I don’t value life in and of itself I value sentience, life is just a neat trick to duplciate dna, sentience is what is morally relevant. Plants have no nervous system or pain receptors, they have no mechanism to feel pain and no evolutionary reason to as they cant physically escape dangerous situations, plants respond reflexively to basic stimuli like light concentration and temperature the same way a thermostat “feels cold” and “acts to warm itself up”
Even if you want to contend that plants can suffer, if you read Poore 2017 you will find that a vegan world would use 70% less cropland, this is because it is thermodynamically inefficient to filter your nutrients through someone elses body, so if you want to minimise plant deaths eat them directly https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-020-01579-w
Ranking the importance of species by sentience seems archaic.
Plants don’t feel pain In the same way humans feel pain, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel pain.
Plants produce chemicals that suppress pain, plants send out chemical distress calls, and plants communicate.
Sloths, snails, and tortoises cannot “escape dangerous situations” and still feel pain. They may avoid pain automatically, as humans do, but those organisms are feeling and avoiding pain, not registering the pain without feeling it like your thermostat.
You’re killing organisms and consuming them to live. Me too. Plants and fungi too. they eat blood, meat, waste.
If you want to be vegan, I suggest living in India. I was vegan in India for one month and vegetarian for two without noticing because the food is so good.
If you really think that plants have feelings then you must pick one of the following: you shouldnt trim bushes without anesthetic because theyre alive just like my dog, or: this dog is just like a bush so no need for the anaesthic just cut them open.
You didnt respond to the other point which is that you being vegan would kill far far fewer plants, this is due to something called trophic energy loss, it is thermodynamically inefficient to filter your nutrients through someone elses body bc 90% of the calories are “lost” keeping that other creature alive
Do not cut your dog open to prove a false dichotomy.
What do you want to know about the efficiency of killing plants?
Calories are not “lost” by their ingestion and utility. You are here, having fun typing your answers because of the calories you have ingested and used.
Animals taste good and are a natural, efficient source of nutrition.
Calories are not “lost” when they are ingested and used.
When you pay taxes to maintain civil services, that money goes to buy books, pay firefighters and maintain roads. The money is not “lost”, it was used.
I’m very happy you’re learning about factory farming, I’m well aware of its problems. Factory farming is part of why I live abroad. Are you from the US?
India is a wonderful country and you may want to consider living there, I was a very happy vegan in India.
I’m just trying to explain trophic energy loss, not get in the middle of this- the number of calories that a pig eats during its lifetime is much smaller than the calories we can get from its meat. These calories aren’t “lost,” but they are used by the pig to support its growth, function, and movement. If we ate the soybeans used to feed it instead, we’d need to harvest fewer plants, because it’s more efficient to just get the calories from the plants than it is to also support an additional animal.
“they” not “it” they’re thinking feeling creatures with personality memory preferences fears and feel pain love grief and comfort, they are someone not something not an inanimate object and never “it” not calling other animals it is a simple thing we can do to subconsciously reduce speciesism in the world
Good we agree on the second point, so if you wouldnt want to be killed in your sleep, and it would be murder to do it against your will, what is so different about a cow a chicken a pig a fish that makes it ok to kill them when they dont want to or need to die for your taste preference.
There’s some complexity here. Consider that farmland only accounts for about 7% of the Earth’s total land. Pasture land, only suitable for feeding animals and not raising crops, is about 25% of the Earth’s total land.
It’s foolish to have a human grow crops to feed animals, totally agreed. That makes no sense. However, for the 25% of land that’s only suitable for grazing ruminants, a human does not have to grow the crop, the animal eats something a human can’t eat. And that’s the power of ruminant nutrition
India is amazing in this respect, their shepherding was striking. Seeing the attitude of cattle in India gainly eat the dozens of native plant varieties everywhere was fascinating compared to other countries’ cattle chewing their cud.
yes thats why I said 10-30%, if you account for the fact these animals often eat human inedible crops, the efficiency raises from 10% to 30% (edit: 35% just rechecked the numbers)
that taste is the overwhelmingly determinant factor in their choice. it was so overwhelming that, by their own account, they didn’t notice they weren’t eating meat for months.
I don’t value life in and of itself I value sentience, life is just a neat trick to duplciate dna, sentience is what is morally relevant. Plants have no nervous system or pain receptors, they have no mechanism to feel pain and no evolutionary reason to as they cant physically escape dangerous situations, plants respond reflexively to basic stimuli like light concentration and temperature the same way a thermostat “feels cold” and “acts to warm itself up” Even if you want to contend that plants can suffer, if you read Poore 2017 you will find that a vegan world would use 70% less cropland, this is because it is thermodynamically inefficient to filter your nutrients through someone elses body, so if you want to minimise plant deaths eat them directly https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-020-01579-w
I value life itself.
Ranking the importance of species by sentience seems archaic.
Plants don’t feel pain In the same way humans feel pain, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel pain.
Plants produce chemicals that suppress pain, plants send out chemical distress calls, and plants communicate.
Sloths, snails, and tortoises cannot “escape dangerous situations” and still feel pain. They may avoid pain automatically, as humans do, but those organisms are feeling and avoiding pain, not registering the pain without feeling it like your thermostat.
You’re killing organisms and consuming them to live. Me too. Plants and fungi too. they eat blood, meat, waste.
If you want to be vegan, I suggest living in India. I was vegan in India for one month and vegetarian for two without noticing because the food is so good.
If you really think that plants have feelings then you must pick one of the following: you shouldnt trim bushes without anesthetic because theyre alive just like my dog, or: this dog is just like a bush so no need for the anaesthic just cut them open.
You didnt respond to the other point which is that you being vegan would kill far far fewer plants, this is due to something called trophic energy loss, it is thermodynamically inefficient to filter your nutrients through someone elses body bc 90% of the calories are “lost” keeping that other creature alive
Do not cut your dog open to prove a false dichotomy.
What do you want to know about the efficiency of killing plants?
Calories are not “lost” by their ingestion and utility. You are here, having fun typing your answers because of the calories you have ingested and used.
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Harvest.
Animals taste good and are a natural, efficient source of nutrition.
Calories are not “lost” when they are ingested and used.
When you pay taxes to maintain civil services, that money goes to buy books, pay firefighters and maintain roads. The money is not “lost”, it was used.
I’m very happy you’re learning about factory farming, I’m well aware of its problems. Factory farming is part of why I live abroad. Are you from the US?
India is a wonderful country and you may want to consider living there, I was a very happy vegan in India.
I’m just trying to explain trophic energy loss, not get in the middle of this- the number of calories that a pig eats during its lifetime is much smaller than the calories we can get from its meat. These calories aren’t “lost,” but they are used by the pig to support its growth, function, and movement. If we ate the soybeans used to feed it instead, we’d need to harvest fewer plants, because it’s more efficient to just get the calories from the plants than it is to also support an additional animal.
Thank you, context is valuable.
Calories are not “lost” when eaten, they are reallocated.
Efficiency also depends on context. Should you dig a hole manually or with a backhoe?
How big is the hole, how was the backhoe built, how far away is it, who owns it, what is its fuel, and so on.
“they” not “it” they’re thinking feeling creatures with personality memory preferences fears and feel pain love grief and comfort, they are someone not something not an inanimate object and never “it” not calling other animals it is a simple thing we can do to subconsciously reduce speciesism in the world
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“the crops you grew harvested and fed to the non human animal were calories that did not end up in the human”
Yes, this is the aforementioned reallocation of calories.
'If someone gave you the choice today to be killed in your sleep…and then remove your memory…would you say yes?"
Nah. Thank you, though.
Good we agree on the second point, so if you wouldnt want to be killed in your sleep, and it would be murder to do it against your will, what is so different about a cow a chicken a pig a fish that makes it ok to kill them when they dont want to or need to die for your taste preference.
There’s some complexity here. Consider that farmland only accounts for about 7% of the Earth’s total land. Pasture land, only suitable for feeding animals and not raising crops, is about 25% of the Earth’s total land.
It’s foolish to have a human grow crops to feed animals, totally agreed. That makes no sense. However, for the 25% of land that’s only suitable for grazing ruminants, a human does not have to grow the crop, the animal eats something a human can’t eat. And that’s the power of ruminant nutrition
India is amazing in this respect, their shepherding was striking. Seeing the attitude of cattle in India gainly eat the dozens of native plant varieties everywhere was fascinating compared to other countries’ cattle chewing their cud.
yes thats why I said 10-30%, if you account for the fact these animals often eat human inedible crops, the efficiency raises from 10% to 30% (edit: 35% just rechecked the numbers)
You can see the figures and calculations here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzj1OcHzjOg
you were wasting your breath. they had already admitted it.
admitting what? that they think a non-human animal’s right to life is contingent on how tasty vegan food is?
that taste is the overwhelmingly determinant factor in their choice. it was so overwhelming that, by their own account, they didn’t notice they weren’t eating meat for months.
never be the first one to bring up taste. but when your interlocutor does, pounce on it.
yep, using arguments like “but vegan food can taste great” although true decentres the victim and centres the abuser
Oreo cookies are delicious vegan and “taste good” - but they are not healthy at all. Taste isn’t the major factor in determining health outcomes.