http://www.upc-online.org/phil_veg.html

Karen Davis is the voice of clarity once again.

Your post here is about reincarnation. That means after you die. After you die, social and causal ripples are all that is left. Before you die you have a body and brain to boot. Other than that? Nothing.

If you have secrets that you've never told anyone and never acted upon, they die with you.

You could take an atheistic/scientific approach to the idea of reincarnation that makes it more logical: the matter of which we all are made is endlessly recycled.

"We", that is our personalities, thoughts, and deeds continue on in the ripple effects they caused also for infinity.

Well yes, there are other possibilities for a relationship than bullying and neglect. Thank goodness! — unenlightened

Just pointing it out because the thread was seeming to adopt an either/or stance on that issue. :wink:

making it sound like it's unreasonable to question authority groups...scary! — Pseudonym

Questioning them as a layperson without (so far as has been presented here) any evidence to do so, and thus exposing children to your own (seemingly) crackpot theories, is what I would call scary, actually.

They don't just randomly do unhealthy things, they copy. If you're stuffing your face with chocolates and telling the child not to, you're on a hiding to nothing — Pseudonym

That's partly true. Modeling good behavior is indeed an important part of parenting. I totally agree.

But it's not the sum of it. Since children are exposed to aggressive advertising everywhere, and their own biological drives tell them to consume calories, and perhaps they have peers with bad habits, etc etc. It's thus equally important to first tell them that sweets are bad in large quantities, and then (if you notice them developing poor habits) intervene, and that includes by having rules.

Drug addicts, smokers, and drinkers are proof that humans of all ages do not necessarily heed the fact that things have been labelled "dangerous."

us adults are the arbiters of what's healthy and safe? Have you seen the world recently? — Pseudonym

True enough, grown ups suck. But ideally, as parents, we do know that certain things are bad for us and others better. I think if we're talking about people choosing parenting styles, we're talking about the more caring, loving, and knowledgable part of the population anyway.

We have an obligation therefore to steer our most vulnerable and inexperienced in the right direction, and until they are old enough, that includes making decisions for them. Do you ask your kids if they want to be vaccinated? Or get medicine? If they say no, what do you do? Sometimes you have to override their wishes for their own good.

Your post is basically just saying "Give me the evidence, but oh, if you do, I won't believe it anyway cause it's just a matter of interpretation, and even if there was undeniable evidence, I wouldn't care anyway and would insist that my way is better."
I'm not writing a research article on this, so if you ever do decide that you care about the research, you can do your own perusing of the NCBI database. There are literally dozens documenting the correlation between delinquency and permissive or uninvolved parenting--and even one documenting the correlation of tooth decay and permissive parenting!

As to your question, I do not generally look up how to behave in a textbook, no. But if I came across a study that said something I'm doing towards loved ones has some sort of adverse effect I was unaware of, then I would seriously reconsider my actions. That's because I care more about actually doing right by them than having my own pet theory about how I think things "should" work proved right.

My experience is similar to yours, and the principle i have always followed is that one should treat children as if they are the people one would like them to be. Treat them like little shits, and they become little shits, manipulate them and they become manipulators, respect them and they become respectful, in just the same way that if you speak Spanish to them, they will become Spanish speakers. — unenlightened

Totally, I agree that one should treat children and all people respectfully. But rejecting a hands-off approach to parenting does not mean embracing a "tiger parenting" aka authoritarian parenting, which has also been shown to have negative effects on children.

Ideally, the parent-child relationship is something that is continually negotiated and evolves throughout the child's life depending on the temperament and ability of that person. For example, you stop toddlers from eating sweets, because they are not mature enough to stop eating when they get sick from it or when they gain unhealthy amounts of weight. But you might just roll your eyes privately and let a teen or tween overindulge once or twice until they realize that it's not really that fun after all.

Most importantly, if you tell a kid that they can do what they want, you're basically telling them you don't care all that much what happens to them. "Eat what you want" is heard as "I don't care about your health." "No curfew" = "I'm not worried about your safety." "Come and go as you please" = "I don't care about your company." But if you continually re-negotiate reasonable boundaries with them, they hear "I respect your growing autonomy, but I still care deeply about your well-being and want you to be healthy and safe."

It can happen, but the ressurected soul will be eternally burdened with the tagline "previously damned." It's only fair — Hanover

I almost want to be banned and then unbanned just for the priviledge :naughty:

And if you think asking for evidence to back up a claim and pointing out that science is not immune to paradigms, — Pseudonym

I think it's pretty stupid to ask for evidence and then, upon being told the evidence, questions all science and psychology, not just one study or one aspect, but the totality of it. If not from science, from whence should one get facts with which to back up any claims? And if you don't trust any sources of facts, why ask for them in the first place?

Yes, your knee-jerk condemnation of the entire field does show that you are reacting allergically, as does your snark in your previous post.

I should've said imagery, since it summarises my point better — Liar Lyre

Equating imagery and game play makes no sense.

is what art is about: A message. — Liar Lyre

I did not say art was solely aesthetics. I said primarily. Big dif. That can mean anywhere from 51 to 100% of it is aesthetics.

If all art does is convey a message, then my doctor's bill is a regular Picasso. Nope, that's just not a sufficient condition.

I will rephrase tho, that art needn't be aesthetically pleasing as much as it needs to be aesthetically appealing. Clearly ugly art appeals to the aesthetic sensibilities of some wayward persons on this planet, but it's still an aesthetic quality which conveys any message if there is one to be had. Instrumental music, for instance, has no definite message, it is just aesthetics, and is purely art.

I think this is the point where the argument depends on one's definition of art — Liar Lyre

If that's what you think, then why even bother trying to contribute to the discussion. "To each his or her own" is a non-answer.

highly recommend it to anyone who would say video games cannot be art (not to generalise that as your opinion). — Liar Lyre

Which you can't, since I don't say they can't be art. Just that they generally aren't.

Also, sorry, but I'm not gonna check up on your personal fav game.

Gotta go with the best knowledge you have at any given time in history.

You really shouldn't post about your personal life if you're going to react so allergically to criticism thereof.

You can loom at the American Psychology Associations own website if you want.
Or pick up any developmental psych 101 textbook. It's pretty basic stuff.

I didn't say anything about your kids specifically. (Though I do honestly assume it's not as rosy and happy as you claim it is... perhaps you'll find out when they are adults and have their own kids how they really feel about your wonderful parenting style.)

But one family working out despite poor parenting choices cannot outweigh the fact that the majority of such families do not fare as well.

The tyrannical aspect of this comes in the form of an oppressive guilt that the progeny experiences. Paradoxically, the act of parenting is a selfish act of sacrifice. The parent sacrifices a great deal, perhaps even everything, for the sake of their child, and the child feels obligated to return this reciprocity, regardless of their actual appreciation. — darthbarracuda

That's not tyranny, that's just how being a social being works. Perhaps you wish we could have evolved from crocodiles instead so we could be totally independent, but we evolved from apes and as such are social beings and cannot live without others. Yes, we are born indebted to our families. And in a perfect world we would repay them by taking care of them as they get older the way we take care of our own children while they are young.

There's a reason this is illegal in some places and just generally frowned upon.

The APA describes parenting styles such as yours thusly:

Permissive
In this parenting style, parents are warm, but lax. They fail to set firm limits, to monitor children's activities closely or to require appropriately mature behavior of their children.

Children raised with this parenting style tend to be impulsive, rebellious, aimless, domineering, aggressive and low in self-reliance, self-control and achievement.

Uninvolved
In this parenting style, parents are unresponsive, unavailable and rejecting.

Children raised with this parenting style tend to have low self-esteem and little self-confidence and seek other, sometimes inappropriate, role models to substitute for the neglectful parent.

Being "pleasant" is not a sufficient condition for something to be called art, because a multitude of things "please" like a sunny day, a rainbow, a kitten, etc without being art.
Art should be aesthetically pleasing, but it also needs to be an artifact (i.e. human made) and intentionally made to be art.


The purpose of art needs to be primarily that it is aesthetically pleasing. The main purpose of a video game is generally not that it appeal to our aesthetics, but that it be "fun," which is not quite the same thing. I think that a game could be designed with the primary purpose of being art by being aesthetically interesting, but in order for that to count, the aesthetics would have to be connected to the game play somehow, and not just be backdrop for the game.

Also, I think by "description" you mean to say "plot," and I don't think that game play itself is the plot, it's just the vehicle by which you navigate through the plot, or plot options.

and its only fools who see that hate is evil. — DPMartin

Sounds like a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to me!

is the most felicitous way to describe a formula that goes back only several decades. The problem is this formula is "epistemological" in a naive way, i.e., it doesn't know that epistemology as such is a 19th century invention. It asks, what is the access to reality as such? The older discussion assumes a grounding, when one sees a tree, that's it. No "belief". Seeing is knowing, a certainty. One is in the world. No question about a mad scientist or a dream — InternetStranger

Drop the 'tude dude.
You're either unaware of, or outright neglecting much of the important history of Western philosophy. Plato was the first to say we don't have direct access to the world as it is. Aristotle talked about Gettier problems (not by that name, but the idea was the same). Descartes questioned our access to truth and reality famously in the 1600's.

But most importantly, you seem to misunderstand what the term "belief" means in this context and why even radical realists use it. Even radical realists realize the tree could be an illusion, or a hallucination, or just a mistake (it could be a shrub cleverly pruned to look like a tree). Because of this, all you can say is that I believe x to be true, and I have enough evidence that my belief probably 99.99999% likely corresponds to reality, therefore I am confident in calling it knowledge.

Knowledge is traditionally, and succinctly defined as "justified, true belief."

You can have an unjustified and untrue belief, like thinking that you can fly if you just think happy thoughts. You have no reason to think you can actually fly, plus you can't actually fly, so it's unjustified and untrue.

You can have an unjustified but true belief, like when you try to guess the sex of someone's unborn child and you happen to be right. You had no way to know that the baby would be x or y, you just got lucky. Your belief may have been true, but it was unjustified and is therefore not knowledge.

You can have a justified but untrue belief, like if you go to a party and your friend says she's going to the same party, and you see someone at the party who looks just like your friend, and you wave, and that person waves back (let's say you never bothered to actually talk to her), then afterwards you'd be justified in believing your friend was at the party. But it may turn out to be untrue and that you were just waving at a stranger look-a-like and your friend was actually at home with the 24-hour bug.

Gettier problems (I love these) explain how you can have a justified and true belief that still is not knowledge. Stanford Encyclopedia lists one such example as:
"Imagine that we are seeking water on a hot day. We suddenly see water, or so we think. In fact, we are not seeing water but a mirage, but when we reach the spot, we are lucky and find water right there under a rock. Can we say that we had genuine knowledge of water? The answer seems to be negative, for we were just lucky. (quoted from Dreyfus 1997: 292)"

So basically, the answer to your question is that these things come in all sorts of combinations.

Feminists being uneasy with gay men, drag queens, and mtf transpeople goes way back. Gay men asserted that gay rights were more important than women's rights. Drag queens are seen as nothing but another kind of blackface.

And mtf persons are seen as men who
a) try to tell biological women how it feels to be a woman, and that this feeling is somehow accompanied by or worse even just the desire to wear lipstick and skirts (last I checked women were still female without those props)
b) insist on pushing their way into female conversations (abortion is simply not their issue) and spaces.(bathrooms and locker rooms) with all the self-rightousness patriarchy has imbued them with
And c) want cis women to recognize privilege but adamantly refuse to admit that their male birth gave them any privilege whatsoever.

I personally think all trans people do these things, but I see why feminists are annoyed.

It's one thing to criticize a group of people on the basis of trivial and/or inborn qualities such as race, sex, or sexuality. That's the kind of thing that is wrong and leads to unfair prejudice.

But when you pick on Republicans, you're picking on people on the basis of their values, beliefs, and actions. Although one ought to be careful in how far that goes in some cases, it's also often justified. Descrimination shouldn't be made legal towards opinions and political views, but for instance, if I choose to avoid socializing with a KKK member, that's not bigoted of me. I can also call those people out for being racist dimwits. It's not an unfair criticism.

With political affiliation it's the same thing. You just have to be prepared for some Republicans to claim not to be one of THOSE Republicans.

You know very well that I'm not arguing that we ought to reproduce or raise farm animals for their own sake. I've explained this multiple times, you keep repeating the same misinterpretation. I'm arguing that it's not immoral to breed farm animals, just as its not immoral to produce children. The reason you keep making this mistake can only be because you hold the position that reproducing or breeding animals is immoral, and you're confusing the negation of this with inversion into moral obligation. You're clearly an anti-natalist. — VagabondSpectre

This is clearly a case of projection on your part: you tell me I'm insisting on a misinterpretation and then you call me an anti-natalist without any suggestion of that on my part.
I have repeatedly said that putting animals on this planet is not immoral. Therefore putting humans on it is neither. The problem arises when you seek to cause them harm, and death counts as harm.

Your analogy with the pregnant wife is flawed in part because there is (obviously) a huge difference between someone's natural death that you can't stop, or causing someone's death. To equate the two just means you think that since all children we have will eventually die of natural causes, it's just as okay to kill them when we please.

Wanting to escape the farm before my execution (even though it's certain death) isn't the same as not wanting to have ever lived at all. — VagabondSpectre

But it shows that you don't want to die, and neither does the pig, and that you would see something wrong in being killed...that's because it is wrong to kill someone for your own profit.

If I'm making a point about my own circumstances, then I needs must reference myself. This is very straightforward and easy to understand. Obfuscatory hand-waving is bad rhetoric. — VagabondSpectre

Your own circumstances matter not in the least here. Whine to your doctor about it. Until you show me some scientific evidence about how this happens to people and not just you your personal "experience" cannot be used in this discussion. Not sure why that's so hard to wrap your head around? If I told you that being vegan cured my cancer, I should hope you wouldn't just take my word for it either. It's just hearsay.

Medical evidence pointsd toward consuming less meat as a healthier alternative, not consuming no meat. And unfortunately there are yet extant economic and logistic hurtles toward a nutritionally adequate national diet. — VagabondSpectre

Medical evidence shows that eating less meat or no meat is great for your health.

And I've already explained that being vegan does not have to cost more than being omnivorous... the price of either diet depends on your abilities to shop and cook and perhaps your location.

You don't buy that either agriculture or health-care are complex systems which are difficult to model, predict, control, and plan? — VagabondSpectre

Of course I know they are complex, but I know for a fact that in comparison to what we currently have, both plant-based agriculture and universal health care would be much much simpler, affordable, better for humans, animals, and the planet.

And depending on the resources available to the farm, cattle might be more profitable than vegetable.

Why are you inserting your personal stories like they matter? :D — VagabondSpectre

So you admit then that meat is more expensive since it is more profitable?
Just, FYI, citing relevant sources or experts does not count as personal anecdote. At most you could argue that I should be providing some way to verify these sources, but I guess that you really have a hard time telling what is and what isn't anecdotal.

In any case, no new arguments are being made here. We've clearly reached an impasse, so unless you have something new to add, I will consider this conversation over now.

Science really can't work that way. Progress is made by finding problems with our theories and proposing solutions to these problems, not by certifying theories as true. Right now there is zero evidence that there is a problem with either quantum mechanics or general relativity. No one knows even how to perform an experiment to discover any problems with them, since both LHC and LIGO have failed to find one, but we know there IS a problem, and it has nothing to do with evidence. — tom

How do you know that there is a problem? It makes no sense to say you know something without having a shred of evidence in favor thereof. You're simply failing to count the reasons we have to believe QM is flawed in someway as evidence.

It is anti-philosophical.

Why would anyone do that? — Arne

Possibly because they had nothing else to say in favor of their own pet theory and people are pretty unwilling to admit defeat (especially around here) :wink:
Also, possibly, they were being rude about a legitimate concern that any such hypothesis should only be given credence when accompanied by at least a shred of evidence... but I also do not understand the need for rudeness if that is the case.

I suppose a better term for what people are actually looking for (or should be looking for) is "evidence." Most of science and most of philosophy are just working with evidence which supports or weakens any given argument. Any good scientist or philosopher will admit that "proven" is just shorthand for "there is so much evidence for x that we can reasonably assume it is true."

However, both fields do sometimes work with "proof." Like math and logic actually often do prove their conclusions.

A) Once a creature is born it can begin exhibiting preferences and interests. Therefore, once a pig is born it can be indirectly pleased that you created it. Your argument here is that the whole concept of a life worth living cannot be considered or applied with respect to as yet non existent creatures, but given the similarity between past and future members of given species, it's more than reasonable to assume that once born, animals who are treated well would prefer life over non-existence, despite the nature of its end. — VagabondSpectre

The key being once it is born. Arguing that we ought to bring people into life, because they will then enjoy it is just an argument against birth control.

And even a well-treated pig doesn't want you to hurt it or kill it. You're pretending like this is a bargain that the pigs made with you: "some time living for my right to eat you." Well, you never asked the pig permission, it hasn't agreed to those terms.

I might be upset at the brevity of my existence but I would still be thankful for the life I do have. — VagabondSpectre

Baloney. If you knew what was coming, you'd try everything in your power to get the heck out of there. You wouldn't just happily say "oh, gee thanks for letting me live at all. I guess it's okay for you to kill me now for the sake of eating my flesh." You would obviously try to escape and you wouldn't be all that grateful. Just like I don't think African American slaves were so grateful to be alive that they thought their situation was just a-okay.
And the comparison to child traffickers is spot on. But we can change it to "black-market organ sellers" or "cannibals" or "snuff film makers" if you want to err on the side of the animal/child simply dying. Cattle are killed at 22 months of age on average, but they have a natural lifespan of 20 years. So killing them at that age is like killing a human whose only 10 years old.

. I don't know why you're concerned about psychology and subjective experience though, you could just address the things I've said directly — VagabondSpectre

Ummm, but you keep on inserting your personal stories like they matter.

won't say there's a perfectly humane way to slaughter unwilling humans, but there are more and less humane ways, just as there are more and less humane ways to raise and slaughter farm animals. Relatively speaking, yes, animals and humans can be humanely slaughtered — VagabondSpectre

The death penalty is for people who have murdered others (and I still think it's wrong). It's not right to compare the killing of a criminal human to that of an innocent animal. But even if some ways are less awful than others, that doesn't make any of them "good" or "humane". Compassionate murder of someone who wants to live is just contradictory in terms. Like I said, you wouldn't be so convinced of your aggressors compassion if it was your neck on the line.

we're still beholden to material, energy, and thermodynamic limitations which prevent us from just doing whatever we want to do. — VagabondSpectre

And yet all the medical evidence points to the fact that meat is something we can actually live very well without. Better yet, it points to the fact that meat consumption is linked to various diseases and shorter lifespans.

I was more so trying to broaden your perspective of the interconnected and complex nature of societal agricultural systems — VagabondSpectre

How sweetly condescending. I don't buy it though. You've obviously just bought into American corporate propaganda.

I know plenty of farmers-some just vegetable farmers, some raise cattle. They don't dispute that raising cattle is a lot more work, money, and resource intensive than beans and kale.

But I can afford the pig if I harvest it at some point, and I'm confident that the pig would rather have lived and been harvested than to have never lived at all, so actually what I'm doing might be considered morally praiseworthy, although not morally obligatory. — VagabondSpectre

Nope.
A) A non-existent entity has no interest in being born. Therefore there are no non-existent pigs who wish for you to create them. Your hypothetical pig would not be unhappy about not being born, because not being born prohibits anyone from having interests positive or negative.
B) You cannot justify causing harm that way. Try: "I can afford to have children only if I sell them to traffickers/cannibals/pornographers once they are a certain age".... should those children be happy their lives were afforded by your pemeditating to harm them? I think not.

Life has suffering is a quality that none of us can (100%) control. Actively causing suffering is not justified on that basis.

because life will contain some suffering and eventual death for our farm animals and our children. — VagabondSpectre

No duh. But you'd still be wrong to beat and eat your kids.

Regarding my personal consumption of meat: I do mainly consume what I believe to be somewhat humanely produced animal products, and when I am in in a state of health where eating no meat does not pose a health risk to me, I will do so. — VagabondSpectre

I thought we had moved on from talking about you? You can't think clearly about something that you so intensely personalize. You'll notice I also do not expound upon my personal experience, because it's simply too subjective and I realize it's too prone to the regular trappings of psychology.

By harvest I mean humanely slaughter for sale and consumption at a point when it is financially beneficial to do so. — VagabondSpectre

Can one humanely slaughter unwilling humans? If not, I find the term silly.

We're still a part of nature — VagabondSpectre

Farms, refrigerators, heating, medications, clothes, etc are all not things which are "part of nature." We can clearly deviate from nature when we choose to.

Believe it or not, but public health involves more factors than the existence or absence of public health care — VagabondSpectre

Some interesting points, most of which I don't agree with, but really, if you want to talk about this completely separate issue, you should make a new thread. But of course I also understand if you're kinda sick of talking to me by now :joke:

see that I was not wrong to characterize your position as Trump-esque naivete. Healthcare insurance and healthcare infrastructure in America is anything but "super-simple", and likewise societal agriculture is deceivingly complex — VagabondSpectre

Oh boy! I guess somebody better call Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Sweden, Japan, Luxembourg, etc, etc and let them all know their superior, more cost efficient, public health care which directly results in people who live longer and more healthily is naive. *sarcasm alert*

My position is that the current regime of over-producing meat is unhealthy and inefficient, while eliminating all animal husbandry is also unhealthy and inefficient: both are unfeasible, the optimal solution is somewhere in the complex middle. — VagabondSpectre

Since we're just repeating our contrary positions at this point, I'm pretty sure it's time to move on from that part of the issue.

I do recognize and appreciate, however, your position that we should lower our meat consumption on the basis of it's adverse environmental and economic effects.

Unless I murder the farm animals at some point I could never have afforded them to begin with, that's the dilemma. When you give me the go ahead to raise pigs, you're implicitly giving me the go ahead to harvest them. Would you like to recant? — VagabondSpectre

It's not a dilemma. If you can't afford them without harming them, don't create them. Just like you shouldn't have a kid you can't afford. Don't adopt puppies you can't afford.

The argument that you should raise the pig even if you can't afford it and have to harm it sounds a lot like what I refuted earlier, which you yourself admitted is absurd.

But if by "harvest" you mean "let it live its complete natural lifespan without causing it harm and then eating it once it's died of old age or other natural causes", okay, I guess if that makes you happy. Ew, gross. But at that point, it's just aesthetics and not ethics.

Rephrase the question from are they art to can they be art and we might get somewhere.

I would argue that games can contain artistic elements, or even contain art. But games are just games absent any intention at artistry. Video games don't differ from card games and board games in that sense. Poker is just a game and not an art, for instance, but the cards can have art on them (some card decks are quite aesthetically pleasing, actually).

Art needs to have a message of some sort that the artist is intending to convey through it to an audience of at least one person. Most video games lack that intention.

SA had the link to this article... Which, you may notice, itself links to peer-reviewed psychological studies in academic journals. Point is, there's science to back up positive thinking.

I'm not at all against toying with the idea of existentialist dread (which is all this is), and I appreciate Sartre and Kafka and Kundera as much as anyone. My main reasons for thinking Shop just needs to get out of his own head more are the way he repeatedly insists on this view, has at times insisted that's how life is for everyone, and not only makes numerous threads on the same issue, but also works it into seemimgly every conversation. It's like an obsession.

However, I do think existential dread has severe limitations. One being accusing anyone who is happy of merely being deluded and seeing the world in a one-sided manner... But the thing is that a saying like making lemonade from lemons is about recognizing that sometimes life has sucky parts, hence the lemons. Not everything is great.

I'm not advocating for a simplistic happiness a la Byron Katie (a guru who is a favorite of my mothers', and whose books she sends me every Christmas).

But some moments of unhappiness don't cancel out all the moments of actual happiness and to say that they do is, imo, the simplistic view.

It's also wrong to declare all striving in this world as a struggle, or to claim that all struggle is negative. Not all means to ends are enjoyable in and of themselves, but a lot of them are. Food is good and cooking the food is fun. Being with loved ones is just enjoyable per se (most of the time).

And, no, I can't guarantee happiness for any of my offspring. But I can offer them all the foundations for one, including doing my best to create a sustainable future. Also, the estimates of when global catastrophe should hit seem to ballpark my kid's kids' kids. So that's not realy a reason for me to avoid having my one son.

Even Dylan wasn't all glum all the time:
Can't you feel that sun a-shinin'?
Ground hog runnin' by the country stream
This must be the day that all of my dreams come true
So happy just to be alive
Underneath the sky of blue
On this new morning, new morning
On this new morning with you.

you're well aware that eating too many grains and not enough variety of other plants will result in nutritional deficits — VagabondSpectre

Adequate nutrition for children is a non-trivial consideration we must make in undertaking a national vegan diet — VagabondSpectre

You need to decide whether you're arguing for a well-balanced diet or not. A well-balanced omnivorous or vegan diet will both require more fruits and vegs than are currently consumed by the average American. The meat-heavy diet as is followed by most people today is dangerous to the health of children and adults alike. Heart disease is, after all, the leading cause of death in the US. An unbalanced vegan or omnivorous diet is going to be grain heavy. In either case, the omnivorous diet uses animal products which are less efficient than plant proteins.

Just like the study you mentioned compared a standard American diet (which is meat and grain heavy) to a vegetable heavy vegan one, which doesn't really make sense. You can't then counter a grain heavy vegan diet by claiming it's unhealthy but advocate for the grain heavy omnivorous one which is even less healthy.

Children thrive on well-balanced vegan diets. Children who are in food deserts and suffer from food insecurity do not thrive on meat-based diets. All your argument means is that we should make food sources more available to underprivileged people and that government assistance does not reach enough people. But a bag of beans is simply not expensive. Nor are peas. Nor is oatmeal. Nor are plenty of good, wholesome plant-based foods.

But there are people in this world who can't afford to be picky about their food--like people in Somalia. And for them I would argue that ought implies can. Since they can't be picky, they are not obligated in the same way people in the US or Europe or richer Asian countries are.

Your constant misinterpretation and hyperbolization of everything I say is genuinely absurd :) — VagabondSpectre

I'm glad you think the conclusion is undesirable. But it is the logical conclusion of saying we have some sort of obligation to bring anyone into the world.

But let's assume you said that it's not immoral to cause existence even if it entails suffering. Okay, sure. But that does not give us the right to cause said suffering. Go ahead, raise pigs for all I care. You just shouldn't hurt them, and that includes murdering them.

He campaigned in part on repealing Obamacare,one piece of a massively complex industry - medicine and medical insurance - but it turned out that the complexities of the task were well beyond his ability to fathom. Agriculture and societal nutrition are one such field of human activity with hard to fathom complexities. — VagabondSpectre

I don't wish to get off track here, so I'll try to be brief: Healthcare is in fact super simple--allow all people to choose a government-run health plan regardless of income level. It's amazingly easy. Other countries do it; I've lived it. It's a great thing.

But even if it were complicated, it's the right thing to do, because letting people die for the want of funds to pay a bill is just barbaric.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/being-a-couch-potato-may-change-your-personality1/
Something to think about.

I vote for going back to college and studying philosophy--tough degree to get a job with, but apparently you don't need one? You'd get all the fun of the forum with more rigor and you'd get out of the house :)

I stumbled across this article through Scientific American and had to think of you:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/mental-health/the-science-behind-5-classic-happiness-clich-s

The scintillating, positive-minded intelligences here will attack your views just the same, but a novel approach might drive a larger dose of cold rain under their shingles to spoil the faux perfection of their painted ceilings. — Bitter Crank

:lol:
I do like rain, even when it's cold. But I'm also pretty good at carpentry, metaphorically as well as literally, so bring it on :)

The article is not telling people to give up healthy foods. It takes a look at the feasibility of America switching to a national vegan through the nutritional/GHG ramifications of doing so.

I do understand that this article seems as a pessimistic delay to your vegan goals, but you must acknowledge the real world hurtles we must clear before we can reach them. Our current agricultural systems aren't so easily modified, or so presently stupid as to be missing out on more nutritional crops that would also be more profitable.

Remember when Trump said "who knew health care could be so complicated?"?

It's called supply and demand. It's a simple concept really, but also the authors of your article don't seem to get it. Vegan foods are currently more expensive due to low supply due to relatively low demand. They have been becoming more affordable due to higher demand creating greater supply. But even when avoiding fancy tofus or vegan cheese, anyone can afford a bag of beans. Like any diet, being vegan can be as expensive, cheap, healthy, unhealthy, bad or good for the environment as you want to make it. But on average, it wins against an omnivorous one.
— NKBJ

I wish you vegans could actually put forward a tangible action plan or feasibility assessment. It would be great if we could improve our health and save money, truly it would.

So why does the U.S import more than twice the fruit and veg that it exports? If growing it domestically could be cheaper, and there's a demand, why don't they take the risk by planting fruits and vegetables on land better suited to grains? Because grains are easier to grow on soil where vegetables might not thrive, they are easier to harvest, store, and transport; a less risky crop. Suggesting that demand alone determines what farmers can and choose to plant is a vastly narrow view of the complexity involved in large scale agriculture and the many layers of decision making that are involved.

Furthermore, if indeed farmers simply operated on market value, we would have to endure regular ups and downs in pursuit of nutritional stability where one year certain nutriments are at a deficit, and thus more expensive, and then next others are at a surplus, leading to possibly just as much waste as exists presently. We would need massive central planning to tell farmers what to plant, where, and how much, otherwise the total nutritional value of the food we produce will continue to reflect more factors than nutritional demands by proxy of market demands (we're going to continue getting excesses of the cheap reliable stuff: corn and corn syrup)

Where it does make economic sense for farms to move into vegetable and fruit produce and away from field grains, they're already tending to do so. Specific farms may benefit from such a switch but other farms might not. It can depend on region, market availability, market fluctuations, infrastructure, climate, crop risk, soil quality, and more. As people realize that eating too much meat is needlessly expensive and unhealthy, where possible farms will diversify, but your baseless assertion that their ability to arbitrarily alter crop production has no limits invokes the same unrealistic view of economics and agriculture that rendered Emery et al. unable to grasp the assumptions and objectives of the study they criticized. — VagabondSpectre

Again, all of this is based on some totally weird idea about what a plant-based diet even looks like. It's like you have a block and can't process this simple fact: vegans eat grains. Half of the vegan diet consists of grains. And attacking a vegan diet on the basis of how many veg/fruit are in it, is just attacking a well-balanced diet period. It would amount to about the same with a well-balanced omnivorous diet.

I believe it is more important to exist at all than to not be hurt. I don't wish suffering on animals, but I also do not wish non-existence on them as you are inexorably doing. I maintain that there is room on this earth for ethical farms which enable our extended phenotype farm animals to continue existing happily, with lives worth living, which are also thermodynamically and economically efficient on our end compared to a plant-based alternative.

Unless a farm harvests the animals it rears, it cannot continue supporting itself. If and when we can afford the aforementioned animal sanctuaries and actually tackle present infeasibility of nationally going vegan (economically, thermodynamically, nutritionally), then we will share the same views for the same reasons. Until then, I maintain you're wrong that we can so radically alter our current agricultural strategies without great risk, cost, and societal detriment. We need fish, we need ruminants (we may even need their feces). We need poultry for sure... Without these things we're on the train down to too much grain town, where some will afford adequate variety and some will not.

If tis better to have lived happily and been harvested than to have never lived at all, and or if fellow humans are worthy of more moral consideration than non-human animals, then eating meat can be ethical/not immoral. — VagabondSpectre

It can't be immoral not to bring people or animals into the world or else you'd have to argue that birth control is immoral. Or immoral for women not to try to be perpetually pregnant throughout their fertile years. Or that even child molesters/beaters/traffickers should procreate and raise children, because living in hell is better than not living... absurd.

A human life is worth more than a non-human animal life sure, but that does not mean every single, however trivial human interest is worth more than an animal life.

Remember when Trump said "who knew health care could be so complicated?"? — VagabondSpectre

The Twitter in Chief can go jump in a lake as far as I'm concerned. I have no reason to give any credence to anything that ever comes out of his mouth.

I know that a well planned plant-based diet does not include too much grain, which is what we would have on our hands given the aforementioned difficulties in vegetable and fruit produce agriculture and distribution — VagabondSpectre

I guess that explains your inability to thrive on a plant-based diet. A well-balanced any kind of diet has about the same composition: 45-65% of calories from grains, 5 servings veggies or fruit, some source of protein, some healthy fats. Vegans simply choose plant-based proteins and choose veggies high in calcium and iron (like kale or spinach or collards).

All your article really says is that if all people ate the amount of veggies and fruits that they ought to, it would have an impact on agriculture. Which we should look into, and perhaps it means we need to change food production methods here and there, but that does not equal telling people to give up healthful foods. Aside from that, the cost of protein production is simply much lower with legumes and other plant-basef alternatives.

Your second article also talks about B12 and the cost of making it and the unavailability in plants alone... Conveniently neglecting to mention that 90% of b12 supplements in the US are given to farm animals so that either way your daily b12 comes from a supplement, directly or indirectly.

They already do plant vegan foods, and vegan foods are already more expensive — VagabondSpectre

It's called supply and demand. It's a simple concept really, but also the authors of your article don't seem to get it. Vegan foods are currently more expensive due to low supply due to relatively low demand. They have been becoming more affordable due to higher demand creating greater supply. But even when avoiding fancy tofus or vegan cheese, anyone can afford a bag of beans. Like any diet, being vegan can be as expensive, cheap, healthy, unhealthy, bad or good for the environment as you want to make it. But on average, it wins against an omnivorous one.

That is why all this talk about agriculture and the environment is just so much icing on top of the real issue: do we have a right to harm sentient, intelligent, emotional beings like farm animals? And if the answer is no (which I obviously think it is) then everything else is secondary. Even if it were more costly to do the right thing (thankfully it's not, but if it were) you still should do the right thing: don't hurt others.

Before anyone uses the word 'meaning', they should have to read and at least summarise the above and stipulate which of the 16 or so philosophical meanings of meaning they mean.

Or possibly we can manage without such stipulations — unenlightened

:lol:

Nietzsche seems to be a favorite on this forum, but the professors I've had have informed me that among professional philosophers, Nietzsche just isn't studied much. He's too aphoristic and doesn't really make solid arguments. His poetic and nebulous style appeals to many aesthetically, but there's not much substance behind it.

I think sometimes it's useful and other times leads one off topic, because then you get into arguments about the "correct" definition instead of just going along with the OP's meaning for the sake of the argument.

Fwiw, the principle of philosophical charity also says that you should interpret words in such a way that they make the most sense for the argument you are adressing. That's been a guideline for a long time precisely to avoid people either derailing the argument into long talks about the proper definition, or claim that the whole argument is invalid on the basis of what amounts to semantics.

But I've noticed on here that people are unwilling to even go along with stipulated definitions by the OP. There was a recent thread that wanted to say for the sake of argument that abortion is immoral, and commenters refused to stick to that.

But if this kept going so you just help people so they can help people, etc. it doesn't make sense. You have to look beyond mere cliches for what we are talking here. For the record, I'm not against helping others, I'm just saying that taking this to an absurd level, it makes no sense as a basis in and of itself. — schopenhauer1

You're missing my main point: you're too self-obsessed and that's what's bringing you down. You're clearly stuck in a rut of overthinking the futility of your own existence. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Blah Blah.

If it is a cliche, it is one of those cliches that exist for a reason. We're a social species. Helping others makes us feel good and makes those we're helping feel good. Win-win. Who cares if there isn't some objective purpose to it for the universe which is by default indifferent to our individual joys and woes? It matters to us. Here. Now.

Maybe that's what you need to learn. Stop looking to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Learn to take some satisfaction in the moment. A nice glass of merlot. A good book. A dinner with a friend. Tomorrow you could get hit by a bus or fall down the stairs and be paralyzed for life, or dead, or be one of those conscious coma people.

There is a difference between "never having existed", "currently existing," and "ceasing to exist."

As a currently existing creature, I have an interest in continuing said existence, because as you said:

. There is a "nobility" to existence, a sort of delicate beauty to growth, maturation, flourishing. There is possibility in existence. — darthbarracuda

Once I no longer exist, so too do my interests. Other people who continue to exist after me may look at my passing with thoughts about how much potential was possibly lost, but to me that won't matter anymore. But that does not mean that ceasing to exist didn't harm me--death harmed the once-existing creature.

Entities which have not yet existed likewise neither care nor not care about existing. It can't be better or worse for them to exist, because, in this context, "they" is just an abstract word waving in the direction of non-entities/hypotheticals.

"Reason for existence" is too vague. Of course there are reasons, or else nothing would actually exist. My parents wanted a baby so here I am. Their parents wanted babies, so there they are.

the immediate response is to suggest a new hobby, club, group, sport, etc. as if just getting into a routine of non-work activities is the answer to the lack at the heart of things. — schopenhauer1

Suggesting someone take up a hobby is not about getting life "right." It's gentle way of suggesting that you're wasting your precious time on this planet by worrying about how unfulfilled you are.

My suggestion would actually be to join some volunteer program so you can go out and do something for others/think about others for a change and quit all this unproductive navel-gazing.