Best argument ?

[Mr_Reasonable]

@volchok

@Smears

My argument is that it tastes good and makes ne happy.

Sounds like a confession of stupidity.

What a pleasant thing to say. You are very open minded. I want to learn from your superior intelligence. Please help me not to be stupid.

You know, something tasting good means that I feel a qualitative sensation in my inner mind which satisfies a particular desire, and something making a person happy, is generally regarded as a good thing, so long as consequentialists don’t start throwing out half witted theories of possible, (but not proven), repercussions.

How do you expect to be taken seriously in any kind of discourse speaking to people the way that you have here? If you had any integrity you’d be ashamed of yourself.

[volchok]

@Smears

What a pleasant thing to say. You are very open minded. I want to learn from your superior intelligence. Please help me not to be stupid.

That was actually a tamed version of the the sort of answer your argument merited.

[ZenKitty]

The Chinese national team to go to the Olympics, that is the women’s volleyball team, appear to be an example. They were forbidden to eat meat because the meat in China has the potential of containing a steroid that is banned by the Olympic comity. He says that their playing ability has dropped significantly since being on a vegetarian diet. Your teeth are also used to chew into meat and vegetables. The whole shebang.

[Moreno]

@iambiguous

@Moreno

Imagine some person concerned about a dwindling tribe of Amazonians decides that if he sells their meat and creates a big demand, these people will not only survive, but more will get to live in the future.

Makes sense. Unless, from a countervailing point of view, it doesn’t. For example, it can be rationalized it is better for the tribe to move on into the 21st century with the rest of us. Let’s yank them into it by exposing [to them] the primitive nature of the world they live in now. Convince them to leave the forest—for better or for worse. It will always be a complicated and problematic world.

It just depends on which particular logic – predicated on which particular set of premises – you apply.

I don’t think your objections to the other argument make sense in the interests of streamlining I will focus here. You are presenting a third option. This third option may or may not be good or feasible, but it doesn’t change the moral problems with breeding these humans for food. If the argument is - hey, sure it’s a bad thing to get eaten, but at least you get to live, which it certainly seems to be in your friends statement, then this should hold for humans also.

[Moreno]

@Faust

Moreno - It is generally true, yes. But I have other grounds to support meat-eating, well-expressed by tentative. I don’t think it’s feasible for the vast majority of humans to refrain form eating meat or using animal products.

Does this mean your view would be different if it was feasible? I would guess, if things go the way they are going, there will need to be shifts toward less meat eating since it uses more land and water. So non-animal proteins and yes, perhaps distribution of B12, might become the norm. If you don’t believe that meat takes more land and water than the equivalent in non-meat proteins, surely you can imagine other potential solutions. Hell, it may become so unhealthy to eat things high up on the food chain due to concentrations of pesticides and heavy metals, this will also be the mother of inventing non-meat based diets as a general rule. Would it then seem OK to you?

I would be hard-pressed to recommend a practise that only a relative few, relatively wealthy people could undertake.

Lacto vegetarians do fine - or at least many of them do - and many poor people worldwide manage like this. Frankly I don’t understand the need to go from vegetarian to vegan. Cows don’t mind being milked and hens don’t seem to mind laying eggs - I feel less certain reading avian minds, but cows eat when milked, don’t move or object unless you’ve really got bad skills.

[Mr_Reasonable]

@volchok

@Smears

What a pleasant thing to say. You are very open minded. I want to learn from your superior intelligence. Please help me not to be stupid.

That was actually a tamed version of the the sort of answer your argument merited.

You are goofy. Go ahead and throw out what you’ve got man. You’ve made no argument at all.Shortness is not an indication of inaccuracy. You do know that right? You’re not much of a reasoner are you? The whole vegan line is pretty standard, and pretty old. Are you just rehashing emotivist views on it for kicks? Or do you think there’s something important to be said about it? I’m being serious.

[Moreno]

What is the big deal about eating dairy products and eggs? You can buy free range, grass fed versions?

just to tie a couple of threads together - who bears the burden of proof here?

At what point in the history of meat eating did meat eaters get a burden of proof that this was not immoral.

I am reacting to this exchange:

volchok wrote:
Smears wrote:My argument is that it tastes good and makes ne happy.

Sounds like a confession of stupidity.

Smears could argue that he is saying that meat tastes good and this makes him happy leads him to this behavior and those with objections bear the burden to demonstrate this desire should be overridden.

Someone on the other team could try to say the act needs to be justified, but then they need to establish that meat eating needs justification where swimming or plant eating does not.

[tentative]

@volchok

@tentative

Ummm, you might want to do a little homework… The fats in meat are easily converted to glucose and then stored by the liver in the form of body fats. It takes a lot of grains and starches to produce the same amount of usable energy. Consider: We would never have progressed to hunter/gatherer without meat. We’d still be living on leaves and fruits, frolicking in the trees and being the meat source for other predators.

What fats, lol ?

100 grams of chicken breast has 5 grams of fat.
100 grams of beef has less then 10 grams of fat.

You get more fat then that in a tablespoon of olive oil or in an ounce of nuts.

Meat is a really poor source of fats. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

The best energy sources are things with a lot of sugar.
And contrary to popular belief, we don’t like those things because they are sweet, they are sweet because we like them.
Our sweet tooth is an evolved instinctual preference for high energy food.

Wow! You really need to do some homework. Without B12 and D supplements, vegetable oils (fats) are extremely deficient in essential nutrients that are provided in animal-based foods. There are fats and then there are fats. It’s possible to be a strict vegan as long as you have a ready supply of supplements for the essential nutrients the body needs that are absent in an all-veggie regimen. Most of the vegans I know ‘cheat’ a little with milk, cheese, and eggs because the supplements are too much of a hassle and require careful monitoring to insure proper nutrition. About 90% of the world population doesn’t have a health food store next door, so they eat meat whenever it’s available.

Talk to your dentist. He LOVES strict vegetarians. Without animal nutrients, lots of dental problems.

I’d suggest having a loooong talk with a good nutritionist before you make assertions found only in the fad diet blurbs.

Sugar? Yeah. Carbos. All of the grains are easily converted to sugars and then stored fats. It’s great for creating the glycemic burst we all love - as well as the obesity from our reliance on the quick and easy. Your hunter-gatherer ancestors evolved a system of nutrient intake that included very little vegetable materials. Nuts, berries, and occasional finds of wild honey were both happenschance and seasonal. Meats were the steady diet.

You might consider the fact that there is no perfect universal diet. Most of humanity relies on what is available, not the supermarket and the local GNC outlet.

[Faust]

Moreno -

Does this mean your view would be different if it was feasible?

No, but the discussion would at least enter the realm of the possible, of the reasonable.

I would guess, if things go the way they are going, there will need to be shifts toward less meat eating since it uses more land and water. So non-animal proteins and yes, perhaps distribution of B12, might become the norm.

Let me know when that happens.

If you don’t believe that meat takes more land and water than the equivalent in non-meat proteins, surely you can imagine other potential solutions. Hell, it may become so unhealthy to eat things high up on the food chain due to concentrations of pesticides and heavy metals, this will also be the mother of inventing non-meat based diets as a general rule. Would it then seem OK to you?

Again, let me know. I cannot be concerned with what we do not know. I have to deal with what we know, and right now, it’s not feasible to morally require that which is impossible. We can pontificate all we want - moral philosophy is full of ideas that no reasonable person would adopt. This is just another of those. We might say that lying is always wrong - a case can be made, as long as you don’t examine the ramifications too closely. But moral rules have to be measured against that which is possible. Or they are useless.

Lacto vegetarians do fine - or at least many of them do - and many poor people worldwide manage like this. Frankly I don’t understand the need to go from vegetarian to vegan. Cows don’t mind being milked and hens don’t seem to mind laying eggs - I feel less certain reading avian minds, but cows eat when milked, don’t move or object unless you’ve really got bad skills.

Cows don’t mind being dead, either. No one does. When you’re dead, you don’t mind anything. It’s possible to raise meat animals in ways that do not cause much suffering, and to slaughter them in ways that don’t cause much suffering. I have probably suffered more at the dentist than a bullet to the brain of a cattle would cause.

[Moreno]

@Faust

Again, let me know. I cannot be concerned with what we do not know. I have to deal with what we know, and right now, it’s not feasible to morally require that which is impossible. We can pontificate all we want - moral philosophy is full of ideas that no reasonable person would adopt. This is just another of those. We might say that lying is always wrong - a case can be made, as long as you don’t examine the ramifications too closely. But moral rules have to be measured against that which is possible. Or they are useless.

I wasn’t asking you to be concerned with what we do not know. I was presenting a possible situation to more clearly understand your position. Even if you had answered in the affirmative, this does not mean you are somehow trapped into having to assert meat eating is wrong now, but it would give me a clearer sense of your justification.

As far as the lying, again we tend to think it needs some justification, the justification increasing from very little - around white lies - to huge - certain lies between intimates, perjury, etc. Many of these issues are not digital. One can think something is to be avoided if possible.

If most meat eaters in the West know that the animals tended to be treated poorly via factory farming - which a great case can be made for - this could be used as an argument for minimizing meat eating. Not every day. Trying to find better producers. Fighting for legislation on the issue.

If we treat it as digital, then status quo is more a shrug issue.

But I am not sure why it has to be treated as yes/no, no in between.

Cows don’t mind being dead, either.

That made little sense to me. Cows will move away from physical threats if they understand them. They tend not to move away from or give a shit about milkers. Even by the cow’s own standards they do not avoid this experience. We can make kill processes that the cows do not recognize are kill processes until it is too late, but they clearly avoid death and harm if they can understand the threat.

IOW I am not sure what the fuss is about eating dairy, why the next step to veganism - I do know at least some of the arguments, but they seem weak to me.

No one does. When you’re dead, you don’t mind anything. It’s possible to raise meat animals in ways that do not cause much suffering, and to slaughter them in ways that don’t cause much suffering. I have probably suffered more at the dentist than a bullet to the brain of a cattle would cause.

I am pretty sure most vegans know that a bullet to the brain is not causing a lot of suffering and tend to focus either on animals rights or on the suffering of factory farming.

But if the image of the bullet going into the brain along with the comparison to the dentist works for you, great.
I also eat meat, but where I am I cannot afford to get meat that has been raised not on factory farms. Non-factory farmed meat is also something for the few. As is avoiding animal tested medications and products. I think I will try to look at this as a digital aesthetic issue also.

But for aesthetic reasons I am going to move on to other topics.

[Ben_JS]

When I was young teenager, I was a pronatalist. I wasn’t against birth control, but my idea was having kids is good because life is good. No matter how much you mess your child up, you’ve given them life. If you don’t take it away from them in the process of messing up as a parent, you’ve given them a positive opportunity.

As I fell into my nihilism, I thought it’s all bullshit. Our desires are empty. We are empty. Life’s cumbersome. Why bother? To subject beings to life, is cruel. I’ve suffered when I gave life value, so that’s the only possible result of caring. If one stops caring about life, then there is no life, for life is about bias. Again, why care?

I’m slowly learning to accept that if a belief has no affect, it’s because you’ve probably lost sight of your goal, rather than the belief lacking integrity. I haven’t been moving towards an objective that I believe in, rather, I’ve been following the objective of safety and security. Safety and security are fine in themselves, but they’re a means to an end, not an end in themselves. I want to experience. That is my goal. Being safe and secure, if taken to an extreme, hinders this goal. Therefore creates conflict - suffering.

---

Eating animals

arguments - Tasty. ‘Natural’. Comforting. Habit. Efficient. Enjoyable. Variety.

Not eating animals

arguments - Compassionate. Can become habit. Can be enjoyable. Can have variety. Can be comforting. Is natural, because man is natural, therefore our affects are natural. Can be tasty. Not so efficient, but in time, could be.

So… At the end of the argument, it’s whether your compassion for other animals is of greater importance to you, than the efficient source of nutrients that animals provide. If your compassion outweighs the efficiency, and you continue to eat meat, odds are, it wont be enjoyable and good for the ‘spirit’. If your compassion for other animals is lacking, then you’ll eat meat because you’ve made the alternate value call.

Finally, if an animal has a long life, does whatever the hell it enjoys, and dies without human intervention, or even at an age that is common for said animal to die without human intervention, I doesn’t seem like there’s any harm in consuming the animal, as opposed to letting it rot. Just as an apple falls from the tree, when the time comes, all life dies and is consumed by it’s environment, people are in said in environment, so we might as well.

[James_S_Saint]

@Moreno

I am wary of nutrition rules that are supposed to be true for everyone.

I’ll certainly grant you that one.
Everyone doesn’t even live in the same environment which affects how much of other nutrients they need, not to mention having a variety of genome assemblies.

[lizbethrose]

I’ve not heard really good arguments either for or against eating meat. Many of my family and friends say they don’t eat meat because of the chemicals the animals raised for slaughter are given. But plants also ingest chemicals, so I don’t know if the argument holds up. Processed foods of any kind should be avoided.

I’ve also tried not to reply to certain posts or OPs because of the slings and arrows so often hurled my way. So, I’ll reply to this one very quietly:

[size=50] We eat meat because our oceans are polluted, so we can’t eat a lot of fish. We eat meat because it’s more abundant than unadulterated plant protein. We eat meat because we’re given meat at the markets. We eat meat because most of us have never studied nutrition. In short, we eat meat because we don’t know what else to eat.[/size]

Since this is a philosophy thread, what are the tie-ins here? What makes vegetarianism a philosophy?

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

I favor meat reduction.

We just eat it as least as possible.

There are health and ethical reasons not to eat meat.

[Stoic_Guardian]

I’m all for lowering the amount of meat that is easily availiable seeing as how people seem to suck it down like air without ever bothering to think it was once part of a living creature.

But i’d never advocate vegetarianism.

[volchok]

@tentative

Wow! You really need to do some homework. Without B12 and D supplements, vegetable oils (fats) are extremely deficient in essential nutrients that are provided in animal-based foods. There are fats and then there are fats. It’s possible to be a strict vegan as long as you have a ready supply of supplements for the essential nutrients the body needs that are absent in an all-veggie regimen. Most of the vegans I know ‘cheat’ a little with milk, cheese, and eggs because the supplements are too much of a hassle and require careful monitoring to insure proper nutrition. About 90% of the world population doesn’t have a health food store next door, so they eat meat whenever it’s available…

What the hell does that have to do with anything ? We weren’t discussing the availability of B12. We were discussing if meat is a good energy source or not and it isn’t. Like I said, it’s a great protein source, probably the best one along with eggs but a lousy energy source.

Regarding B12, you can get it by taking a multivitamin like these:
prozis.com/pt_pt/biotech-usa … en-60-tabs
prozis.com/pt_pt/optimum-nut … en-180caps

Sugar? Yeah. Carbos. All of the grains are easily converted to sugars and then stored fats. It’s great for creating the glycemic…

Contrary to what fitness gurus will have you believe, the glycemic index is retarded and absolutely useless as explained in the following videos:

youtube.com/watch?v=Za2PyzcS9YI&feature=plcp
youtube.com/watch?v=HmsU4I_usls&feature=plcp
youtube.com/watch?v=qYqCLteXwMA&feature=plcp

It is also a big, big misconception that carbs are the nutrient that make you gain fat.

Talk about needing some homework…

[Only_Humean]

@volchok

Contrary to what fitness gurus will have you believe, the glycemic index is retarded and absolutely useless as explained in the following videos:

youtube.com/watch?v=Za2PyzcS9YI&feature=plcp
youtube.com/watch?v=HmsU4I_usls&feature=plcp
youtube.com/watch?v=qYqCLteXwMA&feature=plcp

It is also a big, big misconception that carbs are the nutrient that make you gain fat.

Talk about needing some homework…

I only got about half the way through the first one. Is he a bodybuilder? I’ve yet to meet a bodybuilder who doesn’t consider themselves a world authority on nutrition. Does he eventually mention glucagon release when he’s talking about protein-based insulin spikes? That’s a basic, significant difference already, and I didn’t hear him mention it while explaining that protein prompts an insulin response.

Point being, referencing scientific studies on empirical facts is definitely the way to go, but given the contentious nature of the subject (as far as I knew, the whole area is still under study) anyone can post up 30 minutes or an hour of someone somewhere on the internet who happens to agree with us. Where does his information come from? I’m asking because it’s an area I’ve looked into before - I am sensitive to blood sugar levels, and I know several people who’ve lost a lot of weight on no/low-carb diets and kept it off (to the point of tedious evangelism on the subject), but the long-term risks of high-fat and protein intake in a low-carb diet don’t seem to be known.

Back to your OP - a couple of questions before my answer:

• why do you want to keep your reasons to yourself, but discuss everyone else’s?
• do you think that an argument that is compelling to you must be compelling to all rational people?
  As for myself, I avoid buying industrially-farmed meat (I’m fortunate enough to have the choice, where I live) and battery eggs, and I’ve cut back a fair bit on meat intake in the last few years. I have kids to feed, and meat’s the best way to get nutrients into them. Given that I don’t see it as necessarily wrong to eat the meat of an animal that’s had a reasonable life, and that humankind has been overwhelmingly omnivorous to date, I don’t see a call to have to justify it without an argument against it. Factory farming I see as an argument against.

[Faust]

Moreno - maybe I’ll just start a new thread. There are too many issues that are rather jumbled up here.

[von_Rivers]

Move to Hall of Questions.

[volchok]

@Only_Humean

I only got about half the way through the first one. Is he a bodybuilder? I’ve yet to meet a bodybuilder who doesn’t consider themselves a world authority on nutrition. Does he eventually mention glucagon release when he’s talking about protein-based insulin spikes? That’s a basic, significant difference already, and I didn’t hear him mention it while explaining that protein prompts an insulin response.

He is but what he aims to do is exactly to expose all the bullshit that has been going around in the fitness industry. He has done a few videos with Alan Aragon, who is one of the most knowledgeable guys out there when it comes to nutrition. Check it out if you want.

I recommend you watch the third video I linked which directly addresses the uselessness of the Glycimic index.

• why do you want to keep your reasons to yourself, but discuss everyone else’s?

Firstly, because I can. Secondly, I asked what was the best argument people had heard or seen. That was the main question which does not require a personal answer.

• do you think that an argument that is compelling to you must be compelling to all rational people?

If it is compelling to me on the grounds that it makes sense, there’s a higher chance that it will be compelling to other rational people but there are many variables that come into play, not sure why you’re even going there.

I have kids to feed, and meat’s the best way to get nutrients into them.

This needs to be substantiated.

Given that I don’t see it as necessarily wrong to eat the meat of an animal that’s had a reasonable life, and that humankind has been overwhelmingly omnivorous to date, I don’t see a call to have to justify it without an argument against it. Factory farming I see as an argument against.

Got it. Thanks for your answer.