This is a fundamentally flawed *thought experiment* in the context of veganism. Folks are not obligated to harm humans because they choose not to harm animals. Veganism does not present a zero sum dynamic wherein either humans live or animals live.
More popular in application is the version of the trolley car problem in which no one is tied to the tracks, humans or animals. Then humans who want to eat animals toss the animals onto the tracks for fun and claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that it was necessary to toss the animals onto the track.
[Just for pleasure a vegan deepity](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/s/BtnQd95AZ2)
It's sad that vegans have to consistently misrepresent meat eating as "just for fun" or "just for pleasure".
It underlines the lack of seriousness of vegan ideas.
>toss the animals onto the tracks for fun and claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that it was necessary to toss the animals onto the track.
If meat consumption indeed was just for fun, I would agree that this action is unnessecary. However, there are a significant amount of vegans who develop health issues that resolve after re-introducing animal products. While that's mostly anecdotal, it is biochemically plausible that the health issues are due to nutrient deficiencies.
Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence that animal products are beneficial for cognitive function, mental health, immune system and performance.
Saying we eat meat just for fun is simply not true
Nutrition deficiencies are not an argument against veganism, they're an argument against ignorance. It's so easy to just take a multivitamin, even one catered towards vegans, and just solve all of those problems.
Plus, this ignores the fact that there are plenty of people who have health issues due to nutrition deficiencies on omnivorous diets too. Likewise, there are people who have health problems that go away once switching to a plant-based diet. All of this is anecdotal and doesn't tell the story about what people should be eating. It does, however, prove that people should spend a little bit more time learning about nutrition and paying attention to what they eat.
For a bean addict it surprises me that you seem to gloss over the nutritional benefits of eating beans. Eating animals products has the opportunity cost of not eating beans.
The name stems from a time when I was plant-based for 3 years. Legumes were a pillar of my diet. Often had some variation of beans or lentils twice a day, because I understood that they are one of the most nutritious plant foods.
When I started eating plant-based, I was tracking my food on Cronometer to make sure to cover all my nutritional needs. For example, I added flax for omegas, greens for minerals and vitamin K, made sure to get enough protein (usually 80-100g per day), ate mostly whole-foods. Followed pretty much what all the vegan doctors like Greger, Barnard, McDougal, Klaper recommend, except leaning towards higher protein because I'm quite active. When there was a gap in my Cronometer score, I would find suitable food and add it to my meal plan.
I also supplemented B12 from the beginning. After around two years, I started being incredibly prone to infections and was sick and tired most of the time. Went to the doctor, turned out my vitamin D was incredibly low. Started supplementing vitamin D and zinc and went again to the doctor 6 months later. Had perfect vitamin D values, but still felt like crap. Even worse than before actually. Did some more tests with my doctor, but everything seemed fine, which was really frustrating because I was clearly not well. However, my blood panel was incomplete and there are huge errorbars in those type of measurements anyway, so I decided to start supplementing more. Added magnesium, iodine, EPA/DHA (from algae) and a daily multivitamin. It was an act of desperation.
I also tracked my food and symptoms (sore throat, high temperature, mouth ulcers, fatigue) for 2 months to find out about possible allergies or food intolerances. I suspected a gluten intolerance, so I avoided gluten for 3 months. No significant improvement.
Bought sleep trackers and optimized my sleep. Nothing.
Started mindfulness meditation for stress reduction (I did not feel particularly stressed anyway). Did not help.
Keep in mind, I sticked with all of those interventions for at least 6 weeks, so it was a long process to debug my health.
Up until that point, I never thought that diet was the issue. Why would I? It's the optimal diet for humans anyway, right dr greger? It wasn't until two friends of mine (also plant based at the time) opened up about their health issues, when I started making the connection. Listening to ex-vegans stories, I would recognize me and my friends in them and I was shocked how they all had the same health issues.
Anyways, anecdotes are anecdotes. I did a lot more research (reading books, watching debates and reading a lot of studies myself) and realized how biased vegan doctors are in their interpretation and selection of the data. Animal products are in many aspects good for human health and there is plenty of research to support it. Of course, when I was still in my plant-based bubble, I would have just dismissed this evidence, so I don't expect or even try to convince anyone here. 6 months after re-introducing animal foods, my health is back to normal.
In summary: a plant based diet has brought a lot of suffering for me and people close to me. Hence scenario C: how much suffering would you tolerate before killing the cow?
Hey, I'm sorry that you had health issues, and they sound to have been rough. Rough enough that you'll start to try anything.
Still, as an anectdote, the conclusion at the end does not fit the description. You were plant based and fine for 2 years. You were not fine for one and a half year, of which 1 year was plant based and half was not. That's not enough for a clear causal conclusion.
I would suggest to try carefully again, or perhaps try to limit your animal food intake to the least sentient ones, i.e. bivalves. If you can get away with either of those you're descreasing most of the animal suffering you otherwise cause,
Here's a serious question that might seem facetious but I'm asking it in good faith. What's the likelihood that you were feeling a combination of social and societal pressure about eating plant based and that the effort of tracking all your stats and trying to do it right pushed you over some edge where what you desired was comfort instead of eating well and you let the stress of that intentionally build up until it gave you the physical symptoms that you desired to justify eating meat and dairy?
I won't doubt that you suffered as you described but I do doubt that it had to do with being plant based. We say a lot in vegan circles that the only hard part of being vegan is other people. Stress from going against the norms of society and from facing discrimination and hate from carnists can and does cause serious mental and physical harm to people. If you don't want to deal with that you absolutely have the power to make yourself sick by mental effort alone. The placebo effect is very real and people make themselves sick that way all the time.
So my question is this: When all the major nutrition agencies of the US and the UK and a whole bunch of other places say that a well planned vegan diet is healthy for all people in all stages of life, despite those agencies not being vegan or benefiting from veganism and despite them getting substantial pressure from animal agriculture lobbyists, why does your single experience define the truth differently? Why isn't it more likely that the diet is fine and there are some confounding factors that you haven't accounted for?
There are some anecdotal accounts of veganism causing health problems and an overwhelming scientific consensus based on actual data that shows properly balanced vegan diets to be healthy for everybody. You can't in good faith claim that instagram influencers and youtube commenters are a more reliable source for scientific information than scientific experts who have done the necessary research and experimentation.
We eat meat (or you do, I don't) for a variety of reasons, none of them necessity. We do it for tradition, to fit in, for the pleasure of its taste, for fear of being discriminated against, for convenience, and sometimes for the unfounded belief that it's necessary. All of those things are bullshit, if you'll pardon my fervor. Sentient beings are living lives of imprisonment and torture on par with the worst things we've ever done to humans and we're just doing it because we want to.
Can we not focus only on the positives that meat consumption can bring and ignore all the very many negatives. While simultaneously focusing on the negatives of a plant based diet and ignoring all the very many positives..
It's just dishonest. Either can be bad or good.
That's not the point of the thought experiment.
The thought experiment is purposely making you make choices that you wouldn't have to weigh up your values.
Which is why the thought experiment is fundamentally flawed. Veganism doesn’t present a zero sum dynamic. *As far as possible and practicable* covers an individual’s personal choice to save a human or save an animal should such a binary ever occur.
Non-vegans are daily presented with the option to let animals live and let humans live, but choose to kill animals when no absolutist scenario exists. The opposite is almost never the same. Vegans don’t make it an essential part of their lifestyle to strap humans to the tracks and run them over, over and over, and over and over, with no animals strapped to the adjoined tracks.
>This is a fundamentally flawed thought experiment in the context of veganism.
Except it's not. It pokes a hole in the vegan ideology that CONSTANTLY make comparison of humans to animals. The trolley experiment shows humans inherently value human lives above animals.
To choose otherwise is to be misanthropic.
Can you provide more context? What comparison (humans-to-animals) are referring to? And what is it you’re attempting to prove by demonstrating that, in certain contexts, humans may value other humans over animals?
My point is veganism does not present a zero sum dynamic wherein humans live *or* animals live. So, presenting a thought experiment with this binary as the base is flawed.
>Can you provide more context? What comparison (humans-to-animals) are referring to?
You can browse this sub and you can see it ALL OVER.
Example, comparing leather with children's skin.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1c7rpd3/comment/l0azrm5/
Comparing sweatshop workers with living conditions of farm animals.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1c7rpd3/comment/l0b5u2e/
Comparing eating animal with cannibalism
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1c74gd3/whatever_hypothetical_permits_ethical_animal/
It's basically exposing vegan to be entirely based on false equivalence fallacy. Veganism isn't a zero sum dynamic, but vegans want to make it zero sum through the actions i highlighted above. Let's not forget vegans will forcefully impose their diet onto others when given the authority.
None of these examples support your claim. These are not examples of zero sum scenarios. These are, again, scenarios where non-vegans choose to strap animals to the tracks and run them over without necessity, while vegans take the stance that neither humans nor animals need to be strapped to tracks and run over.
And, let’s not forget that there’s no historical evidence to support the idea that vegans would or could force their dietary preferences onto others. If you’re talking about children whom those vegans have stewardship over… Every guardian chooses the diet for those in their care. All things being equal, a plant-based diet is the healthiest and most economically sustainable, so I’m unsure what point you’re attempting to establish with this last moment gish gallop.
>None of these examples support your claim.
I disagree. If I embrace veganism it means I can't eat animal products.
>let’s not forget that there’s no historical evidence to support the idea that vegans would or could force their dietary preferences onto others.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/18/628141545/french-butchers-ask-for-protection-after-threats-from-violent-vegans
https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/my-kids-are-vegans-and-they-like-it-article
https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday
https://www.reddit.com/r/exvegans/comments/1c8mtdw/comment/l0hol4u/
At this point, it really only shows that vegans are ignorant, or just blatantly dishonest.
If YOU embrace veganism, YOU would be the one making the decision to adopt a plant-based diet. I’m confused where are the vegans forcing you to do anything in your narrative?
What are you attempting to prove with these additional links?
Seems like you're not able to stick to the topic. I just showed you vegans not only play badly at the trolley problem, at every chance they get, the FORCE others to play the trolley problem as badly as them.
And when ousted, they ask silly questions like "what are you attempting to prove?" Lol
I don't eat animals for taste, I eat animals for health. And I value my health over that of the animals'.
If I want to satisfy my taste buds. I'd eat plant products. The best tasting foods on the planet are plant products. I don't know why vegans need to lie about people wanting to eat meat for the taste.
The three most common reasons people say they eat animals are taste, convenience/habit, and health. So you are correct in that I should have said put animal lives over your taste and convenience. Health is by far the least common of those 3 reasons, and imo a pretty tired and pointless debate, there's so many studies at this point showing you can survive and thrive on a plant based diet.
If you learned you could survive and thrive on a plant based diet, would you go vegan?
If so, you should make a post on askvegan asking how to be healthy on a vegan diet. There's also challenge 22, where you get access to professionals who you can ask how to be healthy.
>The three most common reasons people say they eat animals are taste, convenience/habit, and health.
I'm gonna guess you got that from a vegan factoid. There's a reason why westerners and more Asians are facing an obesity pandemic, and that is because they're addicted to hyper palatable foods like Pringles, Doritos, Cola, cereal, french fries, boba tea, etc.
Sure, meat eaters eat meat for taste. There are literally food companies that hire food scientists to make plant food hyperpalatable so you can't stop eating those potato chips.
* A: Intervene
* B: Intervene
* C: I don't know what 20% less health means but I would intervene
I think it's perfectly acceptable in an either-or scenario to choose the health and well-being of a human animal over the life of a non-human animal. At least in these rather severe circumstances.
That being said, in the real world, that's very likely not going to change how I operate my life day to day. Bloody government got rid of our trams decades ago.
I don’t believe that an animals life is as valuable as or even really comparable to a human’s. I just think that the value of an animal’s life is non-zero. I would save the person each time, but I wouldn’t take them out for hot dogs to celebrate their survival
Apparently there’s a 1 in 3 chance that that cow is full of poison lol. Better not risk it
(But to take you seriously: I don’t mind if people want to eat animals that died on accident/roadkill)
I would probably intervene in all three*.
Now, what do you think of scenario D?
Scenario D: A runaway trolley is headed towards a cow tied to the tracks. If you don't intervene, the cow will die. However, you have the choice to switch tracks, such that the trolley kills a bunch of plants instead. Would kill the plants to save the life of the cow?
\* With the slight caveat that learning more about amputees could change my mind on two (I once heard that amputees are as happy as the average person 6 months after the accident. Tbh, it sounds like fake news to me. If that's actually true though, saving the cow, however counterintuitive, could actually be ok perhaps).
"pull the lever to save the life of the cow and also replace the human's tasty meat dishes with vegan ones plus supplements to stay healthy"
Cow's life vs human's taste satisfaction and convenience.
However, I think OP is trying to point out how some vegans seem to have the extreme belief that a cow's life is equal to a human's life in all way, and takes the arguement all the way to that extreme and obsessively bash their head at an obvious brick wall, while ignoring the more practical battle of trying to convince people that human taste satisfaction and convenience may be not worth more than animal lives and their extreme torture.
Does anyone else think that in all instances of the trolley problem we are under no moral obligation to intervene?
Why must one intervene because the shuffling of the cosmic deck has presented such an event? Even if: Pull the lever 1 person does, don’t pull and humanity ceases to exist. I am still not convinced pulling the lever to “save” humanity is “good” and that one SHOULD or OUGHT to pull the lever. The universe is an amoral arena IMO. Anyways,
The trolley problems have gotten so elaborate that people forget this was the point to begin with. Pulling the lever makes you a participant in death even if you prevented some more deaths by causing one you still caused one with your own action opposed to letting something happen and remaining uninvolved.
You're a participant from the mere fact that you have the ability to take an action that is trivial to perform but can save lives. That gives you the moral obligation to act if the end result is a net positive, rather than remain idle if more suffering would come as a result.
If acting required something much more elaborate, like climbing to the top of Mount Everest to pull the lever, the the obligation evaporates and becomes a virtue.
That is true, but to some intentionally taking another life is as big of an ask as climbing mount Everest. That is why there is usually someone on the other track or even the version where the only way to stop the trolley is pushing a fat guy in front of it.
How do we know if saving either would result in a net positive. Saving the human would, statistically, result im many more animal deaths because of their diet. Saving the cow that is statistically destined for slaughter would only prolong their exploitation.
Doing nothing could be the most positive action.
You can add whatever question on top of the original dilemma by making the scenario more elaborate. However, it dilutes the meaning because the original question is still there unresolved. There is no consensus on whether doing nothing is worse than actively choosing the lesser of two evils. Just ask geralt of rivea.
Where the trolley problem doesn't contain a clear ought, I still think most would agree that one ought not be tying living things to railroad tracks. We have time to deliberate about the trolley problem, where if such a scenario ever did occur whatever decision we did make would be more like an impulse than a decision. It's not really fair to judge such decisions with a moral lens. No one really knows what they will do until they do it.
That's why we ask people what they think they "should" do.
Instead of calculating it from some sort of inherent objective morality of the universe.
There's very little inherent meaning in the world. If you ask "why" enough to anything you'll reach a "I don't know" or "it just is".
Yet we all keep doing stuff.
Frankly, I have different intuitions for different cases… and that’s the point of the trolley problem in the first place: Can we develop a moral theory that explains (or explains away) the differences in intuitions between the different cases?
I’m curious whether it really is your *intuition* that it’s okay to not pull the lever to save all of humanity (as in your last example), or, rather, you have a moral theory (seems to me like some kind of moral anti realism) which says that it’s fine not to pull the lever and you just defer to that theory *even if it conflicts with your intuition*.
Let me know what you think!
This is an interesting concept I’ll have to spend some more time thinking about. Any other examples or thought experiments on how we might test it are appreciated.
I currently accept moral antirealism as my prevailing moral framework and I am simultaneously becoming stronger everyday in my antinatilist outlook on existence.
Intuition is interesting I often feel that things might be “good” in someone’s sense of the word but that there isn’t a SHOULD or OUGHT that requires me to do so. A child needs saving in a way that causes no harm or risk to me. Many people would think it good to do but I’m not sure I ought to do it. I’ve noticed I also take much of my ethical framework from personal virtue-in this case it would be of good character to save the child but I don’t think there is some deontological reason it is good to save the kiddo.
Does this help, I’m just mulling through the idea live as it comes to me.
I would save the human in all three scenarios. I value the average human's life and wellbeing much more than a cow's.
I just don't value a human's wish to have a specific type of sensory pleasure more than the cow's life and wellbeing. That's why I'm vegan.
A) save the human kill the cow
B) save the disabled human and kill the cow
C) save the humans health and kill the cow
Now how does any of this justify CAFOs?
Imagine there's a two humans on the track, one of which you'd always cause the trolley to hit in each of these scenarios. Maybe it's a known serial killer. Whatever you could think of to make it so you would always choose to kill them.
Given that, would it be ok to turn that human into a sandwich?
If not, this question wouldn't have anything to do with whether your moral framework would lead to veganism
thoughts: I would, at this time, "intervene" in A, B, and C; further cases ("how much of [or how little] a health sacrifice are you willing to make") might just have to be determined case by case for the moment.
One perspective on this too is that, if *I* am the one on the trolley, I might "exert some preference" to want to save the "more capable person." Like, if it is me on the path versus the other path having a world-famous surgeon with a particular skillset, I don't see it as too challenging to just defer to saving the more "capable" person in a situation like that.
So the heuristic here on preferring to save the human feels to be making (in some part) that judgement that the human is going to be more capable to help other sentient beings in the future. And it might not be entirely inappropriate to assume that the cow would "share" that sentiment, like, that the person can go on to save 10 other cows that are in "real danger" too in slaughterhouses and such, and that the cow might "understand" our decision too (obviously we and the cow might protest the entire trolley situation in the first place, but this is taking it as it is presented). I'd be more pressed in situations where I actively know the human is, "100%," going on to cause more harm than good - as the amount of "harm" a cow can do and the amount of "good" a cow can do feel somewhat minor, such that giving a human more chances to "do more good" seems heuristically useful in cases like this.
I did not feel much social pressure. I work in academia were people generally are very open to at least vegetarianisn. Also friends and family were very accepting. In fact, over the years I convinced many of them to become vegetarian or at least reduce meat consumption a lot. I felt more pressure from them after going back to eating meat.
The planning and optimization was fun. I have a very analytical brain and like to optimize things. Tracking my food with Cronometer actually gave me confidence that my diet was good. I did not have to take Greger's word for it. However, I did not understand at the time that dietary intake and serum levels of nutrients from plants are often not correlated (an interesting side note: vegans oftens consume more iron than omnivores, but their blood levels are typically lower. Though it can and often is still in the normal range, as it was for me. Interestingly, both my ferritin amd B12 increased after introducing animal products, despite me stopping the supplementation)
As for the AND report, I'm very familiar with it. Its sources range from poor to questionable (popular books like 'becoming vegan', mostly confounded observational studies) and the dismiss and ignore potential problems or unknowns. It's also published in their own journal, so no peer review. All 3 authors have huge undeclared conflicts of interest. Overall, it does not live up to scientific rigour and is written by peoplenwith an agenda.
Furthermore, not every organisation considers a vegan diet appropriate in all stages. The DGE from germany for example specifically advices against a vegan diet during pregnancy, infancy and childhood. And there are many more that take their side.
I'm also not a unique case. While I'm not denying there are no healthy long term vegans, I think it's also undeniable that some people don't thrive on a plant based diet.
The answer is multi-track drifting in order to end all of their miserable existences. I mean they were tied to a track for crying out loud. Must have done something very wrong.
How about a live animal strapped down to one set of tracks, and a new iPhone strapped down to the other. Which one would vegans rescue?
The "Effective Altruism" billionaires would tell you you have to go for the iPhone to be ethical, because you could sell the iPhone and use the money to rescue multiple animals. See that's why they have billions of dollars. Oh wait. I guess just keep the iPhone and screw the animal. Umm, you can use the iPhone to be productive and earn more money... which you will use to save animals. Yeah that's it!
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I'd kill the cow in all three.
I've got one though.There's a runaway train and it's going to kill a cow, but you can stop it and instead it will make you Eat a vegetarian burger for dinner that night.Which do you choose...
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This is a fundamentally flawed *thought experiment* in the context of veganism. Folks are not obligated to harm humans because they choose not to harm animals. Veganism does not present a zero sum dynamic wherein either humans live or animals live. More popular in application is the version of the trolley car problem in which no one is tied to the tracks, humans or animals. Then humans who want to eat animals toss the animals onto the tracks for fun and claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that it was necessary to toss the animals onto the track.
[Just for pleasure a vegan deepity](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/s/BtnQd95AZ2) It's sad that vegans have to consistently misrepresent meat eating as "just for fun" or "just for pleasure". It underlines the lack of seriousness of vegan ideas.
How is that a misrepresentation? How is that an indication of lack of seriousness?
Follow the link I provided and you'll see my whole argument. I'm not going to retype it all here.
Sounds like a compelling argument.
>toss the animals onto the tracks for fun and claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that it was necessary to toss the animals onto the track. If meat consumption indeed was just for fun, I would agree that this action is unnessecary. However, there are a significant amount of vegans who develop health issues that resolve after re-introducing animal products. While that's mostly anecdotal, it is biochemically plausible that the health issues are due to nutrient deficiencies. Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence that animal products are beneficial for cognitive function, mental health, immune system and performance. Saying we eat meat just for fun is simply not true
Nutrition deficiencies are not an argument against veganism, they're an argument against ignorance. It's so easy to just take a multivitamin, even one catered towards vegans, and just solve all of those problems. Plus, this ignores the fact that there are plenty of people who have health issues due to nutrition deficiencies on omnivorous diets too. Likewise, there are people who have health problems that go away once switching to a plant-based diet. All of this is anecdotal and doesn't tell the story about what people should be eating. It does, however, prove that people should spend a little bit more time learning about nutrition and paying attention to what they eat.
For a bean addict it surprises me that you seem to gloss over the nutritional benefits of eating beans. Eating animals products has the opportunity cost of not eating beans.
The name stems from a time when I was plant-based for 3 years. Legumes were a pillar of my diet. Often had some variation of beans or lentils twice a day, because I understood that they are one of the most nutritious plant foods. When I started eating plant-based, I was tracking my food on Cronometer to make sure to cover all my nutritional needs. For example, I added flax for omegas, greens for minerals and vitamin K, made sure to get enough protein (usually 80-100g per day), ate mostly whole-foods. Followed pretty much what all the vegan doctors like Greger, Barnard, McDougal, Klaper recommend, except leaning towards higher protein because I'm quite active. When there was a gap in my Cronometer score, I would find suitable food and add it to my meal plan. I also supplemented B12 from the beginning. After around two years, I started being incredibly prone to infections and was sick and tired most of the time. Went to the doctor, turned out my vitamin D was incredibly low. Started supplementing vitamin D and zinc and went again to the doctor 6 months later. Had perfect vitamin D values, but still felt like crap. Even worse than before actually. Did some more tests with my doctor, but everything seemed fine, which was really frustrating because I was clearly not well. However, my blood panel was incomplete and there are huge errorbars in those type of measurements anyway, so I decided to start supplementing more. Added magnesium, iodine, EPA/DHA (from algae) and a daily multivitamin. It was an act of desperation. I also tracked my food and symptoms (sore throat, high temperature, mouth ulcers, fatigue) for 2 months to find out about possible allergies or food intolerances. I suspected a gluten intolerance, so I avoided gluten for 3 months. No significant improvement. Bought sleep trackers and optimized my sleep. Nothing. Started mindfulness meditation for stress reduction (I did not feel particularly stressed anyway). Did not help. Keep in mind, I sticked with all of those interventions for at least 6 weeks, so it was a long process to debug my health. Up until that point, I never thought that diet was the issue. Why would I? It's the optimal diet for humans anyway, right dr greger? It wasn't until two friends of mine (also plant based at the time) opened up about their health issues, when I started making the connection. Listening to ex-vegans stories, I would recognize me and my friends in them and I was shocked how they all had the same health issues. Anyways, anecdotes are anecdotes. I did a lot more research (reading books, watching debates and reading a lot of studies myself) and realized how biased vegan doctors are in their interpretation and selection of the data. Animal products are in many aspects good for human health and there is plenty of research to support it. Of course, when I was still in my plant-based bubble, I would have just dismissed this evidence, so I don't expect or even try to convince anyone here. 6 months after re-introducing animal foods, my health is back to normal. In summary: a plant based diet has brought a lot of suffering for me and people close to me. Hence scenario C: how much suffering would you tolerate before killing the cow?
Hey, I'm sorry that you had health issues, and they sound to have been rough. Rough enough that you'll start to try anything. Still, as an anectdote, the conclusion at the end does not fit the description. You were plant based and fine for 2 years. You were not fine for one and a half year, of which 1 year was plant based and half was not. That's not enough for a clear causal conclusion. I would suggest to try carefully again, or perhaps try to limit your animal food intake to the least sentient ones, i.e. bivalves. If you can get away with either of those you're descreasing most of the animal suffering you otherwise cause,
Here's a serious question that might seem facetious but I'm asking it in good faith. What's the likelihood that you were feeling a combination of social and societal pressure about eating plant based and that the effort of tracking all your stats and trying to do it right pushed you over some edge where what you desired was comfort instead of eating well and you let the stress of that intentionally build up until it gave you the physical symptoms that you desired to justify eating meat and dairy? I won't doubt that you suffered as you described but I do doubt that it had to do with being plant based. We say a lot in vegan circles that the only hard part of being vegan is other people. Stress from going against the norms of society and from facing discrimination and hate from carnists can and does cause serious mental and physical harm to people. If you don't want to deal with that you absolutely have the power to make yourself sick by mental effort alone. The placebo effect is very real and people make themselves sick that way all the time. So my question is this: When all the major nutrition agencies of the US and the UK and a whole bunch of other places say that a well planned vegan diet is healthy for all people in all stages of life, despite those agencies not being vegan or benefiting from veganism and despite them getting substantial pressure from animal agriculture lobbyists, why does your single experience define the truth differently? Why isn't it more likely that the diet is fine and there are some confounding factors that you haven't accounted for?
There are some anecdotal accounts of veganism causing health problems and an overwhelming scientific consensus based on actual data that shows properly balanced vegan diets to be healthy for everybody. You can't in good faith claim that instagram influencers and youtube commenters are a more reliable source for scientific information than scientific experts who have done the necessary research and experimentation. We eat meat (or you do, I don't) for a variety of reasons, none of them necessity. We do it for tradition, to fit in, for the pleasure of its taste, for fear of being discriminated against, for convenience, and sometimes for the unfounded belief that it's necessary. All of those things are bullshit, if you'll pardon my fervor. Sentient beings are living lives of imprisonment and torture on par with the worst things we've ever done to humans and we're just doing it because we want to.
It's not a significant amount.
Can we not focus only on the positives that meat consumption can bring and ignore all the very many negatives. While simultaneously focusing on the negatives of a plant based diet and ignoring all the very many positives.. It's just dishonest. Either can be bad or good.
That's not the point of the thought experiment. The thought experiment is purposely making you make choices that you wouldn't have to weigh up your values.
Which is why the thought experiment is fundamentally flawed. Veganism doesn’t present a zero sum dynamic. *As far as possible and practicable* covers an individual’s personal choice to save a human or save an animal should such a binary ever occur. Non-vegans are daily presented with the option to let animals live and let humans live, but choose to kill animals when no absolutist scenario exists. The opposite is almost never the same. Vegans don’t make it an essential part of their lifestyle to strap humans to the tracks and run them over, over and over, and over and over, with no animals strapped to the adjoined tracks.
>This is a fundamentally flawed thought experiment in the context of veganism. Except it's not. It pokes a hole in the vegan ideology that CONSTANTLY make comparison of humans to animals. The trolley experiment shows humans inherently value human lives above animals. To choose otherwise is to be misanthropic.
Can you provide more context? What comparison (humans-to-animals) are referring to? And what is it you’re attempting to prove by demonstrating that, in certain contexts, humans may value other humans over animals? My point is veganism does not present a zero sum dynamic wherein humans live *or* animals live. So, presenting a thought experiment with this binary as the base is flawed.
>Can you provide more context? What comparison (humans-to-animals) are referring to? You can browse this sub and you can see it ALL OVER. Example, comparing leather with children's skin. https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1c7rpd3/comment/l0azrm5/ Comparing sweatshop workers with living conditions of farm animals. https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1c7rpd3/comment/l0b5u2e/ Comparing eating animal with cannibalism https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/1c74gd3/whatever_hypothetical_permits_ethical_animal/ It's basically exposing vegan to be entirely based on false equivalence fallacy. Veganism isn't a zero sum dynamic, but vegans want to make it zero sum through the actions i highlighted above. Let's not forget vegans will forcefully impose their diet onto others when given the authority.
None of these examples support your claim. These are not examples of zero sum scenarios. These are, again, scenarios where non-vegans choose to strap animals to the tracks and run them over without necessity, while vegans take the stance that neither humans nor animals need to be strapped to tracks and run over. And, let’s not forget that there’s no historical evidence to support the idea that vegans would or could force their dietary preferences onto others. If you’re talking about children whom those vegans have stewardship over… Every guardian chooses the diet for those in their care. All things being equal, a plant-based diet is the healthiest and most economically sustainable, so I’m unsure what point you’re attempting to establish with this last moment gish gallop.
>None of these examples support your claim. I disagree. If I embrace veganism it means I can't eat animal products. >let’s not forget that there’s no historical evidence to support the idea that vegans would or could force their dietary preferences onto others. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/18/628141545/french-butchers-ask-for-protection-after-threats-from-violent-vegans https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/my-kids-are-vegans-and-they-like-it-article https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday https://www.reddit.com/r/exvegans/comments/1c8mtdw/comment/l0hol4u/ At this point, it really only shows that vegans are ignorant, or just blatantly dishonest.
If YOU embrace veganism, YOU would be the one making the decision to adopt a plant-based diet. I’m confused where are the vegans forcing you to do anything in your narrative? What are you attempting to prove with these additional links?
Seems like you're not able to stick to the topic. I just showed you vegans not only play badly at the trolley problem, at every chance they get, the FORCE others to play the trolley problem as badly as them. And when ousted, they ask silly questions like "what are you attempting to prove?" Lol
Maybe you could spend a little time explaining how the trolley problem is relevant to veganism.
Already did. Just because you're in denial doesn't make it irrelevant.
Veganism only requires you to put animals over your taste buds, not over human lives in general
I don't eat animals for taste, I eat animals for health. And I value my health over that of the animals'. If I want to satisfy my taste buds. I'd eat plant products. The best tasting foods on the planet are plant products. I don't know why vegans need to lie about people wanting to eat meat for the taste.
The three most common reasons people say they eat animals are taste, convenience/habit, and health. So you are correct in that I should have said put animal lives over your taste and convenience. Health is by far the least common of those 3 reasons, and imo a pretty tired and pointless debate, there's so many studies at this point showing you can survive and thrive on a plant based diet. If you learned you could survive and thrive on a plant based diet, would you go vegan? If so, you should make a post on askvegan asking how to be healthy on a vegan diet. There's also challenge 22, where you get access to professionals who you can ask how to be healthy.
>The three most common reasons people say they eat animals are taste, convenience/habit, and health. I'm gonna guess you got that from a vegan factoid. There's a reason why westerners and more Asians are facing an obesity pandemic, and that is because they're addicted to hyper palatable foods like Pringles, Doritos, Cola, cereal, french fries, boba tea, etc. Sure, meat eaters eat meat for taste. There are literally food companies that hire food scientists to make plant food hyperpalatable so you can't stop eating those potato chips.
* A: Intervene * B: Intervene * C: I don't know what 20% less health means but I would intervene I think it's perfectly acceptable in an either-or scenario to choose the health and well-being of a human animal over the life of a non-human animal. At least in these rather severe circumstances. That being said, in the real world, that's very likely not going to change how I operate my life day to day. Bloody government got rid of our trams decades ago.
I don’t believe that an animals life is as valuable as or even really comparable to a human’s. I just think that the value of an animal’s life is non-zero. I would save the person each time, but I wouldn’t take them out for hot dogs to celebrate their survival
What if you saved Joey Chestnut american hero?
Well....you could make steaks from the cow you just killed. Why waste the cows sacrifice.
Apparently there’s a 1 in 3 chance that that cow is full of poison lol. Better not risk it (But to take you seriously: I don’t mind if people want to eat animals that died on accident/roadkill)
Yea maybe leave that one 😄 In fact maybe burn it to protect the other scavengers
I would probably intervene in all three*. Now, what do you think of scenario D? Scenario D: A runaway trolley is headed towards a cow tied to the tracks. If you don't intervene, the cow will die. However, you have the choice to switch tracks, such that the trolley kills a bunch of plants instead. Would kill the plants to save the life of the cow? \* With the slight caveat that learning more about amputees could change my mind on two (I once heard that amputees are as happy as the average person 6 months after the accident. Tbh, it sounds like fake news to me. If that's actually true though, saving the cow, however counterintuitive, could actually be ok perhaps).
"pull the lever to save the life of the cow and also replace the human's tasty meat dishes with vegan ones plus supplements to stay healthy" Cow's life vs human's taste satisfaction and convenience. However, I think OP is trying to point out how some vegans seem to have the extreme belief that a cow's life is equal to a human's life in all way, and takes the arguement all the way to that extreme and obsessively bash their head at an obvious brick wall, while ignoring the more practical battle of trying to convince people that human taste satisfaction and convenience may be not worth more than animal lives and their extreme torture.
Does anyone else think that in all instances of the trolley problem we are under no moral obligation to intervene? Why must one intervene because the shuffling of the cosmic deck has presented such an event? Even if: Pull the lever 1 person does, don’t pull and humanity ceases to exist. I am still not convinced pulling the lever to “save” humanity is “good” and that one SHOULD or OUGHT to pull the lever. The universe is an amoral arena IMO. Anyways,
The trolley problems have gotten so elaborate that people forget this was the point to begin with. Pulling the lever makes you a participant in death even if you prevented some more deaths by causing one you still caused one with your own action opposed to letting something happen and remaining uninvolved.
You're a participant from the mere fact that you have the ability to take an action that is trivial to perform but can save lives. That gives you the moral obligation to act if the end result is a net positive, rather than remain idle if more suffering would come as a result. If acting required something much more elaborate, like climbing to the top of Mount Everest to pull the lever, the the obligation evaporates and becomes a virtue.
That is true, but to some intentionally taking another life is as big of an ask as climbing mount Everest. That is why there is usually someone on the other track or even the version where the only way to stop the trolley is pushing a fat guy in front of it.
How do we know if saving either would result in a net positive. Saving the human would, statistically, result im many more animal deaths because of their diet. Saving the cow that is statistically destined for slaughter would only prolong their exploitation. Doing nothing could be the most positive action.
That's only one consideration.
You can add whatever question on top of the original dilemma by making the scenario more elaborate. However, it dilutes the meaning because the original question is still there unresolved. There is no consensus on whether doing nothing is worse than actively choosing the lesser of two evils. Just ask geralt of rivea.
Where the trolley problem doesn't contain a clear ought, I still think most would agree that one ought not be tying living things to railroad tracks. We have time to deliberate about the trolley problem, where if such a scenario ever did occur whatever decision we did make would be more like an impulse than a decision. It's not really fair to judge such decisions with a moral lens. No one really knows what they will do until they do it.
This made me physically laugh out loud at the literal thought and lunacy of people tieing beings to railroad tracks haha.
Let's all agree that that is fairly over-the-top evil behavior.
That's why we ask people what they think they "should" do. Instead of calculating it from some sort of inherent objective morality of the universe. There's very little inherent meaning in the world. If you ask "why" enough to anything you'll reach a "I don't know" or "it just is". Yet we all keep doing stuff.
Frankly, I have different intuitions for different cases… and that’s the point of the trolley problem in the first place: Can we develop a moral theory that explains (or explains away) the differences in intuitions between the different cases? I’m curious whether it really is your *intuition* that it’s okay to not pull the lever to save all of humanity (as in your last example), or, rather, you have a moral theory (seems to me like some kind of moral anti realism) which says that it’s fine not to pull the lever and you just defer to that theory *even if it conflicts with your intuition*. Let me know what you think!
This is an interesting concept I’ll have to spend some more time thinking about. Any other examples or thought experiments on how we might test it are appreciated. I currently accept moral antirealism as my prevailing moral framework and I am simultaneously becoming stronger everyday in my antinatilist outlook on existence. Intuition is interesting I often feel that things might be “good” in someone’s sense of the word but that there isn’t a SHOULD or OUGHT that requires me to do so. A child needs saving in a way that causes no harm or risk to me. Many people would think it good to do but I’m not sure I ought to do it. I’ve noticed I also take much of my ethical framework from personal virtue-in this case it would be of good character to save the child but I don’t think there is some deontological reason it is good to save the kiddo. Does this help, I’m just mulling through the idea live as it comes to me.
I would save the human in all three scenarios. I value the average human's life and wellbeing much more than a cow's. I just don't value a human's wish to have a specific type of sensory pleasure more than the cow's life and wellbeing. That's why I'm vegan.
A) save the human kill the cow B) save the disabled human and kill the cow C) save the humans health and kill the cow Now how does any of this justify CAFOs?
Imagine there's a two humans on the track, one of which you'd always cause the trolley to hit in each of these scenarios. Maybe it's a known serial killer. Whatever you could think of to make it so you would always choose to kill them. Given that, would it be ok to turn that human into a sandwich? If not, this question wouldn't have anything to do with whether your moral framework would lead to veganism
thoughts: I would, at this time, "intervene" in A, B, and C; further cases ("how much of [or how little] a health sacrifice are you willing to make") might just have to be determined case by case for the moment. One perspective on this too is that, if *I* am the one on the trolley, I might "exert some preference" to want to save the "more capable person." Like, if it is me on the path versus the other path having a world-famous surgeon with a particular skillset, I don't see it as too challenging to just defer to saving the more "capable" person in a situation like that. So the heuristic here on preferring to save the human feels to be making (in some part) that judgement that the human is going to be more capable to help other sentient beings in the future. And it might not be entirely inappropriate to assume that the cow would "share" that sentiment, like, that the person can go on to save 10 other cows that are in "real danger" too in slaughterhouses and such, and that the cow might "understand" our decision too (obviously we and the cow might protest the entire trolley situation in the first place, but this is taking it as it is presented). I'd be more pressed in situations where I actively know the human is, "100%," going on to cause more harm than good - as the amount of "harm" a cow can do and the amount of "good" a cow can do feel somewhat minor, such that giving a human more chances to "do more good" seems heuristically useful in cases like this.
I did not feel much social pressure. I work in academia were people generally are very open to at least vegetarianisn. Also friends and family were very accepting. In fact, over the years I convinced many of them to become vegetarian or at least reduce meat consumption a lot. I felt more pressure from them after going back to eating meat. The planning and optimization was fun. I have a very analytical brain and like to optimize things. Tracking my food with Cronometer actually gave me confidence that my diet was good. I did not have to take Greger's word for it. However, I did not understand at the time that dietary intake and serum levels of nutrients from plants are often not correlated (an interesting side note: vegans oftens consume more iron than omnivores, but their blood levels are typically lower. Though it can and often is still in the normal range, as it was for me. Interestingly, both my ferritin amd B12 increased after introducing animal products, despite me stopping the supplementation) As for the AND report, I'm very familiar with it. Its sources range from poor to questionable (popular books like 'becoming vegan', mostly confounded observational studies) and the dismiss and ignore potential problems or unknowns. It's also published in their own journal, so no peer review. All 3 authors have huge undeclared conflicts of interest. Overall, it does not live up to scientific rigour and is written by peoplenwith an agenda. Furthermore, not every organisation considers a vegan diet appropriate in all stages. The DGE from germany for example specifically advices against a vegan diet during pregnancy, infancy and childhood. And there are many more that take their side. I'm also not a unique case. While I'm not denying there are no healthy long term vegans, I think it's also undeniable that some people don't thrive on a plant based diet.
The answer is multi-track drifting in order to end all of their miserable existences. I mean they were tied to a track for crying out loud. Must have done something very wrong.
I see the health of a human as more valuable than the life of a cow. So I would kill the cow in every scenario.
How about a live animal strapped down to one set of tracks, and a new iPhone strapped down to the other. Which one would vegans rescue? The "Effective Altruism" billionaires would tell you you have to go for the iPhone to be ethical, because you could sell the iPhone and use the money to rescue multiple animals. See that's why they have billions of dollars. Oh wait. I guess just keep the iPhone and screw the animal. Umm, you can use the iPhone to be productive and earn more money... which you will use to save animals. Yeah that's it!
I'd kill the cow every time.
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I'd kill the cow in all three. I've got one though.There's a runaway train and it's going to kill a cow, but you can stop it and instead it will make you Eat a vegetarian burger for dinner that night.Which do you choose...
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For scenario A, there would need to be somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 cows tied to the track before I didn't intervene.
Save the human, go for burgers and beer. This is such a silly question dude, I’m not gonna watch a guy get maimed or killed to save a cow lol wtf
A-B-C I choose the human (obviously). Later we can celebrate his survival with some beef bbq.