81 KiB
Rational fiction and animal cognition?
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Author: u/SimoneNonvelodico Dai-Gurren Brigade*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8vcv3l/rational_fiction_and_animal_cognition/
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Score: 43
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Created: 2018-07-01T20:35:14
Post:
Just curious as this is a trend I noted. In a lot of rational fic, little thought is given to animals as potentially sentient agents, or targets of ethical reasoning. I don't mean seeing animals as taking priority over humans, of course, but just being object of any ethical concern. In HPMOR, Harry briefly fears that animals might be sentient, after he learns about parselmouths, but then he just reassures himself when he understands that's not how parselmouth works and stops worrying. A more blatant example is found in Luminosity and its sequel Radiance, where the "vegetarian" vampires have to feast on animals, but the question of which animals is never considered. Bella regularly eats killer whales, which not only looks ethically questionable since these are some of the smartest animals on the planet after us, it even looks like it could be potentially a severe hit to the viability of the species' population, since killer whales are few already and it's not like they're supposed to have predators in nature. Sure, it's better than eating humans, but she goes from being absolutely horrified about that to being perfectly fine with regularly eating an animal that probably has an intelligence comparable to that of a small human child.
The way I see it, the idea of a sharp cut between animal and men is a relic of religious thinking, with humans having souls and thus being very very special compared to everything else. If one is a materialist, the most sensible assumption seems that with intelligence and sentience there's probably somewhat of a continuum, and that animals, while not being as much of a concern as humans, should still be more of a concern than, say, trees or rocks. Do you know of any stories that address this? What's your idea about why this topic seems to be never touched? Is it narrative convenience (too many constraints make stories even harder to write) or more of a matter of belief?
Comments:
u/vaegrim [+23] (2 hours later)
Just curious as this is a trend I noted.
What genres of fiction are you not seeing this trend? It's curious to me that you'd call Rational Fiction out specifically for its insensitivity to non-human suffering while you cite examples like HPMOR where there IS such consideration (even if you consider the amount insufficient), and where the latest chapter of The Origin of Species is still on the front page and well upvoted.
My instinct is this problem exists across most fiction not specific to pursuit of the cause of animal rights, and that Rational Fiction is doing better on average to notice the problem.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+11] Dai-Gurren Brigade (15 hours later)
Well, in this case I think it sticks out because in rational fiction on average there's a big focus on problems of sentience, ethics, and respect of life.
If a Christian author writes a novel where humans see killing other humans as horrible but killing animals as normal, they're not contradicting their own world view. In that world view, the sanctity of human life is a product of humans being made in the image of God, aka having a soul. God himself gave man lordship over all other creatures of Earth. Therefore, it's perfectly normal that killing other humans is a bad thing but killing animals is not.
In rational fiction though usually the world view is strictly materialistic. So that reasoning doesn't hold. Yet a lot of it is also humanistic, putting humans front and centre, and their well-being as the supreme value to pursue, even at the expense of animal lives. While Harry's musings about sentient plants are a bit unhinged, he still could decide to become a vegetarian, just to stay on the safe side. He only considers the option when he thinks parselmouths can give sentience to snakes; but once he thinks that's not a thing, he happily goes back to eating meat. He doesn't stop wondering about whether animals could have sentience without magical interventions; he gives it for granted. In other words, sentience is seen as an on/off switch, something that you either have (humans) or don't (animals) instead of a continuum. This is a view pretty common in rationalist fiction (and in a lot of science fiction in general, especially of the old type, the kind Rational!Harry in fact read during his formative years).
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (12 days later)
Point of order: there's nothing biblical about the idea that humans have souls and animals don't.
u/zonules_of_zinn [+6] (7 hours later)
i think the issue is that rational fiction should be doing even better than it is doing.
plenty of fables and light fantasy with talking animals do a lot for thinking about animals as intelligent creatures.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (13 hours later)
What genres of fiction are you not seeing this trend?
Children's fiction? Animation? Science Fiction.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+24] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (52 minutes later)
Alicorn, Dogs.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+7] Dai-Gurren Brigade (20 hours later)
Oh, good one! Reminds me of some discussions I had with a friend who was arguing that, if you took the principles of veganism to their logical extreme, you'd have to forcefully mod the biosphere, remove the mechanisms of predation and make lions vegetarians too. Or alternatively, if life turned out to be inextricably tied to suffering and inflicting violence on other life, that perhaps the only truly ethical option would be mass extinction.
The way I see it, that kind of arguments only show how completely ridiculous your ethical assumptions were to begin with. Can't have more utility when there's no subjects left to experience the utility any more.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (20 hours later)
If I recall correctly, Alicorn has another story, I don't remember the name offhand, about the utility of retroactive universal mass extinction.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (13 days later)
remove the mechanisms of predation and make lions vegetarians too
:D Unlike the animal souls thing, that is biblical.
u/GrizzlyTrees [+7] (8 hours later)
That was creepy, and thought provoking.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
Alicorn specializes in that.
u/self_made_human [+1] Adeptus Mechanicus (2 days later)
I'm not entirely sure what the story is getting at? Does the librarian know that they have means of achieving immortality that is restricted for some unknown reason? Is that why she's dismayed by the fact that Key doesn't agree with her (probably minority in this society) view about the immorality of letting people die?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+4] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 days later)
Does the librarian know that they have means of achieving immortality that is restricted for some unknown reason?
It seems more that research into preventing supposedly inevitable aging and senescence is suppressed by cultural norms. Key's horror at cultural norms opposed to the elimination of pain is ironically contrasted to acceptance of the deathist norms in their supposed enlightened society.
u/callmesalticidae [+7] writes worldbuilding books (23 hours later)
That story hits like a brick in the face, every damn time I read it. God.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)
I have to take Alicorn in small doses. I can't take that many bricks.
u/cactus_head [+4] (11 hours later)
Something I found interesting about that story is that the plot is set in motion by the protagonists needing convincing animal actors in a film-equivalent, but even in the current year deepfakes exist and are convincing, and it doesn't cost much to set them up. Surely the far future would have even more sophisticated ways of faking video for free. It comes across as a bit of an anachronism, like when spaceships in old scifi have big hulking switches to throw or buttons to press.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (13 hours later)
Even in the current year "we have CGI but we're going to do practical effects anyway for authenticity" is a thing.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (15 hours later)
Though sadly, a far rarer thing that I'd like it to be.
Automata was so fucking cool.
u/Galap [+2] (a day later)
Film is art, and part of the form of art is the substrate you're using to create it with. That's why we have things like CG film, hand drawn animation, puppet stop motion, and live action. In their time period, even though CGI could probably be indistinguishable from real life, they probably want to make an artistic statement by imaging real objects. It kind of fits with the 'documentary about the past' kind of thing.
u/eroticas [+13] (2 hours later)
Pokemon - the origin of species pretty heavily explores the idea of meat eating and general ethics of it all despite severely nerfing pokemon intelligence from the canonical levels down to real world non-human animal levels so I think it counts.
Animorphs (the original, not the fan-fiction popular on /r/rational) explores this quite a bit. The protagonists are repeatedly faced with discomfort when morphing into cetaceans and primates because they feel a sense of a consciousness which is apart from theirs and aware of being possessed, looking back at them.
Of course the original animorphs isn't commonly considered rational fiction, but it can never be said that the series did not deeply explore the full implications of its premises.
u/Amonwilde [+30] (27 minutes later)
I think you've actually hit on a blind spot in rational fiction and rational ideologies, which tend to be heavily, and sometimes explicitly, partisan to humans and human experience. I think the only reason we can't see animal experience as legitimate and worthy of respect is that we treat one another so badly that we can't even get around to it. In a world where human beings treated one another well treating animals well would start to seem like a no-brainer.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+11] Dai-Gurren Brigade (an hour later)
That is my impression too, yes. Though I don't think that kind of reasoning fully works - after all, if we started creating hierarchies of problems and only ever address the most pressing one, we would do that for humans and only care about, say, world hunger, and not war or cancer or whatever. Different people have different affinities too so obviously everyone will have their focus on different problems; there's nothing wrong about giving your all to a relatively minor problem, like, say, volunteering at a stray cat refuge, as long as humanity as a whole divides its resources in an approximately proportionate way.
I think this was hinted in "Significant Digits" as Hermione is mentioned to be vegetarian. But the motivations for that are only left implied, never stated, and she never tries to convince anyone else to make a similar choice. It just seems into character that she might be the type to be empathetic enough to start worrying about the well-being of animals beyond that of humans too.
u/Amonwilde [+3] (2 hours later)
I agree. Probably one reason I'm not a vegetarian, another reason being that I'm selfish and society doesn't punish me for being selfish along the vector of eating other conscious beings.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (12 days later)
Is it actually unreasonable to focus exclusively on whatever is killing the most people, until it is sufficiently fixed that it no longer holds that spot and we move on to the next bottleneck? If $X million can prevent 1000 deaths from hunger or 10 deaths from cancer, focusing on hunger seems fine.
I mean, it may be unreasonable in practice to expect that level of cooperation and coordination from the human race. But it doesn't seem like a bad outcome in principle.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (12 days later)
I think the most unreasonable part about that is that it ignores how discovery and problem solving actually work - there's always some need for serendipity and mixing up of different experiences and ideas to find good solving strategies. You can't expect to just toss money and time only at a single problem and then move on to the next one when that's solved. If we did it for world hunger, by the time that was solved and we moved on to, say, climate change, we'd have lost all the know how and experience in the latter's field due to focusing too much on something else for too long, not to say how the two problems actually are tangled together and can't just be separated easily.
Besides that, it's not just that humans aren't that coordinated, you'd literally need a hive mind. If I'm suffering from, say, diabetes, my interest is that someone researches diabetes. Because that's what will improve my life. So even if that's not optimal for humanity as a whole, it's optimal for me, and I will push for it. The balance that comes out is due to this interplay between collective and individual interests.
u/GopherAtl [+5] (10 minutes later)
A more blatant example is found in Luminosity and its sequel Radiance, where the "vegetarian" vampires have to feast on animals, but the question of which animals is never considered. Bella regularly eats killer whales,
lolwat?
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+13] Dai-Gurren Brigade (11 minutes later)
Did you read it? It's said a lot of times. She finds killer whale blood to taste especially good.
And that fic qualifies as "rational?"
Well, it's considered amongst the main examples and regularly suggested, yeah. It's pretty good overall, perhaps a bit too straightforward towards the ending in how well things go for the protagonists.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+18] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (55 minutes later)
She finds killer whale blood to taste especially good.
Fridge Horror: What if it's because they're so intelligent?
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+13] Dai-Gurren Brigade (an hour later)
That is actually what I thought, that the closer to human intelligence, the better the taste. But she's unique in this, other vampires all have their various (random) preferences.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
Weird.
Actually, this doesn't need any fridge horror. It's already pretty horrible. I need to stop thinking about this now. Thanks. Uh. Bye.
u/Russelsteapot42 [+9] (6 hours later)
She finds killer whale blood to taste especially good.
Is it made clear that the whales die of it?
Because whales have a lot of blood in them.
Also is it made clear how she's sourcing that? Because it doesn't seem like that'd be easy.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
u/GopherAtl [+1] (13 minutes later)
No, I didn't.
And that fic in which the protagonist routinely snacks on rare and dangerous (well, not so much to vampires I suppose) aquatic mammals qualifies as "rational?"
u/Flashbunny [+4] (16 minutes later)
Yes. I'm surprised you consider that to be a major stumbling block, since you yourself acknowledge the animals aren't dangerous to a vampire.
u/GopherAtl [+9] (31 minutes later)
Regularly finding one to eat seems the more problematic issue. They're not endangered afaik, but they're apex predators, so not exactly common anywhere, relatively slow to reproduce and mature, and rove over massive spans of ocean. They're not something you can just pop off and snag at will.
Now, I'm assuming that Bella in this story doesn't spend a large chunk of her life just sailing around in boats. If she does, that might explain it.
u/Flashbunny [+8] (an hour later)
Oh, that's more reasonable. I can't remember how it was explained off the top of my head, but remember that vampires have superspeed on top of everything else. Also, whales are big - finding one might give her a lot of meals, considering vampires can avoid killing a human when feeding on them.
u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (5 hours later)
Some combination of super-speed, and ludicrously good senses - as described (in both canon and Luminosity), Vampire senses in many cases exceed the physical limits on sensing.
Since whales are not quiet - they make a lot of noise, and much of it being outside the range of human hearing is no barrier to a vampire - I never thought that finding the whales would be particularly difficult.
And since Orcas have much more blood than humans, I like to imagine a kind of marine-park-for-blood-donation deal that ends up with everyone better off.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+3] Dai-Gurren Brigade (40 minutes later)
The vampires are super-strong and fast, to the point where they can swim through the entire Atlantic Ocean without too much effort, plus they have empowered senses, so while it did seem weird to me that she'd find them, it wasn't completely unbelievable, and certainly I'd buy that she could put them down without danger to herself. What I found weird is that not even once she wondered whether they could possibly just go extinct as a result of her feeding habits.
u/GopherAtl [+2] (an hour later)
The vampires are super-strong and fast, to the point where they can swim through the entire Atlantic Ocean without too much effort
Wait, what? I'm to believe they can swim (or run on water, or fuck, maybe they just flap their arms and fly?) at thousands of miles an hour? Were they actually stated to be that fast in twilight canon (which I also didn't read)? because that seems like the worst kind of wank.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+8] Dai-Gurren Brigade (an hour later)
I didn't read all of Twilight and am confused as to how fast they actually were, but they were pretty fast and durable (we're talking comfortably mid-to-high-tier superhero levels: one of Edward's first feats is stopping a truck from hitting Bella, bare-handed, starting from a considerable distance. Stronger or faster than, say, Spider-man). I think this part is just following canon.
I don't know exactly about ocean crossing. I remember it was mentioned as a possibility, meaning they easily had the endurance, but not if they ever actually did it, and if so, how long it took. Usually they'd just travel by hiding inside airplanes (or in some cases, walking into them on plain sight using fake IDs).
u/Bowbreaker [+7] Solitary Locust (16 hours later)
They never actually cross the ocean. But they do cross from Scandinavia to Britain and from Britain to Ireland IIRC.
Canon Twilight vampires are some of the most powerful vampires I've seen outside of Hellsing the anime.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+3] Dai-Gurren Brigade (18 hours later)
outside of Hellsing the anime
And considering what Alucard is capable of at the end of the series, that's like saying that any real number is lower than infinity.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (12 days later)
They are definitely slower in water than on land, but swimming speed is greatly influenced by strength, and they have that in spades. An early test involved Alice - a small female - picking up a six foot thick fallen tree, dancing a jig while holding it over her head, then tossing it in the air and planting it.
And "easily" swimming an ocean doesn't mean it's immediate. But they don't age, don't get tired, and don't need to breathe. So, it's easy.
u/AweKartik777 [+1] (a day later)
Luminosity is pretty heavily recommended on this sub, heck the first top post I read when I got introduced to /r/rational was a list of the genre defining web fictions, and one of those was Luminosity.
u/hpmorfan [+2] (2 days later)
If you haven't already, check out Flowers for Algernon. It's about intelligence enhancement (a common theme here), in the context of a theme of fellowship between the narrator and a lab mouse. It's uh, not a happy story. But it's a classic.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (12 days later)
In the early stages of Luminosity, there aren't enough vampires for population depletion to be a real concern, and the very real challenge of not eating humans occupies Bella's attention once she's turned.
If you continue to the end of Radiance, where she's making longer-term plans, Bella actually does consider the impact of vampire diet on the world. She wants to make synthetic blood, breed fractional vampires that can survive on a wider variety of foods, and make use of all the blood currently being thrown away by the existing butchery industry. You can see some of this happening in Flashes.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (12 days later)
Killer whales are top predators - they number in the thousands and reproduce slowly. Even just one vampire nibbling on one every two or three days would be enough to put a significant dent in their population numbers. They're just not meant to be hunted at all, they're not like rabbits or mice whose main strategy is to just Zerg rush the biosphere.
And besides that, I'd still feel bad about killing even one single killer whale because they're way too smart for me to do something like that comfortably. We're talking human child level intelligence, probably. I'd find it really hard to believe they don't have subjective experience like we do.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (13 days later)
Well, it's quite possible that Bella didn't know that about whales. Thanks for the info.
u/None [+4] (an hour later)
It's called rationalizing.
The authors don't want to stop eating meat and still feel like a decent human being, so they just say animals are not whatever*
/* word with no clear definition or stuff that doesn't matter for the ethics.
RHarry was in the same chapter more horrified that grass could be sentient. Even without evidence that they could be, except that he could talk with snakes. Well, he got a head injury as a baby...
I mean I looked for (ethical) reason to not go vegan, and didn't find any. Even the practical reasons against veganism (money, availability or cultural stuff) weren't really any concern. Heck, I can live cheaper and healthier on a vegan diet. (But I don't cause I'm lazy and like to eat cookies)
btw eating whales would be ethical better than eating chicken. (Cause you kill one individual for a ton of meat versus one individual for a kilo of meat.) A species going extinct is not a tragic thing in itself. Well, in most cases it is tragic, because the individuals starve to death or die in another horrible way, but if all humans choose to stop getting kids, that would be ethical okay with me.
Anyhow, either the authors want to eat meat and still think good of themselves or fears the reader will think it is vegan propaganda. And vegans should not decide over someone else's live... but meat eater can decide over animal lives, cause... Don't be judgy, bad vegan!
killer whale dining sentient plants are "thousands of times more important"
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+16] (3 hours later)
Heck, I can live cheaper and healthier on a vegan diet.
Nitpick warning: Maybe cheaper, but certainly not healthier. At least not necessarily so, since you mentioned cookies as your alternative to vegan meals instead of steaks, omelettes, and yoghurts.
I've studied nutrition science and specialized diets a lot and have personally tested both paleo and vegan diets. From research, I can say with strong confidence that a balanced diet that includes meat, fish, and eggs is superior to a balanced diet that does not. Even achieving the latter is difficult enough to constitute a non-trivial cost in time, effort, and stress that can't be ignored in the decision process.
And from personal experience, I can say that veganism causes people to make very questionable food choices in order to hit their daily caloric energy needs. Most vegans (and a lot of vegetarians) end up with:
- a way higher intake of nutrition-lacking (and sometimes nutrition-leaching) grains than is healthy
- huge amounts of polyunsaturated fats (n-6 primarily) that are the main contributing factors to heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and chronic low-grade systemic inflammation
- and a lacking and/or incomplete amino acid profile
So at a certain point, there is indeed a tradeoff between personal health concerns (not just dietary enjoyment) and ethical concerns related to the meat/egg/milk industries. While I don't think it's right to just ignore it because of taste/enjoyment concerns, I think that most people who eat a "healthy" diet that includes those things rather than a standard vegan diet are at the very least inadvertently making a justifiable decision.
For me personally, I decided that the costs (negative health impact + time + effort + stress) are more significant than the ethical concerns. That said, if I could switch to lab-grown meats for example with the only difference being a 2-3x cost increase, I would do it. But not for a 5x+ cost increase.
As long as people think the issue through and establish their own value balance (or make a justified and informed decision to follow the advice of someone who knows enough to do so), I'd say there isn't much of a problem with ignoring it from that point onward.
u/None [+2] (10 hours later)
Maybe cheaper, but certainly not healthier.
Okay my own fault, for using a word like healthy...
Healthy eating is for me getting enough calories, with the right mix of macro nutritions (protein, fat, carbohydrates) and having all your Vitamins and stuff (I take Vit B12 pills, cause cheaper than buying soymilk with it added. And Vit D, cause 90% of the whole population don't get enough. And sometimes I eat a Multivitamin for vegans, cause effervescent tablets(?) are funny to put on your tongue)
Anyhow, I didn't want to claim I eat healthy now. That's why I mentioned the cookies. But I claim I can live healthier on a vegan diet and I did. I still eat healthier than I did before I went vegan.
For me personally, I decided that the costs (negative health impact + time + effort + stress) are more significant than the ethical concerns.
Wasn't the point here. As long as you know you are doing something unethical, my point (they say animals are not sentient, cause they want to feel ethical okay) doesn't matter to you.
But since you mentioned a strawmen vegan diet, can you give me sources for the negative health impact. Like for incomplete amino acid profile (how do you know the profile of most vegans from personal experience? Or any study?), why do vegans have less heart dieseases when they eat "huge amounts of polyunsaturated fats " Too lazy to find a study: "Many studies have shown that vegetarians seem to have a lower risk of obesity, coronary heart disease (which causes heart attack), high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and some forms of cancer."
I mean honestly, are you comparing a unhealthy vegan diet to a healthy omnivore diet? I mean there is clearly some bias behind that argument. How about comparing the diet of vegans and omnivores (=nice word for meat eater)? Or the diet you would have as a vegan and you have as an omnivore. Seems more fair.
Also maybe you only see vegans eat, when they are at (non-vegan) restaurants and don't have many choices. The question would be how often they eat there.
And I can tell you from personal experience, that the time and effort were way less than I expected. (And I have no clue what you mean with stress.) The negative health impact is new to me, would be interested in a source.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+4] (11 hours later)
First of all, as a disclaimer, only about half of my comment was really aimed at you specifically; I kinda just started ranting on the general topic once I got started.
Semi-related: If you're taking vitamin D because everyone's deficient (I do too btw) I recommend adding magnesium (any kind other than oxide) for the exact same reason. I take 400mg of before bed every night and it's an actual noticeable difference which is rare for vitamin/mineral supplements.
As long as you know you are doing something unethical
Right. Just to clarify my point a bit though, I think it's a spectrum of how bad it is ethically and what the tradeoff is. I'd feel way more guilty eating dolphins or killer whales than I would for cows, and I feel more guilty eating cows than chickens, and chickens > plants. I can accept the ethical issues for the reasons I already stated, but if circumstances were to change (cows found to be as smart as dolphins!?), I would naturally have to change my actions too. I agree that I think some people use sentience as a binary operator, and while sentience is definitely a VERY important threshold, it's not the only one.
can you give me sources for the negative health impact. Like for incomplete amino acid profile
No sources right now, but this just stems from the fact that animal protein is always a "complete" protein (all the EAAs in most suitable proportion for digestion and use) whereas plant protein is often "incomplete". The classic example is that rice+beans together provides the complete EAA spectrum if you eat them in an exact proportion. Given that a person just eats "anything that fits the diet" (even if they're counting macronutrients), they likely will be getting insufficient amounts of certain EAAs. Like you may be eating 40g protein in a day, but if (made-up numbers incoming) 1/8 of that would have been a certain EAA if you'd eaten "complete" animal protein, you might only be getting 1/3 the amount of that EAA in actuality. That's what I meant. I don't know actual studies on how this affects vegans in real life, but there are definitely studies out there that analyze the effect of being deficient in certain EAAs. The reason they're "essential" is because your body can't make them from other amino acids.
are you comparing a unhealthy vegan diet to a healthy omnivore diet?
Haha, good point. I think I actually was doing that a bit subconsciously, because most people on specialty diets don't really care much what they eat as long as it fits the specialty diet (and for those who do slightly better, as long as it fits the specialty diet + macronutrient ratios). (People on fad diets especially have this problem). The main point I was getting at is that an omnivore diet will naturally avoid some problems that can crop up with special restrictive diets like the EAA issue.
why do vegans have less heart dieseases when they eat "huge amounts of polyunsaturated fats"
That's compared to the average person, and the average person is unhealthy. If I had to guess, I'd say anyone on a specialty diet (unless it's a really stupid one) will likely have improved health markers over the average person. So I don't think this fact can be used to prove that "huge amounts of PUFAs" is not a problem. There are lots of studies that show that it is in fact a problem. Now, that's not to say omnivores are immune to this problem—not by any means. It's a huge problem universally in the West.
More about PUFAs
When I was testing vegan diets, I noticed it was difficult to eat enough fat to hit my macronutrient goals without also overdosing on PUFAs. Unfortunately, there are almost no plant sources of saturated fats (which are not bad for you and are your body's preferred source of fat for fuel purposes). The only options are coconut and palm oil. Aside from that, sources of monounsaturated fats without also having lots of PUFAs are limited to macadamia (almost pure mono) and olive oils (still about 10% PUFA). Canola is 20% PUFA which is too much. Vegans (and even paleo, regular vegetarians, and omnivores even) who eat salads with lots of salad dressings, especially those who use things like sesame oil (IIRC, ~40% PUFA) will end up getting too much which leads to heart disease, metabolic syndrome, high LDL/VLDL, etc, etc. It's just more of a problem for vegans because they don't have convenient sources of non-problematic fats like omnivores do.
There are other problems that can crop up in highly-restrictive diets (including but not limited to vegan) but that are smaller problems with omnivorous diets since they're drowned out in the larger variety of food eaten. A big example is Phytic Acid from legumes and nuts which binds certain essential nutrients in your body and carries them out of the body through excretion. This means that just adding up the amount of nutrients your'e supposedly getting from the Nutrition Facts (like iron for example) doesn't actually represent how much your body actually has available to absorb, since a good amount of it can be tied up in Phytates. Omnivores may eat nuts or legumes, but much less often do they constitute a large enough part of their diet for this factor to make a big difference. Whereas paleo and vegans who both tend to go heavier on nuts and/or legumes are more susceptible to this.
I think the bottom line point I was trying to make is that if you're really trying to eat "healthy", it's just overall easier to do with a generic "healthy" omnivorous diet than with specialty diets given an equal amount of time and effort you're willing to spend. From all my research and experience, my personal opinion is that if you are fully committed to micromanaging all of the little details like the ones I've mentioned, a Paleo diet is actually the healthiest. (It's certainly the one I felt the best on.) Of course, a well-micromanaged Vegan diet can be way healthier than a generic "healthy" omnivorous diet, but it does take quite a bit more work to avoid the issues introduced by having to work around the restrictions of the diet itself.
And that's where the "stress" factor came from. Not so much a distinct issue as it is a consequence of having to spend the extra time and effort micromanaging all the little things that you don't have to worry about as much with an omnivorous diet.
(btw, I'm enjoying this discussion. Thanks!)
u/None [+1] (15 hours later)
Oh, come on Paleo diet? The idea behind it, is already debunked "There is no one 'Paleo diet.' There are millions of Paleo diets. People in East Africa ate different foods than people in West Africa versus the Middle East, and South America, and North America."
I'm also not sure what you are talking about polyunsaturated fats. Since those are which your doctor wants you to replace other fats. Of course, too much fat (or calories) is always bad. "For good health, the majority of the fats that you eat should be monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. " link above.
biological value of protein Sorry, the source is clearly a vegan. But he gives sources for some of his claims. Most important part "Foodstuff with these proportions of amino acids is considered to be a source of complete protein. This includes legumes, seeds, grains, and veggies like chickpeas, black beans, cashews, quinoa, soy, etc."
Honestly, you should try to find sources for your claims. At least read the wiki articles.
" Expert panels in the United States and Europe recommend that pregnant and lactating women consume higher amounts of polyunsaturated fats than the general population to enhance the DHA status of the fetus and newborn.[1]" [Polyunsaturated fat]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyunsaturated_fat)
"knowledge of the relative proportions of animal and plant foods in the diets of early humans is circumstantial, incomplete, and debatable and that there are insufficient data to identify the composition of a genetically determined optimal diet. The evidence related to Paleolithic diets is best interpreted as supporting the idea that diets based largely on plant foods promote health and longevity, at least under conditions of food abundance and physical activity."[35] Paleo Diet
"Vegans can get enough essential amino acids by eating a variety of plant proteins."Protein And without the whole counting trouble... Just eat more proteins.
"The BV of a food varies greatly, and depends on a wide variety of factors. In particular the BV value of a food varies depending on its preparation and the recent diet of the organism. This makes reliable determination of BV difficult and of limited use — fasting prior to testing is universally required in order to ascertain reliable figures." Biological value of proteins
But yeah, you can probably live on most diets healthy. I eat vegan healthier than as an omnivore. Mainly because you can find many restaurants with a vegan meal option, but most have not a vegan dessert. Or you can buy fruits at the supermarket, but at least in my country, only in big cities are vegan cookies avaible.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (20 hours later)
There is no one 'Paleo diet
Of course not. It's a specially restrictive diet, not a specially inclusive diet. The idea about it is what you don't eat. Almost no primitive cultures ate grains or legumes until about 10,000 years ago for example and we're far less well adapted to eating them than for other foods. I even included butter and yoghurt in my paleo diet when I was on it because even if they weren't common paleolithic foods, they didn't' contain anything that was overtly harmful and they fit both my macro and micronutrient goals.
I'm also not sure what you are talking about polyunsaturated fats
Specifically, omega-6 (n-6) fats are not good for you. They oxidize far too easily even once eaten, they create an inflammatory response in your body (whereas n-3 fats create an anti-inflammatory response). You need a certain amount of them as building blocks for certain hormones and signaling molecules, but if you overeat them, they're used in places they shouldn't be which causes the health problems I mentioned in the previous posts. Your link is not a valid source, sorry.
Expert panels in the United States and Europe recommend that pregnant and lactating women consume higher amounts of polyunsaturated fats than the general population to enhance the DHA status of the fetus and newborn
Yes, exactly. DHA is an omega-3, which is a PUFA, but you'll never get DHA by accident. It doesn't exist in vegetable oils. Only certain fish oils contain it. Your body can make a small amount of it from ALA (the lowest grade of omega-3 found in food, and rarely at that.). When people talk about PUFAs as a health risk, they're talking about omega-6. It's ubiquitous in nut and seed oils and shows up in processed foods. It's one of the main reasons processed foods are considered unhealthy.
u/None [+1] (20 hours later)
Sources?
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (17 hours later)
huge amounts of polyunsaturated fats (n-6 primarily) that are the main contributing factors to heart disease, metabolic syndrome, and chronic low-grade systemic inflammation
Ok, this actually interests me personally, what kind of inflammation are we talking about? Both me and my gf have had health problems recently (more specifically, I've developed asthma, she's got acid reflux & such), so while there's a lot of other potential causes, I'm wondering if it'd be worth investigating whether our diet could be a cause (for example, we do eat lots of grains and legumes). The doctors never really investigate much those things or... anything that's not obviously immediately connected to the issue at hand, really.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+4] (20 hours later)
Ok, this actually interests me personally, what kind of inflammation are we talking about?
Examples would be: nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), cardiovascular disease, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer's disease (AD). source And while athsma is not listed there, it is indeed an inflammatory pathology, so while I don't think it would cure you, I think it might indeed help.
The reason for this is that your body "wants" an approximate 4:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (hereafter n-6 and n-3 PUFAs respectively). However, modern western diets have an average of 15-30:1 ratio of n-6:n-3 instead. That means your body uses n-6 as a building block in places it shouldn't. n-6 PUFAs are precursors to many proinflammatory markers, and n-6 PUFAs inhibit the anti-inflammatory effect of n-3s. You need both, and you're supposed to have more n-6 than n-3, but we eat WAY too much n-6 because of use of vegetable/nut/seed oils and processed foods. The relevant dietary intervention is to supplement EPA/DHA (the only usable omega-3s. Humans can't do much with plant-based omega-3s, unlike some other animals) and to drastically cut down on polyunsaturated fats (because any PUFAs you're getting inadvertently from food is almost guaranteed to be n-6, since n-3 is so rare).
Studies have been done showing improved health markers including lowered systemic inflammation and decrease in severity of inflammatory pathologies simply by supplementing EPA and DHA and bringing your n-6:n-3 ratio closer to 4:1. Keep in mind that that there's a lot of evidence on this topic, but we still don't understand the complex interplay here completely. My best-informed guess though (and I consider myself quite well-informed on this topic) is that this is one of the more significant dietary health interventions a person on a standard western diet can make. I avoid random PUFAs like the plague.
The doctors never really investigate much those things or... anything that's not obviously immediately connected to the issue at hand, really
I agree that that's frustrating, but you can't really blame them though. They're trained to look for the cause, not contributing factors. Most doctors aren't even all that well informed about nutrition science, so they couldn't make these suggestions even if they wanted to.
Anyway, the n-6 PUFA issue is somewhat separate from the grains/legumes issue, so those are 2 different possible dietary interventions you could try to improve your health. The Omega-6 one is all but guaranteed to improve your health markers on official blood tests but from personal experience may not be as directly noticeable on a day-to-day basis. If you just barely have asthma though, there is a chance it could tip the scales favorably, so I'd still recommend giving it a shot.
Cutting out grains/legumes is a more drastic intervention, mainly because is almost necessarily means that you'll be drastically decreasing your carbohydrate intake and will have to put quite a bit more effort into meal planning, but you should totally try it if you're not satisfied with your current daily health situation. It can be a very noticeable difference in daily subjective health and QoL. The main thing to keep in mind is that cutting grains and legumes requires an adjustment period of about 2 weeks during which you may feel a bit shitty as your body re-adapts to using fat as its primary fuel source rather than carbohydrates. This is sometimes hyperbolically called the "low-carb flu," so you have to be committed to lasting this out if you want to try it.
Humans didn't eat grains or legumes heavily until 10,000 years ago, so we're way less well adapted to them than for other foods. It's actually been hypothesized that a significant portion of modern dental problems are actually a result of us switching to a grain-based diet.
Anyway, if you decide to try cutting grains/legumes, check out "paleo diet" recipes for inspiration. But remember that it's just inspiration—you're not going full paleo just from this one intervention, so continue doing whatever you normally do when it comes to butter, yogurt, and other dairy products as well as anything else a paleo diet may try to limit.
I'm actually against cutting butter/yogurt out of your diet unless you don't react well to them. At the very least, butter and yogurt are tolerable to almost everyone and have great nutrition profiles, so if you can eat them, you should. That said, I've actually heart of people who cut dairy (milk specifically) in order to get rid of asthma. If you have a low-grade milk allergy (aka: If you don't tolerate dairy products well), asthma could indeed be one of the possible side effects, since it's an inflammatory disorder and allergies lead to inflammation. So this is a 3rd possible intervention you could look at, and is one of the easiest ones to test.
Just remember to only make 1 dietary intervention at a time so you can tell what's actually making a difference.
Feel free to ask any more questions if you have them. Cheers!
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (21 hours later)
I agree that that's frustrating, but you can't really blame them though. They're trained to look for the cause, not contributing factors. Most doctors aren't even all that well informed about nutrition science, so they couldn't make these suggestions even if they wanted to.
Oh, I know. A single human being, even with the most trivial diseases, would be a rather complex scientific system to study. Obviously, doctors need to maximise everyone's average health; I want to maximise mine. Hence our objectives overlap but don't coincide XD.
supplement EPA/DHA
Where are those found, exactly?
Anyway, the asthma may as well be from living in one of the most polluted areas in the UK + in a shitty mouldy home. Sounds sensible. But I've been wondering if the change in diet might not have contributed, since I didn't really plan it or discuss it with any experts (though it's at least been gradual). I also get the impression that doctors don't want to be nosy - feel like they're interfering in what might be personal/ethical/religious life choices. Personally I'd just want the full information there, so I can make my decisions for myself. Saying "this thing is not healthy" needn't be judgemental, it's just a statement of fact. But maybe some people would give them grief over something as simple as that.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (21 hours later)
supplement EPA/DHA
Where are those found, exactly?
Cold-water fatty fish. Salmon and Herring are the best, then trout and cod and tuna to a much lesser extent. The old wives tale of "spoonfuls of cod liver oil" being healthy probably originated from this.
Realistically however, you should just take an EPA/DHA fish-oil supplement and cut out n-6s as much as possible. It's expensive and difficult to get EPA/DHA through your diet, and you also have to worry about bioaccumulated pollutants if you eat too much of certain kinds of fish.
But I've been wondering if the change in diet might not have contributed
It's entirely plausible that your diet did indeed contribute to the problem. Or conversely, that dietary interventions could help.
So yeah, the main 3 I'd recommend trying, in order of decreasing easiness to test are:
- Cut milk (but not necessarily butter/yogurt. Maybe cut all dairy at first for the test, then if it happens to fix the problem, try re-introducing butter/yogurt)
- fix your n-3:n-6 ratio (You should do this anyway and keep at it even if it doesn't fix your asthma)
- cut grains and legumes (major intervention, but with highest potential to improve subjective health and quality of life)
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (21 hours later)
I had already tried cutting milk and dairy once, though perhaps not for long enough. It was kind of troublesome. For n-3s, I already eat salmon, so maybe I'm fine, though here's the vegetarianism problem - if I wanted to be a full vegetarian (right now I just don't eat meat, but not fish), that would not be an option. With legumes and grains maybe I can make an effort to reduce, at least. Does stuff like pasta or pizza count too because it's made with flour?
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (a day later)
tried cutting milk and dairy once
The things in dairy that are most likely to cause inflammatory responses are lactose (a kind of sugar) and casein (a kind of protein). The other sugars in milk products are usually not problems, the fats in dairy products are very good for you, and the other protein in diary products, whey, is the easiest to digest of all protein sources so it's not usually a problem either. If you want to retry the no dairy dietary intervention but found it too troublesome before, try just making sure that you're cutting out the problematic parts. For example, butter is totally safe, some yogurts (like greek) are lactose-free, etc. You'd have to do some research on the casein part, since I don't remember off the top of my head what dairy products don't have it. But milk itself would definitely have to be cut. Anyway, just some thoughts on how you could try this again with hopefully a bit less inconvenience.
salmon
Pay close attention here, because not all salmon is created equal. EPA/DHA content varies wildly, so make sure to check the content of whatever you're getting. I remember seeing a 5x difference in n-3 content between 2 different brands of canned salmon before. Unless you're specifically looking for high EPA/DHA salmon, you're probably not getting it and could benefit from a supplement. They're relatively cheap anyway—far cheaper than making a habit of eating Salmon.
vegetarian
It's not all that feasible to be both a vegetarian and cut grains and legumes. It's possible, but would be super hard and probably wouldn't be enjoyable IMO. And you have to enjoy a diet to be able to stick with it indefinitely.
Pizza, Pasta
Of course they count. Pizza, Pasta, and Bread are the main sources that people eat of grains in the West. If you want to "cheat", white rice is an okay substitute because it's just pure starch with almost nothing else in it. You'd lose some of the benefits of low-carb, but should still be able to tell if cutting out all the hidden nasties in grains is helping you or not.
reduce
If you're going to test it, test it all the way first by completely eliminating it, or you're not going to be able to tell if it's working. After you've confirmed it is in fact working, you can then try reintroducing some grains/legumes or certain kinds to see if you lose the benefit and if so, how much of it you lose. Then you'd know where the border is. If the change is worth it, you may want to stick with it. If it helps but isn't worth the trouble, then you drop it. But don't half-ass the testing period or you might as well not do it at all.
u/vaegrim [+5] (2 hours later)
Even without evidence that they could be, except that he could talk with snakes.
That's not entirely fair. He wasn't concerned about reasoning plants until he heard about a story with an ability he thought was similar to Parseltongue which applied to plants. The existence of such a story was itself some evidence, and ultimately he discarded it after concluding it wasn't actually comparable.
The implication that this route of inquiry was so foolish as to need to be justified by a childhood head injury is hyperbole and makes your overall point less convincing.
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
He wasn't concerned about reasoning plants until he heard about a story with an ability he thought was similar to Parseltongue which applied to plants.
What ability? He heard the story about a snake getting information from other snakes. And spreading self-awareness. Read chapter 48 again And then asked about other animals and then plants.
And stories as evidence? RHarry didn't even believe his magic teacher how spells are supposed to be cast. (Giving Hermione false spell incantations.) Or that "...after all, snakes couldn't really be human-level intelligent, someone would have noticed by now."
Anyhow, the "plants have feeling" argument is quite stupid. Even for RHarry in his fantasy world. The ""Parseltongue" was probably just a linguistic user interface for controlling snakes..." is also quite stupid and pure rationalization.
I mean, if I give you the power to understand this or this or this would you think you gave them self awareness? Or maybe you just found out they were really always able to speak. (And yeah, except for the first, I'm pretty sure they didn't communicate.) Or if you learn German, would you think German is just a linguistic user interface for controlling Germans...
Btw he discarded it after finding out mandrakes can speak... Not sure if they kill them for the potion in HPMOR.
I still think it was stupid. But yeah the "head injury" was only to make a joke. I mean everyone should know, it wasn't a real head injury.
I don't expect to convince anyone on the internet to go vegan or of anything else. Not even on r/rational. So I think the perceived hyperbole didn't hurt anyone.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (16 hours later)
I mean, if I give you the power to understand this or this or this would you think you gave them self awareness?
Self-awareness is not so big a hurdle. I doubt you need human-equivalent computational ability to jump that one. I don't think I could argue convincingly that snakes are self-aware right now, but dogs or cats, yeh, I'd be willing to take that on... without at the same time granting them human-equivalent awareness.
u/None [+1] (13 days later)
I don't think I could argue convincingly that snakes are self-aware right now,
Well, I used self-awareness cause RHarry used it. Call it language or intelligence or whatever you (or someone else) use to justify eating some animals and not others (like humans, or dogs, or horses or rabbits...)
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+3] Dai-Gurren Brigade (an hour later)
Well, about going vegan, I suspect it'd make significantly harder to stay healthy, though not impossible, as you'd have to spend more time on your diet and balance it more carefully. Some people might be actually unable to survive on it depending on metabolism, I don't know. And there's a social aspect - ultimately it all boils down to quality of life and time, which means, are you willing to sacrifice a fraction of your own life for the sake of the lives of animals?
Here's the thing, I know the most coherent option would be that, but I'm still just a vegetarian because ultimately, it's just not realistic for the animal meat industry to disappear in my lifetime. If we compare animal husbandry to human slavery, we're not in the US right before the Civil War, we're in the middle of the Roman Empire running our entire society off it. At this stage, it'd basically save more animal suffering if you just convinced, say, three meat-eaters to eat one half of meat, eggs and dairy less than they do than if you convinced one single person to go full vegan (which would be much harder). It's not exactly ideal but it's a feedback loop - it's easier to transition to vegetarianism than to veganism, and we need society itself (restaurants etc. especially) to start being more supportive of veganism before all the cultural barriers are removed.
Concerning extinction: true only if you consider the individual well being of members of the species. Biodiversity in itself is a a value, and it translates into resilience of the whole biosphere to sudden change. You remove one species, you never know what crazy domino effect that could set up. Humans are the obvious exception as, let's face it, everyone else would be probably better off without us. Well, except for cats, dogs, rats and pigeons, who would meet a drastic reduction in numbers after losing their main source of food, and all the abandoned domestic animals like cows and pigs who are so selected and inbred they're now unfit to living in the wild.
As for this:
btw eating whales would be ethical better than eating chicken.
Questionable, by this logic you could make an argument for cannibalism as well, since humans too weigh more than chicken. It's not just about how many individuals, but who the individuals are. If we acknowledge value approximately proportional to sentience, keeping humans as our main concern, then killer whales, other dolphins and chimpanzees are right below. It's hard to decide how many chicken are worth one killer whale - birds are smart too after all, but I don't think chicken are especially so. Domestic animals are usually also less clever than their wild cousins, and chickens haven't even been selected for intelligence like some dogs, so they might as well be completely demented.
u/water125 [+2] (3 hours later)
Well, about going vegan, I suspect it'd make significantly harder to stay healthy, though not impossible, as you'd have to spend more time on your diet and balance it more carefully. Some people might be actually unable to survive on it depending on metabolism, I don't know. And there's a social aspect - ultimately it all boils down to quality of life and time, which means, are you willing to sacrifice a fraction of your own life for the sake of the lives of animals?
It's actually considerably more healthy to be vegan for most people. There are some who cannot easily, or possibly at all, survive on a no animal products diet, but they're fairly rare. For most, it's very healthy. The Okinawan diet for example contains very little meat, and is associated with one of the longest living groups of humans in the world. Additionally, pretty much every major world health organization has said that veganism is appropriate for all ages and stages of life.
The only thing you really need to worry about with veganism is getting b12, which is easily supplemented, or gotten through fortified foods. (Which is how meat eaters do it, since meat is arguably fortified with b12.) Protein isn't so much a concern as people think as illustrated here.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+3] Dai-Gurren Brigade (15 hours later)
Japanese people eat fish though! Which is arguably just healthy all-round, what with antioxidants, B12 etc.
My point though wasn't that you can't be healthy on a vegan diet, but that there can be practical issues in procuring and balancing all the nutrients from the most commonly found ingredients (especially in western countries, and depending on where you live). I guess part of this is that for me a "healthy" diet comes pretty natural since I grew up in a Mediterranean area so even as a meat eater I wouldn't dream to just chug down hamburgers and steaks on a daily basis. Veggies have never been weird for me, in fact they've always been a major part of my diet. For others, just having a healthy diet might be as much of an effort as organising a vegan one.
Another problem is that you have to throw out a vast part of your acquired cooking wisdom. For me a lot of things I make depend on eggs or cheese. Well, objectively, even as a vegan, I wouldn't see anything bad with keeping a couple chickens in a pen, feeding them and using only whatever eggs they produce. I couldn't possibly be so strict to assume that chickens have not only a right not to suffer in battery farms, but even not to be kept at all, a condition I doubt they have enough awareness to even fully appreciate.
But yes, I know it's possible. People do it. It just takes a bit of effort and time.
u/water125 [+2] (23 hours later)
Japanese people eat fish, but if you look at the article I linked, the Okinawan traditional diet includes less than half a serving a day. They also eat pork, but rarely.
I guess my point is that if you're vegan, and not living off of oreos, then you're probably gonna be pretty healthy anyway, since most of your diet is going to consist of vegetables and fruits and some fungi (nutritional yeast, mmmm.) If you're vegan, you pretty much already have a healthy diet (Again, unless you just eat oreos and ice cream, but I mean, that goes for any diet.)
About the backyard chickens thing, the problem is mainly in acquisition. If you buy those chickens from a breeder, then you're supporting a business in which male chicks are often ground up at birth, as they have no benefit to the operation beyond the small number of cocks they need to keep for breeding purposes. That's not to mention whatever conditions the hens are under, and if it's anything like normal egg farms, then they're probably calcium deficient, as they're laying way more eggs than they would normally, and they aren't allowed to eat the extras to get back calcium, as they would and do naturally. That can also be a concern for your backyard chickens, the calcium deficiency. Ultimately though, if you can solve the supply issues, then there really is not much wrong with keeping them, as long as you make sure you keep them pets first, egg machines second- add calcium supplements to their feed, for instance, that kinda thing.
Thanks for listening to me, rather than shutdown entirely as a lot of people do when confronted with a dreaded vegan.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
No problem, I started this thread because I at least acknowledge it as an issue, so I wouldn't simply shut you down :).
Also, I think neither Oreos nor ice cream are vegan (except for soy milk variants), so that settles it anyway :D.
u/water125 [+1] (a day later)
Oreos are indeed vegan. They're one of the only store bought cookie I can have anymore. I did of course mean vegan ice cream, but believe it or not, you can't really tell a difference. Still delicious. I especially like ben and jerry's efforts, if you ever feel like trying some.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
Oh, yeah, I don't have doubts about the ice cream (well, I had some vegan ice cream that I didn't like the other day but I think that was because of some weird preparation method, it looked more like sorbet, without any milk-ish substance at all. My gf had one at a different taste and it was delicious). Oreos being vegan surprises me, I thought that cream inside had milk stuff or butter in it! What's it made of?
u/water125 [+3] (a day later)
I don't really know, but i found an article that says "That being said, using simple methods of deduction, we were able to gleam from the ingredient list that the filling is likely made of sugar, palm and/or canola oil, high fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin, and artificial flavor."
Apparently before they switched, it was originally pig lard, so I guess it was never cream.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
XD
Well, that's a hard switch from pig lard. Good thing!
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
My point isn't against people doing stuff they think is unethical, but against people who find reasons to make things they find unethical acceptable. (Most think killing animals is bad. Except for eating... Except dogs... And horses... Or not horses)
Since I think morals and ethics are subjective, I can't really argue against cannibalism (on ethical grounds). But if you think eating humans is morally wrong I can argue to include animals in the exception.
I mean if you want to choose what to eat on intelligence, some humans are less intelligent then some animals. Hard to test and value objectively. (Would birds value the ability to fly more than the ability to recognize yourself in a mirror?) But eating less intelligent humans still seems wrong. I would argue to not eat stuff with brains, just to be sure. I mean look at some stuff on r/likeus, hard to say cows can be eaten, when you see one behaving like a dog. And pigs are said to be smarter than dogs.
Well, not all species have a positive effect on the biosphere and most realistic extinctions have not many individuals as direct victims. Just on the flip side wasting resources to keep a species with few individuals alive (pandas for example) when the resources could be used elsewhere, could be very wrong. And some try to bring mammoths back to live...
Eh, if in 1000 years a big rock collides with earth, humans could be a benefit. Even with our destructive behaviour.
Just to say it again, if you already think killing animals is unethical, and still do it because of other reasons, my point was against people making stuff up so it isn't unethical anymore.
Being vegan is not as hard as some might think. (Just look at some of those hippies that are vegan. If they can do it...) And the amount of work is overestimated. And honestly most of the work (making sure you eat healthy) should also be done if you eat meat.
If someone wants to go vegan, just look up 3 (healthy) meal options for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. And change one if you don't like it or got bored of it. And try to keep the ingredients at home.
The rest is stuff you can sort out when you browse through the internet. Like what Vitamins you should take (Vit B12 and D)
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u/Russelsteapot42 [+1] (6 hours later)
Do you have a particularly good reason for abstaining from eggs, assuming that you can verify that the birds are treated well (perhaps by raising them yourself?) I keep backyard chickens, and my animals are probably among the happiest, safest, and healthiest forms of life on earth, and I don't see how taking some excess eggs is a bad tradeoff for that.
u/None [+1] (9 hours later)
Well, it is always a conflict of interest if you keep animals for eggs or milk or wool.
If the reason doesn't have to be ethical, I would say first the price. Do you know what you pay for each egg?
And another reason is, that I didn't eat eggs before I went vegan. I ate cookies where they used eggs. And I doubt the eggs in the cookies where from backyard chicken. And it would be very hard to verify restaurants using backyard chicken.
Anyhow, if I had backyard chickens, I would give the excess eggs away to people who would buy eggs instead. (Like my grandmother.)
Well, there are also other problems, like what happened to the male chicks (most only buy female ones) or what happens to the old chicken... But let's just say that wouldn't be the case for backyard chicken. (At least yours.)
u/Mentioned_Videos [+1] (14 hours later)
Videos in this thread:
VIDEO COMMENT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n20uGGNoVdo_ +3 - Well, about going vegan, I suspect it'd make significantly harder to stay healthy, though not impossible, as you'd have to spend more time on your diet and balance it more carefully. Some people might be actually unable to survive on it depending on ... A Boy and His Dog (1975) +1 - What genres of fiction are you not seeing this trend? Children's fiction? Animation? Science Fiction. (1) How English sounds to non-English speakers (2) Star Wars: Every time Chewbacca speaks +1 - He wasn't concerned about reasoning plants until he heard about a story with an ability he thought was similar to Parseltongue which applied to plants. What ability? He heard the story about a snake getting information from other snakes. And spre... I'm a bot working hard to help Redditors find related videos to watch. I'll keep this updated as long as I can.
u/zombieking26 [+1] (2 hours later)
Rational fiction prioritizes intelligence over emotion, and the only real reason to treat animals right (besides environmental reasons) is empathy.
I'm not advocating that we should all become psycopaths, I'm just telling you many author's reasoning.
Edit: It was wrong to put words i to many authors mouths. And yes, I now see that my logic about not killing others also applies to humans. Sorry about that.
u/None [+3] (15 hours later)
Well,
After he'd gotten over the raw shock, Harry's common sense had woken up and hypothesized that "Parseltongue" was probably just a linguistic user interface for controlling snakes...
...after all, snakes couldn't really be human-level intelligent, someone would have noticed by now.
http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/48
Not really what I would call a rational argument. It is clearly a rationalization, so RHarry can still eat meat without feeling guilty. (And by extension the author and readers can.) So the authors emotion trumps the logical thinking.
Most people think killing animals is bad. They also think they are good people. And if you ask them why they meat, they will make some faulty excuses ("They are already dead," "They taste good," and other stuff), while the real reason is, they never thought about it before. They never made a real decision. Well sometimes you find people that did that, but they had to decide to change or stick with the status quo. And intelligent people are just better at making excuses.
Well, there are some rationalizations I read over the years, why you should treat animals right (aka don't eat them) even if they are not sentient biological machines:
cause if you mistreat animal machines, you could become mean and mistreat humans
cause you could upset other humans who are stupid and don't believe animals are machines
cause eating animals is unhealthy (at least in the amount the western society does now on average)
something religious about souls and stuff
Sorry for the bad english and no sources... I don't think I would have found those arguments again with googling and not in english anyway.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+7] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (16 hours later)
why you should treat animals right (aka don't eat them) even if they are not sentient biological machines
Sentient is another term that I consider too low a hurdle to draw a line at. You have to go pretty far down the scale of brain complexity to argue convincingly that you're below the line of feelings and awareness. It's even a lower bar than self-awareness.
(This is where Alicorn's Dogs comes in)
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (13 days later)
Most people think killing animals is bad.
This is too broad. I think waste is bad. So, killing for sport and failing to use the carcass, bad. The fact that farming animals is ecologically less efficient than farming plants, somewhat bad, although not with any moral urgency.
As a result, I tend to cook vegetarian or with very little meat, and I often eat vegetarian at restaurants, but I don't impose any hard rules on myself.
something religious about souls and stuff
I'm not saying you're wrong about people believing this, but it's rather backward. The whole idea of a soul is that it outlives your body, right? So killing an intelligence that has a soul would logically have much less impact than killing an intelligence that doesn't.
u/None [+1] (13 days later)
This is too broad. I think waste is bad.
Maybe you are not most people. Let's test it: Watch those sheep and the black goat getting killed (just keep in mind, the video is made by the farmers who killed the animals, so it would be very unlikely, that you see a slaughter where something goes wrong. And I guess the price of the meat will be higher than most people are willing to pay.)
Still you get comments like:
It was quick. Although, if I were there, I would have requested the butcher bring 1 lamb in at a time, then hide the body so the other doesnt see or even have the chance to get nervous. This is part of nature, yet I cried. Its good to have emotions about this.I feel that it was important for me to watch this video. It is humbling. It makes me feel gratitude for the animals I eat.
The person eats animals, and still cried over it. And that was an example of organic farmers who put the video online themselves. You also see many people saying organic treats animal better, so it is okay for them to eat meat. Even setting aside if they really only eat organic meat, their whole justification would fall away, if conventional meat would be prohibited. How I see it, you are either okay to kill animals for food (you don't need to be healthy) or you aren't. If you are okay to kill, you should also be okay to mistreat them in some other way (small cages, force feeding, hitting them so they move, breaking their tail so they move into the slaughterhouse )
But yeah maybe I should change "most people" to at least over 50% of people I talked with about this topic said to me killing animals is bad.
Anyhow, did you watch the videos before reading this question? Did you think about how much of the animal got wasted?
I'm not saying you're wrong about people believing this, but it's rather backward.
If I didn't communicate the dismissive subtext, let me be clear: I don't believe this bs about souls. I also meant it more in the direction of: some people don't eat meat because some fantasy being told them not to do. (Christians think it is okay, because their fantasy being wont kill them for it. It promised with rainbows.)
Anyhow, I mentioned "souls and stuff" because some people justify eating meat with animals don't have souls. And some say, you have to be nice to animals because they have souls. But you can be mean to plants and rocks and other stuff, cause they don't have souls.
So basically, don't expect someone in believing in souls to make sense.
But just to counter the point. If you traumatize someone with a soul, that is more impactful than traumatizing an intelligence that doesn't. Even if they don't feel pain, the betrayal of their caretaker, who killed them, should have high consequences.
Anyhow, if you think waste is bad, what do you think about wasting human meat? Is it more important to don't waste meat than to not waste plants, because of the resources invested in "producing" them? What if recycling/using it, so it wouldn't get wasted, would waste more resources, than just throwing it away? (My justification to throw away food. If I eat it, I would get more overweight and would probably waste more resources for drugs.)
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (13 days later)
That's a very long comment...
I don't typically watch videos on mobile, so no, haven't seen them. I don't think that willingness to kill necessarily implies that mistreatment is meaningless, in the same way that killing in self defence or war does not mean torture is meaningless - but I do accept that animals bred for slaughter will have unpleasant lives, and it would be hypocritical for me to condemn that - and it's usually not arbitrary, but has practical commercial reasons. I'd be happy for us as a species to do much less of it for a variety of reasons, but "we shouldn't kill animals" isn't on the list.
From a very very pragmatic point of view, yes human meat is wasted. But there are so many problems with eating it that it's way down the priority list of possible human problems.
u/None [+1] (13 days later)
But there are so many problems with eating it that it's way down the priority list of possible human problems.
Isn't that true for non-human meat?
Just check somehow if you really believe killing animals isn't bad, but wasting stuff is bad. Most say it is bad, but... eating meat is necessary, normal, natural or tasty.
u/vaegrim [+3] (8 hours later)
If this isn't your reasoning, and you aren't quoting an author, I think this edges a bit too close to putting words in someones mouth.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+5] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (16 hours later)
the only real reason to treat animals right (besides environmental reasons) is empathy
You can apply that reasoning to other humans.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (15 hours later)
the only real reason to treat animals right (besides environmental reasons) is empathy
That's also the only real reason to treat humans right. For all I know, I'm the only sentient mind in the universe, and y'all P-zombies. How can you disprove that?
All I can do is try to infer who is sentient like me, by observing their behaviour. Humans are pretty transparently so. But a lot of animals do also a lot of sentient-like things. They clearly show love and affection, fear, playfulness, a simple theory of mind, mourning and understanding of death. If you encountered an alien, or an intelligent robot, what rules would you apply to decide whether they're fair game to kill or not? Can you say that you apply the same rules to all animals as well, or do you just go along with society's default assumptions in that field?