Comment by notjulianjaynes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notjulianjaynes | Hacker News Reader

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notjulianjaynes

I'm a lifelong vegetarian. I agree the ethics of eggs and dairy aren't great. FWIW I primarily eat eggs from chickens I know personally.

I've been a vegetarian since I was a child. My parents are not. I went to public school and had government subsidized school lunch. A no-dairy meal with sufficient calories was simply not an option. It was also generally much harder to maintain a vegetarian diet say 20 years ago than a vegan diet today."Salads don't make friends."

I'm basically just set in my ways now and live with the hypocrisy. Until they perfect the CRISPR bugs that make casein from plants I'll continue to eat cheese made from animal milk.

own a pair of leather boots, purchased new as well. It's not fair to the cow, but they last 5x as long as any comparable shoe made from synthetic material. Do I contradict myself, very well then blah blah blah

https://64.media.tumblr.com/e238fe868189a39c4903ce7b7bb1a7b7...

Such a refreshing comment.

I get it. I'm default vegan but bought some brie to enjoy tonight as a treat, wear leather shoes etc.

People want to be black and white. Sometimes just reducing the harm on yourself and animals and the environment to a large degree is enough, while still being able to enjoy and benefit from them just a bit here and there

>I get it. I'm default vegan but bought some brie to enjoy tonight as a treat, wear leather shoes etc.

You are not vegan.

We can't confuse the idea of seeing the world as less black and white, and outright changing definitions.

You wouldn't say "Oh I'm default teetotaler, but I bought a bottle of gin as a treat for tonight"

If you want to identify as vegan, that's probably because you see the label as having some value. But for it to have value, it must mean something!

Who cares? That person does far more than most to reduce animal harm and environmental impact. They called themselves default vegan, which is a lot like saying "I don't usually drink".

A lot of people doing mostly the right thing is a lot better than the same people thinking it's pointless to try.

Exactly. If you think about that with every breath we take and step we take we are “killing” organisms without even knowing it, the “just do the best we can” approach starts to become the most reasonable one— else it’s easy to get a bit crazy about things.

I just find the rationalization amusing, though I doubt it will matter either way. Since the rate of adoption of this diet is so slow, and the relative proportion of daily meat-eaters keeps growing as countries develop, we'll either face the consequences or find a technical solution long before it has an impact.

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