Veganism isn't about utilitarianism, it's a ethically stance against oppression! You must know that, and it certainly is not a diet, people can have all the calories they want and be more unhealthy than the vast meat eating fast-food group! I'm disappointed and sad, you keep suppressing animals and who knows how many more you justify oppressing! The right thing to do is to not oppres and be for liberating all, except the oppressors themselves of course, that would be downright stupid... and vegans are not... 💚🌿
And it's actually not about if the animals don't know that they are slaughtered. But we should care..., if we don't want to encourage people to be desensitized and careless, potentially making sociopaths out of decent people! It's about us/you/me and our ethics, what we do..., bringing us "down" to a level otherwise animals that aren't humans are on, which will have even more devastating consequences, than the ones we are seeing now! A level where we can't help ourselves, driven by pure instinct! Is that really a recommendable guideline for a civil society!?!? I think not, now you...?
Would you be interested in debating me on veganism and related topics like why you quit, whether or not it was justified, and advocacy like individual boycotting vs legistlation?
Holy crap!!! I haven’t seen you around in a while. Not in a bad way… I mean woah! Brings back memories. I’m happy to see you’re still active on TH-cam dude.
Alex engages in philosophical discussion/thought for a living and has been formally trained at one of the best universities in the world, with all due respect, he would run circles around you
@@Lithiumgurl210yeah to me this is just an example of something I already thought, outside of maintaining the habit, I’m not a purist when it comes to veganism. What that means in practice isn’t that I eat animal products, but that I consider how there are still, even if veganism isn’t bad, more ethical ways to be vegan. Including unnecessary calories. That doesn’t make veganism bad though, it’s just not a free ticket to moral purity. So to answer Alex - a body builder is condemnable (provided they don’t boost veganism to others) in the sense that they could do better.
@@Lithiumgurl210of course there's no achilles heel to veganism, it's an achilles heel to the explicit reason of becoming a vegan being that you want to cause no unnecessary harm, but the point of veganism isn't to do literally no harm but rather to minimize it
I agree that excessive calorie intake shouldn’t be a position for vegans/bodybuilders, neither should be unnecessary holidays and plane journeys or any sort of excessive consumption. But you don’t have to be a bodybuilder, you can be a normal vegan a minimalist. Just because vegan bodybuilders aren’t doing their best, shouldn’t make you go back consuming animal products.
Soemoe told me not to hit my wife, I responded by pointing out they they shop at Primark, which causes suffering because of their Sweatshops. They realised that hitting my wife was justifiable.
His whole point for bringing up excess caloric intake/vegan bodybuilders is that we *don't* intuitively view those things as wrong, even if one of their effects is extra animal suffering. I think a lot of ppl heard him start making this argument and assumed he was presenting it at face value when it was really just setup for his later point about double effect.
On vegan body builders. Take the approach of vegan body builders as role models and examples of positivity in the vegan community. Many vegan body builders are open about their diet and an influence for others that you can eat vegan and be strong. Take the scenario: Body builder A: Over eats vegan food and gains muscle in solitude Body builder B: Over eats vegan food, but had a positive impact on the veganism movement and collectively convinces 1 person to become vegan. Thus, reduce suffering once more. Minimal vegan A: Eats a minimal amount to survive. Does not influence others. If Body builder B convinces one person to be vegan, or even one person to reduce animal consumption. Then is it justified? When considered a utilitarian approach. All scenarios should be considered.
So needless killing is okay because you’re assuming the bodybuilder offsets it. So, by your own standard, it’s okay to go hunting if you offset your suffering in another area.
@@CAPTAINCOOK406 If by needless killing you are referring to crop deaths - only a vegan majority world would care enough to eliminate crop deaths, so if a vegan bodybuilder furthers veganism and moves people toward that better future and inspires change, it's something that isn't morally horrible to me. But someone shooting an animal in the head is morally horrible to me and does absolutely nothing to work toward that better future for animals. I don't see isolated examples of either the hunting claim or buying from a local farm working for the entire global population either (and I still would argue against these people doing less harm than a vegan because there are so many products and industries outside of food and outside of meat that they will not boycott like a vegan does). I can imagine a global vegan world in theory and an end to crop deaths - and all deliberate animal exploitation. So for the hunter/local farm supporter, there is no end to animal exploitation/no rights will ever be given to animals, but the vegan world would have all that. I hope that makes some sense. For me at least, that is my thoughts. I wasn't the original person who made the comment so they might have a completely different view to me but I have thought about it similarly in response to what Alex said.
@@Pinklerx Seems like a lot of guesswork to justify vegan bodybuilding, especially when there are alternatives to representing the cause that don’t require needless killing. Some level of deaths in the production of crops will always exist, so the problem will always be there.
@@PinklerxThat’s like a hunter advocating for hunting and killing wild animals because it’s more moral than factory farming. Does that then mean it’s ok to hunt and kill animals since it’s reducing animal suffering? Your leap in logic is incredibly flawed. All people who advocate for vegan body builders are doing are mental gymnastics designed to justify their personal animal cruelty. It’s almost like people can’t live without harming animals and making this “us vs them” mentality is just a cult for people hoping to take the mental high ground. We should just advocate for reducing animal harm from a top down level without being full of our selfs and attacking everyone who harms more than us while doing the same thing to a lessor degree. Because using the current logic right now the person who lives off of their own persistent farming without consuming any products from stores are the only people who can talk about being moral. Everyone else are just purposeful (or in some cases unpurposful) animal murders who complain about other animal murders.
How would you expect a top-down regulation approach to solving factory farming to work if the citizenry is not sufficiently on board with a boycott of the industry? If government is going to do anything about factory farming then it's a prerequisite that a sufficient portion of the population agrees with such a measure, which requires convincing enough people that the industry is morally unacceptable, entailing that they ought to be boycotting it as a bare minimum.
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, to the point that I will probably get quite a lot of stick for it. I don't think you could make a convincing enough argument to me, that would stop me from eating meat (however it's produced). You can argue from a moral standpoint, from a practical standpoint. I will always prefer to eat meat. I know I'm not any type of representative for the wider public, but I know I can't be convinced to even boycott the farming industry, let alone go full vegan.
@@chriswilliamsCKG I can run you through the basic logic if you're up for it. I assume that you think it is not morally acceptable to murder a human to eat their flesh, given that you have other options available that do not require murder (so we're not talking about some desperate survival situation). If so, then what's the difference that makes it morally acceptable to do it to other animals, but not acceptable to do it to humans?
The crop death / vegan bodybuilder objection only exists because these industries are themselves not Vegan, if they were they would actively work to prevent those crop deaths to the maximum degree possible. But as it is, in animal agriculture it would be absolutely bizarre to work to prevent the deaths of mice if the end goal of your industry was to kill cows, pigs etc
I don't think it's bizarre at all to limit collateral casualties. The cows pigs and chickens have to die in order for the process to be successful, the mice and such don't have to be
Another thing to note is that we don't know if more crops is bad or good because we don't have a study on the counterfactual. Wild habitat is already a breeding ground for predation and other forms of animal suffering. It's possible that more crop land prevents more death and suffering. Until we have good studies on this, we can't really argue that vegan body builders or junk food eaters are causing more death than the counterfactual of eating healthy and not building muscle
That's not true. The point is about growing more crops than is "necessary". If you accept that, even if farmers prevented insect deaths to the maximum possible degree, some insects would still die, then it follows that we should still only grow as few crops as possible. And if anybody wants to eat more crops than is necessary to survive, then they are still causing unnecessary animal suffering.
I just don't think that's true in practise though. I worked on a very small scale eco farm owned and run by two young environmentalists. They only grew and ate vegetables and didn't use pesticides. They would have had the lowest environmental impact you could possibly imagine for a farm. However, the moment they saw a pest (in this case field mice and certain birds) they had no qualms about catching and killing it instantly. At first i thought those deaths seemed avoidable, but they explained that even small pests can have a major impact on their livelihood because the farm was so small. I kind of realised then that the strict version of veganism just isn't workable, no matter the scale of the farm or the values of the people behind it. At the end of the day, we humans are still part of a food chain and an ecosystem, so competition with other animals is unavoidable and will always result in some suffering. I'm not saying this to try and disprove veganism or anything, I just think that vegan movement could do with being more aware of the inherent competition for resources and suffering required to grow food for humans. It doesn't surprise me that most vegans today live in cities and are very disconnected from nature (and our place in it) in a way that small scale farmers are not.
I know that you weren't arguing against veganism ofc, but here's my two cents. I agree that there can't be a strict rule that just any choice causing unnecessary suffering is wrong. Or, at the very least, we can't say any such choice is wrong on the same level that eating factory farmed meat is wrong. Perhaps we can say that eating more veggies than necessary is akin to reckless driving at night- it's obviously endangering others, so it's wrong, but it's not the same as hitting others on purpose because you find it funny. This is because the former doesn't have the same level of certainty of harm as the latter- if you recklessly drive, you might not even hurt anybody. If you eat more veggies than necessary, you might not even be responsible for a crop death. However, I think that we can say that realistically, the vegan eating extra calories is really causing negligible harm, and the vegan bodybuilder is helping to convince others to go vegan, thereby producing much more benefit than harm. But more essentially, we can say that any choice which causes significantly less suffering AND which negligibly impacts quality of life (or even improves it) is worth making and is incumbent upon ourselves to make. End of essay lol
I was looking for this comment haha. But also I think we have to be clear about what we mean by "necessary". Like, necessary for what? To survive or to be happy? I say this because if we only want to survive, I guess we could do it by eating only a hyper dense, hyper efficient growing algae fortified with b12, but then if we only ate that we would unalive ourselves because of the exhaustion of eating only that (maybe I'm exaggerating but I think you get my point). Now, if something is really and absolutley unnecessary and causes more suffering I think it is wrong (it could be the case of growing plants to make cigarretes or drinkable alcohol) but there's another argument that could be in favor of consuming slightly more plants. If there are less animals in the crop fields than in the wilderness that was there before, it could be causing less suffering because there are less animal in total; and is not like wild animals live suffering-free lives.
Even then, the connection between eating more veggies and animal death isn't at all clear. Firstly, the vast majority of the world's crops are grown to feed livestock, so even the most gluttonous vegan is contributing less to that problem than a frugal carnivore. Secondly, the relationship between purchasing plants and the death of small animals on the farm is quite variable, it likely depends substantially on the exact crop, the growing location, and the policies of the company. It isn't even clear to me if a larger farm necessarily implies more death. It could be the case that larger farms displace more animals and hence actually have to kill fewer in the long term.
Similar can be said for animals, if you eat a part of an animal that has already been killed, and you aren't 100% responsible for that death, then it's akin to your reckless driving at night point
You could argue with an emotivist for centuries. So long as they're emotivist, they're free to flip flop value hop as their boos and yums travel with the winds as they do.
The vegan bodybuilder argument is essentially the same as saying "You can't say that causing unnecessary suffering to children is always wrong because we're all wearing clothes made by kids in sweatshops and it doesn't seem right to condemn everyone wearing clothes." This doesn't invalidate the claim that severely beating kids for fun is wrong.
The point about vegan bodybuilders is specifically addressing the existence of unnecessary excess when engaging in a behavior that harms animals. So to add onto your analogy, beating kids is wrong, and so is chronic, unnecessary shopping, which is terrible for a variety of reasons. I think that's a totally fair point to make.
@musicaltakes How did you get "always" from reading a single comment? If you're talking about vegans in general then be more accurate in your writing. To address your point, it's an analogous argument. The claim "Causing unnecessary suffering to adults is wrong" is the same argument structure as "Causing unnecessary suffering to children is wrong."
@@pyotrvoitsekhovski9402 But I think we can all agree beating kids to death every day for no reason is morally far worse than buying clothes that may have been made by kids. No one is saying child labor is morally justified but to equate the two is disingenuous.
Always is always. If you say: "I always drive to work", but on occasion you take a bus, you're not always driving to work are you? Alex is talking semantics and philosophy. If you dont like him being precise and nitpicky with his language, go to another channel.
Just like environmentalism, we don't need to take an either/or approach. Thinking that the movement would work better as a top down movement doesn't mean it's not important for individuals to change and to encourage that change. In fact, it's necessary. That said, I do prefer to think of veganism as a philosophy rather than a prescriptive way of living. "Recude the amount of unnecessary harm you cause" is a realistic and consistent way of living. It's not possible to entirely prevent unnecessary harm and I do know there are vegans out there who think that's what they're doing by being vegan. Those people are, of course, wrong. That doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Individuals constantly working to reduce the amount of unncessary harm they cause does make the world a better place to live in. I think its possible to believe that causing unnecessary harm is wrong across the board while also acknowledging that it's going to happen anyways and we seem to tolerate it to some degree even if we think it would be best to do otherwise. Vegan bodybuilders included.
On the vegan bodybuilder thing, why would a vegan not just say "Sure, vegan bodybuilding is sligthly unethical for the reasons you mention, but it's still a ton better than regular bodybuilding. In fact, what's immoral is bodybuilding itself, vegan or not, just because it requires so many extra calories. So if someone is going to do bodybuilding, it's still much better for them to be vegan than not. And so vegan bodybuilding is not unethical enough to condemn. Sure, there are virtually always things we can do to be even more ethical than we are, but we don't need to be saints to try our best to do right." I'm not a vegan at all but that doesn't seem like a big problem for them
This is weird because I'm a vegan but I'm now going to play devil's advocate and provide a counter to this ☠️ funny that we're essentially arguing each other's positions. Philosophy and all that eh 😃 I guess that the idea is, yes a vegan can say this in response, but then surely a meat eater could respond back with "there are virtually always things we can do to be even more ethical than we are, but we don't need to be saints" as a justification for eating animals? I don't think any vegan (myself included) would find that an adequate response, but I intuitively want to accept that line of reasoning for vegan bodybuilding. It sets up a situation where if we want to uphold the unnecessary suffering principle, we have to draw a line somewhere, and I guess it's unclear where it should be drawn. Goes without saying that this doesn't exactly make me drop veganism altogether as a philosophy at its root - just an interesting consistency test, I guess
The point I draw from Alex's commentary is that even if we are to concede that vegan body building is more ethical than nonvegan body building, we're still causing pain and suffering to animals that would not have otherwise died due to our societal actions. Why is their pain any less worthy of consideration than a farm animals? Obviously genocide is worse morally than murder (to most people I'd reckon), but we can still hold to the idea that not committing genocide is not itself a justification for murder. So then we can go deeper still and posit: "I seek to cause as little unnecessary suffering as reasonably possible, the philosophic ideal is to guide my decisions not be the standard I live by". That is perfectly acceptable but that type of moral does not then necessitate veganism as a behavior because one could then argue "eating meat is the best, most efficient way for me to act ethically towards the reduction of suffering for x, y, z reasons" and still potentially be entirely correct because they are intending to live by that ideal in the best way they know how. this long ramble is basically my musings on how veganism as an ideology breaks apart at a practical level. thank you for this great comment!
Once you vegans outlawed body building, you must enforce the smallest healthy BMI. Eating for pleasure and becoming fat is in no way better than body building. The next step must be to forbid tall people to reproduce, as their total caloric demand is higher given the same BMI of 20. Once the entire human population is small and thin, it's time to leave the surface of the earth where you can step on ants and go underground. Genetically enlargen your eyes to receive enough photons in the darkness and modify your skin to produce Vitamin D and insulte your body's heat better. Be moral. Take the gray alien vegan pill.
@@price69420in that case everything breaks down at a practical level (if you dog deep enough). He does say that: " in the future, you can avoid deaths maybe... But we're not there yet , come talk to me when we are" but after harvester deaths there will be mining and transportation deaths for fertilizer, there will be farmed land vs wild land (depriving animals of wild habitat). Etc... but I still think intention makes up for most of the argument and clearly once you realize that a non-vegan choice can't have a non-intended death it's hard to make an argument for non-vegan path. Also, animals in crop deaths are in the wrong place at the wrong time, they're not put there on purpose, nor are they caged. It's like being Ok with vehicular homicide because sometimes on some cars brakes fail and kill bystanders.
The Vegan Bodybuilder argument is interesting but I want to mention some counterpoints... 1. Being a vegan bodybuilder is a huge promotion for veganism. If even just one person converted to veganism because of you, you'd have made up for the extra calories impact. 2. The alternative to cropland is often natural eco-systems with inherent suffering caused by predation. While it would be questionable to claim that cropland is more ethical than natural systems, we should at least use the approximate suffering within natural systems as a baseline to compare cropland to, effectively lowering the relative impact of cropland compared to animal farms. 3. In the future, harvesting methods that greatly reduce or even eliminate animal suffering are possible to implement. But before we can raise the bar and demand that next level of ethical standard, veganism must become the norm, bodybuilders included. 4. In terms of voting with your money, eating more and thus buying more is essentially more votes towards ethical agriculture. 5. Any positive change is better than no positive change. The difference between being a meat eater bodybuilder and a vegan bodybuilder is gigantic compared to the difference between being a normal vegan as opposed to a vegan bodybuilder. So while you can argue against absolutism you can't really argue against veganisms principles to reduce suffering and increase prosperity. 6. I think it's reasonable to say that the value bodybuilders get from bodybuilding is perhaps greater than the mere hedonistic pleasure of animal consumption. It's not a strong reason by itself, but it is one more score for the vegan bodybuilder. 7. The particular crops that vegan bodybuilders are likely to consume more of are peas (via protein powder) and beans. In my understanding these plant foods cause far less animal suffering and death than many other plant crops. Yet another win for the vegan bodybuilder. Food for thought 😉
One more point: A practical approach to veganism is to reduce suffering as much as possible, without changing your lifestyle much. For example, with modern meat substitutes and alternatives, the average diet can be replaced with a vegan diet with minimal change in lifestyle or loss of taste pleasure. With this practical view, it's unreasonable to expect a bodybuilder to stop bodybuilding. You'd be asking them to give up their lifestyle, potentially losing friends etc, for some abstract greater good. However, if a bodybuilder can be vegan and still be a bodybuilder, then they don't have to give up their lifestyle. They can keep doing everything they're doing now, but with less suffering behind it. If there are going to be x number of bodybuilders in the world regardless, they might as well be vegan bodybuilders.
One more to add. According to Joseph poore's oxford study (the biggest of its kind) eating the best sustainable mixed diet emits at least 3 times more CO2 than being vegan. So unless the vegan bodybuilder is eating the food of 3 people each day the vegan bodybuilder is making less harm than the garbage picker meat eater, let alone the one who is buying meat from the supermarket.
@@emiliohoms6491it’s less harm… but still causing unnecessary suffering. Even regular vegans are causing unnecessary suffering by not doing activism during their free time = immoral.
@@ailanmcdonald6689 Yeah it is on a spectrum. We can always become less immoral. But we don’t want to. We would rather play video games than work extra to donate to charities that save children suffering from malaria or any other diseases. Hence why we have no right to condemn others for their actions when we ourselves wouldn’t do our best to save the lesser fortunate. Think of it like a cereal jiller (yt being weird censoring comments) who jills once a month unnecessarily, judging someone who does it once a week. And they know it’s unnecessary but won’t change. These are vegans condemning meat eaters. “Reduce suffering” will lead to us becoming ones and zeros in a computer where our existence won’t cause unnecessary suffering to others. With no unique features, no individuality, no way to accidentally step on an ant, and no way to gain an advantage over others. I am repulsed by this idea.
I feel that viewing Veganism as a movement to change the Overton’s window is also a useful way to consider it, rather than as an individual boycott. If more people are vegan, over time-hopefully-it may become common sense to farm in ways that reduce animal suffering. Just a thought.
I'm a muslim and since your debate with Muhammad Hijab.. I was like.. wait, this atheist actually feels honest as opposed to what I'm used to (basically, mostly resorting to irony or ridicule and winning the crowd, instead of actually appreciating the theists arguments and trying to answer with reason.. I've been subscribed and watching your content since then.. within reason had become my favourite thing on youtube. Thanks for all the efforts ☕
That's really cool to hear mate. What did you think yo Hijab's performance during the debate? Also, did you watch the video Alex did after the debate detailing Hijab's behaviour? If so, what did you think of that?
If you are interested in more empathetic, calm atheist content, Genetically Modified Skeptic is an amazing channel. He tries to have conversations with people and come to understandings, rather than trying to convert people to atheism
That debate with Muhammad Hijab was interesting as, on that particular occasion (I don't know if it is how mr Hijab usually conducts himself), it seemed like Muhmmad was playing to the crowd rather than the points raised by Alex during that conversation. It was also interesting that Alex had been restricted in recording the conversation for himself and the apparent edited elements which appeared to have been inserted in afterwards.
From a utilitarian point of view, there is no evidence to suggest crop deaths from agriculture causes more harm / suffering than the wild deaths taking place on the same area of land. Those wild animals live and die on that land already suffer from predation. A cricket will either: be eaten alive by a bird, or die from a combine harvester. In contrast; farm animals are intentionally artificially bread into existence for the purpose of being harmed and killed. And realistically, those excess deaths all involve horrific slaughterhouse dungeons. In other words: the crop deaths argument might not even exist at all. That means any anti-vegan arguments using it as a foundation (vegan junk food, vegan bodybuilders etc) are being propped up by something that disappears when properly examined.
From a utilitarian standpoint, ecosystems cannot function without a reciprocal, interdependent relationship between life and death. Of course I would love it if no person or animal would ever die or experience pain or suffering. Trying to reduce this death and suffering is morally and ethically correct. But it just isn’t how ecosystems function. Instead of focusing on the well being of individual animals (or in the case of vegans, animals that most closely remind themselves of humans ie mammals), the moral and ethical imperative should be to care about the well being of ALL animals. More healthy, functioning ecosystems equals the greatest number of care for the most amount of animals (not to speak of plants, soil, watersheds, etc…). Ecosystems rely on this intricate balance of life and death. I am against factory farming and do not buy factory farmed meat. I have the option to buy meat from regenerative, holistically raised producers. No matter what, food raised in this way will ALWAYS be closer to the way ecosystems actually function (grazing animals are an integral component to the health of grass and woodland ecosystems). Row crop agriculture, no matter how “organic” or how “environmentally friendly” it is produced, is an abomination of nature. Row crop agriculture, at its very core, is the rape of a landscape. It is the permanent removal of this landscape from its intended ecological function. Nowhere in nature will you ever see anything like row crop agriculture. Vegans get the vast majority of their calories from row crops; grains, legumes, soy, etc…and they don’t have the option to get these products from “environmentally friendly producers.” Do you ever get chickpeas or brown rice at the farmers market? Have you ever wondered why you can’t?
why would you think eating plants and growing them for food is any better than eating animals? What if plants are also conscious and also suffer. What if this evidence will arise in the next decade. What will you eat then? or you will try to logic your way out saying "oh well, this is less harm then eating animals"? If you were a God who knew all the aspects of being to state anything but you are not. You only assume and suppose based on the theoretical thought experiments. Another thing, why are you okay with lion eating a deer? or bear eating its prey? but not human eating another animal? If your sincere argument is that we bring them into existence just to kill them which is immoral, would you then be fine if there was no such animal production but we would still catch and kill animals from the wild? Honestly... ? utilitarian point of view is just a human construct. Human's are limited in its understanding of the essence of reality. Same as we utalitarianism is very limited, questionable, unreliable and too demanding. Basically,, sucks ass.
the rabbit hole of a vegan bodybuilder causing indirect harm can easily swing the other way. maybe directly/indirectly, a vegan bodybuilder inspires others to also replace their bodybuilding with veganism, thus reducing the meat consumption of a group likely to eat the most amount of meat. maybe, their vegan bodybuilding allows them the strength to pull someone off the edge of a cliff where otherwise they wouldn't have the muscle mass and thus strength to do so at their current weight. maybe not the last one, but maybe... like the idea that someone that says "ANY unnecessary harm is wrong" wouldn't have stipulations to this is a pretty wild concept where the word 'unnecessary' does a lot of heavy lifting. i'm not a vegan, nor very well versed in arguments regarding it but that entire segment felt like an incredibly weak argument that has so many flaws in it. all to go "i guess SOMETIMES we can justify it"
Sure, but you could also imagine a similar hypothetical for meat eaters. If causing unnecessary indirect harm is not always immoral, then eating meat is not always immoral.
Well put. Veanism is also a rights movement in my eyes. So from my POV I wonder if he has had the same thoughts and changes of mood about basic human rights, given that obese people and high level athletes who believe in human rights and not causing unecessary suffering to humans are likely causing 1) more human agricultural deaths and 2) more human exploitation. Maybe he'll make a video about that next addressing the members of his community that believe in basic human rights.
Major congrats! Started watching you because of your “therapy session” with Peter Hitchens, became a big fan of your content instantly. Keep up the great work! 😊🎉
I think I need a therapy session with Peter Hitchens, a conversation with him would make me feel really good about myself; I'd be reminded that at least Im not like him.
Please talk to someone in the vegan ethics/debate sphere. Dr. Avi, Ask Yourself, Nutrivore, Vegan Gaze, Lifting Vegan Logic, Debug Your Brain just to name a few. These questions of yours have long since been ironed out by the vegan community but it seems you haven't been willing to engage with any of them since announcing your ex-veganism.
@@AlexandreMarcati I have no idea why people call Peter Singer the "father of the animal rights movement". He's openly not even vegan and doesn't advocate for animal rights. He's the type of nutjob utilitarian who has no problem with mass murdering humans or non-human animals as long as they had a "nice life" beforehand. Don't know who the other person you're referring to is, but my point is that he's had no engagement with anyone who he knows could help him iron out the philosophical and health hangups. Which leads me to believe he's just a coward who doesn't want to be confronted about his bs.
@@AlexandreMarcati Do you think I'm unfamiliar with Peter Singer and his works? Please quote from a prominent vegan activist/philosopher who cites Peter Singer as the 'father of the animal rights' movement or activism. He hasn't changed his diet to veganism in decades since his book, and still hasn't. Whether he is leaning towards it is irrelevant - he's not vegan. He's not against cruelty; he advocates for 'humane' meat. What is humane about ending the life of a sentient being? He eats vegetarian meals in restaurants, etc., so talking of backyard hens is a moot point. This is not to mention harboring chickens to exploit them for their resources. Eating eggs is inherently exploitative because you are commodifying the being as a resource, even if they are backyard eggs. Those eggs are not ours to take, and doing so instead of feeding the chickens their eggs back is exploitative. He has a rule called the 'Paris exception' where it is fine if you go to a country and be slightly inconvenienced, by not bothering to look up vegan food or places that have vegan options it's okay to consume dairy or eggs regardless of 'free range'. Do you think veganism, following the principles of philosophy, is dogmatic? What makes it more 'dogmatic' than someone following the principle of being against cruelty? Perhaps no wonder you like Peter Singer, given he can't even 'dogmatically' follow his own original principles and philosophy - he's a good little hypocrite. "The point is to avoid animal suffering." It's not. Nowhere under the definition of veganism from the founders of veganism does it state that the point is to avoid animal suffering.
@@AlexandreMarcati Dude you're delusional. Go listen to the podcast with Alex and Singer again, he literally says he has no argument against farming human beings and murdering them at 18 years old as long as the farmed humans had a "nice life" and there is no risk that the rest of the non-farmed humans will be seen as food. The entailment of that is that he sees nothing wrong with an infinite holocaust of humans being raised in good conditions then being murdered at the age of 18. He also says he has no problem with free-range eggs, which still require the macerating of male chicks, still require the selective breeding for hens to lay way more eggs than is healthy or safe for them, and still ultimately ends up with the hen being slaughtered. He also says he has no argument against free-range cow farming outside of the environmental detriment. This is what I mean when I said "nutjob utilitarian". This specific variety of utilitarian (as stated EXPLICITLY by Singer himself in that exact podcast) has no moral issue with an infinite holocaust of humans or non-human animals as long as they had a nice life. In what world is someone who is explicitly not anti-holocaust and not anti-murder on "the same side" as the people who are trying to end the holocaust and mass murder?
Aniamls killed in crop production, is vastly different to intentionally bringing conscious beings into existence, then intentionally ending their lives. People killed in road accidents is vastly different than purposefully driving a vehicle into pedestrians, even if the people killed in road accidents are killed by drivers who were driving for pleasure, not for practical reasons. Furthermore, Vegan body builders show that Vegans can gain muscle and strength, this may help promote veganism and lessen animal exploitation.
driving with a tank to work, killing dozens of people in the process, even if unintentional, is still bad. the same is true for any form of agriculture. once you understand that you realize that human existence is uncompatible with veganism, which should make you think twice about directing hate speech at everyone who isn't vegan.
@musicaltakes animal agriculture is based on deception and betrayal. Imagine raising a dog for a few weeks and then slaughter the dog. That dog thought you were a care giver, a friend or a parent to him. It’s a terrible thing for the human psyche and reflects on our society morals and ethics. Then you kill so many dogs and you feel like it’s nothing, next you kill a human.
@musicaltakes All vegans know perfectly well that you will still have animal suffering in a vegan society, but the amount of suffering would dramatically decrease. You can't be completely happy (every single human being complains about something or wants more); suffering is inevitable and you can't have everything you want. In an ideal vegan planet, humans wouldn't eat animals unnecessarily, that means, they would only eat fruits and vegetables. What's so fantastical about it? Again, animals will still suffer and die, but it'd be nothing compared to the madness we have now.
@musicaltakeswhy wouldn’t you try to minimize it though? Thats veganism. Environmentalism isn’t trying to zero out emissions. They’re trying to minimize it.
Congrats Alex... like my dad would say, "What do you mean by...". This has been one of the best things he left my sister and I. So much miscommunication because we never define the words we use. We can be using the same exact word, but because of life experiences we each have a different definition. Stopping to ask what do you mean by, is a great way to gain clarity and understanding.
9:12 is a particularly weak moment for me. Waving away the fact that crop deaths are a contingent problem by saying ‘well, until we reach a world where that contingency is eliminated, death by combine harvester or butcher doesn’t matter to the animal - let’s have this conversation again when that world materialises.’ ignores the fact that we CAN reach that world THROUGH veganism. It’s a classic case of philosophy missing the forest from the trees, considering edge cases while ignoring practical steps that objectively reduce suffering.
Right? Feel like a Nirvana fallacy. It isn't perfect? Then to hell with it, come back once it's perfect and we can talk about it. If we want something better, we shouldn't only consider the impossibly perfect alternative, but an actually better one.
Yeah it's honestly terrifying that Alex is letting such levels of cognitive dissonance take hold. The point of Veganism is to accelerate getting to that world. Do you know what makes it less likely that world will ever happen?? NOT GOING VEGAN. Society doesn't change - the PEOPLE IN THE SOCIETY CHANGE. Duh. It's such an obviously stupid thing to say from Alex, it's embarrassing. He treats it as if the world changes, when it's the life on the world that's changing.
@@anschn7166 I assume that this person means that once everyone agreed that we shouldn't be breeding and killing animals to eat them, then that seems like a world where everyone would also be onboard with the idea of addressing animals harmed in crop production. Currently most people think it's fine to stab an animal in the neck for a sandwich, so they're not going to be bothered about crop deaths are they. There are methods which can either eliminate or massively reduce the number of crops deaths - vertical farming etc. But currently there is no reason for these to be adopted en mass for the reason of avoiding crop deaths, because there is no general demand for avoiding crop deaths.
While a vegan bodybuilder might eat more while bulking, they offset that by eating less when cutting. You could say that being a bodybuilder is immoral because they choose to have a body that uses more resources, but then that goes for all athletes. All athletes choose to do more physical activity(and therefore use more energy) than is strictly necessary for their health.
The same point was made about weed. The "could be used medically" point is only valid when applied. What's the point in saying "could help with addiction and PTSD" if you'll just use it on a Friday night for no reason, and with no prescription?
I recently discovered your channel and am really enjoying it. I appreciate the respect you show to not only your guests, but also to the subject matter itself. Their are enough Matt Dillahunty types, rudely telling people to go F themselves, and thoughtlessly dismissing arguments that are atleast worthy of some consideration.
@@thyikmnnnn Alex ends up dissapeairng in philosophical critique that adresses theoretical Gods and contributes very little himself. Drew adresses Gods people actually believe in, reseacrhes topics and often gives it his own spin based on his own expertise.
23:21 I very much enjoy the sense of pride I felt come from you when describing how you overslept a 1pm exam. I felt that, as a former engineering student, and I am glad to know that we are like creatures
I think your point about unnecessary suffering doesn't quite land. If we try to steelman the vegan position for a moment: what if their being publicly buff and vegan convinces people to go vegan, making the extra animals they caused to die ultimately worth it. So we can acknowledge the excess food they eat as a kind of necessary evil. Personally, I find the idea that vegan bodybuilders may be doing something wrong to forward a greater good WAY easier to accept than that "unnecessary suffering isn't always wrong."
Vegan bodybuilders are some of the best advocates for veganism. They are the Tesla Roadster of the vegan expansion roadmap. That argument felt more like an attempt at muddying the water around his moral shortcomings. Unusual for him.
Would you agree that overweight meat-eaters are worse than fit meat-eaters? And would you agree that fit meat-eaters are worse than people who hunt their own food? If that is the case, then vegans' worst enemy are not necessarily meat eaters, but rather the ones who are overweight.
You are agreeing with his point, unnecessary animal suffering is not a bad thing by itself but it is a thing that is bad in a specific context/spectrum
This is why I dislike the unnecessary suffering argument when it should be a rights based argument. Crop deaths are not rights violations but intentionally killing an animal bred for slaughter is a rights violation
This is why Vegetarianism makes the most sense to me, unless one would think that petroleum derived fertilizers will be around forever and/or is actually good for the soil/farmland in the long term.
@@jessehoffman2726 exploiting cows for dairy and grounding up male chicks would still qualify as rights violations so how does vegetarianism make sense to you?
@@paulaagam5071 On a small scale and organic community level of agriculture those issues you mentioned should not be a thing (think of well cared for backyard pet hens that abandon their unfertilized eggs). You are going to wanna argue with your obtuse & tunnel like vision approach to these topics I can already tell, so this is my final reply to you. I think that humans should be caretakers of the Earth having a symbiotic type of relationship with the animals and nature.
I agree that humans should be caretakers for animals but that’s why animal sanctuaries exist. They wouldn’t be for profit and if you ignore practical realities, an idealized unfertilized egg from a backyard hen could be convincing. However there are issues with that such as hens that would produce eggs at an unnatural rate due to artificial selection and the whole reason for taking care of a hen is predicated on the hen producing eggs for you. And if the hen stops producing eggs, then if you want more, it would entail breeding. You can see this play with any animal that produces a commodity like sheep. Sheep are artificially bred to produce more wool and it is unnatural for them to the point where they require to be sheared. If wool was no longer a commodity, sanctuaries for sheep may implement altruistic breeding programs to promote health, another example is pugs who have breathing problems. Im just curious to know what is the trait that if true of a human would give you the same attitude for their exploitation. I’m sure you’ll ignore this since you’ve made it clear you’re too ideologically dug in to converse but then why even comment in the first place?
it's mind boggling that Alex only has 750k subs. His channel delivers some of the most groundbreaking, high production value content ever. I was convinced he was AT LEAST at a million!
I'm a vegan now partially thanks to Alex introducing me to the subject. It's surreal and dissappointing to see how he's regressed back to crop death arguments and lukewarm lip service "objections" to factory farming. He's intentionally confused, because it's more convenient for him to be in a state of perpetual confusion without looking for an answer, than finding the answer (which vegans are all too happy to tell him if he'll listen). It's ethical procrastination in other words. But luckily i carried on my own research in the subject and found much better mentors, so ima be a vegan for life and i will never turn my back on the animals like he did. He did a lot for the vegan community even though it was short lived and he kinda sabotaged much of his messaging by the end.
I think that depends on what you are expecting to hear from him now that he’s not vegan anymore. To me, the segment in this video seemed in no way anti-vegan, and it seems like he’d still encourage other people to be vegan if they thought that would be a feasible choice. All I heard was that he had a new line of thinking to consider as well which he then went into detail. He did not use the vegan bodybuilder idea to condemn veganism in any way, he merely explained how that’s another ethical consideration for him now. To me it’s honestly very frustrating to see how quick the vegan community is to turn on him when I think it’s very clear that he still absolutely agrees that factory farming is unethical.
@@musicalwarrior9079the problem is that he claims he can't be vegan because of some undefined health reasons that he won't talk to anyone about improving and then his moral argument changes at the same time. Seems dishonest as a philosopher to so obviously change your moral arguments to align with your actions, rather than the other way around.
@@ande5460 Probably because preaching over an issue is rarely going to be as convincing as actually experiencing it yourself. If people say veganism is easy, then try it and discover it is not, the underlying arguments also become weaker.
or maybe, hear me out: all the super strong vegan arguments are just echo chambers that turn a relativly simple philosophical idea into a fundamentalist cult? "Don't cause unnecessary suffering". That's really everything it is about. This concept is as simple and true as it is unachievable in its pure form in reality. Now choose which compromises you are willing to accept.
Vegan bodybuilding isn't unethical. An increase in demand of calories from plants increases demand in cropland. To say that it's unethical requires you to show that more deaths occur on cropland than on wildland. And that data doesn't exist as far as I'm aware.
I disagree with your reasoning for this point. On wildland, death is replaced by more life, it is a constant motion. So for sure there is more death in the wild, but thats because theres more life to begin with. And surely nobody would say that life in itself is a bad thing because it will end. Additionally, we probably all agree that an acre of wildland is a more ethical use of that land than an acre of cropland, where the only life is nonsentient plants. That said, I still think the bodybuilding/crop death argument is a terrible excuse for taking the life and rights of many more animals unnecessarily. Vegan bodybuilding is not unethical because it can lead to more people being vegan. And even in a world where everyone is vegan, where perhaps vegan bodybuilding would be unethical (given that somehow we still cant find a way to produce crops without crop deaths), that still doesnt provide a justification for harming a greater number of animals to a greater extent.
Two things I will say in regards to the veganism argument is that I don’t think the condemnation of vegan bodybuilders is really a strong reason to give up on unnecessary suffering as a strong principle. That being said the point about property rights is interesting because I don’t feel like most people, even vegans, would argue that animals have the capacity for property rights so the question is kind of irrelevant. I don’t really know much about these sorts of arguments and might need to read some E. O. Wilson or something
It's too hard and inconvenient, that's why no one actually does it. Some people claim to practice that fad, in the end they just do it for different reasons. (money, attention, belonging, etc...)
Regarding vegan bodybuilding, I think “causing unnecessary suffering” is just inherently undefinable and a slippery slope. Alex is definitely right: Vegan body-builders consume unnecessary calories for muscle growth. Also, vegans do things like ordering take-out and delivery, which includes packaging that inflicts (albeit, indirectly) unnecessary harm (and suffering) on animals and their habitats. At times, vegans shop non-locally, again indirectly harming animals through transportation pollution. At times, vegans drink caloric beverages and caloric snacks based on taste pleasure, not pure caloric maintenance needs. Also, is going for a run “necessary”, if you’re going to have to consume even more vegan calories than you otherwise would have that day? Hell, should you have walked “unnecessarily”? That little stroll cost 90 calories. The analysis quickly slips into absurdity. Vegans, and no one else, can ever meet a strict standard of “cause no unnecessary harm”. “Necessary” requires listing the multitude of human physical and mental states and then asking is each one “necessary”? Is a physically and mentally “healthy” body even necessary? Or is pursuing one’s health kind of a “luxury”, taxed with the health of the planet? Maybe? But also, I don’t think vegans ever strictly mean, “only do exactly what is necessary.” Nutritionists and doctors might (and do) argue that everyone should be adding muscle to their bodies to fend off sarcopenia (muscle loss) in old age. We should be adding to our muscle “retirement plan”, they say. More broadly, they also argue for daily cardio and weight-resistance exercises for physical and mental health benefits. Both of these physical activities, again, require more than “maintenance calories”. They are medically prescribed, but they aren’t absolutely “required” (aka unnecessary) for our daily survival. I think what many vegans are actually trying to say is simply this: “It’s often hard to see the harm I’m causing animals with my daily behavior, but one sure way to know I’ve harmed an animal is if it’s currently in my mouth. So I’m gonna try and do things that don’t involve that.” Of course there’s more. But we (everyone) exhaust ourselves with guilt over personal action. We’re stuck in a seeming contradiction where we’re told constantly that we’re insignificant and our actions don’t matter, but also, every single thing we buy and consume is killing the planet, the future, and somebody, somewhere, right f-ing now, you a-hole! So it makes sense for both vegans and non-vegans to just want to throw up their hands. But anything, everything, you do to try to learn how the things we buy are produced, and the gradual movement away from obviously terrible means of production and toward not-so-obviously terrible ones is a goal I think we can all agree on. It’s exhausting, yes, but I think, if you just find people in your life who are behaving in ways you admire, just stick closer to them. Let them encourage you. Encouragement nourishes the exhausted. Nourishes like a delicious steak din-I mean, whoa. um. a vegetable stir-fry.
Yeah well it’s like you say you are spending your time online now watching TH-cam videos and commenting rather than working extra hours so you can give that money to charity and help people in need. We’re all immoral. Thus, we don’t have any right condemning anyone because we ultimately do the same thing. We are inherently selfish beings. We would rather choose being lazy and play video games over saving the lives of struggling individuals.
>but one sure way to know I’ve harmed an animal is if it’s currently in my mouth That's cherry-picking though. Your definite knowledge of one animal being harmed doesn't undo all the others.
@@eugenehertz5791 I like what you’re saying here, Eugene: Direct knowledge that you didn’t harm something doesn’t counter harm you may be doing elsewhere or undo any broader harm. I think what I mean to say then might work better with a human analogy…? For example, let’s say Person 1 directly kills somebody. Person 2 doesn’t. Person 2 , while avoiding any direct killing, may be harming other people in many indirect ways: Maybe he’s buying a product that uses child labor or a product made by a company or government funding an unjust war. Person 2’s behavior of avoiding directly killing someone doesn’t undo indirect harm they’re doing elsewhere. But I think them continuing to strive to not kill any people directly is an important ethic to maintain. They can work on indirect harm reduction while they continue to not kill any people directly. And I think that’d be the vegan position: I won’t eat any animals myself, and while I avoid that direct action, let’s work on better systems to help reduce indirect harm to animals.
I suppose with veganism, philosophically, it seems a utilitarian approach is best. The greatest good for the greatest number of animals is what we should be aiming for right now, and that seems to be veganism. Once we've reached that baseline, we can refine what it means to be a vegan, in terms of the precise morality of certain vegan actions or practices, and reduce animal suffering and death even further. Personally, I have a theoretical compassion for most animals in the world, in the same way I do for humans, and immense love for most animals I know and meet. So, I act in a certain moral way which aligns with how I feel about most animals in my own life, with the consideration that I would feel the same way about the innumerable animals I don't know, if I were to know them.
Animal Rights is not a utilitarian moment. I think the original Vegans were Animal Rights, the movement has lost its way, and that's why Vegans are arguing about suffering and the greater good.
Would you agree that overweight meat-eaters are worse than fit meat-eaters? And would you agree that fit meat-eaters are worse than people who hunt their own food? If that is the case, then vegans' worst enemy are not necessarily meat eaters, but rather the ones who are overweight.
@musicaltakes So there's nothing wrong with eating meat in your view, right? We could have a discussion about morality but, honestly, I was looking for the vegan discussion.
@musicaltakes _"Utilitarianism combined with Speciesism is the best approach. The greatest good for the greatest number of humans is what we should be aiming for."_ utilitarianism is bs, if some humans gRaping dogs increased more good then bad, then you'd have to say they doing nothing wrong, but it's preferable, whatever maximizes net utility & wellbeing... I'd argue Negative Utilitarianism is the only logical conclusion to ethics, human fun/wellbeing doesn't magically outweigh and make the problem of another's suffering not a problem. That's foolishness. "First do no harm" Think of it this way in Benatarian like analogy, "the absent martians don't need to exist, they can't come into existence and solve a problem of the universe's cancer, however once they do exist you will inevitably have victims who NEED to resolve some PROBLEM they have like Cancer"_ As philosopher inmendham argues, logically speaking or in ethical terms, there's nothing to do here but FIRST resolve/satisfy NEEDs, fix problems that "we" created first by being here. Any goals of well-being come after cause it isn't free and doesn't fix the problem. The universe doesn't NEED you to exist and watch the Superbowl or maximize well-being, that desire only exists after a NEED is programmed into you by evolution. Now I'm not saying there's no positive/good we can produce but it's only beneficiary as a bonus or extra, it doesn't fix any real problem except the one in your mind. There's no urgent need or problem that the happy Martians don't exist except the NEED in your mind, some deprivation or dissatisfaction. Your personal problem and NEED and all the other NEEDs that currently exist are what matters first and foremost. You have a poisoned apple pie, the top priority would be to remove all the poison first and foremost, not make it prettier or tastier and try indulging in it.
I remember being at University 25 years ago. I'd reasoned out (I felt) that there couldn't be free will. My philosophy tutor disagreed. My Dad disagreed. My mum too. I felt really alone as my own analysis was at odds with all the key people in my life. I couldn't change how I thought though. It felt like a burden I carried. I parked it and enjoyed life, tried to do good things. Now there's growing movements in philosophy, physics, neuroscience that are skeptical of free will and it's kind of edifying. I wish I could comfort my lonely 21 yr old self with this knowledge that he was onto something. He'd be too busy eating chow mein pot noodles and playing sensible soccer on the amiga to listen though.
It really depends on your notion of free will. Some view free will as a kind of ability to make a choice between several options (Giulio Tononi of Integrated Information Theory for example). In this sense, there is a kind of freedom. The specific choice itself may be fully determined by pre-existing physical state but not all of that information is consciously accessible so it appears that choice mechanism operates freely. I think it depends on the perspective and information available for something to be seen as more or less free. I.e. we can think of the mind as performing some decision process that from its perspective is free even though from some hypothetical all knowing perspective is not free because of universal laws playing out. This also relates to why people "feel" as though they have free will when consciously choosing - they are unaware of the details of their choice mechanism from their perspective. So another way to think about it, is that it depends on what is meant by a choice. If a choice is literally a selection of some kind, then it doesn't really matter if it's deterministic or not.
@@kcronix8672 Thanks, enjoyed your comment and I haven't come across Giulio Tononi's work so I'll look into it. I agree the definition of free will is central to determining whether it exists or not, and traditionally it's been very loosely defined. The description of free will as a highly complex sorting mechanism managing data and deterministically pumping out choices is not one most would recognise as sitting neatly with their idea of free will. I think that is how you are defining it? On this basis, the "choice" is therefore illusory. There was never any real choice as we would think of it, simply an inevitable, predictable (given enough information on starting conditions and physical principles) flow of action. That picture of free will is aligning with the latest findings of neuroscience which seem to show the decision-making process is complete prior to our conscious awareness of making that choice. If we define free will as above then yes, we could be said to have free will. But then so could anything making an inevitable selection based on pre-existing conditions and available data, which would encompass all life and even any piece of software. We just happen to be a very complex example of this. I don't think we differ categorically then from the simplest program I ever wrote on my BBC or C64 back in the day! We simply have more sophisticated data-gathering apparatus and algorithms, all of which were plumbed into us through genetics and environmental influences.
@righteousshift482 Interesting reply! When I say choice, I mean choice in the sense that the mind conjures up alternatives and then picks what it thinks is the best alternative (for some reasons). The actual picking/selection process of choosing an alternative/choice could be deterministic still and it wouldn't be an illusory choice! Kind of a matter of definitions and ways of thinking about it I believe. I think the "illusion of choice" as you put it emerges as a conflation of choice with non-determinism whereas I am suggesting (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) that the definition of choice appears to leave room for any kind of process; deterministic, or non-deterministic. Addendum: This doesn't mean we are absolutely free or absolutely constrained as it really depends on both our imaginative (in the purely functional/algorithmic/deterministic sense) capability and "ability to enact our imagination"'s capability so-to-speak.
YOU'RE AWESOME ALEX!! I'm looking forward to seeing you hit 1 million and I'm going to be there on your journey every step of the way. Keep up the amazing work that you do!
@@dodumichalcevski it isn't that it is without logical consistency, rather it is more akin to moral whataboutism than an entirely ethical argument. Excessive consumption may have morally dubious implications, so I will increase my morally questionable intake for this reason seems somewhat flawed. The intent argument again is logically consistent but equally problematic under closer inspection as there's essentially an appeal to ignorance of consequence. In this specific case, rather than passing judgement on the actions of others would it be more sensible to examine ones own conscious and make a decision on one's personal actions based on this examination subject to legality.
@@philipnorthfield "so I will increase my morally questionable intake for this reason seems somewhat flawed" - You didn't listen to what he said then. He stated before presenting that argument that his own reasons for not being vegan are practical ones and that the following argument was not meant to be a justification of more animal consumption. And he repeated that last part multiple times throughout. The vegan boldybuilder argument wasn't about his own consumption. It was about how he plans to portray himself in discourse.
@@Elrog3 Yes and it isn't a very sound case, why attempt to portray or forward such a flimsy position that is essentially little more than whataboutism. Although he has stated his personal reasons are practical this is his attempt to justify such a position ethically. It's dubious at best and most importantly unnecessary if he actually requires animal product consumption for health reasons that is more than sufficient justification all this does is forward others an ethical argument to consume animal products, despite his informing his listeners, not so long ago that they should really just accept having hayfever ' because it isn't life threatening just a minor discomfort or inconvenience' rather than take medication due to the animal products contained within. Just because he repeated himself doesn't alter this is his attempt at ethical justification.
CS take on vegan bodybuilding would be similar to humans driving cars because the risk may lead to indirect human deaths and non-human deaths, which have several ways it can cause indirect deaths from encouraging urban sprawl, to increases in traffic, to pollution, from resources to produce the cars to driving the cars etc. This is only one aspect, CS rationale can be extended to pretty much any human output. CS view of veganism is also through a strict lens of utilitarianism while a threshold deontologist/deontologists will view these indirect deaths as not right violations, my intuition would suggest that most vegans are the latter. From a utilitarianism perspective, would CS be able to demonstrate that crops deaths cause more suffering than in the wild, in order to demonstrate that excess calories results in more animal deaths?
Everyone's going insane over the crop death point. Thing is: Alex acknowledged that it didn't allow meat eating,. He just got a less principle view on this argument. It was a slight change in his view on veganism, not a change in whether he thought veganism was ethical and meat eating was ethical
I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction, since God has the capacity to mitigate harm without cost to Himself, which puts Him in a rather unique situation.
@@emilia935 alex said that he believes morality is subjective, so why should people do something that most people believe is morally good? why stop doing something that is morally bad if that particular thing benefits you?
@@mikaela43523 he's a moral emotivist I believe, and humans as social critters are (usually) going to feel distress when we violate the moral standards of others, therefore we're incentivised to adhere to popular notions of goodness
@@emilia935 Yes, god would have that ability but (10:15) Alex claimed that it isn’t *always* morally wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering, So god, as a supposed perfectly moral being, wouldn’t always care about unnecessary suffering, thus the problem of evil not holding up from his prospective.
@@hootowlme Alex also made it clear that inflicting unnecessary suffering is bad in certain situations, hence why he believes factory farming is a moral abomination. To defend his argument from the problem of evil, he would have to argue that the suffering God inflicts is unacceptable in a similar way to the unaccaptability of factory farming.
I've been a fan and subscriber for a long time, from the early cosmic skeptic days. As a recent patron, I just know you'll get to 1 million very soon. I can't wait to read your book.
I lot of people think that beauty is subjective. To my view, there is a subjective element to it, but there is a transcendence to it as well. I think your description of realizing the beauty of a tree points to that.
Bodybuilder here - I agree with Alex that eating calories that are unnecessary to maintain physical health is unethical. However, I disagree that bodybuilding is necessarily an example of this. The best predictors of long-term health are 1) VO2 Max 2) physical strength. There is a huge literature on this. Therefore, when assessing whether or not bodybuilding, or any kind of strength training, is necessary for physical health, one needs to make that judgement within the context of long-term health. What many people fail to realise is that diseases of old age - heart disease and Alzheimer's for example - often begin in one's 30s, yet only become clinically manifest in one's 60s/70s. Exercise - including strength training - is the best defence we have against these diseases.
Were we ever saying that causing unnecessary suffering is always wrong? I thought it was: causing unnecessary suffering for trivial taste pleasure is wrong. Didn't you say "great suffering requires great justification"? This whole discussion about crop deaths feels a bit like a red herring to me. Yes, there is some harm there, you can argue that it's wrong, but it doesn't compare to eating meat, so why focus on it so much? And I think you'll find that most vegans agree that a top-down approach is what's needed... but it's hard to argue for that world while continuing to consume animal products yourself.
@cosmicSkeptic On the topic veganism and body building, you are forgetting a consequentalist analysis: many vegan bodybuilders do it to prove the world you can be strong and develop a lot of muscle without the need of animal products. They are actual influencers, and cover an argument against veganism through proof. They are the living proof
And once they convinced most of the world to go vegan, they're gonna pull the carpet and demand that all body building must end now because it served its purpose? Lmao. Arguing with vegans is never not funny.
I would be very unhappy living an entirely ethical or moral life... Eating meat may be a little "bad" but I'm OK having some extra cake in my life and I am comfortable being imperfect and enjoying life's extras..... There's a line sure and my line is a little further than some people's and not so far as others but I am good with that or I wouldn't do it 😊
@@SangitaSucked Assuming you don't think it's ethical to murder a human to eat their flesh, what's the difference that makes it justifiable to murder an animal to eat their flesh, but not justifiable to murder the human?
I think the issue people had with Dawkins on LBC was the context in which he was talking about Islam. The whole conversation was a response to a Daily Mail article that tried to stoke fears around the so called ‘Islamisation’ of Britain by pointing out Ramadan lights were being seen in London and linking that with declining church attendance. We’ve seen MP’s like Braverman and Anderson in February trying to claim Islamists have taken over Britain which is of course totally unfounded and comes from a place of Zionism and Islamophobia. Dawkins agreeing that the spread of Islam would somehow cause ‘Christian culture’ to decline just feeds into the rhetoric being used by the far-right. Also saying Christianity is ‘inherently decent’ while Islam is supposedly evil is also just hypocritical and historically dishonest. Essentially the timing and context were the main issue.
I can appreciate that a utilitarian such as Alex can associate some moral virtue to veganism. But this displays a fundamental misunderstanding of veganism and exposes a glaring flaw of utilitarianism.
I don't think that Alex is actually a utilitarian. If you loot at his videos, he says that he is a moral emotivist (I think that is the term, but it basically says that all moral statements are actually statements of how you feel). In addition at multiple points in this video (in the veganism section), he concludes that something can't be true because it "would involve condemning things that intuitively don't seem condemnable." and hence that "all it shows us is that the conversation can't be one of a strict principle that unnecessary suffering is always wrong inflicted upon animals for food" (which is not something a utilitarian would say). In addition, I would be genuinely interested to see what you think the glaring flaw in utilitarianism is.
Oof. When a person refers to something as a moral abomination, and yet actively chooses to pay for that moral abomination. All of the other things you said are irrelevant (which you know, hence why you kept giving a disclaimer). But at the end of the day you chose to support something you yourself refer to as a moral abomination. Good stuff.
It’s been a wild year! I remember only a year ago watching first your trolley problems, now you’re a recognized philosopher and political influencer/activist
If only there were a group that said "avoid exploitation as far as practicable" instead of "Never cause unnecessary harm ever". What would that look like? It's just an argument from the futility of obtaining perfection. Nothing more.
I feel that the relatively simple way around your bodybuilder example is the distinction of intent. The unnecessary suffering to animals we tend to advocate against is a deliberate, conscious thing. Crop deaths are, generally speaking, an incidental thing. It's still okay to call for avoiding unnecessary suffering we cause to animals by design, even if there are unfortunate casualties in food production. We should try to fix that as well, but it's realistically much more comparable to accidental roadkill.
Its semantics. You still know, for a fact, that what you are doing is causing extra suffering. End of story. You can argue all you like and use fancy words, but it won't get you anywhere (except soothe yourself into thinking its now okay).
If I remember correctly, you already made the argument that theoretically we should accept a hit to our health if we need to in order to avoid unnecessarily exploiting animals. Apologies if that was someone else, but I somewhat agree. I do think bodybuilding is eating to excess. If there was a societal utility to the body builder's strength, there is a chance it could be offset, but I don't think there are many examples of that.
Would you ever consider getting a computer science or a physics degree? I nearly completed a philosophy minor along with my CS major, and I feel like learning CS gave me a pretty unique perspective on my philosophy courses, particularly thinking about philosophy of language and philosophy of science from a physicalist perspective with an understanding of algorithms. I think philosophy is best done when it's informed by hard science, so this might be something to consider!
You need to be physically active to be healthy. It does not matter if you eat more because you run a lot or because you lift weights. If you are contemplating animal deaths from harvesting you could also contemplate countless other reasons animals might die because of your existence and that is just silly. Like the insects that get killed on your windshield when driving your car. Or the insects and worms when you stroll through a meadow. Bogus arguments for sure, as are the few hundred calories someone doing physical activity which is necessary for health anyway. That is why veganism only goes as far as possible and practicable which in itself is subject to interpretation. Not eating animals makes the most difference. Then there is a long distance in efficacy to the next thing which is to stop wearing animals. Everything else is so minuscule that it does not even make sense to mention it as is eating a few more calories. I think intent is also important. Sure you don't buy meat because you want animals to suffer but by buying you ask someone to intentionally raise animals for slaughter. How they are raised is completely irrelevant because they get slaughtered so soon into their lifespan that having a good life for livestock is at most comparable to a teenager getting killed. When a teenager dies people never say: "But he lived a good life." And there is a difference in being raised to be slaughtered and dying young by accident. Eating animals again because of a few hundred calories someone else is eating is just a cop-out.
If you ever do another podcast with the Majesty of Reason (Joe Schmidth) - please discuss (or rather debate) "Free Will". He is agnostic between compatibilism and libertarianism, where you're an incompatibilist. That would be quite a conversation.
Love listening to your conversations! I especially like the way you avoid the pitfalls of polarization, and maintain a clear head on very divided issues, even Veganism where I know you have a strong opinion. I sometimes talk to people that often are so emotionally attached to the supposed correctness of their belief that simply DISCUSSING why they think what they think becomes difficult (I feel like I saw that with your conversation with Konstantin Kissin recently). So I find that your calm and logical approach is something that I admire a lot and try to do too. Looking forward to any content you might make, Alex.
You're forgetting that some animals are being killed by accident, which yes to the animals doesn't make a difference, but on the other side you have bred animals, you've specifically brought life (and capacity to suffer) into this world and then killed them. The killing is the same, but the reason they're even here is morally condemnable.
Where is the empirical evidence that shows that crop deaths inherently causes negative utility or rights violations? If there is evidence, can we objectively say that the body builder eating extra calories isn't overcoming the negative utility by showing what is possible with veganism, as well as any positive utility that comes along with vegan recruitment?
The strange thing about the vegan bodybuilder argument is that it seems to be falling into the fallacy of absolute perfectionism. I think most vegans agree that it’s absolutely impossible to live a life which truly causes zero harm to animals, that’s simply the way the modern world is. However, vegans take active steps to limit unnecessary suffering. It could be that Alex’s personal standpoint was that any unnecessary suffering is wrong but I think generally this isn’t the perspective of most vegans.
Agreed. I am not vegan, just took steps to reduce meat consumption. My attitude is not to be a perfect model of sustainability among my peers, but rather reduce the impacts I have on both Animal welfare and the climate. I liken it to wanting to do as little collateral damage in war as possible. It will happen, but we actively take steps to limit it.
The vegan bodybuilder "problem" is only a problem on utilitarianism. Vegans who are animal rights activists can of course easily ignore this objection since crop deaths are not rights violations. It just shows that utilitarianism is crap (as usual) when it comes to social justice issues.
Im a little confused because the way you say this makes it sound much more like the vegan rights activists are the crap ones, no? Because when your thinking morally about wether an animal should die or not or if its morally right or not, i dont think the animal is too concerned with rights being imposed on it by humans that cant even communicate w them. Its nice to just say “this animal can die because its death abides by arbitrary laws and rules i made up”. That doesnt sound the most right from a social justice perspective to me, but maybe im not understanding your point
The point raised by Alex wasnt about crop deaths. It was about animal death caused by crop production. For example insects and rodents that die as a result of protecting crops that we need for consumption. Someone who wants to build muscle would require extra calories or protein would need even more crops which in turn means they contribute to more animal suffering. Iam a vegan but this is a point for discussion.
@@Vezmo雨 "animal death caused by crop production" are not rights violations. Not sure why you are talking about "contributing to suffering", I'm not a utilitarian. I'm an animal rights activist. I care about animal rights, not utility (in terms of minimizing suffering, maximizing pleasure).
@@john5927 You're missing the point. Alex wasn't talking about crop deaths. He was talking about animal deaths as a result of crop production. In your initial comment you said "crop deaths are not rights violations".
"Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Do not give heed to all the things that men say, lest you hear your servant cursing you; your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others." -Ecclesiastes 7:20-22
It's a shame that none of them could point out a single healthy plants only study or dietician. I guess a healthy plants only diet would have to exist for there to be a dietician who can advertise it...
@@SteversChed no sweetheart. Blueberry high protein overnight oats for breakfast, tofu tikka masala with kidney beans for lunch and pisto with vegan chorizo for dinner today. 90 grams of protein for my 50kg body weight does me just great
@Alex O'Conner - 1. Junk food is calorically dense. Calories are a necessary nutrient. 2. Vegan body builders are some of the best vegan activists because they demonstrate that extreme fitness is possible on a plant based diet. This must easily OFFSET any surplus crop deaths they cause, and makes it unlike the non-vegan causing unnecessary death and suffering. I am surprised if you haven't considered these obvious rebuttals.
let's create a hypothetical. person creates factory farm, factory farm generates person millions, person uses millions to invest in the vegan industry. Is that moral in your eyes because they've "offset" the suffering they've caused?
@bdnnijs192 depends if you are utilitarian or believe in deontological ethics. As utilitarian I would say "yes of course". Hence why it's justifiable to live our human lives which inherently harm others. We have to be a force for good and positive change.
@@danielli3288 in theory, yes, but in practice, I would argue that you'd be fighting to get back to net 0. Factory farming and slaughter harm more than just the animals, and the scale of the harm is so vast. "Earning to give" is a tenet of Effective Altruism. Sometimes it can be more effective then working directly in the non-profit sector.
I wonder on his veganism point if we could revise “unnecessary suffering” to “a demonstrable increase in net suffering”. Thus consuming extra calories of vegan food wouldn’t necessarily be a problem since in the wild animals suffer a lot so killing animals in crop fields doesn’t demonstrably increase net suffering.
@@bdnnijs192 Do you think it is okay to “humanely” slaughter a human for food? If not, what what ethical difference between the animal and the human, in your view, would make it okay to “humanely” slaughter one for food but not the other?
@@bdnnijs192 Well raising an animal or a human for food I would object to it on the basis that it’s a severe violation of their right to life even if it increases wellbeing. But I’m saying that, in terms of wellbeing (since I was commenting on Alex who was talking about wellbeing), the animals who die in crop production live in the wild and often experience extreme suffering so it’s not clear if putting up crops increases net animal suffering. I’m not sure what you’re getting at by talking about humans suffering in the wild.
Here's how Alex decieves you and himself in the vegan section of this video: 1) I could debunk the crop deaths arguments like so many already have, but veganism isn't supposed to be a numbers game to see how low we can get the death toll, and that any number higher than 0 is a failure. It's about changing consumer's mindset around animals. The way we think about animals determines how animals will live in perpetuity. Across a long enough time horizon, our intentions towards animals is what matters the most. He is being too short sighted about the consequences and that's why he believes intentions don't matter. 2) He creates a false dichotomy with the bodybuilding vegan scenario. That we must can either condemn or praise the vegan who eats more than he needs.There is absolutely no reason why we can't say a vegan bodybuilder is ever so slightly worse behaved than a vegan who eats just enough to live. It would be an incredibly nitpicky thing to do, but you can do it. I guess the complexity of life doesn't fit neatly enough into Alex's simple yes/no flow chart. 3) He still only approaches veganism from the utilitarian metric of suffering. He seems to either forget or intentionally exclude concepts of harm and exploitation. Here's a reminder of what "Humane" farming is like when applied to a human context: "would you like to be pampered by your overlords but must do exactly what they want and never be free? Would you like to be painlessly slaughtered without being made aware? No harm done right?" Of course this is wrong - and he showed this to be wrong in his conversation with Peter Singer. "Humane" Killing is robbing the person of future experiences. It's a form of external control and interference with their sovereignty / bodily autonomy. Do human rights restrictions have no value because they impede utilitarians from forcibly shaping the world into their vision of suffering-free utopia? If he believes this, it leads me to ask if he was ever a vegan or just an edgy utilitarian? 4) His rule of "I would only prescribe something that I can stick to" is nonsensical and has led him to irresponsible messaging on social media. Given what he still believes about veganism, why on earth can't he advocate for healthy able-bodied people to follow a vegan diet? His rule has no moral grounding, seems like an emotionally-driven choice made to prevent idiots from calling him a hypocritte.
It is less reducing unnecessary suffering and more eliminating unnecessary abuse. One cannot say that one is abusing animals that die as collateral in crop protection. At the very least not the same kind of abuse that is eating their bodies and stealing the things their bodies make
The Patreon-exclusive QnA will be going live shortly at www.patreon.com/alexoc
First
Veganism isn't about utilitarianism, it's a ethically stance against oppression!
You must know that, and it certainly is not a diet, people can have all the calories they want and be more unhealthy than the vast meat eating fast-food group!
I'm disappointed and sad, you keep suppressing animals and who knows how many more you justify oppressing!
The right thing to do is to not oppres and be for liberating all, except the oppressors themselves of course, that would be downright stupid... and vegans are not... 💚🌿
@@Charlotte.4C gay
And it's actually not about if the animals don't know that they are slaughtered.
But we should care..., if we don't want to encourage people to be desensitized and careless, potentially making sociopaths out of decent people!
It's about us/you/me and our ethics, what we do..., bringing us "down" to a level otherwise animals that aren't humans are on, which will have even more devastating consequences, than the ones we are seeing now!
A level where we can't help ourselves, driven by pure instinct!
Is that really a recommendable guideline for a civil society!?!?
I think not, now you...?
Alex tell more about your daily routine. What have you been doing. And any special projects?
If this is about drugs, I don’t want to watch this video. Im sick of the subject and sick of the people that promote it.
Smooth, almost didn't catch that one! 😂
I know, right? This guy is just OBSESSED with drugs!!!
Peter Hitchens? Is that you?
You seem stressed, you should try some Marijuana
I don't like you.
Wear a disguise and have Peter Hitchens back on.
😂
@@arnesl929 Why am I picturing Alex wearing comedian Ryan George's fake mustache interviewing a very perplexed Peter Hitchens.
Ali g style
hahahaha
And then make this a yearly thing
A conversation with "Earthling Ed" on veganism would be a worthwhile investment of time.
They already had two of those.
@@Wlof25 I should've looked! Digging now... 🙂
@@Wlof25 Yeah but not since Alex stopped being vegan. That’s the conversation I’m looking forward to.
I was just about to post this exact same comment
Alex spoke about this in his patreon Q&A
Would you be interested in debating me on veganism and related topics like why you quit, whether or not it was justified, and advocacy like individual boycotting vs legistlation?
Continue showing theres no arguments in favour of the vegan cult
Go fix ur own mental health problems
Holy crap!!! I haven’t seen you around in a while. Not in a bad way… I mean woah! Brings back memories. I’m happy to see you’re still active on TH-cam dude.
Alex engages in philosophical discussion/thought for a living and has been formally trained at one of the best universities in the world, with all due respect, he would run circles around you
I would be interested in watching that.
Alex's logic got me to veganism, I thank him for that; vegan bodybuilders aren't going to take me away from it.
Same here!
and neither will Alex take me away from veganism.
Same, I've done a lot of research on veganism since Alex helped me become vegan to know this is not some achilles heel to veganism.
@@Lithiumgurl210yeah to me this is just an example of something I already thought, outside of maintaining the habit, I’m not a purist when it comes to veganism. What that means in practice isn’t that I eat animal products, but that I consider how there are still, even if veganism isn’t bad, more ethical ways to be vegan. Including unnecessary calories. That doesn’t make veganism bad though, it’s just not a free ticket to moral purity. So to answer Alex - a body builder is condemnable (provided they don’t boost veganism to others) in the sense that they could do better.
@@Lithiumgurl210of course there's no achilles heel to veganism, it's an achilles heel to the explicit reason of becoming a vegan being that you want to cause no unnecessary harm, but the point of veganism isn't to do literally no harm but rather to minimize it
It isn't Alex's fault for giving up veganism. He doesn't have the free will to make the conscious decision.
O my
If you’re vegan, you are privileged to be so. Don’t be fucking ridiculous..
Dawkins said he evolved as a carnivore.
True
Hunter-gatherers consumed around a third of their calories from meat.
Red meat and preserved meat may be bad for your pancreas.
I agree that excessive calorie intake shouldn’t be a position for vegans/bodybuilders, neither should be unnecessary holidays and plane journeys or any sort of excessive consumption.
But you don’t have to be a bodybuilder, you can be a normal vegan a minimalist.
Just because vegan bodybuilders aren’t doing their best, shouldn’t make you go back consuming animal products.
Soemoe told me not to hit my wife, I responded by pointing out they they shop at Primark, which causes suffering because of their Sweatshops. They realised that hitting my wife was justifiable.
Precisely. I do want to mention, alex clearly agrees with that last part.
His whole point for bringing up excess caloric intake/vegan bodybuilders is that we *don't* intuitively view those things as wrong, even if one of their effects is extra animal suffering. I think a lot of ppl heard him start making this argument and assumed he was presenting it at face value when it was really just setup for his later point about double effect.
Vegan bodybuilders... so I don't have to be vegan, because I'm too low in iq to prepare my meals... brilliant, Alex.
Whataboutism.
On vegan body builders. Take the approach of vegan body builders as role models and examples of positivity in the vegan community. Many vegan body builders are open about their diet and an influence for others that you can eat vegan and be strong. Take the scenario:
Body builder A: Over eats vegan food and gains muscle in solitude
Body builder B: Over eats vegan food, but had a positive impact on the veganism movement and collectively convinces 1 person to become vegan. Thus, reduce suffering once more.
Minimal vegan A: Eats a minimal amount to survive. Does not influence others.
If Body builder B convinces one person to be vegan, or even one person to reduce animal consumption. Then is it justified?
When considered a utilitarian approach. All scenarios should be considered.
Especially when the discourse around veganism is still currently at "where do you get your protein?"
So needless killing is okay because you’re assuming the bodybuilder offsets it. So, by your own standard, it’s okay to go hunting if you offset your suffering in another area.
@@CAPTAINCOOK406 If by needless killing you are referring to crop deaths - only a vegan majority world would care enough to eliminate crop deaths, so if a vegan bodybuilder furthers veganism and moves people toward that better future and inspires change, it's something that isn't morally horrible to me. But someone shooting an animal in the head is morally horrible to me and does absolutely nothing to work toward that better future for animals. I don't see isolated examples of either the hunting claim or buying from a local farm working for the entire global population either (and I still would argue against these people doing less harm than a vegan because there are so many products and industries outside of food and outside of meat that they will not boycott like a vegan does). I can imagine a global vegan world in theory and an end to crop deaths - and all deliberate animal exploitation. So for the hunter/local farm supporter, there is no end to animal exploitation/no rights will ever be given to animals, but the vegan world would have all that. I hope that makes some sense. For me at least, that is my thoughts. I wasn't the original person who made the comment so they might have a completely different view to me but I have thought about it similarly in response to what Alex said.
@@Pinklerx Seems like a lot of guesswork to justify vegan bodybuilding, especially when there are alternatives to representing the cause that don’t require needless killing. Some level of deaths in the production of crops will always exist, so the problem will always be there.
@@PinklerxThat’s like a hunter advocating for hunting and killing wild animals because it’s more moral than factory farming. Does that then mean it’s ok to hunt and kill animals since it’s reducing animal suffering? Your leap in logic is incredibly flawed. All people who advocate for vegan body builders are doing are mental gymnastics designed to justify their personal animal cruelty.
It’s almost like people can’t live without harming animals and making this “us vs them” mentality is just a cult for people hoping to take the mental high ground. We should just advocate for reducing animal harm from a top down level without being full of our selfs and attacking everyone who harms more than us while doing the same thing to a lessor degree. Because using the current logic right now the person who lives off of their own persistent farming without consuming any products from stores are the only people who can talk about being moral. Everyone else are just purposeful (or in some cases unpurposful) animal murders who complain about other animal murders.
How would you expect a top-down regulation approach to solving factory farming to work if the citizenry is not sufficiently on board with a boycott of the industry? If government is going to do anything about factory farming then it's a prerequisite that a sufficient portion of the population agrees with such a measure, which requires convincing enough people that the industry is morally unacceptable, entailing that they ought to be boycotting it as a bare minimum.
As with most things an appropriate substitute is the best way to go about it instead of beating people with the stick, artifical meat.
Also, ending Factory Farming, yet still eating meat and consuming dairy products, would not be scalable, or, possibly, affordable.
I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, to the point that I will probably get quite a lot of stick for it. I don't think you could make a convincing enough argument to me, that would stop me from eating meat (however it's produced). You can argue from a moral standpoint, from a practical standpoint. I will always prefer to eat meat. I know I'm not any type of representative for the wider public, but I know I can't be convinced to even boycott the farming industry, let alone go full vegan.
@@chriswilliamsCKG I can run you through the basic logic if you're up for it.
I assume that you think it is not morally acceptable to murder a human to eat their flesh, given that you have other options available that do not require murder (so we're not talking about some desperate survival situation).
If so, then what's the difference that makes it morally acceptable to do it to other animals, but not acceptable to do it to humans?
Do you agree with the theory behind it but you just dont care enough? Or just purely not convinced @@chriswilliamsCKG
Can't express how excited to see you being interested in art history. Can't wait to see how that pans out.
Congrats on the announcement of your dual only fans with Sam Harris
This comment made me audibly wheeze extremely loudly, for some reason. Congratulations.
Two Men, One Moral Landscape
@@SzaamHahahaha
Only farms*
The crop death / vegan bodybuilder objection only exists because these industries are themselves not Vegan, if they were they would actively work to prevent those crop deaths to the maximum degree possible. But as it is, in animal agriculture it would be absolutely bizarre to work to prevent the deaths of mice if the end goal of your industry was to kill cows, pigs etc
I don't think it's bizarre at all to limit collateral casualties. The cows pigs and chickens have to die in order for the process to be successful, the mice and such don't have to be
Another thing to note is that we don't know if more crops is bad or good because we don't have a study on the counterfactual. Wild habitat is already a breeding ground for predation and other forms of animal suffering. It's possible that more crop land prevents more death and suffering. Until we have good studies on this, we can't really argue that vegan body builders or junk food eaters are causing more death than the counterfactual of eating healthy and not building muscle
That's not true. The point is about growing more crops than is "necessary". If you accept that, even if farmers prevented insect deaths to the maximum possible degree, some insects would still die, then it follows that we should still only grow as few crops as possible. And if anybody wants to eat more crops than is necessary to survive, then they are still causing unnecessary animal suffering.
I just don't think that's true in practise though. I worked on a very small scale eco farm owned and run by two young environmentalists. They only grew and ate vegetables and didn't use pesticides. They would have had the lowest environmental impact you could possibly imagine for a farm. However, the moment they saw a pest (in this case field mice and certain birds) they had no qualms about catching and killing it instantly. At first i thought those deaths seemed avoidable, but they explained that even small pests can have a major impact on their livelihood because the farm was so small.
I kind of realised then that the strict version of veganism just isn't workable, no matter the scale of the farm or the values of the people behind it. At the end of the day, we humans are still part of a food chain and an ecosystem, so competition with other animals is unavoidable and will always result in some suffering.
I'm not saying this to try and disprove veganism or anything, I just think that vegan movement could do with being more aware of the inherent competition for resources and suffering required to grow food for humans. It doesn't surprise me that most vegans today live in cities and are very disconnected from nature (and our place in it) in a way that small scale farmers are not.
Cope harder.
I know that you weren't arguing against veganism ofc, but here's my two cents. I agree that there can't be a strict rule that just any choice causing unnecessary suffering is wrong. Or, at the very least, we can't say any such choice is wrong on the same level that eating factory farmed meat is wrong. Perhaps we can say that eating more veggies than necessary is akin to reckless driving at night- it's obviously endangering others, so it's wrong, but it's not the same as hitting others on purpose because you find it funny. This is because the former doesn't have the same level of certainty of harm as the latter- if you recklessly drive, you might not even hurt anybody. If you eat more veggies than necessary, you might not even be responsible for a crop death. However, I think that we can say that realistically, the vegan eating extra calories is really causing negligible harm, and the vegan bodybuilder is helping to convince others to go vegan, thereby producing much more benefit than harm. But more essentially, we can say that any choice which causes significantly less suffering AND which negligibly impacts quality of life (or even improves it) is worth making and is incumbent upon ourselves to make. End of essay lol
I was looking for this comment haha.
But also I think we have to be clear about what we mean by "necessary". Like, necessary for what? To survive or to be happy?
I say this because if we only want to survive, I guess we could do it by eating only a hyper dense, hyper efficient growing algae fortified with b12, but then if we only ate that we would unalive ourselves because of the exhaustion of eating only that (maybe I'm exaggerating but I think you get my point).
Now, if something is really and absolutley unnecessary and causes more suffering I think it is wrong (it could be the case of growing plants to make cigarretes or drinkable alcohol) but there's another argument that could be in favor of consuming slightly more plants. If there are less animals in the crop fields than in the wilderness that was there before, it could be causing less suffering because there are less animal in total; and is not like wild animals live suffering-free lives.
Even then, the connection between eating more veggies and animal death isn't at all clear. Firstly, the vast majority of the world's crops are grown to feed livestock, so even the most gluttonous vegan is contributing less to that problem than a frugal carnivore. Secondly, the relationship between purchasing plants and the death of small animals on the farm is quite variable, it likely depends substantially on the exact crop, the growing location, and the policies of the company. It isn't even clear to me if a larger farm necessarily implies more death. It could be the case that larger farms displace more animals and hence actually have to kill fewer in the long term.
@@AFastidiousCuber yeah
Similar can be said for animals, if you eat a part of an animal that has already been killed, and you aren't 100% responsible for that death, then it's akin to your reckless driving at night point
You could argue with an emotivist for centuries. So long as they're emotivist, they're free to flip flop value hop as their boos and yums travel with the winds as they do.
The vegan bodybuilder argument is essentially the same as saying "You can't say that causing unnecessary suffering to children is always wrong because we're all wearing clothes made by kids in sweatshops and it doesn't seem right to condemn everyone wearing clothes." This doesn't invalidate the claim that severely beating kids for fun is wrong.
The point about vegan bodybuilders is specifically addressing the existence of unnecessary excess when engaging in a behavior that harms animals. So to add onto your analogy, beating kids is wrong, and so is chronic, unnecessary shopping, which is terrible for a variety of reasons. I think that's a totally fair point to make.
@@pyotrvoitsekhovski9402 You can make clothes ethically, you can't beat kids ethically.
@musicaltakes How did you get "always" from reading a single comment? If you're talking about vegans in general then be more accurate in your writing. To address your point, it's an analogous argument. The claim "Causing unnecessary suffering to adults is wrong" is the same argument structure as "Causing unnecessary suffering to children is wrong."
@@pyotrvoitsekhovski9402 But I think we can all agree beating kids to death every day for no reason is morally far worse than buying clothes that may have been made by kids. No one is saying child labor is morally justified but to equate the two is disingenuous.
Always is always. If you say: "I always drive to work", but on occasion you take a bus, you're not always driving to work are you? Alex is talking semantics and philosophy. If you dont like him being precise and nitpicky with his language, go to another channel.
Just like environmentalism, we don't need to take an either/or approach. Thinking that the movement would work better as a top down movement doesn't mean it's not important for individuals to change and to encourage that change. In fact, it's necessary.
That said, I do prefer to think of veganism as a philosophy rather than a prescriptive way of living. "Recude the amount of unnecessary harm you cause" is a realistic and consistent way of living. It's not possible to entirely prevent unnecessary harm and I do know there are vegans out there who think that's what they're doing by being vegan. Those people are, of course, wrong. That doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Individuals constantly working to reduce the amount of unncessary harm they cause does make the world a better place to live in. I think its possible to believe that causing unnecessary harm is wrong across the board while also acknowledging that it's going to happen anyways and we seem to tolerate it to some degree even if we think it would be best to do otherwise. Vegan bodybuilders included.
I don't think vegans think they're preventing unnecessary harm entirely, just reducing it as much as they can.
very interesting comment. Not vegan at all---- but that makes a lot of sense and haven't seen it spoken about like that
@@dolph3578most vegans think of it like this, that is ethical vegans.
@@dolph3578 veganism is about reducing harm and suffering, so that's strange to see you say
Agreed!
On the vegan bodybuilder thing, why would a vegan not just say "Sure, vegan bodybuilding is sligthly unethical for the reasons you mention, but it's still a ton better than regular bodybuilding. In fact, what's immoral is bodybuilding itself, vegan or not, just because it requires so many extra calories. So if someone is going to do bodybuilding, it's still much better for them to be vegan than not. And so vegan bodybuilding is not unethical enough to condemn. Sure, there are virtually always things we can do to be even more ethical than we are, but we don't need to be saints to try our best to do right."
I'm not a vegan at all but that doesn't seem like a big problem for them
This is weird because I'm a vegan but I'm now going to play devil's advocate and provide a counter to this ☠️ funny that we're essentially arguing each other's positions. Philosophy and all that eh 😃
I guess that the idea is, yes a vegan can say this in response, but then surely a meat eater could respond back with "there are virtually always things we can do to be even more ethical than we are, but we don't need to be saints" as a justification for eating animals? I don't think any vegan (myself included) would find that an adequate response, but I intuitively want to accept that line of reasoning for vegan bodybuilding. It sets up a situation where if we want to uphold the unnecessary suffering principle, we have to draw a line somewhere, and I guess it's unclear where it should be drawn. Goes without saying that this doesn't exactly make me drop veganism altogether as a philosophy at its root - just an interesting consistency test, I guess
The point I draw from Alex's commentary is that even if we are to concede that vegan body building is more ethical than nonvegan body building, we're still causing pain and suffering to animals that would not have otherwise died due to our societal actions. Why is their pain any less worthy of consideration than a farm animals? Obviously genocide is worse morally than murder (to most people I'd reckon), but we can still hold to the idea that not committing genocide is not itself a justification for murder. So then we can go deeper still and posit: "I seek to cause as little unnecessary suffering as reasonably possible, the philosophic ideal is to guide my decisions not be the standard I live by". That is perfectly acceptable but that type of moral does not then necessitate veganism as a behavior because one could then argue "eating meat is the best, most efficient way for me to act ethically towards the reduction of suffering for x, y, z reasons" and still potentially be entirely correct because they are intending to live by that ideal in the best way they know how.
this long ramble is basically my musings on how veganism as an ideology breaks apart at a practical level. thank you for this great comment!
Once you vegans outlawed body building, you must enforce the smallest healthy BMI. Eating for pleasure and becoming fat is in no way better than body building.
The next step must be to forbid tall people to reproduce, as their total caloric demand is higher given the same BMI of 20.
Once the entire human population is small and thin, it's time to leave the surface of the earth where you can step on ants and go underground. Genetically enlargen your eyes to receive enough photons in the darkness and modify your skin to produce Vitamin D and insulte your body's heat better.
Be moral. Take the gray alien vegan pill.
@@price69420in that case everything breaks down at a practical level (if you dog deep enough). He does say that: " in the future, you can avoid deaths maybe... But we're not there yet , come talk to me when we are" but after harvester deaths there will be mining and transportation deaths for fertilizer, there will be farmed land vs wild land (depriving animals of wild habitat). Etc... but I still think intention makes up for most of the argument and clearly once you realize that a non-vegan choice can't have a non-intended death it's hard to make an argument for non-vegan path.
Also, animals in crop deaths are in the wrong place at the wrong time, they're not put there on purpose, nor are they caged. It's like being Ok with vehicular homicide because sometimes on some cars brakes fail and kill bystanders.
Very much agree, would love Alex to response to this argument.
The Vegan Bodybuilder argument is interesting but I want to mention some counterpoints...
1. Being a vegan bodybuilder is a huge promotion for veganism. If even just one person converted to veganism because of you, you'd have made up for the extra calories impact.
2. The alternative to cropland is often natural eco-systems with inherent suffering caused by predation. While it would be questionable to claim that cropland is more ethical than natural systems, we should at least use the approximate suffering within natural systems as a baseline to compare cropland to, effectively lowering the relative impact of cropland compared to animal farms.
3. In the future, harvesting methods that greatly reduce or even eliminate animal suffering are possible to implement. But before we can raise the bar and demand that next level of ethical standard, veganism must become the norm, bodybuilders included.
4. In terms of voting with your money, eating more and thus buying more is essentially more votes towards ethical agriculture.
5. Any positive change is better than no positive change. The difference between being a meat eater bodybuilder and a vegan bodybuilder is gigantic compared to the difference between being a normal vegan as opposed to a vegan bodybuilder. So while you can argue against absolutism you can't really argue against veganisms principles to reduce suffering and increase prosperity.
6. I think it's reasonable to say that the value bodybuilders get from bodybuilding is perhaps greater than the mere hedonistic pleasure of animal consumption. It's not a strong reason by itself, but it is one more score for the vegan bodybuilder.
7. The particular crops that vegan bodybuilders are likely to consume more of are peas (via protein powder) and beans. In my understanding these plant foods cause far less animal suffering and death than many other plant crops. Yet another win for the vegan bodybuilder.
Food for thought 😉
One more point:
A practical approach to veganism is to reduce suffering as much as possible, without changing your lifestyle much. For example, with modern meat substitutes and alternatives, the average diet can be replaced with a vegan diet with minimal change in lifestyle or loss of taste pleasure.
With this practical view, it's unreasonable to expect a bodybuilder to stop bodybuilding. You'd be asking them to give up their lifestyle, potentially losing friends etc, for some abstract greater good.
However, if a bodybuilder can be vegan and still be a bodybuilder, then they don't have to give up their lifestyle. They can keep doing everything they're doing now, but with less suffering behind it. If there are going to be x number of bodybuilders in the world regardless, they might as well be vegan bodybuilders.
One more to add. According to Joseph poore's oxford study (the biggest of its kind) eating the best sustainable mixed diet emits at least 3 times more CO2 than being vegan. So unless the vegan bodybuilder is eating the food of 3 people each day the vegan bodybuilder is making less harm than the garbage picker meat eater, let alone the one who is buying meat from the supermarket.
@@emiliohoms6491it’s less harm… but still causing unnecessary suffering. Even regular vegans are causing unnecessary suffering by not doing activism during their free time = immoral.
@@pepperpig649 would you say morality is on a spectrum as opposed to absolutes though?
@@ailanmcdonald6689 Yeah it is on a spectrum. We can always become less immoral. But we don’t want to. We would rather play video games than work extra to donate to charities that save children suffering from malaria or any other diseases. Hence why we have no right to condemn others for their actions when we ourselves wouldn’t do our best to save the lesser fortunate. Think of it like a cereal jiller (yt being weird censoring comments) who jills once a month unnecessarily, judging someone who does it once a week. And they know it’s unnecessary but won’t change. These are vegans condemning meat eaters.
“Reduce suffering” will lead to us becoming ones and zeros in a computer where our existence won’t cause unnecessary suffering to others. With no unique features, no individuality, no way to accidentally step on an ant, and no way to gain an advantage over others. I am repulsed by this idea.
I feel that viewing Veganism as a movement to change the Overton’s window is also a useful way to consider it, rather than as an individual boycott. If more people are vegan, over time-hopefully-it may become common sense to farm in ways that reduce animal suffering. Just a thought.
I'm a muslim and since your debate with Muhammad Hijab.. I was like.. wait, this atheist actually feels honest as opposed to what I'm used to (basically, mostly resorting to irony or ridicule and winning the crowd, instead of actually appreciating the theists arguments and trying to answer with reason.. I've been subscribed and watching your content since then.. within reason had become my favourite thing on youtube. Thanks for all the efforts ☕
Welcome!
Hijab is the lowest of the low. Pond scum.
That's really cool to hear mate.
What did you think yo Hijab's performance during the debate?
Also, did you watch the video Alex did after the debate detailing Hijab's behaviour? If so, what did you think of that?
If you are interested in more empathetic, calm atheist content, Genetically Modified Skeptic is an amazing channel. He tries to have conversations with people and come to understandings, rather than trying to convert people to atheism
That debate with Muhammad Hijab was interesting as, on that particular occasion (I don't know if it is how mr Hijab usually conducts himself), it seemed like Muhmmad was playing to the crowd rather than the points raised by Alex during that conversation.
It was also interesting that Alex had been restricted in recording the conversation for himself and the apparent edited elements which appeared to have been inserted in afterwards.
From a utilitarian point of view, there is no evidence to suggest crop deaths from agriculture causes more harm / suffering than the wild deaths taking place on the same area of land.
Those wild animals live and die on that land already suffer from predation. A cricket will either: be eaten alive by a bird, or die from a combine harvester. In contrast; farm animals are intentionally artificially bread into existence for the purpose of being harmed and killed. And realistically, those excess deaths all involve horrific slaughterhouse dungeons.
In other words: the crop deaths argument might not even exist at all. That means any anti-vegan arguments using it as a foundation (vegan junk food, vegan bodybuilders etc) are being propped up by something that disappears when properly examined.
From a utilitarian standpoint, ecosystems cannot function without a reciprocal, interdependent relationship between life and death. Of course I would love it if no person or animal would ever die or experience pain or suffering. Trying to reduce this death and suffering is morally and ethically correct.
But it just isn’t how ecosystems function. Instead of focusing on the well being of individual animals (or in the case of vegans, animals that most closely remind themselves of humans ie mammals), the moral and ethical imperative should be to care about the well being of ALL animals. More healthy, functioning ecosystems equals the greatest number of care for the most amount of animals (not to speak of plants, soil, watersheds, etc…).
Ecosystems rely on this intricate balance of life and death. I am against factory farming and do not buy factory farmed meat. I have the option to buy meat from regenerative, holistically raised producers.
No matter what, food raised in this way will ALWAYS be closer to the way ecosystems actually function (grazing animals are an integral component to the health of grass and woodland ecosystems). Row crop agriculture, no matter how “organic” or how “environmentally friendly” it is produced, is an abomination of nature. Row crop agriculture, at its very core, is the rape of a landscape. It is the permanent removal of this landscape from its intended ecological function. Nowhere in nature will you ever see anything like row crop agriculture.
Vegans get the vast majority of their calories from row crops; grains, legumes, soy, etc…and they don’t have the option to get these products from “environmentally friendly producers.” Do you ever get chickpeas or brown rice at the farmers market? Have you ever wondered why you can’t?
why would you think eating plants and growing them for food is any better than eating animals?
What if plants are also conscious and also suffer. What if this evidence will arise in the next decade. What will you eat then? or you will try to logic your way out saying "oh well, this is less harm then eating animals"?
If you were a God who knew all the aspects of being to state anything but you are not. You only assume and suppose based on the theoretical thought experiments.
Another thing, why are you okay with lion eating a deer? or bear eating its prey? but not human eating another animal?
If your sincere argument is that we bring them into existence just to kill them which is immoral, would you then be fine if there was no such animal production but we would still catch and kill animals from the wild? Honestly... ?
utilitarian point of view is just a human construct. Human's are limited in its understanding of the essence of reality.
Same as we utalitarianism is very limited, questionable, unreliable and too demanding. Basically,, sucks ass.
the rabbit hole of a vegan bodybuilder causing indirect harm can easily swing the other way. maybe directly/indirectly, a vegan bodybuilder inspires others to also replace their bodybuilding with veganism, thus reducing the meat consumption of a group likely to eat the most amount of meat. maybe, their vegan bodybuilding allows them the strength to pull someone off the edge of a cliff where otherwise they wouldn't have the muscle mass and thus strength to do so at their current weight. maybe not the last one, but maybe...
like the idea that someone that says "ANY unnecessary harm is wrong" wouldn't have stipulations to this is a pretty wild concept where the word 'unnecessary' does a lot of heavy lifting.
i'm not a vegan, nor very well versed in arguments regarding it but that entire segment felt like an incredibly weak argument that has so many flaws in it. all to go "i guess SOMETIMES we can justify it"
How are you this based about veganism but not vegan ? Good explanation bro💯
Sure, but you could also imagine a similar hypothetical for meat eaters. If causing unnecessary indirect harm is not always immoral, then eating meat is not always immoral.
Well put. Veanism is also a rights movement in my eyes. So from my POV I wonder if he has had the same thoughts and changes of mood about basic human rights, given that obese people and high level athletes who believe in human rights and not causing unecessary suffering to humans are likely causing 1) more human agricultural deaths and 2) more human exploitation.
Maybe he'll make a video about that next addressing the members of his community that believe in basic human rights.
Major congrats! Started watching you because of your “therapy session” with Peter Hitchens, became a big fan of your content instantly. Keep up the great work! 😊🎉
I think I need a therapy session with Peter Hitchens, a conversation with him would make me feel really good about myself; I'd be reminded that at least Im not like him.
Please talk to someone in the vegan ethics/debate sphere. Dr. Avi, Ask Yourself, Nutrivore, Vegan Gaze, Lifting Vegan Logic, Debug Your Brain just to name a few. These questions of yours have long since been ironed out by the vegan community but it seems you haven't been willing to engage with any of them since announcing your ex-veganism.
Out of those, Dr. Avi would be by far the best to chat with. He covers both the empirics and philosophy
@@AlexandreMarcati I have no idea why people call Peter Singer the "father of the animal rights movement". He's openly not even vegan and doesn't advocate for animal rights. He's the type of nutjob utilitarian who has no problem with mass murdering humans or non-human animals as long as they had a "nice life" beforehand.
Don't know who the other person you're referring to is, but my point is that he's had no engagement with anyone who he knows could help him iron out the philosophical and health hangups. Which leads me to believe he's just a coward who doesn't want to be confronted about his bs.
@AlexandreMarcati Peter Singer is not an animal rights advocate, he's not even vegan
@@AlexandreMarcati Do you think I'm unfamiliar with Peter Singer and his works? Please quote from a prominent vegan activist/philosopher who cites Peter Singer as the 'father of the animal rights' movement or activism. He hasn't changed his diet to veganism in decades since his book, and still hasn't. Whether he is leaning towards it is irrelevant - he's not vegan.
He's not against cruelty; he advocates for 'humane' meat. What is humane about ending the life of a sentient being?
He eats vegetarian meals in restaurants, etc., so talking of backyard hens is a moot point. This is not to mention harboring chickens to exploit them for their resources. Eating eggs is inherently exploitative because you are commodifying the being as a resource, even if they are backyard eggs. Those eggs are not ours to take, and doing so instead of feeding the chickens their eggs back is exploitative. He has a rule called the 'Paris exception' where it is fine if you go to a country and be slightly inconvenienced, by not bothering to look up vegan food or places that have vegan options it's okay to consume dairy or eggs regardless of 'free range'.
Do you think veganism, following the principles of philosophy, is dogmatic? What makes it more 'dogmatic' than someone following the principle of being against cruelty? Perhaps no wonder you like Peter Singer, given he can't even 'dogmatically' follow his own original principles and philosophy - he's a good little hypocrite.
"The point is to avoid animal suffering."
It's not. Nowhere under the definition of veganism from the founders of veganism does it state that the point is to avoid animal suffering.
@@AlexandreMarcati Dude you're delusional. Go listen to the podcast with Alex and Singer again, he literally says he has no argument against farming human beings and murdering them at 18 years old as long as the farmed humans had a "nice life" and there is no risk that the rest of the non-farmed humans will be seen as food. The entailment of that is that he sees nothing wrong with an infinite holocaust of humans being raised in good conditions then being murdered at the age of 18.
He also says he has no problem with free-range eggs, which still require the macerating of male chicks, still require the selective breeding for hens to lay way more eggs than is healthy or safe for them, and still ultimately ends up with the hen being slaughtered.
He also says he has no argument against free-range cow farming outside of the environmental detriment.
This is what I mean when I said "nutjob utilitarian". This specific variety of utilitarian (as stated EXPLICITLY by Singer himself in that exact podcast) has no moral issue with an infinite holocaust of humans or non-human animals as long as they had a nice life.
In what world is someone who is explicitly not anti-holocaust and not anti-murder on "the same side" as the people who are trying to end the holocaust and mass murder?
Aniamls killed in crop production, is vastly different to intentionally bringing conscious beings into existence, then intentionally ending their lives. People killed in road accidents is vastly different than purposefully driving a vehicle into pedestrians, even if the people killed in road accidents are killed by drivers who were driving for pleasure, not for practical reasons. Furthermore, Vegan body builders show that Vegans can gain muscle and strength, this may help promote veganism and lessen animal exploitation.
driving with a tank to work, killing dozens of people in the process, even if unintentional, is still bad. the same is true for any form of agriculture. once you understand that you realize that human existence is uncompatible with veganism, which should make you think twice about directing hate speech at everyone who isn't vegan.
@musicaltakes animal agriculture is based on deception and betrayal. Imagine raising a dog for a few weeks and then slaughter the dog. That dog thought you were a care giver, a friend or a parent to him. It’s a terrible thing for the human psyche and reflects on our society morals and ethics. Then you kill so many dogs and you feel like it’s nothing, next you kill a human.
@musicaltakes "they are all completely fantastical" How do you know this?
@musicaltakes All vegans know perfectly well that you will still have animal suffering in a vegan society, but the amount of suffering would dramatically decrease.
You can't be completely happy (every single human being complains about something or wants more); suffering is inevitable and you can't have everything you want.
In an ideal vegan planet, humans wouldn't eat animals unnecessarily, that means, they would only eat fruits and vegetables. What's so fantastical about it? Again, animals will still suffer and die, but it'd be nothing compared to the madness we have now.
@musicaltakeswhy wouldn’t you try to minimize it though? Thats veganism.
Environmentalism isn’t trying to zero out emissions. They’re trying to minimize it.
Congrats Alex... like my dad would say, "What do you mean by...". This has been one of the best things he left my sister and I. So much miscommunication because we never define the words we use. We can be using the same exact word, but because of life experiences we each have a different definition. Stopping to ask what do you mean by, is a great way to gain clarity and understanding.
9:12 is a particularly weak moment for me. Waving away the fact that crop deaths are a contingent problem by saying ‘well, until we reach a world where that contingency is eliminated, death by combine harvester or butcher doesn’t matter to the animal - let’s have this conversation again when that world materialises.’ ignores the fact that we CAN reach that world THROUGH veganism. It’s a classic case of philosophy missing the forest from the trees, considering edge cases while ignoring practical steps that objectively reduce suffering.
Please explain how we can reach a world where no food production causes animal suffering with veganism?
@@anschn7166 I would also like to know this
Right? Feel like a Nirvana fallacy. It isn't perfect? Then to hell with it, come back once it's perfect and we can talk about it. If we want something better, we shouldn't only consider the impossibly perfect alternative, but an actually better one.
Yeah it's honestly terrifying that Alex is letting such levels of cognitive dissonance take hold. The point of Veganism is to accelerate getting to that world.
Do you know what makes it less likely that world will ever happen?? NOT GOING VEGAN. Society doesn't change - the PEOPLE IN THE SOCIETY CHANGE. Duh.
It's such an obviously stupid thing to say from Alex, it's embarrassing. He treats it as if the world changes, when it's the life on the world that's changing.
@@anschn7166 I assume that this person means that once everyone agreed that we shouldn't be breeding and killing animals to eat them, then that seems like a world where everyone would also be onboard with the idea of addressing animals harmed in crop production. Currently most people think it's fine to stab an animal in the neck for a sandwich, so they're not going to be bothered about crop deaths are they.
There are methods which can either eliminate or massively reduce the number of crops deaths - vertical farming etc. But currently there is no reason for these to be adopted en mass for the reason of avoiding crop deaths, because there is no general demand for avoiding crop deaths.
Been here since 2017 and it's been a privilege to watch you grow :)
Waiting for his first book ❤
While a vegan bodybuilder might eat more while bulking, they offset that by eating less when cutting. You could say that being a bodybuilder is immoral because they choose to have a body that uses more resources, but then that goes for all athletes. All athletes choose to do more physical activity(and therefore use more energy) than is strictly necessary for their health.
They don’t completely offset their increased caloric intake because they are still maintaining additional muscle mass.
The same point was made about weed. The "could be used medically" point is only valid when applied. What's the point in saying "could help with addiction and PTSD" if you'll just use it on a Friday night for no reason, and with no prescription?
Yeah so vegan athletes are immoral in their unnecessary overconsumption
Congratulations on hitting 750k, Alex! It's been an absolute pleasure listening to you so far, and I'm excited to see where your channel goes.
I recently discovered your channel and am really enjoying it. I appreciate the respect you show to not only your guests, but also to the subject matter itself.
Their are enough Matt Dillahunty types, rudely telling people to go F themselves, and thoughtlessly dismissing arguments that are atleast worthy of some consideration.
Congrats on overtaking GMS yet again. Hoping for 1 mill soon 🤞
I always think of Alex and Drew as the Daniel Radcliffe & Elijah Wood of scepticism in that I keep confusing them with each other ;-)
Alex is far ahead of GMS. His critique of religion is far more nuanced. GMS’s analysis is plagued by his history of Fundamentalism.
@@thyikmnnnn
Alex ends up dissapeairng in philosophical critique that adresses theoretical Gods and contributes very little himself.
Drew adresses Gods people actually believe in, reseacrhes topics and often gives it his own spin based on his own expertise.
23:21 I very much enjoy the sense of pride I felt come from you when describing how you overslept a 1pm exam. I felt that, as a former engineering student, and I am glad to know that we are like creatures
I think your point about unnecessary suffering doesn't quite land. If we try to steelman the vegan position for a moment: what if their being publicly buff and vegan convinces people to go vegan, making the extra animals they caused to die ultimately worth it. So we can acknowledge the excess food they eat as a kind of necessary evil.
Personally, I find the idea that vegan bodybuilders may be doing something wrong to forward a greater good WAY easier to accept than that "unnecessary suffering isn't always wrong."
The lengths that these people will go in an attempt to justify slicing the throats of Non Human sentient beings.
Vegan bodybuilders are some of the best advocates for veganism. They are the Tesla Roadster of the vegan expansion roadmap.
That argument felt more like an attempt at muddying the water around his moral shortcomings. Unusual for him.
So needless killing is okay because in your opinion it will make someone go vegan
Would you agree that overweight meat-eaters are worse than fit meat-eaters? And would you agree that fit meat-eaters are worse than people who hunt their own food? If that is the case, then vegans' worst enemy are not necessarily meat eaters, but rather the ones who are overweight.
You are agreeing with his point, unnecessary animal suffering is not a bad thing by itself but it is a thing that is bad in a specific context/spectrum
This is why I dislike the unnecessary suffering argument when it should be a rights based argument. Crop deaths are not rights violations but intentionally killing an animal bred for slaughter is a rights violation
Rights don't exist.
This is why Vegetarianism makes the most sense to me, unless one would think that petroleum derived fertilizers will be around forever and/or is actually good for the soil/farmland in the long term.
@@jessehoffman2726 exploiting cows for dairy and grounding up male chicks would still qualify as rights violations so how does vegetarianism make sense to you?
@@paulaagam5071 On a small scale and organic community level of agriculture those issues you mentioned should not be a thing (think of well cared for backyard pet hens that abandon their unfertilized eggs). You are going to wanna argue with your obtuse & tunnel like vision approach to these topics I can already tell, so this is my final reply to you. I think that humans should be caretakers of the Earth having a symbiotic type of relationship with the animals and nature.
I agree that humans should be caretakers for animals but that’s why animal sanctuaries exist. They wouldn’t be for profit and if you ignore practical realities, an idealized unfertilized egg from a backyard hen could be convincing. However there are issues with that such as hens that would produce eggs at an unnatural rate due to artificial selection and the whole reason for taking care of a hen is predicated on the hen producing eggs for you. And if the hen stops producing eggs, then if you want more, it would entail breeding. You can see this play with any animal that produces a commodity like sheep. Sheep are artificially bred to produce more wool and it is unnatural for them to the point where they require to be sheared. If wool was no longer a commodity, sanctuaries for sheep may implement altruistic breeding programs to promote health, another example is pugs who have breathing problems. Im just curious to know what is the trait that if true of a human would give you the same attitude for their exploitation. I’m sure you’ll ignore this since you’ve made it clear you’re too ideologically dug in to converse but then why even comment in the first place?
it's mind boggling that Alex only has 750k subs. His channel delivers some of the most groundbreaking, high production value content ever. I was convinced he was AT LEAST at a million!
I'm a vegan now partially thanks to Alex introducing me to the subject. It's surreal and dissappointing to see how he's regressed back to crop death arguments and lukewarm lip service "objections" to factory farming. He's intentionally confused, because it's more convenient for him to be in a state of perpetual confusion without looking for an answer, than finding the answer (which vegans are all too happy to tell him if he'll listen). It's ethical procrastination in other words. But luckily i carried on my own research in the subject and found much better mentors, so ima be a vegan for life and i will never turn my back on the animals like he did. He did a lot for the vegan community even though it was short lived and he kinda sabotaged much of his messaging by the end.
I think that depends on what you are expecting to hear from him now that he’s not vegan anymore. To me, the segment in this video seemed in no way anti-vegan, and it seems like he’d still encourage other people to be vegan if they thought that would be a feasible choice. All I heard was that he had a new line of thinking to consider as well which he then went into detail. He did not use the vegan bodybuilder idea to condemn veganism in any way, he merely explained how that’s another ethical consideration for him now. To me it’s honestly very frustrating to see how quick the vegan community is to turn on him when I think it’s very clear that he still absolutely agrees that factory farming is unethical.
@@musicalwarrior9079the problem is that he claims he can't be vegan because of some undefined health reasons that he won't talk to anyone about improving and then his moral argument changes at the same time. Seems dishonest as a philosopher to so obviously change your moral arguments to align with your actions, rather than the other way around.
@@ande5460 Probably because preaching over an issue is rarely going to be as convincing as actually experiencing it yourself.
If people say veganism is easy, then try it and discover it is not, the underlying arguments also become weaker.
or maybe, hear me out: all the super strong vegan arguments are just echo chambers that turn a relativly simple philosophical idea into a fundamentalist cult?
"Don't cause unnecessary suffering". That's really everything it is about.
This concept is as simple and true as it is unachievable in its pure form in reality. Now choose which compromises you are willing to accept.
I usually find milestone Q&A's pretty boring, but not this one! Fantastic content, as usual.
Vegan bodybuilding isn't unethical. An increase in demand of calories from plants increases demand in cropland. To say that it's unethical requires you to show that more deaths occur on cropland than on wildland. And that data doesn't exist as far as I'm aware.
I disagree with your reasoning for this point. On wildland, death is replaced by more life, it is a constant motion. So for sure there is more death in the wild, but thats because theres more life to begin with. And surely nobody would say that life in itself is a bad thing because it will end. Additionally, we probably all agree that an acre of wildland is a more ethical use of that land than an acre of cropland, where the only life is nonsentient plants.
That said, I still think the bodybuilding/crop death argument is a terrible excuse for taking the life and rights of many more animals unnecessarily.
Vegan bodybuilding is not unethical because it can lead to more people being vegan. And even in a world where everyone is vegan, where perhaps vegan bodybuilding would be unethical (given that somehow we still cant find a way to produce crops without crop deaths), that still doesnt provide a justification for harming a greater number of animals to a greater extent.
Congratulations on hitting 750k! 🎉
Huge congrats! You deserve way more than 750k, can't wait for more milestones to be broken!
Two things I will say in regards to the veganism argument is that I don’t think the condemnation of vegan bodybuilders is really a strong reason to give up on unnecessary suffering as a strong principle. That being said the point about property rights is interesting because I don’t feel like most people, even vegans, would argue that animals have the capacity for property rights so the question is kind of irrelevant. I don’t really know much about these sorts of arguments and might need to read some E. O. Wilson or something
I don't think that was his point.
What did you find challenging about veganism? I think it makes most sense to personally boycott AND focus on top down legislation.
It's too hard and inconvenient, that's why no one actually does it.
Some people claim to practice that fad, in the end they just do it for different reasons. (money, attention, belonging, etc...)
Regarding vegan bodybuilding, I think “causing unnecessary suffering” is just inherently undefinable and a slippery slope.
Alex is definitely right: Vegan body-builders consume unnecessary calories for muscle growth. Also, vegans do things like ordering take-out and delivery, which includes packaging that inflicts (albeit, indirectly) unnecessary harm (and suffering) on animals and their habitats. At times, vegans shop non-locally, again indirectly harming animals through transportation pollution. At times, vegans drink caloric beverages and caloric snacks based on taste pleasure, not pure caloric maintenance needs. Also, is going for a run “necessary”, if you’re going to have to consume even more vegan calories than you otherwise would have that day? Hell, should you have walked “unnecessarily”? That little stroll cost 90 calories. The analysis quickly slips into absurdity.
Vegans, and no one else, can ever meet a strict standard of “cause no unnecessary harm”. “Necessary” requires listing the multitude of human physical and mental states and then asking is each one “necessary”? Is a physically and mentally “healthy” body even necessary? Or is pursuing one’s health kind of a “luxury”, taxed with the health of the planet? Maybe?
But also, I don’t think vegans ever strictly mean, “only do exactly what is necessary.” Nutritionists and doctors might (and do) argue that everyone should be adding muscle to their bodies to fend off sarcopenia (muscle loss) in old age. We should be adding to our muscle “retirement plan”, they say. More broadly, they also argue for daily cardio and weight-resistance exercises for physical and mental health benefits. Both of these physical activities, again, require more than “maintenance calories”. They are medically prescribed, but they aren’t absolutely “required” (aka unnecessary) for our daily survival. I think what many vegans are actually trying to say is simply this: “It’s often hard to see the harm I’m causing animals with my daily behavior, but one sure way to know I’ve harmed an animal is if it’s currently in my mouth. So I’m gonna try and do things that don’t involve that.” Of course there’s more. But we (everyone) exhaust ourselves with guilt over personal action. We’re stuck in a seeming contradiction where we’re told constantly that we’re insignificant and our actions don’t matter, but also, every single thing we buy and consume is killing the planet, the future, and somebody, somewhere, right f-ing now, you a-hole! So it makes sense for both vegans and non-vegans to just want to throw up their hands. But anything, everything, you do to try to learn how the things we buy are produced, and the gradual movement away from obviously terrible means of production and toward not-so-obviously terrible ones is a goal I think we can all agree on. It’s exhausting, yes, but I think, if you just find people in your life who are behaving in ways you admire, just stick closer to them. Let them encourage you. Encouragement nourishes the exhausted. Nourishes like a delicious steak din-I mean, whoa. um. a vegetable stir-fry.
as far as long youtube comments go, this one was worth reading. well said :)
@@TheCopelandr haha thanks for sticking it out, Cope
Yeah well it’s like you say you are spending your time online now watching TH-cam videos and commenting rather than working extra hours so you can give that money to charity and help people in need.
We’re all immoral. Thus, we don’t have any right condemning anyone because we ultimately do the same thing.
We are inherently selfish beings. We would rather choose being lazy and play video games over saving the lives of struggling individuals.
>but one sure way to know I’ve harmed an animal is if it’s currently in my mouth
That's cherry-picking though. Your definite knowledge of one animal being harmed doesn't undo all the others.
@@eugenehertz5791 I like what you’re saying here, Eugene: Direct knowledge that you didn’t harm something doesn’t counter harm you may be doing elsewhere or undo any broader harm.
I think what I mean to say then might work better with a human analogy…? For example, let’s say Person 1 directly kills somebody. Person 2 doesn’t. Person 2 , while avoiding any direct killing, may be harming other people in many indirect ways: Maybe he’s buying a product that uses child labor or a product made by a company or government funding an unjust war. Person 2’s behavior of avoiding directly killing someone doesn’t undo indirect harm they’re doing elsewhere.
But I think them continuing to strive to not kill any people directly is an important ethic to maintain. They can work on indirect harm reduction while they continue to not kill any people directly.
And I think that’d be the vegan position: I won’t eat any animals myself, and while I avoid that direct action, let’s work on better systems to help reduce indirect harm to animals.
Congrats on 750k bro! Road to a million.
I suppose with veganism, philosophically, it seems a utilitarian approach is best. The greatest good for the greatest number of animals is what we should be aiming for right now, and that seems to be veganism. Once we've reached that baseline, we can refine what it means to be a vegan, in terms of the precise morality of certain vegan actions or practices, and reduce animal suffering and death even further.
Personally, I have a theoretical compassion for most animals in the world, in the same way I do for humans, and immense love for most animals I know and meet. So, I act in a certain moral way which aligns with how I feel about most animals in my own life, with the consideration that I would feel the same way about the innumerable animals I don't know, if I were to know them.
Animal Rights is not a utilitarian moment. I think the original Vegans were Animal Rights, the movement has lost its way, and that's why Vegans are arguing about suffering and the greater good.
Would you agree that overweight meat-eaters are worse than fit meat-eaters? And would you agree that fit meat-eaters are worse than people who hunt their own food? If that is the case, then vegans' worst enemy are not necessarily meat eaters, but rather the ones who are overweight.
@musicaltakes But why? And define "good".
@musicaltakes So there's nothing wrong with eating meat in your view, right? We could have a discussion about morality but, honestly, I was looking for the vegan discussion.
@musicaltakes _"Utilitarianism combined with Speciesism is the best approach. The greatest good for the greatest number of humans is what we should be aiming for."_
utilitarianism is bs, if some humans gRaping dogs increased more good then bad, then you'd have to say they doing nothing wrong, but it's preferable, whatever maximizes net utility & wellbeing...
I'd argue Negative Utilitarianism is the only logical conclusion to ethics, human fun/wellbeing doesn't magically outweigh and make the problem of another's suffering not a problem. That's foolishness.
"First do no harm"
Think of it this way in Benatarian like analogy, "the absent martians don't need to exist, they can't come into existence and solve a problem of the universe's cancer, however once they do exist you will inevitably have victims who NEED to resolve some PROBLEM they have like Cancer"_
As philosopher inmendham argues, logically speaking or in ethical terms, there's nothing to do here but FIRST resolve/satisfy NEEDs, fix problems that "we" created first by being here. Any goals of well-being come after cause it isn't free and doesn't fix the problem. The universe doesn't NEED you to exist and watch the Superbowl or maximize well-being, that desire only exists after a NEED is programmed into you by evolution.
Now I'm not saying there's no positive/good we can produce but it's only beneficiary as a bonus or extra, it doesn't fix any real problem except the one in your mind. There's no urgent need or problem that the happy Martians don't exist except the NEED in your mind, some deprivation or dissatisfaction. Your personal problem and NEED and all the other NEEDs that currently exist are what matters first and foremost.
You have a poisoned apple pie, the top priority would be to remove all the poison first and foremost, not make it prettier or tastier and try indulging in it.
Congrats on 750k! Been following you for 5+ years, it's been really nice to see your growth
congratulations Alex!!
what happened?
@@User24x wellllllll I congratulated Alex on his reaching 750 k subs :P
I totally thought you had a million plus already, we’ve come a long way baby, pretty exciting!
I'd love more content on how factory farming can be solved with a top-down approach
I remember being at University 25 years ago. I'd reasoned out (I felt) that there couldn't be free will. My philosophy tutor disagreed. My Dad disagreed. My mum too. I felt really alone as my own analysis was at odds with all the key people in my life.
I couldn't change how I thought though. It felt like a burden I carried. I parked it and enjoyed life, tried to do good things.
Now there's growing movements in philosophy, physics, neuroscience that are skeptical of free will and it's kind of edifying. I wish I could comfort my lonely 21 yr old self with this knowledge that he was onto something.
He'd be too busy eating chow mein pot noodles and playing sensible soccer on the amiga to listen though.
real
It really depends on your notion of free will. Some view free will as a kind of ability to make a choice between several options (Giulio Tononi of Integrated Information Theory for example). In this sense, there is a kind of freedom. The specific choice itself may be fully determined by pre-existing physical state but not all of that information is consciously accessible so it appears that choice mechanism operates freely. I think it depends on the perspective and information available for something to be seen as more or less free. I.e. we can think of the mind as performing some decision process that from its perspective is free even though from some hypothetical all knowing perspective is not free because of universal laws playing out. This also relates to why people "feel" as though they have free will when consciously choosing - they are unaware of the details of their choice mechanism from their perspective. So another way to think about it, is that it depends on what is meant by a choice. If a choice is literally a selection of some kind, then it doesn't really matter if it's deterministic or not.
@@kcronix8672 Thanks, enjoyed your comment and I haven't come across Giulio Tononi's work so I'll look into it.
I agree the definition of free will is central to determining whether it exists or not, and traditionally it's been very loosely defined.
The description of free will as a highly complex sorting mechanism managing data and deterministically pumping out choices is not one most would recognise as sitting neatly with their idea of free will. I think that is how you are defining it?
On this basis, the "choice" is therefore illusory. There was never any real choice as we would think of it, simply an inevitable, predictable (given enough information on starting conditions and physical principles) flow of action.
That picture of free will is aligning with the latest findings of neuroscience which seem to show the decision-making process is complete prior to our conscious awareness of making that choice.
If we define free will as above then yes, we could be said to have free will. But then so could anything making an inevitable selection based on pre-existing conditions and available data, which would encompass all life and even any piece of software.
We just happen to be a very complex example of this. I don't think we differ categorically then from the simplest program I ever wrote on my BBC or C64 back in the day!
We simply have more sophisticated data-gathering apparatus and algorithms, all of which were plumbed into us through genetics and environmental influences.
@righteousshift482 Interesting reply! When I say choice, I mean choice in the sense that the mind conjures up alternatives and then picks what it thinks is the best alternative (for some reasons). The actual picking/selection process of choosing an alternative/choice could be deterministic still and it wouldn't be an illusory choice! Kind of a matter of definitions and ways of thinking about it I believe. I think the "illusion of choice" as you put it emerges as a conflation of choice with non-determinism whereas I am suggesting (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) that the definition of choice appears to leave room for any kind of process; deterministic, or non-deterministic.
Addendum: This doesn't mean we are absolutely free or absolutely constrained as it really depends on both our imaginative (in the purely functional/algorithmic/deterministic sense) capability and "ability to enact our imagination"'s capability so-to-speak.
YOU'RE AWESOME ALEX!! I'm looking forward to seeing you hit 1 million and I'm going to be there on your journey every step of the way. Keep up the amazing work that you do!
The Vegan Bodybuilder argument is very odd and even disingenuous.
Why ?
@@dodumichalcevski it isn't that it is without logical consistency, rather it is more akin to moral whataboutism than an entirely ethical argument.
Excessive consumption may have morally dubious implications, so I will increase my morally questionable intake for this reason seems somewhat flawed.
The intent argument again is logically consistent but equally problematic under closer inspection as there's essentially an appeal to ignorance of consequence.
In this specific case, rather than passing judgement on the actions of others would it be more sensible to examine ones own conscious and make a decision on one's personal actions based on this examination subject to legality.
@@philipnorthfield "so I will increase my morally questionable intake for this reason seems somewhat flawed"
-
You didn't listen to what he said then. He stated before presenting that argument that his own reasons for not being vegan are practical ones and that the following argument was not meant to be a justification of more animal consumption. And he repeated that last part multiple times throughout. The vegan boldybuilder argument wasn't about his own consumption. It was about how he plans to portray himself in discourse.
@@Elrog3 Yes and it isn't a very sound case, why attempt to portray or forward such a flimsy position that is essentially little more than whataboutism. Although he has stated his personal reasons are practical this is his attempt to justify such a position ethically. It's dubious at best and most importantly unnecessary if he actually requires animal product consumption for health reasons that is more than sufficient justification all this does is forward others an ethical argument to consume animal products, despite his informing his listeners, not so long ago that they should really just accept having hayfever ' because it isn't life threatening just a minor discomfort or inconvenience' rather than take medication due to the animal products contained within. Just because he repeated himself doesn't alter this is his attempt at ethical justification.
It’s not whataboutism because he made it extremely clear he is not using this to justify eating meat.
CS take on vegan bodybuilding would be similar to humans driving cars because the risk may lead to indirect human deaths and non-human deaths, which have several ways it can cause indirect deaths from encouraging urban sprawl, to increases in traffic, to pollution, from resources to produce the cars to driving the cars etc. This is only one aspect, CS rationale can be extended to pretty much any human output. CS view of veganism is also through a strict lens of utilitarianism while a threshold deontologist/deontologists will view these indirect deaths as not right violations, my intuition would suggest that most vegans are the latter. From a utilitarianism perspective, would CS be able to demonstrate that crops deaths cause more suffering than in the wild, in order to demonstrate that excess calories results in more animal deaths?
Everyone's going insane over the crop death point. Thing is: Alex acknowledged that it didn't allow meat eating,. He just got a less principle view on this argument. It was a slight change in his view on veganism, not a change in whether he thought veganism was ethical and meat eating was ethical
Does your new stance on unnecessary suffering not contradict the argument you use for the problem of evil?
I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction, since God has the capacity to mitigate harm without cost to Himself, which puts Him in a rather unique situation.
@@emilia935 alex said that he believes morality is subjective, so why should people do something that most people believe is morally good? why stop doing something that is morally bad if that particular thing benefits you?
@@mikaela43523 he's a moral emotivist I believe, and humans as social critters are (usually) going to feel distress when we violate the moral standards of others, therefore we're incentivised to adhere to popular notions of goodness
@@emilia935
Yes, god would have that ability but (10:15) Alex claimed that it isn’t *always* morally wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering,
So god, as a supposed perfectly moral being, wouldn’t always care about unnecessary suffering, thus the problem of evil not holding up from his prospective.
@@hootowlme Alex also made it clear that inflicting unnecessary suffering is bad in certain situations, hence why he believes factory farming is a moral abomination. To defend his argument from the problem of evil, he would have to argue that the suffering God inflicts is unacceptable in a similar way to the unaccaptability of factory farming.
I've been a fan and subscriber for a long time, from the early cosmic skeptic days. As a recent patron, I just know you'll get to 1 million very soon. I can't wait to read your book.
He's releasing a book?
@@feolizx Not that I know of, but I'm sure he will one day.
So you remember the drawers.
@@Elrog3 yup!
I lot of people think that beauty is subjective. To my view, there is a subjective element to it, but there is a transcendence to it as well. I think your description of realizing the beauty of a tree points to that.
"The beholder is in the eye of beauty"
He was high, lol.
Bodybuilder here - I agree with Alex that eating calories that are unnecessary to maintain physical health is unethical. However, I disagree that bodybuilding is necessarily an example of this. The best predictors of long-term health are 1) VO2 Max 2) physical strength. There is a huge literature on this. Therefore, when assessing whether or not bodybuilding, or any kind of strength training, is necessary for physical health, one needs to make that judgement within the context of long-term health. What many people fail to realise is that diseases of old age - heart disease and Alzheimer's for example - often begin in one's 30s, yet only become clinically manifest in one's 60s/70s. Exercise - including strength training - is the best defence we have against these diseases.
His advice for getting out of a funk was basically "clean your room"
(petersonwave)
Were we ever saying that causing unnecessary suffering is always wrong? I thought it was: causing unnecessary suffering for trivial taste pleasure is wrong. Didn't you say "great suffering requires great justification"?
This whole discussion about crop deaths feels a bit like a red herring to me. Yes, there is some harm there, you can argue that it's wrong, but it doesn't compare to eating meat, so why focus on it so much? And I think you'll find that most vegans agree that a top-down approach is what's needed... but it's hard to argue for that world while continuing to consume animal products yourself.
@cosmicSkeptic On the topic veganism and body building, you are forgetting a consequentalist analysis: many vegan bodybuilders do it to prove the world you can be strong and develop a lot of muscle without the need of animal products. They are actual influencers, and cover an argument against veganism through proof. They are the living proof
And once they convinced most of the world to go vegan, they're gonna pull the carpet and demand that all body building must end now because it served its purpose? Lmao. Arguing with vegans is never not funny.
Just speak to Dr Avi Bitterman about veganism already. He covers both the empirical and philosophical
Just make sure you’re not Palestinian, lol
Second this, he's seriously the best vegan advocate full stop
I would be very unhappy living an entirely ethical or moral life... Eating meat may be a little "bad" but I'm OK having some extra cake in my life and I am comfortable being imperfect and enjoying life's extras.....
There's a line sure and my line is a little further than some people's and not so far as others but I am good with that or I wouldn't do it 😊
@@SangitaSucked Assuming you don't think it's ethical to murder a human to eat their flesh, what's the difference that makes it justifiable to murder an animal to eat their flesh, but not justifiable to murder the human?
Come on Alex, at this point it's ridiculous. Speak to Avi.
23:46 The part where you talked about how to get out of a funk was beautifully said.
I think the issue people had with Dawkins on LBC was the context in which he was talking about Islam. The whole conversation was a response to a Daily Mail article that tried to stoke fears around the so called ‘Islamisation’ of Britain by pointing out Ramadan lights were being seen in London and linking that with declining church attendance. We’ve seen MP’s like Braverman and Anderson in February trying to claim Islamists have taken over Britain which is of course totally unfounded and comes from a place of Zionism and Islamophobia. Dawkins agreeing that the spread of Islam would somehow cause ‘Christian culture’ to decline just feeds into the rhetoric being used by the far-right. Also saying Christianity is ‘inherently decent’ while Islam is supposedly evil is also just hypocritical and historically dishonest. Essentially the timing and context were the main issue.
I can appreciate that a utilitarian such as Alex can associate some moral virtue to veganism. But this displays a fundamental misunderstanding of veganism and exposes a glaring flaw of utilitarianism.
I don't think that Alex is actually a utilitarian. If you loot at his videos, he says that he is a moral emotivist (I think that is the term, but it basically says that all moral statements are actually statements of how you feel). In addition at multiple points in this video (in the veganism section), he concludes that something can't be true because it "would involve condemning things that intuitively don't seem condemnable." and hence that "all it shows us is that the conversation can't be one of a strict principle that unnecessary suffering is always wrong inflicted upon animals for food" (which is not something a utilitarian would say). In addition, I would be genuinely interested to see what you think the glaring flaw in utilitarianism is.
"When that world materializes-"
ALEX. HEY ALEX. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE MATE, CUS IT AIN'T HAPPENING WITHOUT VEGANS?
Oof. When a person refers to something as a moral abomination, and yet actively chooses to pay for that moral abomination.
All of the other things you said are irrelevant (which you know, hence why you kept giving a disclaimer). But at the end of the day you chose to support something you yourself refer to as a moral abomination. Good stuff.
Alex’s advice on getting out of a funk is very important and I wish I had heard that when I was a young nihilist.
Congratulations Alex and wishing you all the best.
It’s been a wild year! I remember only a year ago watching first your trolley problems, now you’re a recognized philosopher and political influencer/activist
If only there were a group that said "avoid exploitation as far as practicable" instead of "Never cause unnecessary harm ever". What would that look like?
It's just an argument from the futility of obtaining perfection. Nothing more.
I feel that the relatively simple way around your bodybuilder example is the distinction of intent. The unnecessary suffering to animals we tend to advocate against is a deliberate, conscious thing. Crop deaths are, generally speaking, an incidental thing.
It's still okay to call for avoiding unnecessary suffering we cause to animals by design, even if there are unfortunate casualties in food production. We should try to fix that as well, but it's realistically much more comparable to accidental roadkill.
Yes we should move towards vertical farming
Its semantics. You still know, for a fact, that what you are doing is causing extra suffering. End of story. You can argue all you like and use fancy words, but it won't get you anywhere (except soothe yourself into thinking its now okay).
@@luxeayt6694 What fancy words? Is "deliberate" too fancy a word for you?
I'm pretty sure most meat eaters aren't deliberately or consciously causing harm either. It's just as incidental as the bodybuilder example.
@@jakubSwaps instead of adressing my point, you nitpick on the word "fancy". This is what I'm talking about.
You’re an inspiration Alex! Thanks for helping me along my critical thinking journey
If I remember correctly, you already made the argument that theoretically we should accept a hit to our health if we need to in order to avoid unnecessarily exploiting animals. Apologies if that was someone else, but I somewhat agree.
I do think bodybuilding is eating to excess. If there was a societal utility to the body builder's strength, there is a chance it could be offset, but I don't think there are many examples of that.
Would you ever consider getting a computer science or a physics degree? I nearly completed a philosophy minor along with my CS major, and I feel like learning CS gave me a pretty unique perspective on my philosophy courses, particularly thinking about philosophy of language and philosophy of science from a physicalist perspective with an understanding of algorithms. I think philosophy is best done when it's informed by hard science, so this might be something to consider!
You need to be physically active to be healthy. It does not matter if you eat more because you run a lot or because you lift weights.
If you are contemplating animal deaths from harvesting you could also contemplate countless other reasons animals might die because of your existence and that is just silly.
Like the insects that get killed on your windshield when driving your car. Or the insects and worms when you stroll through a meadow.
Bogus arguments for sure, as are the few hundred calories someone doing physical activity which is necessary for health anyway.
That is why veganism only goes as far as possible and practicable which in itself is subject to interpretation.
Not eating animals makes the most difference.
Then there is a long distance in efficacy to the next thing which is to stop wearing animals.
Everything else is so minuscule that it does not even make sense to mention it as is eating a few more calories.
I think intent is also important.
Sure you don't buy meat because you want animals to suffer but by buying you ask someone to intentionally raise animals for slaughter.
How they are raised is completely irrelevant because they get slaughtered so soon into their lifespan that having a good life for livestock is at most comparable to a teenager getting killed.
When a teenager dies people never say: "But he lived a good life."
And there is a difference in being raised to be slaughtered and dying young by accident.
Eating animals again because of a few hundred calories someone else is eating is just a cop-out.
If you ever do another podcast with the Majesty of Reason (Joe Schmidth) - please discuss (or rather debate) "Free Will". He is agnostic between compatibilism and libertarianism, where you're an incompatibilist. That would be quite a conversation.
maybe, I’ve always seen the argument for compatibilism as more of an argument over definitions so it’s kind of meh to me.
Love listening to your conversations! I especially like the way you avoid the pitfalls of polarization, and maintain a clear head on very divided issues, even Veganism where I know you have a strong opinion.
I sometimes talk to people that often are so emotionally attached to the supposed correctness of their belief that simply DISCUSSING why they think what they think becomes difficult (I feel like I saw that with your conversation with Konstantin Kissin recently). So I find that your calm and logical approach is something that I admire a lot and try to do too.
Looking forward to any content you might make, Alex.
3/4 of the way to a million. Congrats.
The tears I’ve cried over that logic manual… relatively easy 🙈
You're forgetting that some animals are being killed by accident, which yes to the animals doesn't make a difference, but on the other side you have bred animals, you've specifically brought life (and capacity to suffer) into this world and then killed them. The killing is the same, but the reason they're even here is morally condemnable.
Really enjoying this channel.. Alex is refreshing
congratulations alex! :> been a fan since your side part days
I'm so thrilled to watch your content about art history.
Where is the empirical evidence that shows that crop deaths inherently causes negative utility or rights violations? If there is evidence, can we objectively say that the body builder eating extra calories isn't overcoming the negative utility by showing what is possible with veganism, as well as any positive utility that comes along with vegan recruitment?
The strange thing about the vegan bodybuilder argument is that it seems to be falling into the fallacy of absolute perfectionism. I think most vegans agree that it’s absolutely impossible to live a life which truly causes zero harm to animals, that’s simply the way the modern world is. However, vegans take active steps to limit unnecessary suffering.
It could be that Alex’s personal standpoint was that any unnecessary suffering is wrong but I think generally this isn’t the perspective of most vegans.
Agreed. I am not vegan, just took steps to reduce meat consumption. My attitude is not to be a perfect model of sustainability among my peers, but rather reduce the impacts I have on both Animal welfare and the climate.
I liken it to wanting to do as little collateral damage in war as possible. It will happen, but we actively take steps to limit it.
The vegan bodybuilder "problem" is only a problem on utilitarianism. Vegans who are animal rights activists can of course easily ignore this objection since crop deaths are not rights violations. It just shows that utilitarianism is crap (as usual) when it comes to social justice issues.
Im a little confused because the way you say this makes it sound much more like the vegan rights activists are the crap ones, no? Because when your thinking morally about wether an animal should die or not or if its morally right or not, i dont think the animal is too concerned with rights being imposed on it by humans that cant even communicate w them. Its nice to just say “this animal can die because its death abides by arbitrary laws and rules i made up”. That doesnt sound the most right from a social justice perspective to me, but maybe im not understanding your point
The point raised by Alex wasnt about crop deaths. It was about animal death caused by crop production. For example insects and rodents that die as a result of protecting crops that we need for consumption. Someone who wants to build muscle would require extra calories or protein would need even more crops which in turn means they contribute to more animal suffering. Iam a vegan but this is a point for discussion.
@@Vezmo雨 "animal death caused by crop production" are not rights violations. Not sure why you are talking about "contributing to suffering", I'm not a utilitarian. I'm an animal rights activist. I care about animal rights, not utility (in terms of minimizing suffering, maximizing pleasure).
@@john5927 You're missing the point. Alex wasn't talking about crop deaths. He was talking about animal deaths as a result of crop production. In your initial comment you said "crop deaths are not rights violations".
@@Vezmo雨 I cannot be more clear than this: animal deaths as a result of crop production are not rights violations.
"Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Do not give heed to all the things that men say, lest you hear your servant cursing you; your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others."
-Ecclesiastes 7:20-22
Thanks Alex, inspiring channel and work overall.
Suffering is only part of Animal Rights, rights can still be violated with zero suffering.
Please speak to Nick or Avi on the crop issue
It’s a shame you never answered the one question the vegan community had for you. Which is ‘why not just find a proper vegan dietician to help you?’
Maybe it's impossible
It's a shame that none of them could point out a single healthy plants only study or dietician.
I guess a healthy plants only diet would have to exist for there to be a dietician who can advertise it...
@@SteversChed I’ve beeen vegan 5 years and am in the top percentile of my sport lol
@@RapidBlindfolds You use animal products just like everyone else here.
No need to make things up.
@@SteversChed no sweetheart. Blueberry high protein overnight oats for breakfast, tofu tikka masala with kidney beans for lunch and pisto with vegan chorizo for dinner today. 90 grams of protein for my 50kg body weight does me just great
Congrats, Alex!
Thank you for ur amazing content Alex!
@Alex O'Conner -
1. Junk food is calorically dense. Calories are a necessary nutrient.
2. Vegan body builders are some of the best vegan activists because they demonstrate that extreme fitness is possible on a plant based diet. This must easily OFFSET any surplus crop deaths they cause, and makes it unlike the non-vegan causing unnecessary death and suffering.
I am surprised if you haven't considered these obvious rebuttals.
Causing unnneeded suffering is permitted in service of promoting veganism?
let's create a hypothetical. person creates factory farm, factory farm generates person millions, person uses millions to invest in the vegan industry. Is that moral in your eyes because they've "offset" the suffering they've caused?
@bdnnijs192 depends if you are utilitarian or believe in deontological ethics.
As utilitarian I would say "yes of course". Hence why it's justifiable to live our human lives which inherently harm others. We have to be a force for good and positive change.
@@danielli3288 in theory, yes, but in practice, I would argue that you'd be fighting to get back to net 0. Factory farming and slaughter harm more than just the animals, and the scale of the harm is so vast.
"Earning to give" is a tenet of Effective Altruism. Sometimes it can be more effective then working directly in the non-profit sector.
@@kennethsmith5309
What if I'm looking for an answer grounded in vegan principles?
I wonder on his veganism point if we could revise “unnecessary suffering” to “a demonstrable increase in net suffering”. Thus consuming extra calories of vegan food wouldn’t necessarily be a problem since in the wild animals suffer a lot so killing animals in crop fields doesn’t demonstrably increase net suffering.
"the wild animals suffer a lot so killing animals in crop fields doesn’t demonstrably increase net suffering"
Humane slaughter enters the chat.
@@bdnnijs192 Do you think it is okay to “humanely” slaughter a human for food? If not, what what ethical difference between the animal and the human, in your view, would make it okay to “humanely” slaughter one for food but not the other?
@@willbyrob6582
The human would suffer 'in the wild' so in your revised definition of veganism it'd be good. No?
@@bdnnijs192 Well raising an animal or a human for food I would object to it on the basis that it’s a severe violation of their right to life even if it increases wellbeing. But I’m saying that, in terms of wellbeing (since I was commenting on Alex who was talking about wellbeing), the animals who die in crop production live in the wild and often experience extreme suffering so it’s not clear if putting up crops increases net animal suffering. I’m not sure what you’re getting at by talking about humans suffering in the wild.
@@willbyrob6582
Humans suffer. So for increasing wellbeing ...
Here's how Alex decieves you and himself in the vegan section of this video:
1) I could debunk the crop deaths arguments like so many already have, but veganism isn't supposed to be a numbers game to see how low we can get the death toll, and that any number higher than 0 is a failure. It's about changing consumer's mindset around animals. The way we think about animals determines how animals will live in perpetuity. Across a long enough time horizon, our intentions towards animals is what matters the most. He is being too short sighted about the consequences and that's why he believes intentions don't matter.
2) He creates a false dichotomy with the bodybuilding vegan scenario. That we must can either condemn or praise the vegan who eats more than he needs.There is absolutely no reason why we can't say a vegan bodybuilder is ever so slightly worse behaved than a vegan who eats just enough to live. It would be an incredibly nitpicky thing to do, but you can do it. I guess the complexity of life doesn't fit neatly enough into Alex's simple yes/no flow chart.
3) He still only approaches veganism from the utilitarian metric of suffering. He seems to either forget or intentionally exclude concepts of harm and exploitation. Here's a reminder of what "Humane" farming is like when applied to a human context: "would you like to be pampered by your overlords but must do exactly what they want and never be free? Would you like to be painlessly slaughtered without being made aware? No harm done right?" Of course this is wrong - and he showed this to be wrong in his conversation with Peter Singer. "Humane" Killing is robbing the person of future experiences. It's a form of external control and interference with their sovereignty / bodily autonomy. Do human rights restrictions have no value because they impede utilitarians from forcibly shaping the world into their vision of suffering-free utopia? If he believes this, it leads me to ask if he was ever a vegan or just an edgy utilitarian?
4) His rule of "I would only prescribe something that I can stick to" is nonsensical and has led him to irresponsible messaging on social media. Given what he still believes about veganism, why on earth can't he advocate for healthy able-bodied people to follow a vegan diet? His rule has no moral grounding, seems like an emotionally-driven choice made to prevent idiots from calling him a hypocritte.
It is less reducing unnecessary suffering and more eliminating unnecessary abuse.
One cannot say that one is abusing animals that die as collateral in crop protection. At the very least not the same kind of abuse that is eating their bodies and stealing the things their bodies make
Not too long before the 1 mil Q&A!