Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings?

Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by ksaj on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:10PM (#19903426)

Plants and fungi are living beings. We eat them for complementary reasons - what nutrition we don't get from one, we get from the others. I suspect you wish to engage in a veganist conversation, but until the "rules" are considered and applied with equal determination for fungi life forms, I have no interest in the debate that is most likely to emerge from this composed type of questioning.

Verbal cherry picking is annoying to all except those in the echo chamber. Nobody has ever said they eat hamburgers only because carrots are so hard to come by. Scarcity is a clever ruse, but doesn't work here.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by moreranchplease on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:20PM (#19903523)

Fungi aren't animals. They also don't have a central nervous system and they don't feel pain. also in most cases not killing the organism by eating a mushroom.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by ksaj on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:22PM (#19903543)

From below: A fungus is able to search through a maze and apparently remember the route. Is it sentient?

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by moreranchplease on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:24PM (#19903563)

It can react to its environment. That's not the argument. The "rules" are it isn't an animal.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by ksaj on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:51PM (#19903828)

If you are sticking to the argument so cleanly, then perhaps you can stick to my answer, which is at the beginning and not the end of the response you are speaking of.

As I predicted, the purpose of this post was vegan debate, and my answer has been completely ignored.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by moreranchplease on Monday May 13, 2019 @05:33PM (#19904203)

Fungi aren't animals. Vegans don't eat animal products. Your answer was ignored because it is not relevant.

If there's a diet you'd like to discuss that involves not eating fungi then go ahead and make a post for it.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by ksaj on Monday May 13, 2019 @06:03PM (#19904461)

My answer wasn't irrelevant. Go back and re-read it.

It is clear the question asked is a ruse to goad people into a vegan debate.

If you take OP as being 2 questions, then the first answer is at the beginning, and the answer to the goading question of food scarcity is the end.

But the answer is clearly not what OP was after. Only vegan preaching was intended.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by moreranchplease on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:33PM (#19903641)

Ironically I think increased use in psychedelic mushrooms will lead to more people forgoing eating animals.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by ksaj on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:49PM (#19903806)

You could argue that marijuana leads to a spike in people eating lots of corn (Doritos), legumes (Taco Bell) and tomato (pizza). Not such a bad world to consider.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by pickdenis on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:16PM (#19903486)

Fine: replace "living" with "sentient". Do you still have a snarky answer?

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by ksaj on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:17PM (#19903496)

A fungus is able to search through a maze and apparently remember the route. Is it sentient?

EDIT: Your concern as to whether I was snarky in my response glossed over the fact that there is an answer. Let's talk about that instead of proving my "snark" as the more important yet correct part.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do we kill and eat other living beings? by pickdenis on Monday May 13, 2019 @05:24PM (#19904129)

Why are you trying to prove that fungi are sentient? You're just being disingenuous. The core issue is the fact that we kill and eat animals that feel pain and emotions (the "vegan debate", whatever), something that seems wrong at face value. How about addressing that instead of hiding behind annoying semantics? It's obviously what the OP meant.

Look at your sibling comment for an example of a comment made by someone who actually cares about discussion and not winning stupid word wars. You both said the same thing in essence, but they don't come off as a prick.

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