I get a feeling reconfiguring social media to work in a different way would help ease the mental health issues people experience from it. I wonder what solutions could advance us into a new era of social media that is healthier and more productive.
same! thinking about this a lot. Will try to have more conversations around that topic as well as we go... hmm. Let me know if you have any tips of organizations or people to talk to!
Thank you very much for this interview. Awesome questions, awesome guest. You asked him really interesting questions and made us hear his thoughts on topics he rarely talks about. Very well done :D
Hello, fellow Norwegian here :) This podcast illucidated where Alex has gone wrong on veganism wery well. A lot of unjustified assumptions. I admire Alex a lot, and have followed him before either of us went vegan, but I guess we have developed very different conceptions of ethics, which we now have both studied in university, and don't get me wrong, but I don't think he has a very good grasp of it. I will elaborate in detail every point I think he is wrong about/misses here. It's very long, but if you read only 1-2 points it should be sufficient to show why I think he is so mistaken. 1. "Vegans have the opinions they have because of dogma". He asserts that vegans are (like everyone) suseptible to dogma, which is true, but here he is implying that the reason vegans advocate for a 100% plant based diet, and animal RIGHTS isn't based on reasons, but on dogma. It is pretty rude of him to suggest that I haven't reached these conclusions through reasoned and rational thinking, I'm a philosopher and skeptic myself. Most people who have thought long and hard on these issues reach the conclusion that animal rights and a completely vegan diet are moral obligations for a reason, often reluctantly. Saying "vegans are dogmatic, and therefore wrong" is not a justified assertion. I find most vegans are very concerned with science, logical consistency and have vast disagreements about just what is the right way to promote animals interests. That is not dogma. Dogma is the assertion that "animals are here for us to eat" or that "it's natural to eat animals" or "Eating animals is neccacary for health". These are logically and scientifically unjustified. Sure, there are some dogmas in the vegan community, but not about the fundamentals. There might be dogma around what the optimal diet is, how to talk about pets, what to feed pets, how to approach wild animals and predators. But the notion that animals deserve rights and that a vegan diet is a moral obligation are not the subject to dogma. We have very good reasons to say these things, whcih I will talk about later. 2. "Hunting one elk produces less suffering than importing tofu". This isn't a justifiable assumption. For one, it's impossible to quantify suffering. This is a NOTORIOUS problem for utilitarianism. Suffering is an internal state. We can never know just how much the hypothetical 2 mice who died for the tofu suffered compared to the one elk we shoot. And futher, these are not the only ones involved in this decision. If I shoot 1 elk, I might be causing a whole family of predators to starve to death, or I might be negatively impacting the elk tribe for years to come, or I might impact the entire eco system the elk lived in negatively for decades to come. WE CAN'T KNOW. Therefor it's not justified to assume that killing one large animal will cause less suffering than eating farmed plants. 3. Strict, direct utilitarianism is incoherent. Such a strict form of utilitarianism as Alex proposes here to justify his reasons to harm animals deliberately, relies on wildly speculative and unquantifiable metrics that you can literally justify just about ANY action under it. How many individuals do we limit the analysis to? How far into the future? Who determines that? This is another notorious issue for utilitarianism. We can say that any action is good or bad, depending on the scope of our analysis of suffering, and as I stated earlier, we can't even quantify suffering, so this form of utilitarianism can only rely on selective guesses. 4. Alex' utilitarianism is impossible to universilize. Any working ethical system must ensure that every person can in fact act this way as a principle, and it always produces the best ethical outcomes. If Alex says "we should act in a way that minimizes suffering, based on how many individuals we directly cause/demand to suffer with our actions", can everyone use that as their ethical principle and produce the best ethical outcomes? NO. If everyone started to hunt, fish and eat grass fed animals from happy family farms, we would face ecological catastrophy. If we collectively subscribed to Alex' ethical principle here, we would paradoxically cause MORE harm. This is again because he doesn't account for more than the personal and emmidiate hypothetical harm we might be producing/demanding. Our ethical principle needs to account for FAR more than he proposes, to be a working system. 5. "Rights are incoherent/impossible". This is yet another mistaken and unjustified assertion. Rights are simply an ethical principles we institutionalize based on morally valuable individuals interests. Alex implicitly grants animals a right to ethical consideration, because he finds them morally relevant in virtue of being capable of suffering. He obviously also wants to establish a normative principle that ensures that we all take animals suffering into account - essentially giving animals a right to ehtical consideration. We who believe in rights have reasoned that animals are so morally considerable, that they deserve to have their very life and body ethically considered as a norm. So, we want to give them rights. A right to not be killed unjustly, a right to not be mutilated unjustly, a right to have their interests accounted for in the degree they deserve. This isn't a "wrong" way of thinking about ethics. It's as rational and reasoned as utilitarianism, if not even more. 6. "A vegan diet might not be the right way to reduce animal suffering". This is yet another unjustified assertion. I agree that if I bought one single pack of egg-noodles a month it would have close to 0 economical impact in favour of animal agriculture. I also agree that if nobody knew I bought them it would have close to 0 social impact in favour of animal agriculture. But these aren't the only spheres of impact my actions have, and Alex again fails to account for how complex the effect of our actions truly are. For one, if I were 99% vegan instead of 100%, it would impact my own moral character. It would mean that my pshyce would start to allow the notion that animals are "food-objects" instead of persons. It would change my moral attitude towards animals as objects. And this is already evident in Alex recent post where he calles sea animals "seafood". He has allowed himself to objectify animals, and reinforce norms that objectify animals. Being "mostly vegan" instead of vegan would mean I was more likely to buckle under social pressure and eat animals at social events. I would essentially open a door to a slippery slope down reinforcing norms of animal exploitation. Second, if I were 99% vegan instead of 100%, I would be unable to contribute to vital empirical knowledge about vegan health outcomes, making it more difficult to find ways to make a plant based, vegan food system that would abolish crop deaths - which should be anyones goal, even if they only care about suffering. Me being 100% vegan means that any study performed on me would give us knowledge about the benefits and challanges to a vegan food system, and how we can remedy them. No other than dedicated long term vegans can contribute to knowledge production neccecary to build a new and better food system. Therefor being 100% vegan is vital for a future with less suffering/exploitation. A vegan world with close to 0 crop deaths, 0 hunting and 0 animal abuse is ONLY possible if a large population dedicat themselves to a 100% plant based diet, because only a population of 100% plant based people can produce the actual knowledge, technology and infrastructure needed for such a system. Third - humans aren't atomized individuals who personally cause or demand more or less harm. That is avery poor and simplistic way of consieving the world. We are all parts of countless institutions. Institutions we represent. I am part of the institution of my university, my family, my town, my age group, my political sympathies, my economic system and also the food industries I get my food from. Animal agriculture is an institution. It has vast social, economic and political power. If you don't distance yourself from animal agriculture, you are implicitly a part of that institution, not just because you pay for it, but because you embody its values, normalize it and give it social and political power. As a vegan, you remove yourself from that institution, actively challanging it on all levels, even if you aren't an activist. Simply subtracting your entire participation in animal agriculture means that they loose an entire social and political walking representation of their values. This is the very bedrock of political change. We have to first change ourselves to change the world. In order to challange animal agriculture as an institution, we first have to challange it as part of our identity. Doing bad isn't just to personally caus/demand bad, but also to fasilitate it. Every single thing we do matters. We influence each other, we are "the last straw" for great change sometimes, we have political and social power. Our habits build our moral character, and our moral character matters more than anything in what world we help create. There, I said it. Alex is wrong about veganism, and his recent abandonment of it's values is in my opinion based on unjustified assumptions and a misunderstanding of what vegans try to achieve. Alex is not the most profound thinker ever. He is smart, well intentioned and charismatic, but not all knowing. As a 27 year old university student who has done ethics and political philosophy, in my humble opinion Alex is way off on veganism. The vegan argument is much much stronger than the strawman he has presented it as lately. Thank you. Fellow Norwegian here.
These points deserved a whole video, man. I'll tell you in much less words why he has left veganism: because of convenience. For example, he found it incredibly hard to stay vegan while being in a French city (which had numerous fully vegan restaurants). Fast-forward two years, and he just doesn't want to walk two blocks more to get a falafel, so he will buy from the closest KFC. This is the real reason, and any of his verbosity is just trying to cover that.
As for his "buying one can of tuna doesn't make a difference"-statement, it seems he's overlooking the individual aspect. That "just one" is still one. Now, this one fish might still have been killed and been bought by someone else anyway, but for me this is not just a question about if boycotting is a good enough strategy to stop it or not. I'm not choosing to not buy tuna because I think that me not buying tuna will stop the fishing industri on it's own, but because it symbolises something I am strongly against and want no part in. Even if it's small, it's still a contribution to it, and I'd rather "invest" the money I use for food in the production of plant-based foods, even if I alone didn't have an impact on the industries. To use another example I'm also against prostitution. I don't see it as a equally immoral and evil act as eating corpses and their secretions, but still it's something I have an issue with. But even if I would never pay someone to have sex with me, I don't believe that me abstaining from this will end prostitution. It's a non-action I choose to follow regardless of the outcome. It's the same with veganism. I can't stop animal exploitation on my own, but I can choose not to be a part of it, and show others that it's possible and easy to not be a part of it. Maybe others will follow and it will have an impact, maybe not. But I'd do it regardless.
thank you for sharing your insights Mathias! :D I agree on kind of both sides, can go into that in detail later maybe if you want, but yeah, thanks for sharing! Appreciate that.
Well. I disagree with CosmikSkeptik saying that the idea of a vegan world solving the world's problems is a simplistic view. If we all go vegan then we will save ourselves and we will continue to evolve. No other philosophy, religion or social structure can do that because they all lack the dynamic force of change necessary to counter the degenerating effect of our species decline. Thank you for the video.🌱
It's so good to listen to Alex's responded to your interesting questions. Congratulations. Also, just wanted to point out that JK Rowling was cancelled for less than you said regarding wombs xD
If Alex is against the porn industry and cares about the harmful effects of pornography, he should definitely look up Fight The New Drug, a non-religious, non-legislative, and non-profit organization that educates on the dangers of pornography and the porn industry. All proceeds from purchases go to scientific research about pornography
I totally disagree with Alex's number one tip for vegan advocacy. "Don't get started too quickly. Make sure you don't start until you know all the responses because if you're not prepared you might loose a discussion, so make sure you shut up until you're an expert." That's at least how I heard it. And this is perhaps most peoples biggest mistake, that they DON'T start doing what they think they should be doing, EXACTLY because they don't think they're good enough, or that they don't know enough. We don't need a handful of perfect activists. Like he also said, this is a very neglected issue that not enough people are talking about. For us to become successful we need this to become a movement, as wide as possible with as many advocates as possible. Of course he's right in the sense that you should know what you're talking about, but you'll never get to the point that you know everything, and my experience is that this perfectionist approach holds people back. And anyway, our debating-skills and social-skills will only improve enough be practicing them. Learning by doing. So my number one tip is the opposite: Get started! Yes, do your research as well, but don't let the unknown hold you back from speaking up about this. If all the 80 million vegans in the world spoke up, even if they all aren't very good at it, (or started doing some other form of activism) that would have made a much stronger impact.
this is an interesting one I'd say! I think you both agree on most of the things here, as you mention you also want people to do their research, but yeah - I myself am mostly somebody who learn a lot by doing and testing my thoughts out load through conversations, so for me to start early is good and I view my "jump the gun" activities as research as well. I'm also curious of how much harm it does do jump the gun and start earlier, I'm not sure. It could be harmful as well I think and sometimes when we have Reality for example (street activism for animal rights for those that don't know), I feel we could be even better if we did practice more together on how to do outreach, and that sometimes I feel it's really needed. Or just have supergood briefs in the beginning of each session. At the same time, I think we only get those people active if they first start doing activism in the first place. So I think a good mix here, and that that good mix might be what both of you mean. Like if you Mathias, me and Alex would make a plan together on how to best do street activism, I don't think it's that different. Maybe. Idk. But again, thank you for sharing your insights as well here, adding some more perspectives. In the end, I think it's important to note that we all want approximately the same here, a world with much less animal suffering, at least no animal suffering caused by human activities. Wildlife is another conversation hehe. Feel free to reply to this again Mathias and/or we can also talk more at our next event together! I'm open for both.
because to add another thought, we are currently thinking a lot about strategy in World Saving Hustle, so talking deeper about this together and how we'd like to go forward is an important thing. Mentioning this as well as I view you as an important activist in Oslo, so yeah, I think it would be awesome to be aligned (people can also check out Mathias's YT channel here for street activism conversations).
@@MartinSkadal Yeah, I know we want the same thing. And I don't directly disagree with his tip either - that the more you know about these issues, the better you'll be at speaking about them - but theoretical knowledge can only get you so far before you need to implement it into practice, and I think that is where it stops for a lot of people. But once you cross that barrier and throw yourself out there, then you'll start identifying yourself as an activist and will become more fearless and take on more debates and so on. I think that confidence is more strongly needed from our side than more knowledge. If we compare us to the carnists, they have A LOT of confidence in their arguments, even if they suck. They lack the knowledge, but they still speak up and say stupid shit all the time. So I don't think we should be too worried about loosing the debate, but more scared of what will happen if we don't try.
Great interview. So interesting to me as Alex brought up a dilemma I've been thinking about lately. The crop death/hunter thing. If you hunted for your sole source of protein, or line caught wild fish, you'd kill way less animals than eating tofu/legumes etc due to crop deaths. So, is it speciesest to eat tofu at the expense of snakes/rodents etc instead of hunted meat? I realise long term it's not an option as it would send animals to extinction but while vegans are the minority, is it a more compassionate/vegan thing to do? As a vegan of 5 years, eating animals would be stomach churning though. Thoughts?
I disagree with him entirely. Crop deaths are not rights violations, they are competing rights based on necessity. Crop deaths are not so massive in number, not even close to what a regular meat eater would cause, it's more like incidental deaths, like human deaths during construction. Not to mention it'd never be sustainable for billions of people to hunt so factory farming is the only way to meet this massive unnecessary demand. Idk in what world this would be more "practicable" for alex than being vegan.
It's impossible to measure the objective suffering we cause exactly. We have 0 reason to believe that shooting 1 elk is more harmful than eating tofu and legumes. Shooting an elk might impact the entire elk tribe in that eco system for years to come, starve predators. It will remove the body of the elk from the eco system that fed it, which will impact what plants will grow and the quality of the soil there. You see the issue? Our actions have endless hypothetical consequences we just can't measure. That's an issue with utilitarianism as a basis for ethics and veganism. It relies on impossibly complex guesses about the future that is bound to fail to account for something. Also, if hunting and eating animals is the morally prefferable action for 99% of the human population, it would be a disaster. If all humans hunted we would face ecological apocalypse and cause unimaginable global suffering. If everyone went vegan on the other hand, we would use less land, less resources and objectively cause less suffering. But veganism shouldn't aim to simply reduce suffering. Because of the reasons I raised, personally reducing suffering as a universal metric for morality would paradoxically cause more suffering, and it's also impossible to quantify suffering, let alone future suffering. Veganism should be based on avoiding animal cruelty, setting new norms about how we can eat and live without exploiting animals, promoting a plant based food system. These can be quantified, universilized and can ensure a future food system without crop deaths.
Alex is really exact with terms he uses when asked about philosophy, but it is a bit disappointing to see him using psychological terms vaguely. It is especially important to be precise when talking about mental health because there is already too much misunderstanding, pseudoscience and stigma. Also, Jordan Peterson doesn't do any justice to psychology with the way he speaks, sometimes dissecting terms to obscurity. It seems that Martin caught him off guard with some of the questions. Maybe it would help if questions were more specific, with clearer terms. Anyway, nice episode, looking forward to seeing more.
I agree haha. As mentioned in the beginning, my microphone wasn't working properly, so we tried to make the sounds sound familiar at least, to not throw off the audio completely, but I def agree and if you listen to the newer episodes, the sound is better! At least from fourth episode and out. But thanks for letting me know anyways, appreciate it.
I wouldn't say that. It seems like he is very much still against animal cruelty, but is unsure of the best way to combat it and so he's still questioning things. Keeping an open mind does not mean you're drifting away from your position. I've been vegan for over two years and probably will be for the rest of my life because I'm convinced that we should avoid causing unnecessary suffering whenever we can... But even I will admit that there are certain situations where killing and eating animals is justifiable (like in survival situations etc) and there may be many more situations that I'm just not aware of yet. Questioning these things does not mean I'm "drifting away" from being vegan, it's just means I'm taking ethics seriously rather than blindly following dogma.
@@Jakeassimilate it was more so the comment about buying tuna and that he only really advocates against factory farming even though it’s clear animals still suffer greatly in free range farming etc.
@@TheLee267 the main problem is with factory farming tho, free-range farming isn't easy to control.. and the vast majority of animals get killed in factories obviously
Well, now it can definitely be said that Alex discarded veganism for themselves. Such a shame, with no reason provided, just some opaque comment on the community section of their channel.
I know, I didn't know until I listened to the episode myself... so sorry for that! haha. I think I counted around 16 "like"s in just a few sentences one time, I'm horrified of how I'm not self aware in that moment to realize it. Nervous af perhaps, but anyways, it's getting better and better! Earlier I struggled more with stuttering when being nervous actually, but now it seems like the "like" has replaced it hahaha - anyways, have a nice day Lina!
Alex is genuinely one of my favourite people to listen to.
I get a feeling reconfiguring social media to work in a different way would help ease the mental health issues people experience from it.
I wonder what solutions could advance us into a new era of social media that is healthier and more productive.
same! thinking about this a lot. Will try to have more conversations around that topic as well as we go... hmm. Let me know if you have any tips of organizations or people to talk to!
Martin i love your smile!
haha appreciate that.
Martin can you tell Alex to come talk in Australia plz and thank you
Martin’s voice is so soothing 😌
haha, thanks! This mic was actually not working properly, so I hope you like it when it works as well! haha
Great podcast & great questions - subscribed. Keep it up, Martin!
thank you Daniel! Appreciate it. Keep it up you too in whatever you do!
Thank you very much for this interview. Awesome questions, awesome guest. You asked him really interesting questions and made us hear his thoughts on topics he rarely talks about. Very well done :D
Norwegian Lex Fridman bussin
haha! I'm very inspired by Lex!! he's amazing.
Hello, fellow Norwegian here :)
This podcast illucidated where Alex has gone wrong on veganism wery well. A lot of unjustified assumptions. I admire Alex a lot, and have followed him before either of us went vegan, but I guess we have developed very different conceptions of ethics, which we now have both studied in university, and don't get me wrong, but I don't think he has a very good grasp of it. I will elaborate in detail every point I think he is wrong about/misses here. It's very long, but if you read only 1-2 points it should be sufficient to show why I think he is so mistaken.
1. "Vegans have the opinions they have because of dogma".
He asserts that vegans are (like everyone) suseptible to dogma, which is true, but here he is implying that the reason vegans advocate for a 100% plant based diet, and animal RIGHTS isn't based on reasons, but on dogma. It is pretty rude of him to suggest that I haven't reached these conclusions through reasoned and rational thinking, I'm a philosopher and skeptic myself. Most people who have thought long and hard on these issues reach the conclusion that animal rights and a completely vegan diet are moral obligations for a reason, often reluctantly. Saying "vegans are dogmatic, and therefore wrong" is not a justified assertion. I find most vegans are very concerned with science, logical consistency and have vast disagreements about just what is the right way to promote animals interests. That is not dogma. Dogma is the assertion that "animals are here for us to eat" or that "it's natural to eat animals" or "Eating animals is neccacary for health". These are logically and scientifically unjustified. Sure, there are some dogmas in the vegan community, but not about the fundamentals. There might be dogma around what the optimal diet is, how to talk about pets, what to feed pets, how to approach wild animals and predators. But the notion that animals deserve rights and that a vegan diet is a moral obligation are not the subject to dogma. We have very good reasons to say these things, whcih I will talk about later.
2. "Hunting one elk produces less suffering than importing tofu".
This isn't a justifiable assumption. For one, it's impossible to quantify suffering. This is a NOTORIOUS problem for utilitarianism. Suffering is an internal state. We can never know just how much the hypothetical 2 mice who died for the tofu suffered compared to the one elk we shoot. And futher, these are not the only ones involved in this decision. If I shoot 1 elk, I might be causing a whole family of predators to starve to death, or I might be negatively impacting the elk tribe for years to come, or I might impact the entire eco system the elk lived in negatively for decades to come. WE CAN'T KNOW.
Therefor it's not justified to assume that killing one large animal will cause less suffering than eating farmed plants.
3. Strict, direct utilitarianism is incoherent.
Such a strict form of utilitarianism as Alex proposes here to justify his reasons to harm animals deliberately, relies on wildly speculative and unquantifiable metrics that you can literally justify just about ANY action under it. How many individuals do we limit the analysis to? How far into the future? Who determines that? This is another notorious issue for utilitarianism. We can say that any action is good or bad, depending on the scope of our analysis of suffering, and as I stated earlier, we can't even quantify suffering, so this form of utilitarianism can only rely on selective guesses.
4. Alex' utilitarianism is impossible to universilize.
Any working ethical system must ensure that every person can in fact act this way as a principle, and it always produces the best ethical outcomes. If Alex says "we should act in a way that minimizes suffering, based on how many individuals we directly cause/demand to suffer with our actions", can everyone use that as their ethical principle and produce the best ethical outcomes? NO. If everyone started to hunt, fish and eat grass fed animals from happy family farms, we would face ecological catastrophy. If we collectively subscribed to Alex' ethical principle here, we would paradoxically cause MORE harm. This is again because he doesn't account for more than the personal and emmidiate hypothetical harm we might be producing/demanding. Our ethical principle needs to account for FAR more than he proposes, to be a working system.
5. "Rights are incoherent/impossible".
This is yet another mistaken and unjustified assertion. Rights are simply an ethical principles we institutionalize based on morally valuable individuals interests. Alex implicitly grants animals a right to ethical consideration, because he finds them morally relevant in virtue of being capable of suffering. He obviously also wants to establish a normative principle that ensures that we all take animals suffering into account - essentially giving animals a right to ehtical consideration.
We who believe in rights have reasoned that animals are so morally considerable, that they deserve to have their very life and body ethically considered as a norm. So, we want to give them rights. A right to not be killed unjustly, a right to not be mutilated unjustly, a right to have their interests accounted for in the degree they deserve. This isn't a "wrong" way of thinking about ethics. It's as rational and reasoned as utilitarianism, if not even more.
6. "A vegan diet might not be the right way to reduce animal suffering".
This is yet another unjustified assertion. I agree that if I bought one single pack of egg-noodles a month it would have close to 0 economical impact in favour of animal agriculture. I also agree that if nobody knew I bought them it would have close to 0 social impact in favour of animal agriculture. But these aren't the only spheres of impact my actions have, and Alex again fails to account for how complex the effect of our actions truly are.
For one, if I were 99% vegan instead of 100%, it would impact my own moral character. It would mean that my pshyce would start to allow the notion that animals are "food-objects" instead of persons. It would change my moral attitude towards animals as objects. And this is already evident in Alex recent post where he calles sea animals "seafood". He has allowed himself to objectify animals, and reinforce norms that objectify animals. Being "mostly vegan" instead of vegan would mean I was more likely to buckle under social pressure and eat animals at social events. I would essentially open a door to a slippery slope down reinforcing norms of animal exploitation.
Second, if I were 99% vegan instead of 100%, I would be unable to contribute to vital empirical knowledge about vegan health outcomes, making it more difficult to find ways to make a plant based, vegan food system that would abolish crop deaths - which should be anyones goal, even if they only care about suffering. Me being 100% vegan means that any study performed on me would give us knowledge about the benefits and challanges to a vegan food system, and how we can remedy them. No other than dedicated long term vegans can contribute to knowledge production neccecary to build a new and better food system. Therefor being 100% vegan is vital for a future with less suffering/exploitation.
A vegan world with close to 0 crop deaths, 0 hunting and 0 animal abuse is ONLY possible if a large population dedicat themselves to a 100% plant based diet, because only a population of 100% plant based people can produce the actual knowledge, technology and infrastructure needed for such a system.
Third - humans aren't atomized individuals who personally cause or demand more or less harm. That is avery poor and simplistic way of consieving the world. We are all parts of countless institutions. Institutions we represent. I am part of the institution of my university, my family, my town, my age group, my political sympathies, my economic system and also the food industries I get my food from. Animal agriculture is an institution. It has vast social, economic and political power. If you don't distance yourself from animal agriculture, you are implicitly a part of that institution, not just because you pay for it, but because you embody its values, normalize it and give it social and political power. As a vegan, you remove yourself from that institution, actively challanging it on all levels, even if you aren't an activist. Simply subtracting your entire participation in animal agriculture means that they loose an entire social and political walking representation of their values. This is the very bedrock of political change. We have to first change ourselves to change the world. In order to challange animal agriculture as an institution, we first have to challange it as part of our identity. Doing bad isn't just to personally caus/demand bad, but also to fasilitate it.
Every single thing we do matters. We influence each other, we are "the last straw" for great change sometimes, we have political and social power. Our habits build our moral character, and our moral character matters more than anything in what world we help create.
There, I said it. Alex is wrong about veganism, and his recent abandonment of it's values is in my opinion based on unjustified assumptions and a misunderstanding of what vegans try to achieve. Alex is not the most profound thinker ever. He is smart, well intentioned and charismatic, but not all knowing. As a 27 year old university student who has done ethics and political philosophy, in my humble opinion Alex is way off on veganism. The vegan argument is much much stronger than the strawman he has presented it as lately. Thank you. Fellow Norwegian here.
Might have written the longest youtbube-comment ever, but these are IMO extremely important points.
These points deserved a whole video, man.
I'll tell you in much less words why he has left veganism: because of convenience. For example, he found it incredibly hard to stay vegan while being in a French city (which had numerous fully vegan restaurants). Fast-forward two years, and he just doesn't want to walk two blocks more to get a falafel, so he will buy from the closest KFC. This is the real reason, and any of his verbosity is just trying to cover that.
As for his "buying one can of tuna doesn't make a difference"-statement, it seems he's overlooking the individual aspect. That "just one" is still one. Now, this one fish might still have been killed and been bought by someone else anyway, but for me this is not just a question about if boycotting is a good enough strategy to stop it or not. I'm not choosing to not buy tuna because I think that me not buying tuna will stop the fishing industri on it's own, but because it symbolises something I am strongly against and want no part in. Even if it's small, it's still a contribution to it, and I'd rather "invest" the money I use for food in the production of plant-based foods, even if I alone didn't have an impact on the industries.
To use another example I'm also against prostitution. I don't see it as a equally immoral and evil act as eating corpses and their secretions, but still it's something I have an issue with. But even if I would never pay someone to have sex with me, I don't believe that me abstaining from this will end prostitution. It's a non-action I choose to follow regardless of the outcome.
It's the same with veganism. I can't stop animal exploitation on my own, but I can choose not to be a part of it, and show others that it's possible and easy to not be a part of it. Maybe others will follow and it will have an impact, maybe not. But I'd do it regardless.
thank you for sharing your insights Mathias! :D I agree on kind of both sides, can go into that in detail later maybe if you want, but yeah, thanks for sharing! Appreciate that.
This is a really high quality podcast. I’m a huge fan. I found you from Alex and I am definitely subscribed..
This channel will definitely blow up!
appreciate that! Will try my best to have good and important conversations!
Well. I disagree with CosmikSkeptik saying that the idea of a vegan world solving the world's problems is a simplistic view. If we all go vegan then we will save ourselves and we will continue to evolve. No other philosophy, religion or social structure can do that because they all lack the dynamic force of change necessary to counter the degenerating effect of our species decline. Thank you for the video.🌱
It's so good to listen to Alex's responded to your interesting questions. Congratulations.
Also, just wanted to point out that JK Rowling was cancelled for less than you said regarding wombs xD
Martin Skadal, could you have Molly Elwood (from Elwood’s Dog farm) on this podcast?
yesss! I love that farm, have friends in Norway who is starting a department/farm here as well. Will for sure have someone there sometime!
If Alex is against the porn industry and cares about the harmful effects of pornography, he should definitely look up Fight The New Drug, a non-religious, non-legislative, and non-profit organization that educates on the dangers of pornography and the porn industry. All proceeds from purchases go to scientific research about pornography
Where does he talk about that in the video please? I can’t find it.
@@TheLee267 1:17:13
@@malgrosskreuz01 thank you!
@@TheLee267 of course!
Thanks for the shout out I'm going to check them out!
I totally disagree with Alex's number one tip for vegan advocacy. "Don't get started too quickly. Make sure you don't start until you know all the responses because if you're not prepared you might loose a discussion, so make sure you shut up until you're an expert." That's at least how I heard it. And this is perhaps most peoples biggest mistake, that they DON'T start doing what they think they should be doing, EXACTLY because they don't think they're good enough, or that they don't know enough. We don't need a handful of perfect activists. Like he also said, this is a very neglected issue that not enough people are talking about. For us to become successful we need this to become a movement, as wide as possible with as many advocates as possible. Of course he's right in the sense that you should know what you're talking about, but you'll never get to the point that you know everything, and my experience is that this perfectionist approach holds people back. And anyway, our debating-skills and social-skills will only improve enough be practicing them. Learning by doing. So my number one tip is the opposite: Get started! Yes, do your research as well, but don't let the unknown hold you back from speaking up about this. If all the 80 million vegans in the world spoke up, even if they all aren't very good at it, (or started doing some other form of activism) that would have made a much stronger impact.
Sure but it’s hard. Most new vegans won’t be used yet to all the hatred and apathy they’ll face. It’s been years but it still gets to me.
this is an interesting one I'd say! I think you both agree on most of the things here, as you mention you also want people to do their research, but yeah - I myself am mostly somebody who learn a lot by doing and testing my thoughts out load through conversations, so for me to start early is good and I view my "jump the gun" activities as research as well. I'm also curious of how much harm it does do jump the gun and start earlier, I'm not sure. It could be harmful as well I think and sometimes when we have Reality for example (street activism for animal rights for those that don't know), I feel we could be even better if we did practice more together on how to do outreach, and that sometimes I feel it's really needed. Or just have supergood briefs in the beginning of each session. At the same time, I think we only get those people active if they first start doing activism in the first place. So I think a good mix here, and that that good mix might be what both of you mean. Like if you Mathias, me and Alex would make a plan together on how to best do street activism, I don't think it's that different. Maybe. Idk. But again, thank you for sharing your insights as well here, adding some more perspectives. In the end, I think it's important to note that we all want approximately the same here, a world with much less animal suffering, at least no animal suffering caused by human activities. Wildlife is another conversation hehe. Feel free to reply to this again Mathias and/or we can also talk more at our next event together! I'm open for both.
because to add another thought, we are currently thinking a lot about strategy in World Saving Hustle, so talking deeper about this together and how we'd like to go forward is an important thing. Mentioning this as well as I view you as an important activist in Oslo, so yeah, I think it would be awesome to be aligned (people can also check out Mathias's YT channel here for street activism conversations).
@@MartinSkadal Yeah, I know we want the same thing. And I don't directly disagree with his tip either - that the more you know about these issues, the better you'll be at speaking about them - but theoretical knowledge can only get you so far before you need to implement it into practice, and I think that is where it stops for a lot of people. But once you cross that barrier and throw yourself out there, then you'll start identifying yourself as an activist and will become more fearless and take on more debates and so on. I think that confidence is more strongly needed from our side than more knowledge. If we compare us to the carnists, they have A LOT of confidence in their arguments, even if they suck. They lack the knowledge, but they still speak up and say stupid shit all the time. So I don't think we should be too worried about loosing the debate, but more scared of what will happen if we don't try.
Can you ask Alex to debate Jay Dyer?
Great interview. So interesting to me as Alex brought up a dilemma I've been thinking about lately. The crop death/hunter thing. If you hunted for your sole source of protein, or line caught wild fish, you'd kill way less animals than eating tofu/legumes etc due to crop deaths. So, is it speciesest to eat tofu at the expense of snakes/rodents etc instead of hunted meat? I realise long term it's not an option as it would send animals to extinction but while vegans are the minority, is it a more compassionate/vegan thing to do? As a vegan of 5 years, eating animals would be stomach churning though. Thoughts?
I disagree with him entirely. Crop deaths are not rights violations, they are competing rights based on necessity. Crop deaths are not so massive in number, not even close to what a regular meat eater would cause, it's more like incidental deaths, like human deaths during construction. Not to mention it'd never be sustainable for billions of people to hunt so factory farming is the only way to meet this massive unnecessary demand. Idk in what world this would be more "practicable" for alex than being vegan.
It's impossible to measure the objective suffering we cause exactly. We have 0 reason to believe that shooting 1 elk is more harmful than eating tofu and legumes.
Shooting an elk might impact the entire elk tribe in that eco system for years to come, starve predators. It will remove the body of the elk from the eco system that fed it, which will impact what plants will grow and the quality of the soil there. You see the issue? Our actions have endless hypothetical consequences we just can't measure. That's an issue with utilitarianism as a basis for ethics and veganism. It relies on impossibly complex guesses about the future that is bound to fail to account for something.
Also, if hunting and eating animals is the morally prefferable action for 99% of the human population, it would be a disaster. If all humans hunted we would face ecological apocalypse and cause unimaginable global suffering. If everyone went vegan on the other hand, we would use less land, less resources and objectively cause less suffering.
But veganism shouldn't aim to simply reduce suffering. Because of the reasons I raised, personally reducing suffering as a universal metric for morality would paradoxically cause more suffering, and it's also impossible to quantify suffering, let alone future suffering.
Veganism should be based on avoiding animal cruelty, setting new norms about how we can eat and live without exploiting animals, promoting a plant based food system. These can be quantified, universilized and can ensure a future food system without crop deaths.
Can you oppose the cats dogmatically ?
I think you meant 450k 😅
oh, damn! Yeah, did I say smth else? Thanks anyways! haha
Alex is really exact with terms he uses when asked about philosophy, but it is a bit disappointing to see him using psychological terms vaguely. It is especially important to be precise when talking about mental health because there is already too much misunderstanding, pseudoscience and stigma. Also, Jordan Peterson doesn't do any justice to psychology with the way he speaks, sometimes dissecting terms to obscurity. It seems that Martin caught him off guard with some of the questions. Maybe it would help if questions were more specific, with clearer terms. Anyway, nice episode, looking forward to seeing more.
which terms specifically did he misuse? I'm not a psychologist myself so I don't pick up on that sort of thing.
The audio is kind of bad.
I agree haha. As mentioned in the beginning, my microphone wasn't working properly, so we tried to make the sounds sound familiar at least, to not throw off the audio completely, but I def agree and if you listen to the newer episodes, the sound is better! At least from fourth episode and out. But thanks for letting me know anyways, appreciate it.
Lex Friedman 2.0
haha lex is amazing! taking that as a huge compliment. Thanks for listening :-)
Yeah..he really sounds like he’s drifting away from veganism. Such a shame.
I wouldn't say that. It seems like he is very much still against animal cruelty, but is unsure of the best way to combat it and so he's still questioning things. Keeping an open mind does not mean you're drifting away from your position. I've been vegan for over two years and probably will be for the rest of my life because I'm convinced that we should avoid causing unnecessary suffering whenever we can... But even I will admit that there are certain situations where killing and eating animals is justifiable (like in survival situations etc) and there may be many more situations that I'm just not aware of yet. Questioning these things does not mean I'm "drifting away" from being vegan, it's just means I'm taking ethics seriously rather than blindly following dogma.
@@Jakeassimilate it was more so the comment about buying tuna and that he only really advocates against factory farming even though it’s clear animals still suffer greatly in free range farming etc.
@@TheLee267 the main problem is with factory farming tho, free-range farming isn't easy to control.. and the vast majority of animals get killed in factories obviously
Well, now it can definitely be said that Alex discarded veganism for themselves. Such a shame, with no reason provided, just some opaque comment on the community section of their channel.
@@Sheggies yep..called it😂
0:34
15 million views
450 subscribers
LOL
yeah i think he meant 450k
hahaha yes! my bad. I hope and I guess ppl understand. Thank you anyways!
Too many “like” in your speech omg
I know, I didn't know until I listened to the episode myself... so sorry for that! haha. I think I counted around 16 "like"s in just a few sentences one time, I'm horrified of how I'm not self aware in that moment to realize it. Nervous af perhaps, but anyways, it's getting better and better! Earlier I struggled more with stuttering when being nervous actually, but now it seems like the "like" has replaced it hahaha - anyways, have a nice day Lina!
Alex is no longer vegan!
𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐦
You really need to work on your sound quality.