> People don't like to kill in general.

I used to believe this.

Then I came up with a twisted question to ask people (I am fun at parties)

The question is something like, if you had to come up with a name for someone to kill within twenty four hours can you do so? The conditions are you get a full and unconditional pardon. It won't be held against you at all. If need be, we will even arrange it such that the person can't protest. However, once you agree, you must come up with a name and you must follow through. You must kill this person no matter what within a short time frame (make something up like a month).

I expected people to answer no. You can't come up with a name in a day! However, over half the people I have asked have said they have a name right now.

> I expected people to answer no. You can't come up with a name in a day! However, over half the people I have asked have said they have a name right now.

I don't think that's surprising, and it doesn't meant that people are okay with or blasé about killing people. Like, arguably this is just the trolley problem rephrased; there exist people whose death would clearly be a vast net benefit and would save many other lives. So is it okay to kill them? It's not an easy question.

I think it's more or less unrelated to the issue of killing one's own chickens; there is no such thing as an evil chicken who death will save thousands.

If you got that person in front of them and put a gun in their hand, do you think they'd follow through?

Your question is like a game, and people you ask will most probably treat it as such. People 'kill' in videogames, but most would not like to actually kill in real life.

I feel like that's a different question though. Most people have at least one person they think would make the world a better place by their absence, but that's not quite the same thing as wanting to kill them, even if they would guaranteed get away with it.

(for a pithy version: "I've never wished anyone dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure")

But why? You can easily come up with a whole list. I’d ask for a week to perform research on more names I wasn’t aware of. There’s so many bastards in this world I’d specifically choose a less sharp weapon for and skip the can’t protest part. The only thing I’d worry about is getting physically exhausted and mentally unstable after such marathon, but it has to be done.

Kinda disagree on the latter part. If there's no chance to toss them in prison, but other opportunities, do whatever is necessary to prevent further suffering.

But then there's the question on whether you could trust your own judgement.

E.g. I wonder how many people would choose Kim Jong Un without realizing how EXTREMELY progressive the guy is on the scale of the hell hole that is North Korea.

Allowing just anyone who wants access to the countrwide intranet with some curated and heavily censored information from the outside and ending the crackdown on user generated content? Blasphemy! Allowing a selected few foreign restaurants to open up? Witchcraft! Building semi-normal housing in the prison camps you toss entire families together with their children, grand-children and elders in? Cracking down on systematic rape and arbitrary mass executions in those camps? He's going to come for our (prison) children next! Trying to shut down the practice of high ranking officials forcing young girls into sex slavery squads? And even after inflicting an "undisclosed physical ailment" on him, he still only barely agreed to restart the squad, controls the selection of girls himself instead of allowing us to force anyone we like into it, requires parental consent, makes us wait until the girls receive an education and doesn't recruit anyone under 14 anymore? SCREW HIM!

And many other things that seem absurd to us and the Juche system for exactly opposite reasons. Like allowing other countries but China and Russia to offer work in their special economic zones, agreeing to a meeting with the US President at the border inside NK, considering negotiations with South Korea and allowing very limited cultural exchange, giving some priority to increasing living conditions for anyone but those who have the priviledge of living in the capital, turning a blind eye to tiny private markets selling some less controversial contraband, ....

The guy is just barely holding on in a system that completely vaporized anyone with even but a tiny bit less than utmost loyality to the Juche ideology. For several generations. All institutions, government bodies, civic organizations, education and corporations are under complete control of Juche extremists. And then there's this one basketball obsessed fatty raised in Switzerland.

His greatest achievement so far is probably opening up their intranet to about a quarter of their population (less than 1% were allowed to use it before him) and slowly expanding the group of people who have access to the outside internet. At this point more people have access to smartphones than to television or radio. And now social media and chatrooms are apparently being reopened after the previous government took those from the 0.1% elite who had access to the intranet back then in 2005, because they organized a spontaneous sport event with a few hundred people.

And not long ago the NK government became very worried about people accessing the global internet through their intranet enabled devices, extending the application used to connect to the intranet with spyware trying to detect foreign network accesses. So it seems VERY likely to me someone hard to stop is currently hooking their intranet to the global internet in the background. And the NK establishment is not very happy about it.

Maybe the life of North Koreans will become much better within one or two generations.

That’s why I say we need a detailed list, and a long one. Most bastards are in the middle of these structures, not on top (with notable exceptions).

This doesn't sound like "liking to kill" but more so like an "I know someone who's an absolute piece of shit and the world would be better off without them" kind of deal.

The curse of a poll. You always get more than you asked for because any question is too flat.

Putin and Xi immediately jumped to my mind.

There are autocrats all over the world I could name. Unfortunately there are most likely a whole list of people ready and waiting to step into their place.

Your game doesn't test what you say it does, but someone else already covered that.

I'm not saying people have an inbuilt moral objection to the idea of killing, I'm saying most people find hurting other living things emotionally difficult.

Harvesting crops is materially different from slaughtering animals, and calorie for calorie, plant-based nutrition involves less termination of life than getting calories from animals (if you're grouping insects and non-animal life into the "forms of life" being killed).

If people don't like killing in general, or killing animals more specifically, they can live a wonderfully health(y|ier) life by going plant-based, be responsible for less killing, and today do it without having to give up the textures and experiences they've be conditioned on.

It's difficult in 2025 to conclude that a person who doesn't choose to eat this way is particularly opposed to killing, in the way that you propose.

Less termination of life based on numbers or some version of (sentience * number of individuals)? I find it hard to believe the sheer number of individual insects killed during harvest could match the killing of one cow, calorie for calorie.

Also, what if we increase the calories of the animal we choose to slaughter, say we start raising massive whale-sized animals instead, would that tip the scales?

Insects do not have the same level of sentience as birds and mammals.

However, do keep in mind that a large proportion of agricultural output is used to feed animals.

It takes 20 to 40 plant calories to raise one calorie of beef. So slaughtering a cow kills 20 to 40 times the number of lives as eating plants directly.

Number of calories !== number of lives

If anything, I would expect the number of insects, small mammals, etc. killed by harvesting animal feed to be higher than that of harvesting crops grown for people, on a caloric basis.

Significant input costs per animal calorie means there's an order of magnitude or more insects being killed to raise the animal that you ultimately end up eating, to get the same calories you'd have gotten just eating the plant sources.

What makes my wife and I fail every time is protein intake. We are both active and require a lot of protein. We drink whey protein 1x a day, have quinoa for salads and occasionally eat eggs. The problem is come dinnertime, we have few options. We can't eat: - beans: Yes, I rolled my eyes too. My wife gets bloated painfully and it's happened so many times that I've stopped preparing bean-primary dishes - beyond meat: it's expensive, gas and bloat is still an issue, a big one

Tofu, seitan and TVP are all good, but they're extremely boring (user error attributes to this I'm sure).

Every vegetarian/vegan I've talked to is just not into weightlifting, so they sort of dismiss the diet needs we need. We always go back to chicken because of this

> beans

Have you tried various types? cannellini beans don't seem to have the same effect as others in my experience.

Perhaps have a look of tempeh, it’s more digestible that beans (because pre disgusted by shroom) and already comes with a slight nutty flavor but that stuff is a songe (shroom…) and get impregnated sigh any marinade very quickly.

The tvp are tasteless by design, my way is to use them to mimic sliced beef recipes therefore 1) they get different flavors depending on what I cook 2) they trigger my memories and those makes me feel more taste that they are.

For the beans digestability another tip is to remove/by dehulled beans, that’s the hardest part to digest. Also soaking them overnight is a big help for digestion.

I was going to suggest tempeh as well. It takes some practice and creativity to turn tempeh into interesting meals [1], but it makes the beans much easier to digest, and the tempeh adds extra dietary fiber, significantly increasing satiety (in my experience).

[1] I especially like grinding up the tempeh to turn it into a plant based burger substitute, and making "Perkedel Tempeh" (tempeh fritters)

> We are both active and require a lot of protein.

I'm curious what your targets are. I've found getting 0.8g of protein per kg of bodyweight (USDA recommendation) is easy on any diet whereas 1.5g/kg or higher on a vegan diet can be hard depending on your target macro ratio. If you're bulking or doing long-distance running/biking (i.e. carbs aren't a limiting factor) then it's totally doable. Besides tofu, seitan, and beans there's lentils, chickpeas, edamame, spinach, nuts, seeds, nooch, etc.

> beans: ... My wife gets bloated painfully

If she's committed to making beans work you could experiment with varieties and preparation methods that are more digestible, or she could try Beano. But honestly that seems like a lot of work.

> beyond meat: it's expensive, gas and bloat is still an issue, a big one

Same, I just can't digest it. I'm glad the faux meats exist for folks who want them, but I'm sad at how it's displaced other veggie burgers at restaurants.

> Tofu, seitan and TVP are all good, but they're extremely boring (user error attributes to this I'm sure).

I've come to appreciate the blank canvas they provide but that did take a lot of trial and error to get to the point where I knew what to do with them. Similar to beans it depends on how committed you are. (In my case it took a long time for the incongruence between my food choices and my ethics to grow big enough to overcome my innate laziness and affinity for barbecue.)

> Every vegetarian/vegan I've talked to is just not into weightlifting, so they sort of dismiss the diet needs we need.

I know a few vegans into powerlifting/streetlifting, and as mentioned above bulking isn't too hard -- the real issue is cutting. Every one of them supplements with protein powders, especially while cutting. Then again, so do all the omnivore lifters I know.

I would love to provide recommendations and help with menu ideas. If you have a look in my profile you can get to my address and email me from there <3

My partner and I have been fully plant based since 2018 and variously play rugby and train triathlons.

> being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.

That’s like saying you kill chickens to eat eggs. You don’t kill a plant to eat its fruit. In fact, plants benefit from animals eating what they produce, be it oranges or tomatoes or something else and crapping the seeds somewhere else for proliferation.

I killed so many slugs eating my broccoli it started to get to me. I technically didn't kill them myself, I put the cannibals in a bucket together. 1/3 to 1/2 bucket per day. About 30 full buckets for 20 broccoli plants of which about 8 were ruined.

The conversation is about the necessity of killing what you eat. Those slugs have nothing to do with either argument nor were they a necessary casualty.

Not sure how killing things and then not eating them is morally superior. If you aren't eating meat you are probably getting most of your calories from grains and legumes. The people that grow and store those for you are killing a lot of animals to get them to your grocery store.

This response feels quite emotional, so I’ll start by saying there was no judgement in my comment. At no point have I made a comment on the morality of the matter. Furthermore, not only do grocery stores not even enter into the conversation, you are assuming to know what the people who grow and sell the food at my local markets eat. I assure you, you do not.

I think you’ll benefit from this video. Don’t let yourself be consumed by emotions of an imaginary argument. The entirety of your point is a response to something you imagined I said and not my words or intentions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEHuNrC8yU

I think you misunderstood me, perhaps I didn't express myself well. You said the slugs were not a necessary casualty. Growing the acres and acres of grain and pulses necessary for a vegan diet necessitates the killing of way more animals (insects and rodents, etc) than the few cows, chickens, or pigs necessary to feed a carnivore. Every kind of agriculture requires killing. There is no other way to do it at scale.

The real problem is the sheer number of humans we have to feed. Hopefully another couple centuries of low birth rates will help.

I think in practice pest control does require killing the pest, and in that example was a necessary part of growing broccoli to harvesy

Same. Buckets upon buckets. You can’t even feed them to the chickens, critters who eat literally anything won‘t eat slugs.

Ducks love slugs, oddly.

I have seen a cat gobble a slug, so your mileage may vary.

Admittedly this is pedantry on my part, but isn’t this only true for fruits? GP’s argument seems perfectly valid for e.g. carrots or mushrooms.

Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores).

And fruits are broader than most people think. Many of the things you think as vegetables are fruits: pumpkins, zucchinis, tomatoes. But even outside fruits there is food you can harvest without harming the plant, like potatoes. And we haven’t even gotten into seeds and grains, like rice.

So you can definitely live without killing what you eat.

> Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores).

They are the "fruiting body" of the fungus, but biologically they are not fruit.

That is correct, which is why I used quotes. It is important to not get bogged down in pedantry and lose sight of the argument, though. The matter being discussed is if you need to kill what you eat, and I’m using “fruit” as a shorthand for the thing a plant produces to be eaten but is not the plant itself.

aren't plants alive?

They are, and you don’t kill them or harm them to eat the things they produce with the purpose of being eaten and spread. If you want to engage in the conversation, please make an effort to do so in good faith and actually address the arguments. If you’re only going to make basic queries everyone already agrees with, we’re just wasting time and space.

"Aren't plants alive?" is such a bad faith argument that I don't know why you even bother replying. It's legitimately on the level of "internet troll". I eat meat btw, but I wouldn't even entertain someone that pretends there's no difference between a sentient mammal and a stalk of broccoli

You are right, of course. But I have noticed as of late that I sometimes became unkind in my replies, which I don’t like and didn’t use to happen. I want to do better.

Surely the right move here is not to play, but if you don’t get annoyed trolls can’t win either.

The point is that you're still killing that broccoli, not that the two acts have equal moral value. It doesn't normally need to be said but you know, someone was wrong on the internet

Ever ate a carrot? The whole plant has to be "killed". Killing doesn't even make sense in the context of plants, a lot of them can just be cloned from a leaf, stem or root. Where do you draw the line between damaging and killing a plant, the termination of the apical meristem? The plant will stop growing but it can still clone itself, or grow more apical meristems...

This whole argument is absolutely meaningless.

edit: just pointing out I'm not directly replying to you but to the whole thread.

> purpose of being eaten and spread

why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?

You're arguing on the Internet, it's already a waste of time and space.

Also, this is a ridiculous argument.

If someone raises their human kid “to be eaten”, that would be the purpose of the kid.

Does that make it ok to eat the kid?

Here’s a compromise.

Neither you nor I get to decide what the purpose of another sentient being is.

Absolutely. But while I cannot declare its ultimate "final cause", perhaps I have some right to declare a penultimate one? I have my reasons for believing this is the case. What are your reasons for believing it is not (or do you believe that we do have some right to declare penultimate final causes for living creatures, and if so, what are the limits?)

> why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?

Clearly you’ve never experienced the sight of animals in a slaughterhouse, as they realise what is happening to the animals in front and begin to panic and violently bellow and push back.

> You're arguing on the Internet, it's already a waste of time and space.

That is only true for people who don’t engage in good faith and don’t have a genuine desire to learn and are open to changing their minds. For everyone else, it can and does provide value.

your attempt to evoke an emotion doesn't answer my question though.

Why do you get to decide that the purpose of a cow isn't to be eaten?

Why do you get to decide it is? The onus of proof is on the one making the claim.

I guess someone could also repeatedly bash you over the head with a tire iron and break your legs, and when criticised reply “how do you know their purpose isn’t to get hurt?”

“Well, when I approached them to hit them, they cowered in fear, asked for mercy, and tried to flee.”

“Your attempt to evoke an emotion doesn’t answer the question though. How do you know their purpose is not to be ravaged?”

> They are, and you don’t kill them or harm them to eat the things they produce with the purpose of being eaten and spread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43113489

There is a chasm of difference between your purpose and the purpose of something you do.

If you build a chair, the purpose of doing so could be to sit or to earn money by selling it. We can derive exactly which from your actions and the outcomes, but there is still an identifiable purpose. However, it is entirely different to claim your purpose is to build chairs.

Similarly, in my previous example someone can hit someone else with the purpose of harming them, but it doesn’t mean that person’s purpose is to cause harm.

Do you see the difference? I do kind of feel like I’m discussing middle school philosophy here. I surely hope that is not my purpose. This whole conversation was unnecessary with a tiny bit of steel manning on your part, don’t you think? Does it truly seem reasonable to you to claim an entire species’ purpose is to do something they do not only not pursue but actively avoid? I’m confident you are able to see the point by now.

> why do you get to decide that it isn't the purpose of a cow to be eaten?

Pretty sure it is the cow's purpose. Humans first domesticated a wild animal and then with selective breeding cows were "made". That has no weight on ethics tho.

Hah of course you're 100% right on mushrooms - that totally slipped my mind. Am I completely out to lunch on root vegetables though?

The dark truth about keeping chickens and many other poultry is that they hatch in an approximately 1:1 male:female ratio, but can't be kept in that ratio without severe conflict and stress. Thus, hatching chickens to keep for egg-laying requires killing most of the male chicks. So yes, you have to kill chickens to eat eggs.

Same for dairy cattle: males are redundant. My grandfather was an AI pioneer in the UK in the 1940s. AI being artificial insemination of dairy cattle....

I mean, dairy cattle also have the issue of keeping the female pregnant and then taking the baby anyway. And then, once they are done producing milk, what do you do with a giant animal?

Same with chickens that lose the ability to produce eggs.

The "severe conflict and stress" part may be hard to understand for the cityfolk; you have to kill chickens to eat eggs, or else they will do it.

We put the redundant roosters in the woods, let nature do the killing for us. They didn't last one night.

Getting eaten alive makes you feel better than euthanizing them quickly?

Well, at least a wild animal had something to eat?

I'd say main benefit is not doing it youself.

That is pretty much just fruit. Vegetables are typically either the whole body of the plant (like carrots) or a vital part.

Fruit, seeds, grains, legumes, one can find quite a lot to eat without "killing" a plant. Admittedly though most (if not all) vegetables do involve killing a whole plant.

Being against child slavery doesn’t exclude you from benefitting from child slavery when you use your phone.

I guess you should just be pro child slavery and enslaved some kids to do your housework then?

Cars kill 50k Americans a year. I guess we are just ok with killing peoplr and therefore shouldn’t be against murder either?

It doesn’t even take philosophy 101 to understand there’s a significant moral gulf between killing deliberately and incidentally.