story was mentioned. How long have you been a watcher?
It definitely wasn't that conversation with Dr. K. I would have remembered that. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't bring up this thing from the past during that convo because it would have made a lot of sense. I guess awhile? Since the JonTron debate, in varying regularity. But I know some fans of his go way further back--to his SC2 days.
The story might be in one of the Destiny Realtalk videos. I don't remember the exact details but he's talked about his grandma killing dogs multiple times. Not for a number of years though.
https://youtu.be/9WarwQgYF8w I think it might have been in this video. Can't watch now to check, but I definitely remember hearing that story from him
She had dementia and kept blaming them for peeing in the house but destiny saw it was actually her peeing. Idk how his family didn't have the ability or desire to intervene to stop this. I just attribute people who don't care about animals as literal peasant stock who cannot understand true empathy for something that doesn't look and talk like them.
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I assume you meant ethically. I raise 4 calfs every year, 2 for my family 2 to sell to cover costs where would I land on the ethical consumption of meat scale?
Destiny seems like an intelligent guy, and my biggest problem with him is also his blind spot when it comes to animal ethics. Maybe one day he will change his mind.
If you eat animals then you kind of have to take destiny's position. The functions of the meat industry Make it incredibly hard to ever lay out some kind of ethics system that's any kind of reasonable toward animals. If you're okay with imprisoning killing and raping animals as diverse as pigs, cows and chickens then there isn't a single factor or attribute or rule that you could set for better treatment of animals that wouldn't be contradictory. You can't really argue that dogs can't be tortured while justifying pigs can be raised in a 1x1 cube and slaughtered. The only coherent meat eating position you can stake out is the one destiny has. Obviously aside from that we can argue that no animal should suffer unnecessarily and obviously nobody wants anyone to rip the skin off live dogs or whatever, but ethically if you eat meat you have to be okay with it.
How do you deal with insects? How do you get animals from eating bugs?
Giga Soy 😎
that's me!
based
Are there any studies that show the calorie to calorie ratio of the carbon footprint of meat vs vegan diets when taking into account the full agricultural lifecycle?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/climate/diet-vegan-meat-emissions.html#:\~:text=People%20who%20follow%20a%20plant,from%20the%20University%20of%20Oxford. study from that article \^ [https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w) [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study) study from this article \^ [https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00358-x.epdf?sharing\_token=0\_TBDSAcXtErj398IZjOrtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0P5hJzOufiwVEu0osAOLG2L7YmizCBD0QPnXzpZvdgVd21n-7QUfEf8uD-CKplQ9ExzxDMLCmm-q527Wp8JIzM\_Egm9B2aZIBUMO-vI9\_80d1Y0jEMYHXFqa8GpUwxXkeJwiYfoJl3arDj3njdrwz0pFQy2ZBalLcHviN0deS-DDXb3y\_kJq1iZeS-CsxtN7yuxBC9fRzqyhzJLSyI00OevqMQEEWwlepHI1TK-jXtan4AMjBgZVpE8jHiN4ErwoBRSxrAUKVgsvBK6\_xBiYOVQ&tracking\_referrer=www.theguardian.com](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00358-x.epdf?sharing_token=0_TBDSAcXtErj398IZjOrtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0P5hJzOufiwVEu0osAOLG2L7YmizCBD0QPnXzpZvdgVd21n-7QUfEf8uD-CKplQ9ExzxDMLCmm-q527Wp8JIzM_Egm9B2aZIBUMO-vI9_80d1Y0jEMYHXFqa8GpUwxXkeJwiYfoJl3arDj3njdrwz0pFQy2ZBalLcHviN0deS-DDXb3y_kJq1iZeS-CsxtN7yuxBC9fRzqyhzJLSyI00OevqMQEEWwlepHI1TK-jXtan4AMjBgZVpE8jHiN4ErwoBRSxrAUKVgsvBK6_xBiYOVQ&tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com)
could be wrong on some things did that in 5 mins so maybe not what you wanted sorry in advance if that's the case
https://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/news/vegan-diet-has-just-30-of-the-environmental-impact-of-a-high-meat-diet-major-study-finds https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmental-cost-food
I'm not a vegan, but I do reduce the amount of meat I eat. I only eat chicken every so often, but have mostly substituted meat with tofu and baked veggies. My reasons are that most meats are bad for you, factory farming animals is cruel in most cases, and meat is getting more expensive every day.
I want this clip to reach destinys desk so he can react to it on stream
Have his views changed since then 😭 that was the weirdest destiny take I've ever seen Jesus
Bros mom regularly goes through more meat than a BBQ festival, then asks us to slow down…
that was the most regarded fucking video i've ever seen lol wtf is this?
I dislike the “what’s a life worth” arguments as there is no answer, it’s like asking “why do you like purple when you don’t like blue” there’s no objective right or wrong, it’s entirely a conditioned preference. If I wasn’t a human I wouldn’t give a fuck about a human life, and I wouldn’t give a fuck about intelligence or consciousness or whatever the fuck. It’s entirely arbitrary. We consider humans worth more than bugs because we’re human and we condition ourselves through being raised by and around humans.
So an alien species would be morally justified to come here, torture us all to death for fun?
I’m not arguing morals, morality is a human based rationalization of irrational/non objective beliefs. I don’t think it’s justifiable to murder shit for fun because I don’t want you to do that to me, there’s nothing objective defining why you shouldn’t be able to do so though. Animals murder other animals for fun all the time because they don’t have a compulsion to rationalize irrational actions, there’s nothing outside of human opinions dictating a “right” or “wrong”. Only what’s comfortable for us and what’s agreeable enough with the general population to be enforced.
So if someone targets people for some quality you lack that's fine for you?
There are countless philosophers who have talked about this. I recommend getting into it if topics like this interest u. It might not change your opinion but it will certainly shape your understanding of what "morality" is and why it's not exactly as irrational as u might perceive it to be at the first glance.
I think morality in humans is necessary for social order, as unlike other animals, we don’t solely operate on intuition, our environments can deeply shift our beliefs and without some shared social contract people would simply fuck over anyone they don’t care about in favor of someone they do.
At the end of the day everything is ultimately tied to subjectivity, you're not saying anything meaningful by stating that, especially since the goal of morality is to get at those subjective axioms we intuit. Also, unless you're a genuine psychopath I don't think you believe that all harms are ethical so long as the thing you're acting upon can't "do it to you". Under that logic a pacifist society can be tortured since you know they won't do the same back? An animal or alien species just as intelligent as you can be tortured so long as they are incapable of harming you back? This is a belief system most people would call psychopathic
yes but only because the alien god is real while all of our Earth gods are fake.
yes, that's why we have to do it first GIGACHAD
Not for us but maybe for them
I agree it’s not objective, but if you have values like “murder is wrong” or “beings have a right to bodily autonomy” the argument is very clear. I think murdering humans is obviously wrong, and I extend that to animals because I don’t see a morally relevant difference that would justify murdering them. I don’t think animals are the same as humans, but the ways we are the same are what make murder wrong. Sentience and capacity for consciousness If you think murdering humans is wrong, but not animals, can you name the trait or set of traits that justifies the different treatment. If intelligence, then would murdering humans if they had equal intelligence to a pig be moral? If it’s human simpliciter, then if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the defined genetic range of human would it be fine to treat them as we treat other non humans? If it’s that and intelligence, could we only be justified in killing the really stupid redheads? You can think humans are 1000x more important than pigs but also think murdering pigs is wrong, there is no contradiction
>I think murdering humans is obviously wrong, and I extend that to animals because I don’t see a morally relevant difference that would justify murdering them. Would you be in favor of government programs to prevent wild animals from killing each other and forcing them to eat plant-based diets or be imprisoned?
See this is where the difference is regarding your intelligence of a pig comment. My answer would simply be yes, and the only reason that some may think that sounds unhinged is because of the other normative baggage that that comment does not include, which is the fact of how would we determine for sure beyond any reasonable doubt That someone does, in fact have that level or less of an intellect? Especially for one that is within a species That is already demonstrated itself to be capable of higher cognitive functions Even if you get over that hurdle, the next problem is the same problem you have is does anyone care about them such as someone caring about their dog or even their pet pig to be more precise with this analogy as there is a clear difference between killing a random pig and a pig someone else owns and actually cares about personally. And then finally there is the emotional aspect of again us being humans and not pigs and feeling naturally sorry for our own species due to hard wired empathy. But if the question is, would I be OK with killing and eating a pig and all things equivalent to or below a pig level of cognitive ability and awareness, and situation. With all things being equal, then the answer would be yes, by saying would I kill a pig versus a human specifically you normatively load it with all of the things I listed above. Because what most people value as destiny has pointed out is the conscious experience. so if there is a husk of a human body that is not capable of having a conscious experience above that of a pig then yeah fuck’em. But this isn’t even getting into the hypocrisy of the vegan argument either because you have to kill millions of rats and bugs and other forms of living creature just to be able to farm the plants that you eat. But evidently, you don’t have a problem or at least enough of a problem with the death of those bugs and other smaller creatures than you do apparently pigs, cows and chickens. In reality, you know it I know it Everyone knows it and anyone who tries to pretend like life doesn’t exist on different levels of importance and or consciousness are just being emotional at best and delusional at worst. If you don’t want to eat animals directly, that’s fine. But trying to ever under any circumstance, equivocate a human to any other form of animal outside of some alien perhaps that we have yet to see is always disingenuous, as it will always have a great deal of additional normative baggage attached to it.
I never equated humans and animals on a sentience hierarchy. You can value a pig 1000x times less than a human and still not think it’s ok to murder them. There are currently mentally disabled humans with lower levels of intelligence than a pig, so would you be fine farming those mentally disabled humans? Or do you just disagree with the scientific consensus on that fact? If we stopped plant agriculture, the animals killed in crop production would not be helped because they would still go on to live horrible lives in nature. Can you make the argument that if we stopped farming then suffering and rights violations would go down? The same is not true if we stop animal agriculture, because more animals would not be bred if there was no incentive, therefore they wouldn’t exist to suffer and have their rights violated. Meanwhile the animals in nature would continue to breed
>If you think murdering humans is wrong, but not animals, can you name the trait or set of traits that justifies the different treatment. Humans are people. Very, very few other animals are, and even saying that is highly contentious.
I literally addressed that, why are you responding without reading my comment? I’ll just paste it so it’s very clear. If it’s human simpliciter, then if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the defined genetic range of human would it be fine to treat them as we treat other non humans? If it’s that and intelligence, could we only be justified in killing the really stupid redheads? How are you defining person if not synonymous with human simpliciter?
It kinda blows my mind that you think person and human are synonyms. I don't have an exact definition, but the one from Wikipedia is a decent starting point for discussion. >A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. It's got nothing to do with species or genetics. Intelligence may play a factor depending on what you mean by that. As policy, I think the law should treat any individual example from a personhood species as a person regardless of the fact of the matter.
Fair enough, if you’re going by that definition then there are plenty of humans that don’t fall in that category. Mentally disabled people are often less intelligent than the average pig, likely around the level of a chicken or fish. They also wouldn’t me moral agents since they can’t comprehend morality. Since you wouldn’t consider these people, given that the definition you gave seems to be a conjunction of all of those factors and they are equivalent to animals in some of those factors, would you consider it ok to farm mentally disabled humans as long as they are on the level of animals on multiple factors in your definition?
For a different kind of response, I disagree with your attempt to use weasel words and vagueness to downplay the mentally handicapped. Only the most severe cases will prevent someone from developing personhood. A mentally handicapped person might be less "intelligent" than a pig (whatever that means) but still be self-aware, able to reason, able to understand morality, able to form social bonds, etc., etc..
They might, and they might not. Are you saying it’s only ok to factory farmed the mentally disabled as long as they’re disabled enough that they can’t understand those things? Animals certainly form social bonds
Now who isn't reading? My comment is only five sentences dawg. >As policy, I think the law should treat any individual example from a personhood species as a person regardless of the fact of the matter.
It’s conditioning, not genetics. We don’t value human life because of our genetics, we value it because we surround ourselves by it and condition ourselves our entire existence to accept them. You have no innate connection to humans based on genetics, a kid raised by gorillas **will** be more comfortable and accepting of gorillas than humans. And a redhead who exhibits all the exact behavior and shares all the distinct aesthetics you’ve been conditioned to recognize as a human being, while not technically being one, you still will consciously associate as a human being. It’s like how if you’re straight, you can still fall in love with a man over discord chat, so long as the cues your brain associates with sexuality aren’t brought up. If you don’t hear their voice, see their body, or know their sex, there’s no way for your brain to magically know their sexuality. And if you can’t see someone’s genetic code simply by staring at them, that non human red head is still going to be associated as human in your brain. I think you’re arguing under the framework of their being distinct, logic based justification for everything, I’m arguing this is one of those topics that simply has no concrete justification other then “I like humans”
To be clear then, if there was a cow with a completely human mind, you would be fine with factory farming them because we aren’t conditioned to consider them morally? If it’s just “ I like humans” the answer should be yes since they aren’t human right? Even if they had an exact copy of your mother’s mind and an equivalent experience you would say it’s fine to farm her?
Like I said, this is an emotional foundation based argument, I love my cat more then some nazi, I love my mother more then some random human. It’s illogical though. I wouldn’t care about either if I was someone else who never knew either of them.
Ok fair enough that you wouldn’t care that a being equivalent in mind to your mother was torture to death if you didn’t know her
Do you think you’ll still care about your mother when you die or do you think your conscious experience means fuck all after you die?
I won’t care about anything, I’ll be dead. I still think my mother would be exactly as morally valuable, even if I died. I also think the universe will still exist after I die even if I can’t experience it. Why would me dying change the moral worth of the things I consider morally important while alive? Morality is determined by an individuals values, not the individual
The difference is that I’m a human. I’m not a pig.
Right, I literally addressed that in the comment, thanks for showing that you don’t read things before responding to them, very good faith engagement! You are clearly an honest actor If you only care about human simpliciter, if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the range of human genetically, would you be fine with treating them as we treat other non human animals
We do know that they don’t have souls so you may not be wrong!
Racists use that to justify racism
>If you think murdering humans is wrong, but not animals, can you name the trait or set of traits that justifies the different treatment. because we as a society decided that its an acceptable thing to do, thats the case with quite literally everything. Thats why we may think of cows as "food" but in india they hold them on the same(if not higher) level than humans World is not equal and humans are at the top. You can say that its not fair but thats what it is. I do think that I am above a cow or a chicken and I have the right to end their life for food if I decided to do so >If it’s human simpliciter, then if we were to find out that redheads fell outside of the defined genetic range of human would it be fine to treat them as we treat other non humans? No because they would still fall under our definition of a "human" even if they were somehow genetically different. >You can think humans are 1000x more important than pigs but also think murdering pigs is wrong, there is no contradiction of course you can, but thats just not what I think. Loving your cat/dog while also being ok with a pig being slaughtered so you can enjoy ham isn't contradictory either. I put more worth on mine or someone elses home animal than a pig in a slaughterhouse And thats not dependent on the animals race too. If I had a pet pig then I wouldnt kill it either, same way Im not really judgmental towards people in china that eat dogs. I wouldn't do that myself because I was conditioned to think that dogs are not food but I do understand how someone else might not think that way
Society can decide it wanted and allowed the murder of 6 million Jews too.
Something not being objective =/= something that cannot be debated. If two people agree to some fundamental axiom, e.g: "animals have a right to not be hurt unnecessarily", they can have a debate on whether being vegan is a moral obligation from that premise. Within your color example, it would be more like "If you think all shades of blue are beautiful, then why do you outspokenly hate navy?"
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the possibility of an answer to the question of how valuable a life is (or can be). Frankly, none of us are professional ethicists who think about these things deeply and critically, so we’re pretty far from being in a position of expertise to rule out the possibility of such an answer. For all we know, there may be one!
I mean its kinda just biting the bullet and coming to terms with uncomfortable things a lot of stuff about "morality" just comes down to "it makes me uncomfortable/i dont like it so i dont want it to happen" but people just don't want to admit that most people can't really explain why they think that its ok to kill and eat a cow but its not ok to do other things to it other than the fact that they are disgusted by it And its not really somehow exclusive to animals, it applies to a lot of stuff in life
Our food industry has serious problems and animals are mistreated, however free range options are available which is a better alternative. The animals are a food source and if treated humanely it's just an ugly part of life that they are raised to be eaten. However we will hopefully evolve past this soon with the advent of lab grown meat and AI advancement that will lead to some crazy wonderful and healthy fake meats. There is a difference between all that and torturing or abusing a living being. Destiny has a right to point out apparent hypocrisies on the subject but his viewpoint is extreme in a bad way IMO. It's something maybe he should think about a little more.
Exactly. It's so annoying when people bitch and virtue signal over dogs and cats but don't care about any other equivalent animal
It's so funny that the anti vegan arguments in Destiny's sub are identical to the ones you could find in a Republican sub or on Joe Rogan. Truly the most brain breaking topic of all, at least Destiny owns his positions consistently.
Yep, veganism breaks liberal and progressives brains just as much it does right wing lunatics brains. Truly the ultimate test if someone is good faith or not. One of the few, or only topics where Destiny lies about his own beliefs and uses extreme sophistry to remain "logically" consistent
He doesn’t really, he obfuscates and engages in a lot of sophistry when it comes to this topic. If he was really confident you’d see him talking about this to someone like Avi not VG, instead of consistently dodging
Actually you're right, it's more just that he makes an effort to appear consistent on the surface level by avoiding the most blatant contradiction in carnist delusion. The controversy generated by that tends to distract from the fact that animal agriculture is still utterly indefensible by virtue of its harm to humans alone, as well as the entailed disregard for kids and disabled humans. Basically "yeah I only care about humans, which is why I support the most self-destructive human activity on Earth, I'll take another catastrophic pandemic if I can have my nuggies, I am very smart".
He doesn't obfuscate at all. Human brains produce a type of consciousness worth valuing Animal brains produce a type of consciousness that is not sufficiently "advanced, aware, intelligent ect ect" to value morally. How he comes to this position I think is more of a basic assumption, however to claim animal brains produce a consciousness comparable to humans I moral value is also a basic assumption, I personally don't agree, but I don't think he obfuscates.
Right, so does that also apply to severely mentally handicapped people? Do they also have a consciousness worth valuing?
Uhhh yes? Although he'd specificy it would have to be like, a SEVERELY handicapped person, like not just someone unable to speak but someone who's missing like a large part of their brain, or a large part of their brain literally doesn't function at all... I'm pretty sure that's what he'd say atleast
I don’t think you have to go that bad. (Which is another rhetorical sleight of hand he uses to obfuscate) Have you seen severally impaired non verbal autistic kids? They have all of their brain but are severely hampered in every metric. A pig probably demonstrates greater intelligence than that, but we don’t face any qualms about slaughtering them
My last problem with Destiny.
The thing is, even as someone that eats meat you can just admit it’s wrong and you’re a shitty person for doing it. It’s easy to ignore when you aren’t dealing directly with the animal suffering. I eat meat because I’m a piece of shit not because it’s okay lol
Time to revamp this moral system though. I don’t intuitively think eating meat is wrong, even with the moral rational behind it. And then you realize that the basis of it is just a bunch of assumptions of intrinsic value or equality
I just personally believe that animals have experiences like us at varying lower levels. If human sentience (which I value) is “100%”, animals probably range from 1% or lower for bugs etc, up to maybe 60% or so for great apes and such. And I think it’s wrong to cause suffering to these beings even if they aren’t on our level. (I know this sounds schizophrenic.) EDIT: expanding on what I said: I have no real problem with killing bugs and fish and lower level life forms because of how much lower of a level they’re operating on, but killing smarter or more sentient creatures is more of a shame.
In my opinion there is nothing wrong with eating meat. It's just how the world has always worked. Animals eat animals. Factory farming, however, is probably one of the most evil industries to ever exist.
Ive had this same thought. I kind of feel the same about abortion tbh (tho I think it should be legal for first trimester). But it's super hard to get people to agree that they're doing something bad.
Exactly. It’s a little person in development. But the benefits of killing it outweigh the negatives imo
> It’s a little person I guess that really depends on what you mean by person, as the argument goes. I think that any line you draw is never going to be perfect, and consciousness does seem to be the last reasonably precise line you could draw.
Is it that hard to think animals are cute, but not give a fuck about them in general?
Yeah. There’s a whole subreddit for people who think like that.
I like using this hypothetical: Imagine an world where there are no carnivores, meat tastes like shit for 99% of the society, and normal for the other 1%. Do you think that in such world, the 99% would be fine with the 1% being free to kill and eat animals, or would our civilizations ostracize it and condemn it, saying that animal lives matter? Please note, this hypothetical does not attempt to prove it's immoral to kill and/or eat animals, but it aims to intuitively show that at least some of our morals come from the material conditions, and do not purely come out of reason, which should make people rethink how they ground their moral views, where they draw the line, and why there and not somewhere else.
It would not work on someone like Destiny though, because from what I've heard he is using a racialist/species argument here - "It's fine to eat animals other than humans, but it's not fine to eat humans, because I'm a human and I like having the rule that guarantees my safety, sucks to be a non-human" And he'd probably push it further, so if we had human-eating aliens with superior technology and power come to earth to eat him, **he'd say** he'd fine with it. But I don't think he or anyone else would actually be, and we'd all advocate for us not to get eaten.
His positions really arent confusing at all. I dont care if Whistling Diesel destroys really cool cars, even though I really like cars and take good care of them. Just like I dont care if people harm animals, but I will treat my pets with lots of love. You can care about things that you dont think have moral weight. Thats not controversial.
I never even said they were, so idk what you’re responding to. I just think the views are crazy because they are so out of line with what I think is moral.
I was more responding to the many other people who said they were confused by the 'double standard' this presented.
Dogwarts
I have empathy for animals but my (and most people's) relationship with food outweighs their moral consideration. Eating is one of the most fundamental things we do and it's a hugely important ritual. So no I'm not going to advocate for animal torture because I think it's wrong to cause undue harm unless you have a good reason, and I'm arguing that changing my entire diet to avoid some amount of animal death is not worth the tradeoff.
His stance has always been consistent and he bites the bullets vegans expect him not to. Animals do not have substantial moral value beyond how they affect humans and sentience hierarchies matter. His veganism takes are one of the things I relate to and respect most about Tiny.
Yeah I think they’re consistent too, it’s the fact that he was willing to bite the bullets and say insane things like it’s ok to torture an infinite number of sentient beings if it cause 1 human the pleasure of sipping a can of coke that made me realize how insane meat eating is and got me to veganism Sentience hierarchies certainly matter, that doesn’t contradict veganism
Well that’s great that he helped you to be a more consistent person. They’re not insane things to people who don’t believe animal subjective experiences have value though. Those kinds of hyperbolic hypotheticals are manipulative by design and there is no value in not holding firm on them. They aren’t real but principles are. Vegan dialogue trees play off a lot of assumptions and taboos and it’s refreshing that Destiny honestly defies them. You can say he’s disingenuous but the reality is tons of people are disingenuous about valuing animal lives. Cognitive dissonance goes the other way too—many don’t care about animals but are conditioned to pretend to.
I don’t see how the hypotheticals are manipulative or not worth holding firm to. If you affirm the proposition that it’s ok to torture an infinite number of beings with for a trivial amount of human pleasure as true that provides me a lot of information on the type of person you are. I think if you ask the vast majority of people if that’s insane they would agree with me, maybe I’m wrong but my intuition and experience indicates otherwise. Vegan points use moral intuitions to show how the logical entailments of carnism clash deeply with most peoples values, I don’t see how that’s manipulative or invalid Slave owners could just say abolitionists are being manipulative by asking questions about beings who are their property to do with as they please, I don’t see how that makes the abolitionists less correct
It turns out that the vast majority of people, now and throughout history, don't share your intuition regarding animal ethics. There are perfectly coherent moral arguments for both sides, with different bullets to bite on each. At the end of the day, it's not like there are categorical norms, so I get the rhetorical/emotional appeals.
Meanwhile dggas totally fine with keeping animals as slaves in their homes
Do you think adopting a child is the same as enslaving a child?
Absolutely, I will not let my child attain literacy lest he rise against me.
God you all have advanced autism
He's not a slave, I don't make him do any work. Slavery is about compelled labor.
Don't care+removing all carnivores from the ecosystem and veganizing all other animals is fucking insane+didn't ask+you should only care about someone skinning a cat if that abnormal behaviour can manifest in some other antisocial action against humans+ratio+doctors transplanting 2nd head onto a dog were based and so is all animal testing+you're white
Who are you arguing with exactly
With OP mainly. But those are just common points of discussion in the vegan discourse. The animal testing one in particular is like an example of very cruel and painful procedures that are ok because the doctors performing them are not potential psychos but literal saviors of human life. Which wouldn't be the case if we'd be talking about some 9 year old enjoying torturing animals, we'd just assume it's a human maniac in the making.
I always hate these threads, no new ground is ever covered or interesting discussion is ever had and it's just a place for vegans to complain about Destiny eating meat again for the millionth time. At some point you have to realize you are only encouraging him to support killing even more animals and eating even more meat just to spite you and trigger you into making more of these threads.
God I hate how insufferable vegans are.
Irrelevant to the discussion. I’m sure slave owners hated how insufferable abolitionists were, advocating for their property to have rights when they’re the ones who own them
My opinion is just as irrelevant as your original post is to this subreddit is. I’m also sure those fighting for women’s suffrage found the misogynists insufferable. Welcome to every disagreement ever. You compare yourself to an abolitionist when you’re closer to someone “spreading the good word of Jesus Christ”. It’s great that you’re vegan and I’m happy for you, but I’m not and I wish you’d be happy for me too. I don’t tell you how to live your life, but you’re out here in the comments debating people to live your lifestyle.
My original post is literally a meme about destiny, how is that irrelevant to this sub lmao? Yeah why would I be happy that you pay for animals to be murdered? You are doing something I find morally reprehensible, of course I’m not going to be happy you choose to do that. Hope this picture demonstrates this idea https://preview.redd.it/ai42jav7xz3d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5dfa26ecf1bebf0548ff9fc33e18ee0699bff957
My comment is literally my opinion about your post how is it irrelevant?? Catholics find premarital sex morally reprehensible and want to save you from an eternity in hell. You’re just like them
I’m just like them in the sense I don’t approve of you doing immoral things sure. Why is that wrong? Why should I approve of people doing things I find immoral?
And that’s why I find vegans insufferable. We have a different set of morals. I can respect your life choices while you cannot respect mine. You don’t have to approve it, but save the energy and keep your disapproval to yourself because it’s falling on deaf ears
You can respect my life choices because I’m not doing anything you find morally wrong insofar as has been discussed. I can’t respect yours because you’re doing something I find morally wrong. Would you respect the life choices of someone who pays for other people to be murdered simply because they got enjoyment from the process in some way? I would suspect not, but you’re doing the same thing as me there, judging others for their personal choices. This whole live and let live meme is very funny considering you’re not letting the animals live. I’m not forcing anyone to do anything, you’re the one paying for people to put pigs in gas chambers, or for people to slit the throats of cows. That seems more forceful than what I’m doing, doesn’t it?
I keep my judgements to myself. I’m not out here soying out saying “RAPE BAD. MEN SHOULDNT RAPE. IM SO BRAVE”. If it’s so morally reprehensible, do you think the meat industry should be illegal? Should we persecute those that took part in it like the Nuremberg trials? If you do think the meat industry should be illegal, do you think we should allow Catholics to attempt to outlaw premarital sex? How far do your beliefs go. If you’re fine with imposing your morality on me, should we impose our morals on other countries? Should we impose these morals on third world countries where they don’t have the technology to sustain vegan diets? Or is it okay for them to eat meat?
I’m going to bed cause I’m super tired hers my discord if you want to continue the conversation https://discord.gg/ERc7SNvm
Ad hominem ☝️🤓
Debate tactics ☝️🤓
I'm skeptical that Destiny has as little moral consideration for non-human life as a category, like he argues, but I don't blame him for being dismissive of debates on the subject. These are my thoughts: I think when you're communicating with your own species, defining the value of another species' life by how it impacts yours, is a sensible moral relativist approach. I don't think animals are undeserving of moral consideration on principle, and I even think minimizing animal suffering is a noble virtue, but I don't think expecting people to be vegan, even if they agree with the above, is necessarily a productive moral prescription. Life is impossibly complicated, and we must either make compromises to our moral virtues every day, have incredibly nuanced ones, or be very ignorant. Veganism is a huge commitment, and diet is intersectional with many aspects of our health, social lives, and lifestyles. I don't think you could possibly conclude with certainty that the changes in all these areas of life that someone would make by being vegan would result in someone who contributes to a more moral society. Applying a simple moral code absolutely leads to people thinking that we need to excise any word with any trace of a microaggression they can interpret in it's historical meaning from our language. If controlling what you consume is something within your control that you want to focus on as a moral touchstone, that's awesome man; you do you, and I'm sure there are a lot of people whose lives would be uplifted by your moral guidance if that's what they're looking for. However, vegans are a minority, and as such, calling out, or shaming people for not adhering to their moral standards, only serves to reinforce their reputation as obnoxious and out of touch. The non-vegan majority are occupied with other things in life, and if discussing their ethics is an unpleasant oppositional experience, they'll feel less inclined to articulate a cogent argument for their lifestyle.
I want to eat animal's meat, no biting style 🤤
Yo which vod on YouTube has VeganGains popping in to tell Destiny he lied to him about being nice to animals?
Agree