[devinhelton]

However tasty meat may be, it’s ethically and environmentally bad.

I disagree entirely, but there is no need to relitigate this debate here. If by any chance you have never read the pro-meat argument, the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith is a pretty good primer.

[michaelmrose]

Instead of debating a bad book or whether meat is good or bad for you which I don't know enough about would you like to talk about the ethics? I eat meat myself.

Where do you draw the line as far as ethical behavior towards animals? I think even most who eat meat don't think things need suffer right? After you admit animals CAN suffer and that such suffering ought to be minimized the logical minimum suffering is not raising animals for food save to the degree that is required for the health of human beings. Essentially balancing the 2 factors.

I'm personally hoping that particularly knot can be untangled by artificial meat. If we can ultimately cheaply produce fake meat that is identical insofar as utility there remains zero reason at that point to justify killing animals.

Do you disagree?

[michaelmrose]

I realize that sourcing wikipedia is kind of lazy but I lack the time to read entire books full of every sort of misinformation that happens to be going around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vegetarian_Myth

From the article:

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For the earth to survive, Keith thinks, the human population needs to be reduced by more than 90 percent. She also argues that the human food-supply needs to come mainly from hunting and small-scale animal husbandry.[4]

Criticism:

Sami Grover, referencing "Jason V", says Keith's book is filled with "factual errors and fallacious thinking". Furthermore, Jason V writes that Keith fallaciously uses her ex-vegan status in an attempt to depict herself as an authority on the subject.[11]

Patrick Nicholson writes that the book misinterprets scientific articles, cherry-picks facts, uses strawman arguments and relies heavily on anecdotes and faulty generalisations.[5] Ian Sinclair writes that Keith's arguments are "full of lazy thinking, willfully ignorant logic and glaring omissions".[12]

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My thoughts:

I think its meaningful or even sane to suggest that virtually everyone stops having babies or dies and all the survivors go play hunter gatherers in the woods.

I think our present trajectory is obviously unsustainable but that doesn't make any alternative suggestion reasonable.

Our future is the stars or extinction. In between we have to find a sustainable reasonable way to live civilized lives. This probably isn't horrifically complicated we don't have to reduce our population by 90% we just have to not keep increasing it and make do with simpler and less.

[jngreenlee]

>I think our present trajectory is obviously unsustainable

Curious what makes you think that, with some real hard numbers, etc.

I think we've become very good as a culture at brainwashing ourselves into a doomsday attitude when it comes to planetary resources...yet we've actually done quite well at getting rid of or minimizing bad practices as we learn they are damaging. Nukes, CFCs, noxious smokestacks...sure not 100%, but getting better over decades.

Yes I'm an optimist...I think the Earth is all we need, and based on scientific advancements and slow learning over decades (we barely even use the [deserts|seas|tundra]!), we could easily live well and without abject poverty at 100 BN+ in centuries to come.

What will kill us off...I think it more likely to be external [asteroid|aliens|supernova] or inescapable [Yellowstone|Krakatoa|Earthquakes|virus|new apex species]

[michaelmrose]

I think technology and science inherently empowers a smaller and smaller number to a greater and greater degree while the size of the playing field remains the same.

It would have been virtually impossible for virtually any percentage of hunter gathers to wipe out humanity let alone the biosphere. Eventually one person crazy enough may engineer all of our doom. This could even be so without malice aforethought.

Once you get to the stage of a planetary civilization expanding further gets fantastically harder. It's entirely possible that most intelligent species go extinct between getting big enough to destroy the requirements for their continued existence and actually escaping their planets.

The more obvious answer of ecological catastrophe is actually a lot harder. We could actually be well on our way to crashing and burning and still not be able to predict well enough that far ahead.

[devinhelton]

Every book taking a stance on a controversial subject is going to have those kinds of criticisms from the opposite side. It doesn't make those criticisms true.

I don't endorse the book or her particular worldview 100% but I believe she does bring some true evidence to light about the good aspects of meat.

[michaelmrose]

The criticism doesn't appear to merely come from some "opposing side" but also from disinterested observers without a particular dog in the fight.

Her only stated expertise outside of a high school education is that she spent multiple decades unhealthy because she decided to adopt a lifestyle choice and didn't bother to simultaneously read about how to eat a healthy diet without eating meat. Instead of figuring out how to eat vegetarian without being unhealthy or simply returning to a balanced diet she has decided that we ought to somehow get rid of almost all people and go back to being hunter gathers.

The problem is that she is a writer who writes about a broad range of topics she has no understanding of. Knowing how to put words together effectively can grant one an audience but it doesn't grant one any sort of expertise. She is a crank.