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Tiiba comments on A sense of logic - Less Wrong
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"What's the worst argument you can think of?"
Since you asked... Some people told me I shouldn't be vegetarian because I kill plants.
And my reaction to such arguments is the surprise of learning that the human mind really is that broken. I used to be under the impression that as intelligence rises, the ability to spot certain fallacies should be reached before the ability to ride the long bus.
I don't feel any pain, but sometimes I feel like I'm SUPPOSED to get an ice cream headache from the overwhelming stupidity.
Unless they were fruitarians, I'd be quite surprised if they took that argument seriously rather than using it as an attempt to make you look inconsistent.
Then be surprised.
If they themselves eat rabbits but not dogs, they are themselves inconsistent, as rabbits are more closely related to humans than dogs are. (I am inconsistent myself, but who said that my choice of what to eat had to be consistent in the first place?)
This is only tangentially related, but still:
When I was still at college, many ages ago, one of my lab partners lived in an all-female, mostly-vegan co-op, because it was cheap. I came to visit her one day to work on our project, and was informed by one of the vegans that their co-op had no TV, because TVs emit dangerous freon gases, which (as everyone knows) are bad for the environment. It took me a while to recover from that one.
I've always wanted to ask a vegetarian this.
Do you reject eating meat for humanitarian reasons? If so, would you eat oysters? They have no brain. They're still alive, but so is corn.
There's an article arguing in favour of that position, from a vegan perspective: http://www.slate.com/id/2248998/
(I'm a vegetarian and I agree with that, though I personally do not eat oysters mainly because I find it icky. But I don't have any ethical objection to it.)
I frickin love oysters. Try them some time.
I describe myself as a vegetarian for humanitarian reasons, and have no ethical problem with eating oysters for exactly the reason you describe.
Though, I guess that means I'm not technically a vegetarian. My policy is to choose my food so as to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to animals. Is there a good word for that?
I reject eating meat for humanitarian reasons. I don't eat oysters because 1) I've taken "the animal kingdom" as a Schelling point to avoid a slippery slope into eating shellfish and fish, and 2) even when I did eat meat I thought oysters were gross.
Considering this subject was an early part of my rationalist education.
I know that meme from certain Facebook pages, but I had always supposed it was intended as a joke -- or at least as HHOS. (There are a few people who appear to take it seriously, but there are a few people who appear to take anything at all seriously.)