>It's deeply ingrained in Western culture.

It's only "deeply ingrained" in the US. In most of the Western Europe etc it's negligible.

And from what I've read it wasn't some deep rooted tradition in the US either -- it took a lot of advertising from diamond companies to instill it...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/how...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you... has some details on the ad campaigns.

Eh, my wife got some flack in Ireland when she didn't have a diamond engagement ring. Yet somehow we're still together.

Horse may be a better example. Meat from carnivores tends to concentrate more toxins, which actually is a rational reason to avoid it.

Horse meat is quite normal in western culture, unless if by western culture you mean anglophone countries.

And not eating it is for non-taste/texture/allergy reasons is just as absurd as wanting to have a "real" diamond.

It's all nonsense. None of it makes sense.

OT aside: I sometimes like to play automatic reading (ala dada) with google. So at this moment a google search for "It's all nonsense. None of it makes sense." brings up your comment at the top of the page and a few items below this link [1] which has a section entitled "Making sense of nonsense. Conant and Diamond read Wittgenstein's Tractacus".

Now I wonder if that Diamond is a chance event ("nonsense") or correlation artifact from the search algorithm ("sense").

[1]: http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/conant/costello...

Culture just tends to be arbitrary, in the details. If you don't care about potential social consequences, then feel free to ignore the parts that you find absurd.

Does horse meat not raise the risk of digestive system cancer, as other red meats do? (and notably unlike fish and vegetables)

I can't reply to stouset for some stupid reason, but why is it "absurd" to not want to eat horse for texture reasons? My understanding is that horse meat generally does not taste that good and is very tough, because those animals get a lot of exercise; it's like deer meat. Some people like venison, and there's no stigma attached to eating it, but it's hard to buy because demand is low (and they're not raised as livestock), and the meat is generally considered "gamey" and difficult to cook properly so it's tender instead of tough and nasty. Cow and especially chicken is popular meat because it's both relatively cheap and rather easy (and fast) to cook. It's really hard to screw up cooking chicken in fact.

> I can't reply to stouset for some stupid reason

On deeply nested comments, if it hasn't been long since the post was made you have to click the "permalink" ("XX minutes ago" or "XX hours ago") link to reply. I think the extra step is to help slow down flamewars ("do I really need to reply to this comment, right now?".

Thanks for the info, that's very useful.

If this is the intention, it seems like it'd make more sense to throw up roadblocks to only someone else who's in the comment chain, rather than to someone who hasn't been involved at all and is just chiming in. Usually, those flamewars are long chains of comments between two people.

It's also useful to slowdown people dog-piling the 'obvious' response to new comments.

Hmmm... I didn't know that thanks for the heads up.

Many people wouldn't be able to distinguish from beef. I had it once in Quebec, much to the amusement of a jerk waiter.

It's not tough, just very lean and thus prone to overcooking. Honestly it tasted pretty good, I thought it was grass fed beef.

Venison is a lot gamier. I only like it in stews.

Deer meet is hard to buy, at least in the US, partly because the US has ridiculous laws prohibiting transportation of venison from US deer across state lines in various ways.

> and they're not raised as livestock

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_farm#Deer_Farming_in_New_... -- not quite as many of them as sheep there, but you definitely see a bunch of deer farms just driving around.

In fact, in my experience you're more likely to see New Zealand venison in a US store than US venison, because of the above laws prohibiting transportation.

I think hes saying that it's absurd to not eat horse for reasons other than taste or texture, which would agree with what you're saying

horse, at least the horse I've had, was very tender. It did however have slightly odd aftertaste I wasn't too fond of.

> There's no rational reason not to use dogs for meat...

Yes there is, unless you would make the same argument for having sex with relatives - which philosophers have rationalized against for thousands of years (way before the genetic consequences were understood). Morality is a rationalization. Dogs are genetically predisposed to be man's best friend - friends don't get eaten.

Diamonds don't even come close, there is no positive moral argument - just a fairly recent PR campaign.

"Dogs are genetically predisposed to be man's best friend - friends don't get eaten."

I take it you've never met a cow, horse, pig, chicken or tame deer. Most animals will befriend humans if you are patient enough.

All those animals were domesticated for very different reasons. I've spent a lot of time with horses, my family had three, and they're great animals - but they don't come anywhere close to dogs when it comes to trust and the ability to read people. I've seen dogs trained with nothing more than praise - the desire to please is that strong for them. That doesn't work for horses.

I've owned horses too. It depends on what you want them to do. If you want to jump on their back and ride them around, sure. I don't do that personally, and while they don't read you like a dog can I've taken unsocialized "mean" horses and turned them into friendly companion horses with nothing but patience and the occasional cookie or carrot.

Unless your children keep having sex with their siblings as well, just pair of incest marriage doesn't actually have significant risk of genetic consequences.

Good to know. Although it does raise the question of how a line is drawn. I'm imagining a "I smoked pot when I was your age but..." sort of conversation - just infinitely more uncomfortable for everyone involved.