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I mean if you stretch it enough even cells know they are being eaten
Is that the browning that goes on on the outside when baking some meat?
What will Staples do?
Yeah, that’s absolutely what keeps happening with these news items. “Lifeform demonstrates reaction to stimulus!”
Yo fuck that propagandist piece of shit Joe Rogan. Keep him off of my feed.
I’m constantly dismayed to find that brain damaged ape, topping the podcast charts weekly. He’s such a disease
Let’s go to the extremes here: let’s say I’m a vegan, and love snakes and want my snake to not eat live mouse, do you think I can feed the snake vegan snake food?
This is all hypothetical as I dislike snakes and love bacon.
Veganism is a philosophy that calls for reducing harm to animals where practical and possible. You can conjure up whatever hypothetical you like, and if you specifically look for situations where harm to animals is unavoidable, then harm to animals will be… unavoidable, in those situations.
However, the vast majority of choices you’ll make that affect the lives of animals don’t happen within the context of these sorts of thoughts experiments. You don’t have to eat rats or bacon in order to survive. So it’s not really relevant, unless you’re actually in that sort of situation.
Personally, I simply wouldn’t keep a snake as a pet, and if I had one, I’d give it away. The delimma you’ve presented pits my feeling of wanting a snake against my ethical beliefs about not harming animals, and I consider that ethical belief to be more important. I could always just watch videos of snakes or go see them at the zoo or whatever. But if you did one of those, “You’re stranded on a deserted island with nothing to eat but a crate full of frozen steaks that washed ashore,” then sure, I’d prioritize my survival because it wouldn’t be practical to avoid them in that situation.
Well sure, but it was all a shit-post comment not actually meant to be taken seriously. I chose a snake for that very reason. Though your comment gave me a ton to think about and was well thought out! Bravo!
Let’s go to the extremes here: let’s say I’m a vegan, and love snakes and want my snake to not eat live mouse, do you think I can feed the snake vegan snake food?
well i mean, snakes are pretty fucking stupid. assuming the snake can digest it properly, and gets the required nutrients, it should be fine.
However we can also consider that mayhaps you live in NYC which has a rat problem, perhaps you should just feed your snake rats instead.
For no particular reason I’m heading to new York with my van of 1000 snakes.
whatever you do, don’t hold on to them, NYC has a snake under population, they desperately need more snakes. For uhhhh…
Snaking.
You can tweak this metaphor and get plenty of real life examples. Cats are obligate carnivores. There’s been lots of morons who went vegan and decided their cats could be vegan, too. I’ll leave guessing the outcome of that as an exercise to the reader.
I believe cats can’t properly digest the plants right? Probably kills them slowly.
I guess vegan cat owners are doing their Job and eradicating meat eaters from the world. /s
But for real, crazy that some did that to their pets.
Rogan would know. He has sucking down his own air biscuits so long he thinks they taste great.
Siding with alt right trash like Joe Roegan to own the
libsvegans 😎Even a broken clock is right twice a day 😎
Not a digital one.
On the scale of clock tech, you think Rogan is a digital clock?
Excuse me while I scoff lmao, dude is a turd and ¾
There’s no way this won’t restart the same argument with someone, huh? Top-tier shitpost, well done.
Thanks, I saw it come across my FB feed and knew what had to be done.
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lmfao this is hilarious
So many vegans taking this 100% seriously lmao
Those poor cats. Vegans shouldn’t be allowed to own meat.
I am mostly vegan and my cat and dog eat mostly meat 🖕
That you for being reasonable and not insane.
vegans care about animals. I assure you it is the norm
Yep. My vegan brother has two dogs and three cats and has no problem giving them meat (or meat-based food anyway) as part of their diet.
It’s not some universal idea that vegans will be okay with keeping meat-eating pets but refuse to give them that meat.
No it’s not a universal idea, but it does happen and it is animal abuse when it does.
I agree with you, but this is definitely not an argument you want to go into because it caused an absolute massive shitshow. Check out the top pinned post on Lemmy.world.
I did see that shitshow you refer to.
I realized that was likely true, but the ones who aren’t are just so damn loud about it.
I have met far more people complaining loudly about vegans than I have loud vegans
Vegan is a philosophy, not a diet. The word you’re looking for is plant-based, not vegan.
A vegan wouldn’t buy leather shoes or woolen sweaters. Someone on a plant-based diet would.
Sure, but the average person does not know or care about the distinction. It’s much easier to explain this way. I’ll see if I can incorporate this terminology instead next time though
Dogs taste better anyways. Can’t beat a good Elwood’s steak!
That website is confusing, it doesn’t let you order any dog meat. It also seems to assume I would have a problem with the product? Is that a strategy to make me want it more?
Doing this sort of “eating a cow is no more ethical than eating a dog” thing isn’t necessarily untrue (although ethics are, of course, a subjective thing) but it does not really convince people not to eat meat. If you are going to argue from an ethics of killing and eating an animal angle, talk about why it is cruel to kill and eat animals that most people who eat meat are used to eating.
I always fall back on the concept of graphing how delicious the animal is vs how much of an asshole it is. Ducks? Absolutely delicious and raging assholes; they are the perfect meal. Dogs? Too sweet to ever try and on the negative side of the asshole graph. Cats? Rather asshole but not sure how they taste…
Maybe you’re joking but I have seen people say this seriously so I’ll respond seriously. Determining which conscious beings to inflict pain and suffering onto based on characteristics they were born with through no choice of their own is pretty shitty.
I’m all for the most humane and ethical means of getting meat and the day I can get a steak that didn’t require a cow to die but is indistinguishable from the real thing I will absolutely switch over, but until then I’m going to enjoy delicious, delicious duck and not feel bad about. Wouldn’t eat a dog even in an apocalypse though.
Different people react to different things. It takes many approaches to reach multiple types of humans.
I personally reacted after months of being shown hypocrisy, with the tipping point being when I said there’s no problem with eggs and dairy before I was shown what the egg and dairy industries do.
Part of that process was really realizing, not just knowing but consciously thinking about and considering the fact that humans are also meat. I am meat. The cats I loved were meat. My human family is meat. It’s not okay to eat them in a sandwich. Why is it okay to eat strangers in a sandwich?
No one approach will work on every human, and many people take a lot of different approaches over time to really understand.
Yeah that’s an obvious troll response you vеgаn’s use
People are well aware of it
Great idea, let’s stop re-homing rescue animals shall we?
“Know” is a stretch. Plants respond to attack by releasing chemicals (e.g. nettles and grasses), curling or retracting their leaves (e.g. acacia), or by changing their morphology (e.g. holly); but they have no nervous system - let alone a brain - so it’s not like you’re killing an animal.
Isn’t that how we justified boiling Crayfish alive though?
Some misguided monsters, yes.
Plants having no nervous system is being challenged with the idea that the plant itself is its central nervous system.
They react to stimulus, they emit sounds (different ones when in “pain”), and communicate with each other.
They don’t have consciousness in a way we understand
I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that
I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that
It’s truly shameful that disclaimers like these feel necessary in this age of shitting on everyone else online. Lemmy users suck too.
Yeah, but on the other hand I’m old enough to know that when I get excited about something I can talk about it in a way that “clobbers” so I like to disclaimer myself when I know I’m exhibiting that kind of behavior.
Huh, neat.
It’s always funny to me how people eat up the concept of a distrubuted neural network in tech but scoff at the same idea applying to something like a tree or a fungus.
Pando is the largest organism by area, and the Humungous Fungus is the largest by mass. The idea that those organisms don’t “think” in some way is laughable.
It always seems lime some excuse in a counter response by vеgаns
The number of times I’ve responded to them telling them that plants probably process pain in a different way to us has always been shot down by them
Tell them that brains extremely simplified are just on and off responses to certain stimuli / information just like plants have specific reponsonses to stimuli and computers having 1’s and 0’s that respond to information
A mycelium network could be counted as a brain
If you actually believe harming plants causes them pain and that that is bad, you should be vegan. Animal agriculture harms far, far more plants than any plant agriculture ever could.
But then you’re still causing plants pain by farming and eating them. Isn’t that argument no different than saying if you believe that harming animals causes them pain, you should be in favor of eating the ones that are hunted because farming them causes more pain?
I really don’t know if plants can cause pain and I think the environmental arguments for not eating meat are far more compelling than the ethical ones, but regardless, I think this is a poor argument for veganism.
But then you’re still causing plants pain by farming and eating them. Isn’t that argument no different than saying if you believe that harming animals causes them pain, you should be in favor of eating the ones that are hunted because farming them causes more pain?
If you insist on animal abuse then you should do it through hunting rather than factory farming precisely because of the diminished amount of suffering caused. But it’s still more suffering than would be caused by just eating plants so I’m not sure I understand your point
I’m talking about an argument for veganism though. If you are saying that it’s acceptable for people to eat hunted meat, you’re not saying they should be vegans. And you’re encouraging a massive increase in hunting.
“In some way” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting there. … although in the general sense, agreed.
Especially given how many outright wrong or otherwise assinine conclusions some “thinking” animals come to… Perhaps communicative consciousness is overrated on the intelligence scale.
because humans invent things from scratch that nature has already created and optimzed, it’s why we’re seeing a lot of optimizations on current tech that comes from nature itself.
It’s a really weird problem to have.
Go find that video of a slime mold optimizing Japan’s rail system by finding oats in a maze
isn’t this similar to or equivalent in concept to letting water pathfind through a maze for example?
No. The slime mold doesn’t just solve the maze. It figures out the optimal path and grows only where it needs to reach the goal. It’s a fascinating thing to watch in time-lapse. The “water in a maze” idea is that if it fills every passage, the only drain would be the exit.
You should read the book “entangled life” if you haven’t already. It’s fascinating.
Are vegans fine with fish? Seafood?
No, vegans aren’t eating fish or seafood.
Some of them eat oysters, or so I’m told. They lack a brain and centralised nervous system.
One of my exes is very strictly vegetarian and will eat oysters. Oysters lack the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves or the environment, effectively they’re a water pump made out of meat, and they’re one of the most sustainable foods we can make leading to less planetary harm than a lot of plant crops even. It’s definitely a controversial opinion though
When talking about the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves (the oysters) how is that actually measured and what do they look for
How are we sure they are not actually self aware through some other unknown mechanism
I am not a biologist but my understanding is that largely has to do with a lack of central nervous system. It would be like asking if a heart is aware of itself. It can autonomously react to things like low oxygen but that isn’t because those signals go anywhere that makes a decision it’s more like a chemical/biological Rube Goldberg machine. If you really want to get down to it though I don’t think we can know for certain just make educated guesses, and imo oysters are even less likely to have any form of consciousness than a lot of plants or mushrooms
Oysters lack the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves
Fish too btw, as far as we know. Lizard brain is an evolution of fish brain, they are basically biological automata.
Makes one think, live getting on land was it getting into hard mode.
one of the most sustainable foods we can make leading to less planetary harm than a lot of plant crops even
I did read about damaging effects of oyster farms though, the ones with cages, because of their poop/piss(?). But sure, because hundreds in one place.
I did read about damaging effects of oyster farms though
Yeah no monoculture farm is without it’s damage, for sure, but oysters are real low on the list. They are filter feeders so don’t need any additional food source or fertilizer you just seed them somewhere and pull them out as needed. A single one filters something like fifty gallons of water a day, capture carbon for their shells, and they’re incredible at pulling heavy metals out of the water but that’s not something they’re utilized for at scale afaik because then humans wouldn’t want to eat those ones
Your fish science is wildly outdated.
Peak ambiguity.
If it helps give context, various … factions? (I’m not sure the best word here) consider honey OK and others do not. You can research that more if you want to get an idea of what some vegans might think.
Vegans don’t really have factions. Every single one is an individual with their own values.
Yeah, I couldn’t think of a better word at the moment. “schools of thought” is probably a better one for grouping overall themes that exist within the vegan movement.
by this logic do people even truly exist. Maybe you’re just the only real person in the world, maybe im the only real person in the world, we have no way of proving this.
We can’t say that brains are required for a mind to exist; we have no way of knowing.
Lobsters contain 15 nerve clusters called ganglia dispersed throughout their bodies, with a main ganglion located between their eyes. So, according to the logic here whyis it wrong to boil them alive if they don’t have a brain?
For the record, imo it is wrong to boil lobster, crabs, and other crustaceans alive. There is no reason you can’t kill them directly before boiling them.
We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.
They don’t have muscles either, but some plants are known to uproot themselves and fucking move.
We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.
Hmm sorry but no, there are traits exhibited by conscious entities which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness. This is a nice explainer on consciousness, note that it’s not saying anything about needing a brain to exhibit those traits
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#DesQueWhaFeaCon
correct me if I am misremembering sth
there are traits exhibited by conscious entities which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness.
Implying we have a way of determining whether an entity is conscious or not. That’s the entire point of contention here.
which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness.
See what you did there? You assume a priori which entities lack consciousness, and then motivate this by claiming they lack traits that can be observed in conscious entities. That is very neatly circular.
What you and other people who’re objecting to my comment are saying is that there is no way to define consciousness because we don’t know all the different ways something can be conscious. But that doesn’t matter because these organisms lack the properties which we see in other conscious organisms, ie proprieties we do know about
Here’s what I am saying: consciousness is an emergent property of some discrete biological processes, and we have developed some idea of what consciousness looks like when exhibited by an organism.
So that means that all organisms which are conscious have to exhibit the same properties. You cannot pick and choose which properties to exhibit because then what you’re doing is something else, and not exhibiting consciousness.
Like, if you’re a heart of some sort, you have to exhibit the same activity as a heart in general across all different organisms to be classified as a heart.
It’s possible that same organisms exhibit some parts of consciousness as we have noticed till now, but if those organisms do not exhibit all parts of consciousness then they’re not conscious.
So, I’m guessing everyone in this thread has a different conception of what “consciousness” actually is and what we’re talking about here, which makes it difficult to discuss casually like this. You seem to have a very exclusive definition of consciousness, which only serves to avoid the argument, really. “It’s possible that same organisms exhibit some parts of consciousness as we have noticed till now, but if those organisms do not exhibit all parts of consciousness then they’re not conscious”…you’re splitting hairs. If plants could be proven to be aware, have subjective experience, a sense of self, it would be reasonable to change our definition of consciousness to be more inclusive - simply because such a concept of consciousness would be a lot more useful then.
Emergentism is a popular hypothesis, not a fact. Christof Koch lost the bet, remember? The idea that “all organisms which are conscious have to exhibit the same properties” and “you cannot pick and choose” does not logically follow from anything you’ve said. These are criteria that you set up yourself. Take the idea of qualia as an example, how could we ever observe that an animal or a plant does or does not experience qualia? Nobody solved the problem of other minds.
Consciousness is nothing like a heart; the function of the heart can be observed and measured. How do you know that you possess awareness? You can only experience it. (Actually, that we are aware is the only thing we can know with complete certainty.)
Er, that’s what I am saying however is that you can observe and measure consciousness.
You seem to have a very exclusive definition of consciousness, which only serves to avoid the argument, really.
I don’t, I am just going based on current findings.
I am not sure why it’s hard to accept that some living things may not be conscious. Viruses propagate “mindlessly”, they’re neither living nor conscious.
I also don’t understand why you think emergent properties are a hypothesis. Emergent properties of biological processes are fact, look at any cell of any major organ in the body. Why do we treat the brain differently? Because I think we get irrational.
Er, that’s what I am saying however is that you can observe and measure consciousness.
Going with any definition of consciousness relevant to this discussion, say phenomenality and/or awareness, no.
I am not sure why it’s hard to accept that some living things may not be conscious. Viruses propagate “mindlessly”, they’re neither living nor conscious.
That’s not really the point - I don’t claim to know what entities possess consciousness. The point is that you don’t either.
I also don’t understand why you think emergent properties are a hypothesis. Emergent properties of biological processes are fact
Obviously I’m talking about Emergentism as it relates to consciousness, and the idea that consciousness is an emergent property is not a fact, no. And there are perfectly valid reasons - for example, the “explanatory gap” - why someone might find it unsatisfactory.
How will we ever know for sure if plants have their own form of consciousness that doesn’t follow a list of requirements that’s based on animals, or can feel pain.
But why do you think plants should have some own form of consciousness? All organism which have circulatory systems have generally similarly behaving circulatory systems. So why should consciousness be different?
No, if an organism does not exhibit all properties of consciousness that we see in all other organisms, then it’s not conscious
Wait that’s cool as hell, which plants?
Banana plants for one.
Maybe tumbleweeds? I think…
Yeah, plants aren’t stationary. All plants move, just very, very slowly compared to animals. Looking at time lapse videos of vines growing, reaching out for something to grab on to and stuff is pretty neat. They kind of whip around in circles until they feel they’ve hit something worth grabbing onto.
They have the knowledge and are doing something about it. If other plants can send out this chemical by observing it themselves, that sounds like a reaction from a communication. It may not be cognition like we expect but it is behaving like cognition would. Hard to argue that plants don’t know or care of their friends start dying.
I’d argue that knowledge is more than that, otherwise books or state machines could also be said to know things.
The plants are acquiring information and making an independent change to their status with this information. Books do nothing with knowledge other than communicate it to others. Machines are unable to make independent changes to itself unless programmed to do so.
This is why I don’t eat books
Hey, it’s fine by me if you want to become a fruitarian.
I don’t care what a plant thinks of me; it won’t change the dynamic that I’m motivated and it’s prey.
My point is that plants “think” but do so differently than meat bags. Plant cognition is more like a series of low level chemical reactions that look like thinking, but so does brain chemical squirts if we look close enough. So plants may actually be thinking using mechanisms which don’t rely on complex brain architecture because it has another method of processing that thought. Probably across the whole structure but the process is really inefficient so it takes a long time to finish compute.
Like if a super computer made the judgement of a calculator - they are both crunching numbers but there is an order of magnitude difference in how fast the answer is found. Maybe a plant has low bus speeds and crappy compute limited to simple threaded operations.
There was a Hungarian cult that convinced others that people can survive by eating light. There were some deaths and was quickly shut down, but they exist forever in anorexia-related jokes.
I think you’re talking about Breatherism? There’ve been a couple of those cults all over Europe. It’s not particularly popular, luckily, but they often make it to the newspapers, because someone usually dies.
It originates from Hinduism though. There’s a another Indian religion called Jainism. These are the monks you see brushing away the beetles before their feet, to not step on them. It’s very much about nature and spiritualism and being good. Fasting is a key concept of this religion and the most extreme cases will choose to fast until death to cleanse the world. This is all very spiritual though and takes years of preparation.
Carnivores eat animals that eat a lot more plants than humans could ever eat.
That’s why I only eat baby animals. They only drink milk, which hurts no one.
That’s why I only eat fungi. It’ll be reciprocal eventually.
Fun fact, humans share more DNA with fungi than they do with plants. We share nearly 50% of our DNA with fungi.
Plus mushrooms are the sex organs of the mycelium organism. Just an extra fun fact for free there.
So, OP eats mushroom dick. Got it.
It’s my understanding that fungi came around rather late in the game. Long after animals and plants both.
The earliest fungi evolved approximately 1.5 billion years ago, while green algae, the earliest plant, only evolved ~1 billion years ago. Animalia is significantly newer.
Similarly, I plan on double crossing the mafia so Thin Lips Johnny can chop me up and feed me to the pigs. Circle of life.
Everybody needs to eat stuff. And if it is about reducing pain and having a better climate impact, you should plants all the way. A cow eats 50 times the amount of plants that it gives back in meat.
The cow meat is already there, in the store. Individual choices do not affect the climate. It is disrespectful to not consume it.
demand and supply are a thing
But it tastes better
I’m afraid I’m going to need a better argument than “I support killing animals because it makes me feel good.”
Then raise a cow and kill it.
I don’t have the space for it, though I’d really like to have a little farm of my own.
So the choice is meat or division of labor?
Can’t, don’t really have the space for it, but you want to see my chickens and my ducks? Heck, you can have a picture of my dog, but I ain’t eating that.
but I ain’t eating that
Well, now I’m just disappointed that that’s just a vegan anti meat page.
I was more disappointed by the inconsistency of their claims.
On the front page, they said that, they gave their livestock the highest quality feed and kept them happy in an open environment.
Upon reading further, they changed their tone to keeping them in small cages, followed with stuff like, “don’t worry, you won’t taste it”.They, as a company, lost credibility.
I’m sure there’s poison that tastes good. Go eat that, Mr. Bigot.
