abraxas @ abraxas @lemmy.ml

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387

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2 yr. ago

You are committing what is called an oversimplification fallacy. I'm assuming you're an anarchist? If not, how is it very different, as you are opposing government's right to run themselves just like an anarchist (do you see what an example of an oversimplification fallacy is?). If so, please understand that arguing definitions is not how you will convince the 99% of the world who think anarchism is nothing but puerile stupidity that it isn't.

That said, you seem to have ignored half my point, that piracy isn't theft. Or are you saying you think it is, as well? Was it theft before it was illegal?

Better than trying to pretend taxation is theft, you should probably just affirmatively attack taxation with real reasons.

Okay, I would argue that the guy in the video is extremely biased. I don’t know how you would determine bias in a person, but I think that a clear indication is to not caveat any of the cited sources with their various flaws in methodology and only show studies “in your favour” assuming they don’t all show that

I'm not sure that's a fair objection. In the video, he jumps directly to experts (feel free to prove bias from them). In his webpage, he cites fairly reasonable and unbiased sources.

I'm trying to read the rebuttal you linked, but it's fairly packed with ad hominems. This is most definitely the style of source I have a lot of trouble giving any reliability to beyond the core factuality. You would probably agree this rebuttal is **fiercely **biased? In fact, as he is a professional vegan debater, I would think both of us would want to stay miles away from any of his content. I would certainly avoid any professional arguer with a pro-meat bias in any analysis I make. Is that unreasonable? And of the arguments he makes, I've sorta been involved in discussions on many of them in the past and could fill a dozen pages of takes on those.

I think there's two ways we could go on this. Either, we could address the claims you think are most biased (and hope they are impactful), or we can address the claims you think are most impactful (and hope they are biased).

If we do the former, it's about discussing whether the there's enough to demonstrate that the author himself is biased; but I have to warn you that showing some of his informing sources are biased seems an untenable way to show he himself is biased... instead, it seems we'd want to find some factual evidence of bias. Whether you think that bias is willful-misleading (like the ad hominems in the rebuttal) or merely good-faith failure to adjust for bias would be up to you.

I think the latter might work better (though not quite what you offered) because if you can show the impactful parts of his video are biased (or just plain wrong), it doesn't matter if he's biased and the video would need to be discarded.

I'm ok with either, to be honest.

Excuse you? This was in response to "it's easy to conclude what you're shoving down your throat". What exactly should a person respond in that case? I gave you the facts, precisely.

I feel the moral case for veganism colors every other argument, so I cut that one out at the pass.

Also, true colors showed; first ad hominem came out. Reported and blocked

Dead cow, from a local farm, fed local waste grains. Dead chicken, grown by my neighbor, allowed to eat grass feed would otherwise get burned. I'd eat eggs galore, but I'm allergic. As much seafood as I can handle because it's plentiful around here. Overflow venison when I can because it absolutely has to die whether it's eaten or not.

Also, the best local produce money can buy, fertilized by their manure. Yes, I eat vegetables that are grown with the help of animal shit. Lovely, smelly, animal shit.

Oh I know exactly what I'm shoving down my throat, and have no weird queasy fear about talking about where it came from or what it took to get there. More importantly, I know what I'm eating is good for me and good for the environment.

If you had to choose between being vegan and the environment going to shit, or eating meat and the environment getting figured out, which would you pick?

I find a lot of vegans have a really inaccurate view of non-vegans wrt eating meat. It's not that we selfishly choose to eat meat despite feeling animals dying is a bad thing. It's that we don't think it's a bad thing that animals die in a farm for food.

And if you realize that, you might find you have things in common with non-vegans. I fight for free-range laws, anti-farm-cruelty laws, etc. I just think you're morally in the wrong about everyone stopping eating meat. Oddly, a lot of us non-vegans see vegans to be selfish. But we try not to use that to be uncivil towards them.

One thing many vegans don't get about non-vegans is that we're frustrated at veganism for the same "reasonable if not valid" reasons. I've had some vegan family/friends have serious health issues directly related to their refusal to eat meat. Yes, there's a lot to that, and it usually spawns from people easily prone to PTSD being made to watch some disgusting documentary about the meat packing industry and going full starvation on and off until all their hair fell out. Is it veganism's fault? Not directly.

It's kinda like the Catholic Church. There's SO FEW pedophiles in the Catholic Church, but for anyone who has been touched by that, the Church itself is tainted far worse than the facts allow.

Is that how you respond to a good-faith conversation by someone who has researched this?

Those independent experts corroborate my own experience, the environmental exports I've had the opportunity to befriend, etc. Further, if you look carefully, the environmental numbers that some vegans like to use actually work against them if taken in an unbiased light.

But that's ok, you won because you drew a picture with me having a silly face and you having a chad face :)

EDIT: Flummery to lemmy's recent context BS. I realized that you replied to one of my only comments that didn't include citations, so I backed off on the "how you respond to facts and evidence".

EDIT2: Is anyone else experiencing what I am? When you look at a context, you can't see its parent post anymore. When you reply to something, the link for the original post seems to be overwritten by the link to your reply (with no context of the previous post). I end up having to load the post and ctrl-f search for the damn comment I intended to reply to

Yup. I am. My professor was pretty good about it, though, knowing a lot of us had to commute for his class. He calculated the average strings per hour, then let us comp out to an A. Some of us had to make up two gym credits, so he offered to let us comp out both gym classes just bowling, letting us skip the "lifestyle fitness" class.

But yeah, never do the math. The gym class is just a moneymaker for them.

As I said, if you want to argue, you pick the topic :). Though, I'm not really looking to argue, just to squash misinformation (which you haven't really provided any of directly that I've seen).

But that said, I only really provided two points. It's just not possible to talk about a complicated topic with short blurbs. If you aren't up for reading 4 paragraphs to support a claim with evidence, I'm not sure a discussion would be productive. I say something, you disagree with it, I will have failed to quantify it (to keep my post small) and you would look correct for the wrong reasons.

If you're using definitions of a word that can not effectively differentiate between two very distinct things, you're using the wrong definition or the wrong word.

Taxation is not theft. Piracy is not theft. Using definitions of theft that include them triggers George Orwell alarms in anyone who knows better.

You do realizing that explaining why will not cause them to let you keep the $100k. They WILL seize it, regardless of your reasons. They take note of those reasons you give so they can use that against you in a court of law, however.

The possession of the money is treated as probable cause. The police are not tasked with finding the ultimate truth of things, just acting on probable cause.

So you're on the road with $10,000 in cash. The police find out. You tell them the true reason. They write it down, then seize the money because it was suspicious to you to carry $10,000 in cash.

Then, of course, you can go petition to get the money back. At which time, you have to prove by a preponderance of evidence (the same bar as if you were suing them for damages) to get the money back.

The point is, that's not enough. You have to prove it in a court of law. Which, for $100,000, might cost most of that $100,000 and years of time.

There have been some clear-cut seizure cases where the legitimacy of the money was obvious and it was either not worth the legal fees to clear up or simply insane to clear up. We are a "reasonable doubt" country for a reason, and if you can't prove someone came about their money illegally, you shouldn't be stealing it from them.

My take on this (an I’m vegan so there’s a possibility of bias) is that most of the mainstream claims such as there being no health downside and a plantbased diet is significantly less harmful for the environment are simply true.

I try to avoid talking BOTH environment and health in the same discussion because I find the risk of it turning into a gishgallop back-and-forth between the triforce of plant (environment, health, ethics). And obviously ethics can become a nuclear bomb dead-end of different fundamental positions. But I do feel of the two sides, the vegan side is definitely the one benefitting most from misinformation. I don't think you'll do the gishgallop thing (you seem to be pretty good-faith), so I'll give my thoughts on both. But if you did decide you wanted to discuss one in detail, I'd ask that we keep it to one of your choosing :)

I'm not sure if I've provided these links (lemmy context issues). This guy is not biased, a lot health focused, and did a LOT of research on the topic of nutrition and veganism.. There's a lot to pack/unpack, but most of it is based around the fact that a supermajority of vegans are suffering from malnutrition in one way or another, compared to a significantly lower number of non-vegans. As for B12, it is 92% of the population. He also did research into the environmental impact of the meat industry (in another video), and it's equally eye-opening. I'm not blindly believing him, and I don't expect you to. My experience has been growing up in non-mega farm areas, so I have seen the things he's saying firsthand. The river in my hometown died from plant farming; it was a fairly big deal, and a friend of mine (from a totally different area) did her Environmental Engineering thesis on it. It wasn't about the plants as much as the overfarming altogether. Which is similarly true with meat, imo.

One thing as a meat-eater I find is that vegans often do one inadvertant disservice (the same types of vegans who throw false shit out). They change the focus from how to improve a healthy balance (less red meat, more white meat and healthy seafood, regulating away processed meats that are confirmed carcinogens, etc) to "veganism is the cure". And instead of focusing on some very real issues with global warming, they focus on the meat industry of countries like the US that are simply an insignificant part of the environmental threat. If every American and European quit meat cold turkey tomorrow, and the most optimistic non-bs numbers were true, it would slow global warming by a tiny fraction of a percent. Look at this map for a second before reading my next line ( full context article here ) . Instead of focusing on meat emissions in ways that probably will never happen and won't do much if it does, we could be focusing on regulating and presssuring India and Africa (and maybe China) to clean up their act.

When we look at the supposed environmental impact of meat, it's pretty important to know that there are African countries that produce more agriculture-related GHGs than all of the US and Europe combined. It's important to note that the second biggest meat producer in the entire world (US) isn't even a blip on the radar. There is a right way to do meat, at scale, that is environmentally friendly. And as bad as the US supposedly is, they're pretty good in aggregate. If there's room for improvement in the US meat industry... well, I don't expect you to believe the next sentence, but I have come to believe that if meat is grown correctly, the symbiotic Meat+veggie+grain farm is simply better for the environment than plant alone. Lots of reasons (fertilizer, the manure->field efficiency, waste products not usable for any other purpose, etc). But suffice to say even if I'm wrong, it approaches zero impact to do meat as long as you do it right.

1/6

If you're interested, please read my reply to someone else here. Subsidies are not direct to ranchers or meat costs, and applying them to meat retail prices is disingenuous. Many subsidies are actually paid by the farm industry, even ranchers (only benefitting Big Ag), and so actually increase meat prices

I buy meat from a butcher, from a ranch that provides most of its own feed in grass and buys the rest cash (I use feed for my example because feed subsidies are one of the biggest... unfortunately, those go to a small number of megacorporations only). They benefit from zero subsidies, but have to pay for some of those subsidies whenever they sell beef. I pay within $1/lb of Grocery Store prices.

Of course money is ultimately zero sum in its way, but it's arguably grains and vegetables that might take some of the heat if those subsidies were removed. Why? 44% of farmer income is feed subsidies: the government buying grain that is often grown in fields that won't grow anything else anyway. This keeps grain costs down (for obvious reasons) but also fills farmer margins so they aren't forced to raise prices on other crops.

So yeah, 1/6 is true, and 100% unusable data.

it is illegal to film how your food is made if you eat animals. they want to keep you willfully ignorant.

Not quite true. Ag-Gag laws as they are called were found unconstitutional. It is absolutely 100% legal to film how your food is made. It is absolutely true that some states tried to make it illegal, th ough.

There's only a few standing laws to the contrary, most of which are unenforceable but a few of which are "creative". Learn more here.

I agree, but disagree. Aspartame is not a real cancer risk, but neither is red meat. Red meat is technical 2A with Aspartame 2B, but both have shown no signs of causality.

Similarly, zero cancer deaths have ever been attributed to red meat (~34,000 have been attributed to processed meat).

Red meat's fine in moderation. Aspartame is fine in moderation. NOTHING is fine in excess.

IMO, his article is dramatically better than his last line. He is quite accurately attacking Big Ag (something even a majority of farm groups do), but throwing all the subidies together and adding it to the burger is simply mathematically inaccurate. I don't think he intended that line to be taken literally (as in, we'd suddenly see meat prices skyrocket that high), but it leads to a pretty unjustifiable soundbyte nonetheless.

I get meat untouched by subisidies all the time, and it sells for very nearly the same price as subsidized meat. Unfortunately, most of the subsidies are really just giving some companies a monopoly, which they abuse to control prices. The majority of feed (for example) is owned by a couple multinational countries because of the subsidies we're discussing. Those subsidies are actually an obstacle for small farmers, who very arguably could resell their meat for the same (or less) than Grocery Store prices if their costs weren't artificially higher than they should be.

Unfortunately, this is where it gets complicated, the subsidies now amount to 44% of plant farmer income. It will devastate the plant farmer industry to strip away the meat subsidies too quickly or carelessly.

I mean, here's something you might not realize about the subsidies. A good deal of the money from them come from farmers. Have you ever heard of the Beef Checkoff Program? It's a fee paid by farmers, ranchers, and producers every time they sell commodities... like beef. That money used to be voluntary and used for meat and dairy marketing. Now, it's mandatory and used to subsidize feed to Big Ag. In a microcosmic level, it's impossible to say subsidies will increase the price of meat when it costs the rancher money on the net.

The farm subsidies (all of them, not just the meat subsidies) really need to be cleaned up. They're not about helping an industry, but about lobbiests having locked in competitive advantages at the expense of everyone else. ( ref )

That's not strictly true. The practice of applying the value of subsidies and applying it to retail cost of a product is bad-faith. Not saying some of these subsidies shouldn't be changed.

For example, many of these subsidies just give "Big Ag" an advantage over smaller farms, and actually lower the quality and value of meat on the shelves while raising prices (by hurting competition).

And depending on where the numbers come from, one of the "subsidies" generally included in numbers is the "lease" cost of letting animals graze on national parks. This is an incredibly complicated "subsidy" because it is a net good for the National Parks and for the environment to allow that to happen.

Finally, people generally consider "animal products purchased by government" to be a subsidy. Technically it is, but you can imagine that the army buying what it needs isn't giving an industry an unearned advantage.

Most importantly, these subsidies aren't the government giving ranchers money.

There's no question that some of these subsidies need to be changed dramatically. But you're very likely to NOT see a massive or long-term price jump when they do. (ref)

For me, I buy meat from places that don't benefit from these subsidies, and I generally pay within the range of $1 more or less per pound than stuff from "Big Ag" in my grocery store.