this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] AnyOldName3 138 points 2 months ago (8 children)

I've had an unreasonable number of arguments against people who seemed to think animal was a synonym for mammal. Thankfully, we're now in an era where you can look it up and show them now mobile data is cheap, so it's become a winnable argument.

[–] [email protected] 103 points 2 months ago (14 children)

Except they still don't care, and resent you for edumacating them. Whatever you say, they "win". Welcome to the post -information age.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago

Historically I still "lose" these types of arguments as my willfully ignorant interlocutor spams potential strawman and ad hominem "arguments" until they feel sufficiently convinced that my pesky facts and I are safe to ignore.

In my experience there are very few people worth arguing with, as there are very few people willing to argue in good faith. Most people see arguing as a battle to be won or lost rather than a mechanism by which to vet assumptions. How can you expect to argue with a person who is unable to argue with themselves?

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[–] weeeeum 134 points 2 months ago (7 children)

I feel like instead of a giant push for veganism, there should just be a push to eat what's sustainable.

Beef and dairy? Causes huge amount of greenhouse gasses and with current methods of production, it is not sustainable

Blue fin tuna? These things have been way over fished and are endangered. Not sustainable, just try it once and move one with your life.

Tilapia ? These things grow like weeds and can be fed efficiently. Go ahead, good source of protein for your diet.

Honey? We need bees and they are an important pollinator for crops. Go nuts (just watch your sugar intake}

Almonds? Takes huge amounts of water to grow and exacerbates droughts in the areas they are farmed. Eat less of these.

Potatoes? Grow stupid easily in all sorts of conditions. Go nuts.

[–] Rob 32 points 2 months ago (9 children)

I’d already be very happy if everyone took your approach, but it’s not the entire story for veganism. Sustainability is an important factor for myself and many others, but so is animal welfare.

It’s a bummer that animal welfare is pretty much inversely correlated with emissions. Packing chickens together and making their lives miserable is much better for the environment than having them roam free.

Veganism happily aligns with environmental sustainability. But when you believe we shouldn’t exploit animals at all, just pushing to eat what’s sustainable ignores a lot of pain and cruelty.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Potatoes are kinda OP imho.

(I also agree with you btw).

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[–] LordWiggle 15 points 2 months ago (17 children)

About honey: we do need bees. But taking away their honey which they work really hard for to sustain their colony during the winter and replacing it with sugar water is really bad for them and makes their colony weak. They can get viruses, bacteria and fungi much faster, which they can spread to other colonies or when splitting up when their queen dies.

Next to that, bees we use for honey are a very aggressive territorial species. They claim their territory and all the other bee and whasp species are killed and pushed out. There are many bee and whasp species who do not live in colonies but are very important for the biodiversity. Replacing them with our bees, which will die and get sick faster because we take away their nuteician rich honey, is a bad idea.

We do need our bees, but in reduces quantities to keep the balance. But we shouldn't take their food.

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[–] Kyle_The_G 93 points 2 months ago (65 children)

I feel like bees are a bit of a grey area. We're not eating them, we're kind of like landlords that give them a nice place to stay and they pay rent in honey. I'm not vegan so I'm not quite sure what the rationale is for bee stuff.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Best friend's a vegan who raises bees. He doesn't clip wings or use smoke. From what I gather he basically just maintains their boxes, feeds them sugar when it's too cold for em, and collects honey when it's time. Someone is about to come along and say "he's not a vegan. Sounds like a vegetarian" and then I'm going to think "sounds like you're gatekeeping a lifestyle like it's a religion, and not even all vegans who don't use honey agree on whether or not a vegan can use honey" but I won't, because I don't wanna get wrapped up in the nonsense.

But either way, yes, some vegans do use honey. And some, like that theoretical commenter, don't eat anything that casts a shadow.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

don't eat anything that casts a shadow

Anyone who doesn't exclusively survive on naturally dried up lichen ain't no real vegan in my book!

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with my landlord harvesting my vomit as rent.

"I'm eating it, I promise it's not a sex thing."

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago

If my bank accepted vomit as mortgage payments, they could smack my ass and call me bulimic, I don't care what y'all do with my vomit, let's talk about pool house options and a second car.

I'd be cool with creaming their coffee twice a week if it meant I got my house for no money.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Well landlords are the badguys so...

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[–] chuckleslord 25 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Couple of reasons. One, honey is made not from local pollinators but from European honey bees. Two, European honey bees are really good at producing honey, which means they're more efficient at removing pollen and nectar from flowers, denying food for native pollinators. Three, while only a few bees are directly harmed during honey harvesting, the need for their honey to be harvested means that they've been bred to make big, uniform honeycombs and a glut of excess honey. This makes them more susceptible to diseases, even before you factor in the monoculture nature of their existence.

Essentially, it's not that eating honey is harmful to bees. It's that the creation of honey at scale is cruel both to the bees producing the honey and the native pollinators who get pushed out by them. We (my household) do have honey on occasion, but only from local, small scale honey producers.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Here in Brazil we have Meliponiculture, farming honey from native stingless bees.

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[–] Bosht 17 points 2 months ago (6 children)

So my wife went vegan for a bit and the logic is basically any living thing we take advantage of or make their lives more of a labor. So eggs, honey, milk aren't vegan because companies put those animals in situations they normally wouldn't be in in the wild to take advantage and harvest products from them.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 2 months ago (137 children)

Stupid discussion. It does not matter whether something is in the box "vegan". Ask yourself why you would or would not eat something. If you don't want to eat(/drink) dairy because of the way the animals that produce the dairy are treated, would you be ok when they are treated differently? Are bees treated in the same way? Does it matter if you treat them in this way? Those should be your questions, not "does it belong in this box?".

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago

But it will ruin the achievement badge I want to show in my profile!

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago (3 children)
[–] bandwidthcrisis 21 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Someone once told me "meat is murder, but fish is justifiable homicide". I hope that helps.

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[–] ultrahamster64 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Does that mean that goddamn tomatoes are sea creatures??

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Some folks believe that fish aren't animals, either.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The state of California consider bees as fish.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I thought you were kidding but no, they do and the reason is otherwise they wouldn't fit under environmental protection laws.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (19 children)

Reasons that I, as a vegan, do not use honey:

  1. I cannot guarantee that the bees consented to their product being harvested. Some beekeepers clip the queen's wings, which can prevent the colony from leaving.

  2. I cannot guarantee that bees were not harmed in the process of harvesting (potentially getting crushed by the honeycomb frames, for example) or in the process of controlling the colony (like clipping the queen's wings).

[–] Akareth 22 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Regarding your second point, you also cannot guarantee that small animals like rodents are not harmed in the process of harvesting plants.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (12 children)

Kinda tongue-in-cheek questions, but: Honey isn't an animal body part, it isn't produced by animal bodies, so if it is an animal product because bees process it, is wheat flour (for example) an animal product because humans process it? How about hand-kneaded bread? Does that make fruit an animal product because the bees pollinated the flowers while collecting the nectar?

[–] Droggelbecher 39 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Bees make honey for their hive. Honey also does indeed contain bodily fluids from the bees.

The bread making human consents to you taking the bread (presumably). Breast milk and other human bodily fluids can be vegan for the same reason.

And insects pollinate plants not because they use the fruit, but for the nectar. They don't care what happens after they leave the flower.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I've always found it interesting that using animals is a bad thing, but using plants in similar ways is fine. I guess there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise such a person would simply starve to death.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Animals aren't just used, they are tortured on a industrial scale. That's mainly why vegans oppose animal products.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

One good argument for this: A vegan diet not only minimizes animal deaths but plant deaths as well, since livestock obviously has to be fed on many, many individual plants before they can get slaughtered. So even if we for some reason prioritized saving the lives of plants going vegan would still be the way to go.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Honey is a by-product of bees, the same way that all human made food is a by-products of humans.

[–] pyre 24 points 2 months ago (14 children)

so if I buy food from people I'm basically a cannibal

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (19 children)

if it needs to be pollinated by bees or wasps, then it's not vegan (insert troll emoji i guess)

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