https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/animals-eat-animals
No, obviously vegans think arresting bears is dumb. This same "lions tho" argument has been made enough times to become a meme.
149 karma · joined July 2, 2021
No, obviously vegans think arresting bears is dumb. This same "lions tho" argument has been made enough times to become a meme.
I really enjoyed the ACX article; thank you for the recommendation! I agreed with a lot of the general points he was making.
Not sure about the "dignity" of e.g. plants, as I think there are plenty of ways to harm plants and animals that is helpful to humans. It's an interesting idea, though, and I do like the attempt to make a practical argument instead of a moral one.
In any case, while (to some extent) I care about the possible suffering of insects who are farmed in the trillions, I'm not particularly morally concerned about thousands killed for greater scientific gain. Could I ask generally what work you're doing with them? I'd be interested in learning more about it
But I see no reason for some cutoff, where I arbitrarily decide to care for everything above a certain level of complexity, and decide not to care about anything below. "Vertebrates and octopuses" does not seem like a group that share any exclusive traits, i.e. any moral reason I have to care about an octopus seems like it would lead me to care about an insect, just maybe to a lesser extent.
Even if you value insect lives extremely lowly - if there's any moral value to them at all, mass farming them in the trillions or, possibly someday, quadrillions would be a moral travesty, even of their moral value is extremely small per individual, right?
I feel like "there seems to be a reasonable possibility that insects suffer" implies that we should have some level of interest in preventing their excess suffering, where practical.
It seems sensible to say - these creature with nocicepters and familiar aperture for feeling pain, who react to to bodily damage in ways that suggest that they can suffer, and for whom pain can obviously serve the same evolutionary benefit as it does in humans - they have a moderate to high chance of feeling pain and being conscious to some degree, so we should be careful.
Plants may release chemicals in response to physical threats, but they don't have the pieces of the nervous system we attribute pain to, don't seem to have any level of consciousness, and don't have an evolutionary benefit to subjective suffering. Therefore, morally, there's no reason to treat them as more than an inanimate object.
I feel like AI could theoretically someday have the potential to suffer, but that isn't really a current concern.
Based on all available evidence, the article's argument for at least being careful about insects' potential suffering seems sensible, but the plant argument strikes me as absurd.
I agree socializing developed nations' economic systems isn't having a huge effect on the global population growth. Focusing on the real problem means investing in the health & development of those with the actual highest birthrates, not making U.S. colleges cheaper.
[0] https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/228/pdfs/female-educati...
Rimworld itself is amazing and I highly recommend it, but I'm lukewarm on how much value I've gotten from the Royalty expansion. It's cool, but the mods are not only more in-depth but also more customizable to specific playstyles/interests.
Besides that, I still fail to see the use case. If I download an image of the bird from the internet, that serves me the same amount as having the NFT; why would I need to prove that I "own" a copy of the image?
People paying money for a physical echo chamber could probably as financially beneficial as politically beneficial, since you now have a platform with lots of access to a decently-sized market with known interests and easy keywords that'll trick them into overpaying.
In the long run, if UBI continues proving its success in real-life trials and we're able to get a larger share of the population on board, I'd vote in favor of trying it.
I guess you bring up an interesting point here, that UBI would make minimum wage obsolete.
It seems like you're arguing for changing "anyone who works full time should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food" to just "anyone should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food." I'm not opposed on principle, but I think this is a harder goal to hit in practice.
A terrible product, if this review is accurate. But you have to at least admire their boldness in trying to blatantly manipulate a very opinionated and possibly underserved market.
If you agree with the statement "anyone who works full time should be able to afford necessities like safe housing and adequate food," a minimum wage is required.
If you disagree with that statement, I guess you could argue for no minimum wage, but your moral system will be different enough from most people to make you the minority position.
Also, I don't know the economics of homelessness, but I feel like as supply of homeless shelters increased, demand for the beds would increase as well, right? How elastic is local demand, with people in RVs moving in/out of an area?
Not that it shouldn't be done, but it seems like if all it took to "solve" homelessness was building enough beds, we would already be doing that.
I'm not surprised these people are unable to afford housing in the center of the Silicon Valley (even if it's the "area they grew up in"), though.
But another study that I'm more familiar with that tracked 4,182 people (mostly from the U.K., U.S., and Sweden) says only 2.3% of participants reported symptoms past the three month point. [0]
I feel like every time I look into this topic I find a new study with a wildly different estimate.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 itself also causes heart problems with higher severity and on a much larger scale. In children, this usually is multisystem inflammatory syndrome that can cause severe damage and death. In adults, severe heart attacks are a known (albeit rare) side-effect of COVID-19. [1] There is also early, but not conclusive, evidence that the coronavirus can cause longer-term heart damage in some cases, such as scarring.
You're welcome to make your own medical decisions such as whether you'd like to get vaccinated, but all of the data I'm aware of suggests that by any measure, vaccination is probably a good choice for the vast majority of people (barring those with allergies to the vaccine, or other known issues).
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
> “It’s ok to make a choice, but here’s the consequences asshole”
> It’s exactly what I’m opposed too.
You're opposed to... people pointing out the consequences of your actions? Social pressure to protect the well-being of others?
I got all vaccinations and took basic safety precautions (washing hands regularly during flu season, etc) pre-COVID. I have always balanced the health of others with pragmatic limitations on my ability to take precautions. Now is no different; there's just extra weight on the "caution" side of the scale while a novel and dangerous pathogen spread around. I will continue to take as many precautions as are practical and necessary given world events.
Nobody is forcing you to do anything. But I don't see how it's unfair to have a social standard of caring for others.
> Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths.[0][emphasis mine]
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...
That 6,000 figure you use is 0.0018% percent of people that got the vaccine, and that's only people that died after getting it, not people whose death was caused by the vaccine. [0]
Vaccination seems sensible from any concern for personal health (again, unless you have access to some data I've not seen). Even for very healthy individuals at low rist of death from COVID-19, you're taking on not only higher personal risk but also exposing other people to much larger risk, as well.
Also, I've gotten the flu shot every year I could since age 16 primarily to avoid infecting others. (There was no family or peer pressure to get the flu shot, at least where I'm from.) I'll grant that I'm a bit more invested in public health / disease spread than the average individual, but I doubt my motivations are that uncommon.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...
As far as I can tell, any variables about the vaccines seem extremely safe compared to the unknown variables incurred by those with symptomatic infections.
I agree that people in high risk categories who can be vaccinated should do so. However, the vaccine is only mostly effective, not 100% effective, so to some extent their health is still influenced by the health of those around them.
As far as social pressure, pushing (but not forcing) people toward decisions that benefit everyone seems like the entire point of social pressure. People should be given all of the relevant information and should be free to make their own medical decisions. However, there should be some expectation that one tries not to spread deadly diseases to vulnerable populations, and schools / businesses / etc. should absolutely feel free to require vaccination (of those capable of being vaccinated).
But re: your other comment about wearing a mask, if you're one of the rare people who won't be vaccinated but still keep your mask on in all public places, wash your hands frequently, and stay 6 feet apart from everyone not in your household, you not getting vaccinated isn't a major concern. But the people who use these justifications (disclaimer: anecdata) aren't usually taking those precautions.
The main issue is that there are still plenty of people with your same mindset. See the measles resurgence as less people got vaccinated: Even if you accept the personal effects of getting major illnesses, it comes with an increase in danger to the immunocompromised, people who medically cannot be vaccinated, and people whose vaccines don't protect them 100% of the time.
You're free to choose whether or not to get a vaccine, but the consequences of your decision affect more than just you.
[Edit: Additional note - while it seems preferable that everyone who can get vaccinated do so, I suppose if you're sticking with the face masks, hand washing, and social distancing you could still protect others without getting vaccinated. I'd respect that as a viable alternative. However, based on anecdata, the overlap of "people who won't get vaccinated" and "people careful about preventing disease spread" doesn't seem to be a huge section.]
For the COVID-19 U.S. vaccines in particular:
> Preliminary data from the clinical trials among adults ≥18 years old suggest COVID-19 vaccination may also protect against asymptomatic infection.[0]
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
What if my main reason for getting vaccinated is to lower my chance of infecting an immunocompromised person I care about? Even if I could somehow be 100% certain that if I were to be infected it'd be fully asymptomatic, the vaccine still helps me avoid spreading COVID-19 further.
Do you imagine young people who get flu shots do so only because they're worried about dying from influenza at 20?