alamani

Ty!

Thinking on it more, I think parasocial relationships should be mentioned too. If you get popular it can be difficult to publically argue with anyone without followers harassing them to defend you (and their followers doing it to you). If they do so publically, or just share what you've said, it can spread the argument to even more hostile people.

This reminds me of irl sword-billed hummingbirds. They have beaks as long as the rest of their body. Fantasy creatures based on them could be really fun.

I think that's fair. Good conversations can and do happen, especially on platforms allowing longer contributions like tumblr, but when a site revolves around following people instead of subjects it makes your interactions a public performance to all of your followers. That has a huge impact on discussion quality, incentivising dramatic takes popular in your corner of the internet and disincentivising saying anything controversial.

When you combine that with poor moderation on most platforms and algorithms that promote outrage-inducing content, toxicity and cancel culture are inevitable imo. It's shit even for creators.

Seconded.

To add to this, I've read recommendations from public health orgs to eat no more than two portions of oily fish a week, and minimise consumption of especially high sources like tuna steaks.

Some consumption is still recommended for omega 3s, though there are algae-based supplements for EPA and DHA as well as the fish ones. Flaxseed and some nuts are great sources of ALA, but afaik its conversion to EPA and DHA isn't great and consuming all three is a good idea.

(Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist. Verify things yourself before making dietary changes.)

Tyvm for this, though to be fair this is a PETA source; do you have anything external?

Regardless, their claims about the petakillsanimals site being run by a disinformation org seem to be true. The wikipedia article on the CCF is damning; they seem to have a general goal of opposing any environmental, public health or social justice campaigns that harm certain industries.

If by that you mean both sides were civil, ty haha. I'm trying not to replicate the toxicity of the average reddit argument (which I got sucked into a lot) but I worry I still get too logic-as-my-blade, so I'm glad if my intentions still got through.

A great tip I've heard is to try to read others' comments in the most good-faith tone possible, since it's easy for that not to carry over text.

Agreed. Not the biggest fan of PETA; am very much a fan of animal welfare and rights being advocated for. CO2 'stunning' of pigs especially gets to me.

While we can't be completely sure, our current understanding of sentience makes it a reasonable assumption. Even if plants are sentient, eating from higher trophic levels causes more plant deaths than eating plants directly.

Regarding the rest, I feel like I addressed all of that in the comment above. I'm a fallible human being and personal discomfort with killing animals no less cognitively complex than our pets, and sometimes toddlers, is definitely a factor, but I've been arguing based on necessity and quantity instead of that.

EDIT: And to be clear, I've never claimed veganism is environmentally perfect. It doesn't solve every problem with food production, it just helps with some, and it seems largely better for the environment (albeit with nuance around grazing certain types of land) even if we keep doing monocultures.

The difference between killing animals and plants, which do not have a CNS and therefore almost certainly aren't sentient, has been discussed thoroughly elsewhere in this comments section. Do you believe mowing a lawn is equivalent to harming a dog?

Regarding insects, it should be emphasised that veganism is avoiding anything that causes animal suffering or exploitation as far as is practical. Necessary cases, like the unavoidable death of insects for plant agriculture, aren't morally equivalent to unnecessary cases in the same way that killing other humans can sometimes be justified by circumstances, eg. self-defence. (EDIT: And any livestock raised on feed are indirectly causing more insect death regardless.)

People can indeed have different personal comfort levels when it comes to moral debates, but we can also discuss whether those comfort levels are reasonable. Otherwise 'we have different personal comfort levels' could be used in response to any moral question. It could be within someone's 'personal comfort level' to kill and eat babies as long as they were treated well until then.

Edit: TL;DR: context matters for any moral question and I'm not a fan of total moral relativism.

Other people have pointed out the differences between plants and most animals, but it's also worth noting that livestock need to eat plants. Because energy is wasted between each stage in a food chain, an omnivorous diet likely kills more plants anyway.

I'm not the same person, but it's not about our physical evolution imo. It's about advances in agriculture, our understanding of nutrition and ability to supplement or fortify foods with things like vitamin B12. Without those things, trying to cut out all animal products would probably be a terrible idea. With them, it becomes a viable choice for people with a good understanding of nutrition and without health problems that clash with veganism.