Go tell the lions they're not exceptional. I'm sure they'll switch to tofu.

The argument isn't convincing. It relies on a tired rethorical trick: invent some syndrome, claim it is the basis for something you don't like, then taint the syndrome. It doesn't convince. And in this case, the outcome will be negative: once everyone fully realizes we're just normal animals, why not behave like them? Meat's back on the menu.

Except, industrial agriculture and fisheries are nothing like subsistence predation.

I see no problem with hunter-gatherers’ predation of wildlife, provided they act in ecological balance with their environment (and they do tend to, out of self-preservation).

That’s not the world the vast majority of us live in though. We kill on the order of 1 trillion animals every year. We’re devastating Earth’s biosphere for the sake of an unnecessary dietary choice.

We’ll reap what we sow, sooner or later.

> once everyone fully realizes we're just normal animals, why not behave like them?

Lions hunt and eat pretty, they also regularly kill cubs when taking over a pride. Does that make infanticide acceptable?

This argument is at least as silly as the parent's.

GP isn’t arguing for “we should behave like animals”, they are just using it to show inconsistencies in GGP’s argument.

> Yet another nail in the coffin of human exceptionalism. Consider not what you are eating, but who.

This is an interesting take. If we refactor meat out of our diets out of empathy, wouldn't that imply human exceptionalism considering non-human carnivores and omnivores haven't been observed doing the same?

I think the answer lies in your question. We have not observed such behavior (conscious dietary preferences), but that says nothing of capability.

Opting out of meat is only really possible for us because of farming. Other species lack the physical capabilities to farm as we do. Nor can they communicate to us the depth of their cognitive capabilities.

Rejecting human exceptionalism is not the same as saying we are indistinguishable from non-human animals (which would be absurd to argue), rather that our distinctions do not make us inherently more worthy.

Sorry I'm an apex predator.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210405113606.h...

It is not particularly convincing in the last part, the most relevant part: our own selfish interests in prioritizing people related to us over those not related, close to us over those far from us, and so on. It does a lot of handwaving around environmental interconnectedness but it doesn't add up to much of an argument if you don't fully buy the whole ecosystem thing, and if you do buy that, we should be paying more attention to bees than farm animals.

Indeed we should be paying attention to bees.

Wild pollinators are being assaulted by pesticides and by honey bees outcompeting them. This matters because honey bees do not pollinate all the plants we care about.

Whole regions of China have managed to exterminate their pollinator species, such that fruit trees must be pollinated by hand.

I will remember that when running from other expert animals trying to have me for lunch, maybe they will stop for a second and think otherwise.

The concept that we should abstain from all animal meat is the very definition of human exceptionalism, since it amounts to saying we have transcended our animal natures to such an extent that we've moved past the instincts we share in common with non-humans.

Rejecting human exceptionalism is not the same as saying we are indistinguishable from non-human animals (which would be absurd to argue), rather that our distinguishing features do not make us inherently more worthy.

This is bad.