[dotancohen]

I evolved to eat fish and meat killed. So did all other carnivores. I'm happy to continue eating and shitting and sleeping and having sex, I don't want supplements to replace food and AI to replace intellect and IVF to replace sex. I want to be alive.

[Faelon]

Abstaining from killing animals is about the sober realization that we can have perfectly healthy and happy lives without killing animals, who have feelings and a sense of perspective and experience, just like us. Living with my values and actions as one give me a strong sense of life, and I love cooking every day. Plants taste great when cooked well!

[dotancohen]

  > Abstaining from killing animals is about the sober realization that we can have perfectly healthy and happy lives without killing animals,

Maybe, maybe not. If one is lacking a hobby and happy to spend much time learning and obsessing and fiddling with what they eat, while accepting that they may be missing some vital things that we don't yet know about, then sure.

But I have enough hobbies and I don't want to risk missing some things we don't yet know about. I just eat what I evolved to eat.

[Faelon]

You could find the time to figure out what to eat on a plant-based diet in the space of a single Youtube video. The science that eating plant-based isn't just fine for you but also better for you is extremely solid. Just because we evolved to do something doesn't make it moral, and needlessly killing animals is clearly not moral. Humans did not evolve with the terrifyingly industrial scale farming we do now providing the unprecedented amount of meat global humans now consume.

[dotancohen]

I don't needlessly kill animals. I kill animals (well, they are killed on my behalf) to eat.

[boston_clone]

and there are mountains of evidence that prove you don't need to consume dead animals to have complete nutrition.

which makes the killing of animals to eat a needless act. because it's not needed.

[dotancohen]

Yes, if I want to read mountains of papers and meticulously watch and count what I eat and stay current on research and accept difficulty in deciding what and where to eat and treat the joyful act of eating as if it were a shameful act of desperation, then I could. But like I said, I have enough hobbies and I find no shame in recognising that my lineage evolved from a single cell organism to an apex predator.

[girvo]

> I just eat what I evolved to eat

So do I: plants!

[bluGill]

I'm an omnivore. all meat or no meat is not what i'm evolved to eat. Perhaps I eat too much meat, but zero meat isn't the right answer.

[Faelon]

Just because you evolved to do something doesn't provide a moral justification to do that thing. Whether you evolved to or not, animals suffer extraordinarily in the farms of torture we've made for them. It is well accepted that you can eat healthily on a vegan diet, and it would only really take a couple articles to figure out how to have a healthy plant-based diet. You could do it at Walmart.

[mlrtime]

Who's moral justification? Yours?, My families?, my community?, my government? my god?

I maybe too much of a individualist, so I get a little triggered when I see claims from others about the moral justification of what I should eat, what job I should have, who I should vote for... When these things that I do are not hurting myself or other humans.

Now I'm sure you could take an example of each one of these and "butterfly affect" to some example of hurting another human, but I could do the exact same thing to any one of [your] lifestyle choices.

[boston_clone]

> no meat is not what i'm evolved to eat

why do you think this? I've lived seven healthy years with zero meat and am in superb physical shape. how many 30+ year olds do you know that can run a five minute mile? can you?

[dotancohen]

Yeah, I eat plenty of those too!

[Saline9515]

Why the focus on "killing"?

Plenty of things you consume create suffering, in plants, in animals, but also in humans. Therefore, why just focus on killing certain animals?

Other ways can also be more beneficial overall, such as favoring local farms which respect animals. Those exist, although their products are more expensive. In the alpine mountains where I grew up, cows and goats had undoubtedly a better life than most humans on earth.

You can also change the way to work and consume - all of this vegan ethic isn't very coherent if, as a manager, you pressure your subordinates to the maximum, and fire your coworker who you suspect that she just got pregnant.

[Faelon]

The focus is on killing because we understand that the brain is the organ which generates sensation and presence. Plants completely lack the machinery to integrate information on the level of even a ringworm. Once you get to the size of the animals we commonly eat for food, there is an immense amount of complexity, much more similar to ourselves than different. The ethics of veganism if very coherent. The brain generates subjective experience, the feeling of being something. To deprive one of that experience is wrong- most people would report preferring to be than not. Of course, to your point about subordinates, vegans should also treat humans with respect. Actually, veganism provides a framework that tells us WHY we should treat other humans with respect- because they feel, just like I do. So, if we can practically avoid causing suffering to those with brains, as most people on this website can easily do, it is best to do so. Most plants worldwide are grown to feed to animals, by the way, so even if plants suffered, we should prefer a plant-based world which minimizes this suffering. this would also minimize the human exploitation in the food industry and reduce our reliance on the monoculture which broadly produces the bevy of animal feed grown to feed the insatiable global appetite for animal flesh. One more comment on your alpine animals comment- those animals were slaughtered for their flesh. Could you "humanely" kill a human selectively bred to grow to the size of an adult in two years? How would you do it? Would the average person be ok if you painlessly killed them after two years of roaming through the mountains? I don't think so.

[mlrtime]

>Plants taste great when cooked well!

Maybe? But until we get to the point where this is universally true, or I forget how good a prime fillet tastes, I don't see a good reason to stop eating meat.

[boston_clone]

Some (many?) ethical, ecological, and healthy choices will require you to go beyond "does this taste good" or "does this feel good"?

[Insanity]

Our species started out predominantly eating fruits, vegetables, nuts,.. As hunter gatherers, meat eating came later and initially was still not a dominant source of nutrition.

So yes, you eventually evolved for this, but it wasn’t the dominant food source for a loooooong time.

[amanaplanacanal]

Homo sapiens? I don't think that's necessarily true. Older ancestors maybe. Home sapiens was probably mostly getting calories from fruit, tubers, and other animals, depending on season and what they could find.

[Insanity]

Yeah I left a response about that in another comment. Sapiens (sapiens) perhaps, but not true for the entire homo line.

[konart]

Our species started out predominantly eating whatever was available.

During different points of time the ration was very different. From "mostly nuts" to "mostly fish".

[wizzwizz4]

And different populations evolutionarily "fine-tuned" in environments with different availabilities of various foodstuffs. While many dietary requirements are common to all humans (e.g. we lost the ability to synthesise vitamin C, making us all susceptible to scurvy), some are specific to individuals and (genetically-related) families.

Diet is one of the very few places where your genetic ancestry actually matters – although your gut microbiome, which evolves faster (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2014.00587), may not share quite the same ancestry as your human cell tissue.

[throwaway198846]

> Diet is one of the very few places where your genetic ancestry actually matters

Aside from lactose intolerance what else is different between humans?

[adrian_b]

There are many other intolerances, e.g. coeliac disease and the many different kinds of food allergies.

Besides these cases, which are obvious due to immediate harm, and which are the reason for laws about food labeling that mentions lactose, gluten and various allergens, there is a lot of variability between humans in the efficiency of digesting various foods and in the capacity of absorption for various nutrients.

Some people are able to eat pretty much anything, while others are aware that they do not feel well after eating certain things, so they avoid them.

[Insanity]

Yes, but more likely insects as first small “animals”. Hunting animals takes more effort than eating fruits etc.

I know it’s all vague delineation of where our species really started, and at which point you would no longer consider it the homo line, but for a significant part of history we were a small predator that would eat whatever was _easily_ available. Hunting animals is not easy and it’s a risky endeavour.

I’m not saying meat wasn’t part of our diet obviously, but it logically wouldn’t have been as dominant a part of our diet as it is today.

[adrian_b]

The most likely hypothesis about how humans have become the most efficient hunters of the planet does not pass through catching insects and very small animals, but through eating the remains of the big prey killed by carnivores.

There are various bits of evidence for this, like the higher stomach acidity of humans, which resembles that of carrion eaters, like hyenas.

It is plausible that the ability to throw sticks and stones was used initially for scaring other predators and make them abandon their prey, and only later, after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it became accurate enough to be usable for hunting living animals.

The ability to use stones to break the bones and eat the parts inaccessible for the carnivores who had killed the prey, i.e. marrow and brain, which are rich in hard to get nutrients, e.g. omega-3 fatty acids, is also presumed to have played an important role in the development of a bigger and bigger brain.

It is likely that the gangs of humans acted in a very similar way with the packs of hyenas, which acquire much of their food by scaring away from their prey the other predators, e.g. cheetahs, wild dogs, leopards and even lions. Moreover, similarly to humans, the most important ability of hyenas is not speed, but endurance when pursuing a possible prey that is tired or weakened, e.g. by wounds. While hyenas rely on their big teeth to chase the other predators, humans have relied on their ability to throw things at a distance, for the same purpose. While humans are quite bad at running, jumping, climbing or swimming, in comparison with most mammals, their throwing ability is unmatched by any other animal.

[throw_away_928]

They have found spears that are at least 400,000 years old, so we have hunted for food at least that long.

And if you look at our closest relatives chimpanzees, they also hunt without using tools. Humans and their ancestors probably ate whatever they had available, including meat.

[blacksmith_tb]

Not much meat, however[1] (unless we're counting insects, I suppose, but even then, still mostly fruit).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee#Diet

[Antipode]

Also likely insects.

[niek_pas]

You also evolved to nearly choke to death when you accidentally eat and breathe at the same time. Doesn’t mean it’s desirable.

[wang_li]

“Evolution” is not a sound basis for most choices. We didn’t evolve to wear shoes, live in houses, to use powerful cleaning agents, indoor plumbing, decontaminated water, refrigeration, and pretty much all modern medicine, among about every other thing that is part of modern life.

[mlekoszek]

At least we can talk about it.

[Braxton1980]

>, I don't want supplements to replace food and AI to replace intellect and IVF to replace sex. I want to be alive

No one is pushing for these changes you suggest and to take a stance suggests a social disorder or mental illness.

[cluckindan]

Reject modernity, embrace nomadic life in the forests.

[Propelloni]

Preach it. I, for one, welcome my caveman dentist!

[boston_clone]

You are not a carnivore, neither is any other human.

[amanaplanacanal]

Plenty do, though. Just like there are plenty of vegans. And plenty that live on junk food.

[bluGill]

I don't know anyone who claims that. Humans are omnivores is the most common claim - that is eat a mix of meat and vegitables.

[Faelon]

This is orthogonal to the main point which is that just because we are capable of eating something doesn't provide a moral justification for eating something. It is extremely clear from data and example that it's possible and actually easy to live a happy life on a plant-based diet. This means that eating meat is a choice, and many would say it is an overwhelmingly cruel choice.

[Saline9515]

Morality is a relative and personal thing. It is also very clear from data that you can live a good life while eating quality animal products.

Some may prefer to do it for personal pleasure, but also ease of life, or cost, which allows them to have time for things that they believe are also moral. Such as taking care of their children, working, and so on.

[boston_clone]

The commenter I'm replying to implicitly made that claim:

> [...] So did all other carnivores

[CalRobert]

Ok, but evolution didn’t get us somewhere over 8 billion people can share this planet.

[BobaFloutist]

I evolved to shit outdoors, bathe in cold water, sleep on the ground, and die without having traveled more than at most a couple of hundreds of miles from my birthplace but I refuse to be limited by the capacities of a glorified ape without language, culture, or understanding of the interiority of others, not to mention indoor plumbing.

[dotancohen]

Well actually I still prefer to shit outdoors and bathe in cold water.

https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/34403

[BobaFloutist]

That would I assume preclude taking a shower for 3-4 months of the year in some climates? Especially since we didn't evolve with indoor heating either. Or indoors at all, for that matter.

[staticassertion]

This feels like a series of completely disconnected statements. The underlying theme seems to be that "living" is something that can only be realized by isolating behaviors to those that developed under specific niche conditions that applied pressure to our ancestors, and that this is good, and that deviating is bad. The word "living" and "alive" seems to be a proxy word for something like "happy" or "fulfilled"?

So many hoops to jump through to understand what the hell you're talking about, just to land on what could charitably be called the dumbest thing I'll read today if I'm lucky.

[dymk]

You are not living in the body of a carnivore

Eat some berries and nuts

"Paleo" diet doesn't even include that much meat in it