Microblog post: Not even a vegan but they’re obviously right no need to try to argue with them it’s fine to just be wrong and live your life
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[+] -35 points 3 days ago (18 children)

Plants are alive too. Vegans are just plant racists.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 days ago (17 children)

    Veganism isn't about not eating what was or is "alive". It's about "suffering" (and avoiding it as much as possible).

    You can find that fundamental belief in Buddhism or Jainism too. If you think about it, you can probably find it in you. Why would anybody want to make any other sentient body suffer?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    Veganism can also be about environmental impact. I'm vegetarian mostly because a meat based diet isn't sustainable on a global scale. While I'm obviously happy about the reduced suffering, it's importance is only in second place for me.

    Tho maybe veganism is pretty much entirely for reducing animals suffering, I'm only a vegetarian and won't pretend to know for sure.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    While I'm obviously happy about the reduced suffering, it's importance is only in second place for me.

    that's confusing. I don't know how to reply.

    why is "environmental impact" concerning you if it's not for the suffering it causes and will cause?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago

    It's a widespread misunderstanding but adopting a plant based diet for some reason other than avoiding the exploitation of animals isn't veganism. Praying five times a day isn't Islam unless you're praying to Allah.

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  • [+] -9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (11 children)

    We are only just beginnig to understand what plants feel. They have hormons they have pain rezeptors they have a basic neural net.

    To assume a plant would not suffer is a little outdated.

    Even 20 Yeats ago it was already known that plants do feel pain. they inform surrounding plants about pain and they react to it.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago

    ALL organisms can sense and respond to their environments or else they will be easily killed. Bacterial signalling molecules and receptors exist too.

    This is very different to the concept of pain or suffering.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

    Even if that's true that plants are conscious and can experience subjective pain (doubt), then it just means we live on a world where it's really hard to avoid doing harm and that would suck for us as sapient creatures with the knowledge that inflicting pain is wrong, but the end goal would still be to reduce harm to feeling beings as much as practicable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (7 children)

    this has a lot of unspoken moral assumptions in it

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

    It sure does, it's a moral statement. But let me speak them then:

    • pain is unpleasant and should be avoided as much as practicable

    • If you care about reducing the pain in others then you should act accordingly

    • the vegan perspective is to reduce our exploitation of animals as much as practicable

    • the pain and suffering of animals at the hands of humans matters

    • we should try to limit the unnecessary pain we cause

    • there are actions humans can take to lower the amount of pain and suffering in the world

    • a world with less pain and suffering is preferable to one with more


    But seriously, what would you do with the information that plants felt suffering on the level of animals and humans? Would you do nothing with this shocking new evidence?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (5 children)

    it also assumes that you can know what will decrease suffering in the future. you can't.

    further, it assumes that inflicting or avoiding suffering is either immoral or moral. only one system I'm aware of states this outright and it's utilitarianism, which can be summed up " the ends justify the means" which most people think is pretty abhorrent.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (4 children)

    Yes and that holds true for all actions—we can never know how our behavior will "sum out" in the future, especially the far far future.

    We still make moral decisions based on the imperfect information we have. In fact we have to, because merely existing in the status quo is a moral decision. Even choosing to remove ourselves from existence is a moral decision. On a long enough horizon we can't tell how anything will play out.

    So while can't know what any of our decisions or lack of decisions will amount to in the future, we still try, and update our assumptions as time goes on.

    But there's no point in arguing whether reducing suffering is moral or not if you're not even going to grant that attempting to reduce suffering is a worthy goal.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (3 children)

    On a long enough horizon we can’t tell how anything will play out.

    which is why consequentialism can't actually tell us the right thing to do. it's a fatally flawed ethical approach.

    since ethics can't be derived from possible future outcomes, they must come from somewhere else. kant proposes it's the categorical imperative. divine command theorists propose from God or a holy text.

    neither of those systems axiomatically say to reduce suffering.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago (2 children)

    I feel like you're getting lost in the world of abstracts. I'm talking subjective, fallible, imperfect, morality—not objective ethics.

    There is a concrete instance of a chicken that is being tortured for profit currently. If you're against that, it's morally self-consistent to avoid contributing to the system which is torturing the chicken.

    Is it not?

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago (1 child)

    There is a concrete instance of a chicken that is being tortured for profit currently.

    i don't think that's true.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago

    Ok, we're getting somewhere.

    Personally, I would consider the conditions of battery chickens torture, made worse because of the profit maximising motive.

    If you don't agree with that then this explains why we have different moral intuitions.

    I would still say my points stand because I emphasise internal moral consistency, not some appeal to an objective value system.

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