• ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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    16 days ago

    Let’s assume for a moment that somehow your salad was conscious. That’s an even bigger reason not to eat an animal that has to be fed on plants for a long time.

    • x4740N@lemm.ee
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      16 days ago

      Well a salad is made of cells that have responses to certain stimuli

      The brain if you where to go and simplify it down to its most very basic layer is just responses to stimili

      The brain is a collection of responses to stimuli that together create a kind of network that can respond to stimuli in complex ways

      Plants are a collection of cells that respond to stimuli

      So they very well will likely to be conscious on some level

      • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        16 days ago

        The above comment is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning. The Code of Hammurabi is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning.

        So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          16 days ago

          So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.

          i think statistically it would be insignificant based on the sheer amount of written material out there, so it should actually be a function of how long the work is, plus how long it’s been around for, the longer it is, and the longer its been around for, the more complete of a historical document we have.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      Or maybe its just a fundamental fact of life that something has to die in order for you to live and virtue signaling about the degree to which you participate in that death is a pointless exercise.

        • mildlyusedbrain@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          These arguments are exactly why people hate vegans. It’s nonsense.

          Not only do you jump to an insane straw man. You showcase that you ignore a clear increasing contradiction around your world view and choose reactionary nothing.

          If you care about life realize the harder question. If you care about the environment realize clear inefficiencues. Currently, you showcase nothing more than crude thoughtlessness.

          • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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            16 days ago

            I’m not a vegan but it’s foolish to think that vegans aren’t objectively correct. Let’s even say that plants are conscious beings on the level of cows or pigs. The conditions these plants are grown in are a million times better than that of the average factory farm animal. Additionally, in order to sustain ourselves on cows and pigs, exponentially more of these conscious plants need to be killed to fatten the conscious animals we are eating.

            If we just ate the plants instead there would be several orders of magnitude less suffering in the word, antibiotic resistant bacteria would be a less immediate issue, a significant amount of our greenhouse gas emissions would disappear, and we’d all probably be healthier to boot.

            Yes, something has to die in order for any organism to continue it’s existence. Let’s not pretend that only plants dying aren’t a better alternative in every way to animals dying in order to further our collective existence. You accuse vegans of being reactionary but your comment smacks of knee-jerky defensiveness for something you seem to understand is wrong

        • Ignotum@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          “our new cancer drug is 99% effective!”

          “So it doesn’t work in 1% of cases? Then what’s the point, throw it away, we just have to accept that cancer is going to happen”

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        16 days ago

        This logic doesn’t make sense in any other context. Like, if I say we should try to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere, you could point out that emitting CO2 is a fundamental part of human life, so something something virtue signaling blah blah blah. Just because something is unavoidable to a certain degree doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minimize it.

      • ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml
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        16 days ago

        Or maybe there’s happy middle where everyone can live comfortably while keeping the harm we cause at a minimum.

        Or, at the most selfish, we could make sure we don’t kill ourselves this decade or the next.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    16 days ago

    hey vegans, cool fact, plant based diets are vastly more efficient and effective at feeding people than meat based diets.

    Meat consumes plants to exist, most of that energy is lost. Not so much with plants.

    Just start telling people this shit lmao. Who cares about morality when you can pretend to be saving the environment instead.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        16 days ago

        that can be true, but we also grow a substantial amount of feed for agriculture usage, even if it’s not local to us. A lot of alf alfa being grown is exported.

        It’s all dependent on whatevers cheapest at the end of the day. And regardless of this fact, a lot of energy is still lost in this process, cows are a significant contributor to climate change, ironically.

        • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          16 days ago

          all of agriculture is only about 20% of our GHG emissions. cows are a fraction of that… there are definitely bigger issues.

          as for the alfalfa, it’s also a small fraction of global crops. 2/3 of all crop calories go to humans with only 1/3 going to livestock… this includes about 70% of the weight of the global soy crop (after we have pressed it for oil), as well as fodder like corn stalks. we basically fed livestock trash and get food. it’s a pretty good deal.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            16 days ago

            all of agriculture is only about 20% of our GHG emissions. cows are a fraction of that… there are definitely bigger issues.

            obviously, but in terms of livestock, cows are pretty significant.

            30% of all global stock going to feed is a pretty large percentage of global crop production.

            • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              16 days ago

              I think it’s probably fine. it will work itself out when the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

  • Harvey656@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Let’s go to the extremes here: let’s say I’m a vegan, and love snakes and want my snake to not eat live mouse, do you think I can feed the snake vegan snake food?

    This is all hypothetical as I dislike snakes and love bacon.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 days ago

      Let’s go to the extremes here: let’s say I’m a vegan, and love snakes and want my snake to not eat live mouse, do you think I can feed the snake vegan snake food?

      well i mean, snakes are pretty fucking stupid. assuming the snake can digest it properly, and gets the required nutrients, it should be fine.

      However we can also consider that mayhaps you live in NYC which has a rat problem, perhaps you should just feed your snake rats instead.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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      16 days ago

      Veganism is a philosophy that calls for reducing harm to animals where practical and possible. You can conjure up whatever hypothetical you like, and if you specifically look for situations where harm to animals is unavoidable, then harm to animals will be… unavoidable, in those situations.

      However, the vast majority of choices you’ll make that affect the lives of animals don’t happen within the context of these sorts of thoughts experiments. You don’t have to eat rats or bacon in order to survive. So it’s not really relevant, unless you’re actually in that sort of situation.

      Personally, I simply wouldn’t keep a snake as a pet, and if I had one, I’d give it away. The delimma you’ve presented pits my feeling of wanting a snake against my ethical beliefs about not harming animals, and I consider that ethical belief to be more important. I could always just watch videos of snakes or go see them at the zoo or whatever. But if you did one of those, “You’re stranded on a deserted island with nothing to eat but a crate full of frozen steaks that washed ashore,” then sure, I’d prioritize my survival because it wouldn’t be practical to avoid them in that situation.

  • barsquid@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    There’s no way this won’t restart the same argument with someone, huh? Top-tier shitpost, well done.

  • Hellfire103@lemmy.ca
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    16 days ago

    “Know” is a stretch. Plants respond to attack by releasing chemicals (e.g. nettles and grasses), curling or retracting their leaves (e.g. acacia), or by changing their morphology (e.g. holly); but they have no nervous system - let alone a brain - so it’s not like you’re killing an animal.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      Plants having no nervous system is being challenged with the idea that the plant itself is its central nervous system.

      They react to stimulus, they emit sounds (different ones when in “pain”), and communicate with each other.

      They don’t have consciousness in a way we understand

      I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that

      • LordGimp@lemm.ee
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        16 days ago

        It’s always funny to me how people eat up the concept of a distrubuted neural network in tech but scoff at the same idea applying to something like a tree or a fungus.

        Pando is the largest organism by area, and the Humungous Fungus is the largest by mass. The idea that those organisms don’t “think” in some way is laughable.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          16 days ago

          because humans invent things from scratch that nature has already created and optimzed, it’s why we’re seeing a lot of optimizations on current tech that comes from nature itself.

          It’s a really weird problem to have.

          • LordGimp@lemm.ee
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            16 days ago

            Go find that video of a slime mold optimizing Japan’s rail system by finding oats in a maze

        • x4740N@lemm.ee
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          16 days ago

          It always seems lime some excuse in a counter response by vеgаns

          The number of times I’ve responded to them telling them that plants probably process pain in a different way to us has always been shot down by them

          Tell them that brains extremely simplified are just on and off responses to certain stimuli / information just like plants have specific reponsonses to stimuli and computers having 1’s and 0’s that respond to information

          A mycelium network could be counted as a brain

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      16 days ago

      We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.

      They don’t have muscles either, but some plants are known to uproot themselves and fucking move.

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.

        Hmm sorry but no, there are traits exhibited by conscious entities which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness. This is a nice explainer on consciousness, note that it’s not saying anything about needing a brain to exhibit those traits

        https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#DesQueWhaFeaCon

        correct me if I am misremembering sth

      • strawberrysocial@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Yeah, plants aren’t stationary. All plants move, just very, very slowly compared to animals. Looking at time lapse videos of vines growing, reaching out for something to grab on to and stuff is pretty neat. They kind of whip around in circles until they feel they’ve hit something worth grabbing onto.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      They have the knowledge and are doing something about it. If other plants can send out this chemical by observing it themselves, that sounds like a reaction from a communication. It may not be cognition like we expect but it is behaving like cognition would. Hard to argue that plants don’t know or care of their friends start dying.

      • kshade@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        I’d argue that knowledge is more than that, otherwise books or state machines could also be said to know things.

      • Hellfire103@lemmy.ca
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        16 days ago

        Some of them eat oysters, or so I’m told. They lack a brain and centralised nervous system.

        • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml
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          16 days ago

          One of my exes is very strictly vegetarian and will eat oysters. Oysters lack the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves or the environment, effectively they’re a water pump made out of meat, and they’re one of the most sustainable foods we can make leading to less planetary harm than a lot of plant crops even. It’s definitely a controversial opinion though

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 days ago

      by this logic do people even truly exist. Maybe you’re just the only real person in the world, maybe im the only real person in the world, we have no way of proving this.