I wonder how much energy it would take to adjust earth’s tilt 🤔 nothing could possibly go wrong with that, right?

provide them with a pathway to build power

If I understand you correctly, then I very much agree, but I don’t see this happening very much. On one side I see people saying “vote for the lesser of two evils, and then we can focus on changing the system/changing the democrat policies” without actually any clear idea how to do that. On the other side I see “don’t vote for either party, neither major party deserves to win” without any clear idea of how to give any realistic chance for a third party to win.

It is bad to normalise genocide. Did you not know this?

Here again you are using bad faith tactics to dismiss the idea that people in favour of voting might have valid reasons to, instead presenting it as if these people think normalising genocide is a good thing. This is divisive and not constructive at all.

All it takes is for one “side” to be racist and panicky…

Yes I know how quickly controversial discourse can go downhill, but to be that seems all the more reason to not allow our arguments to disintegrate, even if the other sides are.

You have to unseat and challenge with a truth that disagrees with the prevailing wisdom

I definitely agree, I think all widespread “truths” should stand up to scrutiny, but my point is about the way this is done. Challenging a truth/point of view should mean approaching the logical base of that view, and presenting an alternative with reasons why the alternative is better. But so often I see people ignoring the logical base of the other side’s viewpoint, and instead creating straw-men to attack instead, or simply just dismissing the other side entirely through one tactic or another. To be clear, this is done by all sides, I see many people dismissing the argument to vote as simply being “supportive of genocide” (which is obviously ridiculous), while people dismissing the argument to vote third party as being “stupid/ignorant” or other things to that effect, which is also obviously false.

Like you say, we are all products of our societies with different values, but the vast majority of people are reasonably smart and have good intentions. And dismissing people is not a good way of “calling them out”, it only causes further division and makes them even less likely to be receptive to your ideas. If you cannot see the reasons for someone’s beliefs (even if you strongly disagree with those reasons) then you stand very little chance of changing their mind.

I think assuming that people are completely accepting of what the administration is doing, even when they try to voice their opinions in polls, is in bad faith. They simply don’t feel they have the option to not vote. In any other democratic system I genuinely think a third party (greens?) would have a good chance to win this election, but the two party system is so entrenched (at the minimum in the minds of voters), that to not vote is seen as the functional equivalent of voting for the other side.

I’m not in the US so my opinion doesn’t really matter, but I do think that political discourse would be much more productive if people would stop talking past each other and dismissing the motivations/logic of the opposing side.

Ah yes, dismissing research before it even exists, based on personal belief. What a healthy attitude.

I like this, but I think that the goal to be tested must be a set of tests which are agreed upon by a large majority, not just the current party in power. That way there can be tests as to how effective the law is, but also tests whether it is having other unwanted side effects.

A pot plant which he might try take care of for a while before realising it’s plastic, but has already grown attached to it.

Well first, I don’t think that “is ok to eat meat” is a moral. But it’s true that humans haven’t tended to find it immoral (though there are exceptions to this in certain cultures, regarding certain meats).

But you make a good point, and I think the answer is that since humans make morals based on their circumstances, and the circumstances of society can and does change, then certain morals become less relevant compared to others. Murder is a fairly constant moral, because regardless of how a society changes, a murderous individual is gonna be bad for it. But on the other hand, there used to be pretty strong morals regarding how dead bodies were treated; you leave them alone. And this used to make sense, since people who messed with dead bodies were likely to get diseases and spread them. But as medicine and science and hygiene improved, this became less relevant as compared to the need to investigate dead bodies to improve understanding of disease and human biology. So our common morals regarding respect for the dead changed.

For veganism, it used to be for most societies that they couldn’t afford to simply not eat things, unless they were poisonous. So this need overwhelmed morals of kindness to nature and animals, even though this moral of kindness was still there (respecting nature is a moral found in very many cultures). But in modern day when we now have an abundance of food to the point of large waste, the need to eat whatever you can is no longer as important, and the moral of kindness to animals (and the environment) can be expressed more freely.

And indeed, I think the vast majority of vegans would agree that eating meat is not inherently immoral if there is no other choice, it’s only when meat is chosen over other alternatives that it becomes immoral, because it is unnecessary.

Sorry for the wall of text

That’s a fair point, I was mostly thinking that many people consume far too much meat, and that reducing it would be healthy, but if it’s only being replaced with trash then it wouldn’t be any better

Well I agree with you that I don’t think it was much of a deterrent, because that was the reality of how people were raised. But I think these days many people have never killed the animals they eat, and they were also not raised in the same conditions, so I suspect that forcing people to kill their own animals today would indeed be somewhat of a deterrent, at least to certain groups of people. But this is of course all just my opinion and speculation.

I believe I just did? My argument is that despite morals not coming from some magical entity, they have an origin in humanities success in society, and are therefore still important. For something to be immoral doesn’t merely mean an entity says it is bad, it means that thing goes against principles which benefit our societies. Murder is immoral, not because an entity decided that, but rather because societies which accepted murder were far less successful than societies which did not.

For veganism, the environmental mortality is clear. Besides that I suspect the reason we tend to see unnecessary animal abuse as immortal is because kinder humans tend to be better for society, and kinder humans also tend to be kinder to animals, not just humans.

You are stating strawmen: facts with no relevance to the argument presented, which you then point to and refuse to address the actual argument.

I never claimed to know what any individual needs, but you have started it as a fact as if that is at all relevant. It’s not, because I never claimed it. I claimed that I know that the vast majority of people need, based on basic science and statistics. If you have fact which actually argued against that, then please go ahead. But unrelated facts posing as arguments are strawman arguments, and are bad faith.

Of course they did, they also had drastically less options than they do today. It’s no coincidence that veganism is a fairly new concept, it’s only fairly recently that it’s become feasible.

I of course don’t know what any specific person needs, but knowing what the vast majority of people need is trivial, it’s basic science.

Please stop arguing is such bad faith in every response you make.

It might be a fact, but it’s being used as an argument to make a specific point. These things are not exclusive.

And my question stands, why is it being used as an argument when it has no relevance?

Obviously the observer decides for themselves what they think is needed. I didn’t think it would be controversial to observe that people tend to dislike/have an aversion to hurting intelligent animals for no reason.

Not everyone necessarily feels this, but many people do. Enough for us as a society to largely ban/shun things like dog fights, bull fights, circus animals, animal torture videos, etc

If people had to kill their own meat, not only would there be more vegans, but people who did eat meat would probably eat a lot less on average than the average person today does. It would probably make a lot of people healthier too.

Who here is claiming that there are moral facts? Of course morals are constructs of human culture, but that doesn’t make them less important. Morals are essentially what we have learned to be important rules for good, healthy societies. Humans who abide by the idea that it is “wrong” to kill another human are far more compatible in a community than ones who do not. These concepts have developed over a very long time, which is why we tend to “know” when things are wrong (eg feel bad, guilty conscious, etc). One of these “rules” is that needlessly inflicting pain on intelligent animals is wrong. Similarly, causing unnecessary damage to the environment is wrong. The context of climate change is quite new, but the principle is the same.

Ok but idk if the flying atrocities that are mosquitoes deserve a title as high as “animal” tho

I really don’t see how they are strawmen. The vast majority of people do not need meat, the reason they eat meat is because it tastes good. Taste is merely one of our senses, why is it ok to kill to enjoy the taste, but not ok to enjoy the sound or sight? That’s what the meme is getting at.

Nature playing out

Why is this an argument, when it isn’t an acceptable reason for anything else? Rape, murder, thievery are all things that most people see as wrong, despite them happening in nature plenty.

One of the things that makes humans unique is our ability to consider logic and mortality beyond what happens in nature, because nature certainly isn’t perfect.

I agree not everyone can refrain from eating meat, but waiting until everyone is doing it before one stops eating meat is a good way to ensure it never happens. Veganism has grown to where it is now from people deciding to adopt it for themselves, regardless of other people are doing it.

But yes you are right, the argument shouldn’t be “you should feel bad”. I think educating about the problems of the meat industry, and also making veganism ever more accessible and normalised are the ways forward. But it will spread person by person, not as large communal decisions. At least not yet.