If your hypothesis was correct I think we'd expect to see a coldening of e.g. hunter and prey. In reality, I think most hunters tend to disproportionately be animal and nature lovers. And as you go back in time (and in present as well) there are often rituals of respect involved in the slaughter of prey. Such things would be rather pointless if you had completely desensitized yourself to the nature of animals.

But there's some nuance in here. For instance I'd completely agree that factory farming is inhumane, but I think that's in large part because those that operate such institutions have become so far detached from what it is that they do. If your business is butchering chickens, you should be at least occasionally involved in butchering chickens.

There's some irony though. If there was a chicken and rice shop, as you can find all across the developing world, with chickens running about outside - the same ones ending up on your plate, people would be incensed. Similarly imagine somebody in a not entirely rural area was raising their own goats and/or chickens for slaughter. Again, there would be outrage. People inadvertently drive invisible inhumane conditions by expressing outrage at visible humane conditions that they find distasteful.

> I'm not a vegetarian myself but I think that is more uncomfortable for me than for someone who doesn't believe animals have emotions.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you think is making you still eat animals, given that you are aware of their suffering?

There's a reason we call it beef and not cow. There's a reason we generally don't serve food in a form that still looks like the animal (most common exception being fish, which people are less likely to see as an emotional being). Meat is delicious and nutritious, and it's easy to avoid thinking about what goes on in the feedlot or the slaughterhouse, so the cognitive dissonance is easy. This is one reason videos exposing inhumane practices are so powerful, even to people who already knew such conditions exist.

How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it? (Of course this is an incomplete picture if you want to consider externalities such as cow farts contributing to climate change.)

> How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it?

If that's a general argument, then the same thing goes for humans, so it'd therefore be better to have a human child and eat it (if it's slaughtered as humanely as possible), than not having a child, right?

Whenever we argue this way about a non-human animal this way, it's worth considering whether we'd feel the similarly of about a human being with similar mental capacities. Otherwise it might just be our speciesism leading us into motivated reasoning.

Of course, part of the problem with the argument is the false dilemma between killing someone and them never having been alive. Additionally the assumption, that it's harmful for someone non-existent to never be brought into existence, is an odd one. If we accept it, birth control would be highly immoral, and rape could often be justified as being in the interested of a potential unborn child... which is actually what's happening here with farmed cows, because they're being forcefully inseminated non-stop, and you're arguing it's for the benefit of the unborn calf.

If we buy this premise, we'd also have to support a hypothetical cannibalistic farming industry rearing captive human children for food, because otherwise those children wouldn't exist.

> There's a reason we call it beef and not cow.

Yeah, the Norman conquest. Other languages don't have this division.

>How about animals we eat that are treated well? If a cow lives a happy life, is slaughtered as humanely as possible, and wouldn't have existed if not for our demand for meat, does that make that meat ethical? Maybe even more ethical than not eating it?

With suffering and pain out of the way, this would boil down to the question if existing is more comfortable than not existing. The cow needs to exist in order that you can eat it.

Everything in this universe has the laws of nature as a resistance, and molds itself into a form to lessen this pressure (the easiest or viable way). life strives for a more comfortable life, which is also helped by bonding. Aren't emotions always connected to some kind of connection with something, a bond?

The core or main difference between the universe and life itself could be separation vs. union. The universe drifts apart, but life might eventually concentrate in one part of the universe as different species find each other.

I can answer this from my own experience after having been vegan for 5ish years (but I am decidedly not now). There are two things at play: the more "justified" first thing is I'm politically active and still maintain an interest in animal welfare, but I'm focusing the energy I have for activism on systemic changes and participating in/enabling mass action rather than focusing on individual choices, which often act as a release valve for important political discontent without directly confronting the systemic causes. The less noble second thing is that, given the American food supply chain, it's simply still more of a burden and less pleasant to eat vegan as well as easy to not think about when making food choices.

Your explanation very much resembles the one I used to have for not being vegan: in hindsight, it was nothing but a way to avoid the cognitive dissonance between my belief that I was a good person and the knowledge that I simply didn’t care about veganism/vegetarianism. I’m not saying it’s the same here, but your explanation is flawed on arguably every level, I hope you take the time to think about your decision more, but congrats for your 5 years of veganism

1. “I have limited energy for activism, and I distribute it wisely”: statements like these are often untrue and a way to brush away an ethical question while continuing to appear ethical (“I fly on planes, flying on planes is bad for the planet, but X [droughts in Africa] is more critical, so I prefer to think about X than about planes”). One, willpower is probably not finite, as was found in a famous recent study (granted, I conflate willpower and energy here, but they’re quite close). Two, being vegan takes basically the same amount of effort/time/money as eating animal products for someone with no medical condition. Three (more subjective), veganism is a pretty safe bet when it comes to activism, it’s a low effort/high impact part of climate change activism, which is one of the most critical things you can pour your energy into

2. “Enabling mass action is more important than my individual behaviour”: not how the world works. In theory, you could argue for veganism, even become the most respected vegan philosopher, while at the same time eating a different animal at every meal. In practice, if you’re a “do what I say, not what I do” person, the probability that someone becomes vegan after listening to you would be pretty much 0. I also have trouble imagining why anyone would see someone like this as part of the vegan community and a worthy ally when it comes to mass action

3. “Individual action makes people think they’ve done their part and not partake in mass action”: this is untrue on many levels. Individual action is what mass action is made of and the end goal basically. Most people take the strength for political commitment from their individual everyday choices, I would even say that everyday choices are what makes political commitment inevitable. I have never met an activist who is committed only on a theoretical/group level

4. “Being vegan is a chore in America”: being vegan in a rich country is arguably the closest you’ll get to finding it easy

5. “Being vegan is less pleasant than not being vegan”: I can only assume you’re speaking about taste here, which I find weird from a former vegan. The imbalance between personal gustative pleasure and the suffering of species/ecology might be the most frequent discussion about veganism, and the one that demonstrates the most obviously to all involved that eating animal products is unethical (or at least neutral)

Well, for one, I'm not a good person and have no intention of becoming one, so no cognitive dissonance there. I agree with a number of your points, but take issue with a few.

1. Willpower and energy are finite but not fixed. Being vegan is an additional expenditure of energy. Pretending to be vegan (or publicly being vegan enough) probably would be easy to do without spending much energy and also pretty much deals with #2, but that doesn't seem to be what you want.

2. As above, this is only really a reason to pretend to be vegan. But to your point, I don't begrudge any group for being that picky about who they want engaging in action alongside them. I'm not sure that's a winning strategy, but if it gets some people engaged in action, fine, I'll just run with the more "tainted" groups. Personally, I think these sorts of individual scorecard things are good ideas to apply to friends, bad ones to apply to political allies. Obviously you disagree.

3. Yes, people who strike together, engage in demonstrations or other direct action of course have to act as individuals also in order to do that, but you already seem to understand the distinction I'm drawing here based on the way you talk about it. From there, you just have look at the many successful leaders of mass action/positive political change who had checkered lives to put the lie to this blanket dismissal. It's cool that your friends are good people, but if you all still accomplish the same amount of structural change while eating steaks, I'd be equally happy.

4. Yep.

5. It is less pleasant. It is unethical to prefer more pleasant things that come from an odious supply chain when it wouldn't require too much energy to sqitch. We agree, but this is also one of those things where #1 comes into play, as I imagine you aren't writing this from a self-sufficient commune in a hidden stateless island. If you are, awesome, but otherwise, you're implicated in a lot of unethical choices. Maybe some of which where I'm doing the ethical thing. But it really doesn't matter (beyond our ability to sleep at night) if neither of us are mounting real challenges to the structures that make ethical decisions hard and unethical ones easy.

Quick additional note on your last bit for 1- you're really kind of proving my point about individual behavioral/consumer level change acting as a release valve (though you admit it's subjective). There is no way forward on climate that isn't structural and doesn't hold powerful organizations to account. That doesn't happen through the true believers opting out. Or put another way, it is ethical to not eat meat and it relieves guilt, but the political goal should be to make it harder to eat meat and even remove it as an option.

> There is no way forward on climate that isn't structural and doesn't hold powerful organizations to account.

There is a lot of truth in that. As it is now though, some meat eaters will say that businesses need to stop murdering animals, while people controlling and working at those businesses will say that they're only doing it because people buy it. It's an easy and convenient view to hold, because it let's everyone put the blame on someone else, while not having to do anything themselves.

The companies' position would only make sense if they weren't spending so much on advertising, lobbying, and other attempts to reinforce the structures that lead to the levels of meat consumption we have now.

I'm saying it is critical for anyone who cares about this to do something. Organizing to get laws changed, subsidies stripped/rerouted, and other structural changes takes effort from everyone who has a stake in this. We just disagree on what it is that is critical to do.

My justification is that every life form takes something from the outside. Your pet also would eat other pets in a wild life settings. This is how life forms emerged from ~nature.

I think the debate pops up strongly now [0] because 1) our knowledge is near capable of synthesizing nutrients and 2) industrial based lifestyles have removed the ~fair side of survival eating. I don't think any human ever thought twice about eating an animal when his life depends on it.

[0] I've read a bit in a judaism book that the kosher idea comes from the mental struggle to rationalize taking a life to sustain your own. I know nothing about judaism so maybe the book was just fantasy.. but I found it very touching thinking that in previous eras people did think about this. Maybe (most probably even) other cultures expressed that sentiment in various ways (brainstorming but maybe wearing animal skulls or necklace or maybe prayers for the life taken). If people know more about that hit me up

> I think the debate pops up strongly now

The debate's been going on for quite a while now though[0]. But yes, it didn't involve factory farms, antibiotics, dead zones or climate breakdown back then.

> Your pet also would eat other pets in a wild life settings.

To me that sounds a little bit like cherry picking. Do we take cues from pets in general? Couldn't that argument be used as a justification for doing a poop on the street or going around and sniffing other people's bums?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism#Vegetarianism

At least dogs cover their poop with soil. Plus it's a nice fertilizer for future plant.

I think we're decoupling life too much. I don't think my system was made to be a pure intellectual being. Running for your food is probably the happiest healthiest act one can do.

> I've read a bit in a judaism book that the kosher idea comes from the mental struggle to rationalize taking a life to sustain your own.

This seems very unlikely because the stated reason to spare these animals is that they are unclean and eating them is bad for the eater, not the animal.

Given the rest of the threads, why do you think he shouldn't? Do you think a bear shouldn't eat salmon?

There's generally not a big risk of bears overfishing salmon into near extinction in the massive fishing vessels that they don't possess, nor do they feed antibiotics to the salmon that they don't farm, so that's also not an issue for the bears. When bears go to the super market, they rarely have the choice between buying vegetables or salmon, because humans are generally reluctant to let bears in there, and even if they got in, most of them wouldn't have any cash.

Regardless, there aren't many bears reading HN, so it would be a waste of time trying to discuss these issues with them here anyway.

I think it'll be possible for humans to discuss the ethics of eating salmon without necessarily getting the bears on board with their decision. Most humans tend to generally not involve bears that much in their day-to-day decision making.

We can acknowledge the suffering caused by the bear.

Perhaps the overall utility of having a happy bear in your ecosystem beats not having a bear, or a starving one. Since we can't know for sure, the precautionary principle tells us to just let the bear be a bear. But it still sucks for the salmon, and therefore a human capable of forgoing the salmon clearly should at least consider it.

Because if people were not eating them wolfs would be, or they would not even be born.

God said it was cool.

No. We can have the philosophical and biological discussions without useless moralizing. I have been vegan most of my life but I question whether animals emotions are as similar to ours as many seem to be implying here.

Really? Even if it proven animal have emotions, I still won't have any problem eating meat.

Just curious, do you have emotional reactions to stories about animals killing people?

That depends on the situation, I will surely felt emotional if the people is my family or someone I know.

I was thinking more of stories about hunters getting unexpectedly eaten by lions or the like. No particular point to my inquiry, just trying to understand your other comments better.