On Mar 3, 7:14*am, George Plimpton > wrote:
> On 3/2/2012 8:51 PM, Rupert wrote:
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> > On Mar 2, 7:57 pm, George > *wrote:
> >> On 3/2/2012 9:58 AM, Rupert wrote:
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> >>> On 2 Mrz., 17:43, George > * *wrote:
> >>>> On 3/2/2012 4:03 AM, Rupert wrote:
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> >>>>> On 1 Mrz., 23:37, dh@. wrote:
> >>>>>> On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:37:37 -0800 (PST), >
> >>>>>> wrote:
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> >>>>>>> On Feb 27, 6:22 pm, dh@. wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:39:12 -0500, >
> >>>>>>>> wrote:
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> >>>>>>>>> My favorite food used to be chicken. *recently, while I was preparing
> >>>>>>>>> chicken for my family, I had an epiphany.
>
> >>>>>>>>> I was handling the chicken parts with great caution. *I had vinyl gloves
> >>>>>>>>> on, and I was working hard to keep the process sanitary. *I am aware of
> >>>>>>>>> how unclean chicken meat generally is.
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> >>>>>>>>> It suddenly struck me: *"If I believe this has to be handled like toxic
> >>>>>>>>> waste, why am I feeding it to my family!?"
>
> >>>>>>>> * * * *It's not that way with "meat". It's that way with *some* meat. Notice that
> >>>>>>>> it's that way with meat from omnivores, which we are. So it makes sense that
> >>>>>>>> there is a danger of exchanging microbes that can thrive in the bodies of
> >>>>>>>> omnivores if you eat the bodies of omnivores without doing something to kill
> >>>>>>>> those particular microbes. Notice that it's a danger in pork and chicken which
> >>>>>>>> are both omnivores, and not in beef and fish because their systems are too
> >>>>>>>> different. But the good part is that if you kill the microbes which is simple
> >>>>>>>> enough, then the meat is good for you and your family.
>
> >>>>>>>>> It hit me like a bolt of lightning: *I believe that meat is unwholesome,
> >>>>>>>>> so why am I still eating it, and serving it to others!?
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> >>>>>>>> * * * *Just make sure you kill the microbes which also results in better tasting
> >>>>>>>> meat. No one likes rare chicken, and though rare pork tastes awesome it can make
> >>>>>>>> a person horribly sick. So cook it.
>
> >>>>>>>>> I have always hated the cruelty that "food animals" were subjected to.
> >>>>>>>>> I had to not think about it, to be able to eat meat at all. *Well, I am
> >>>>>>>>> thinking about it now, and it makes the thought of meat even more repugnant.
>
> >>>>>>>> * * * *Broiler chickens and their parents are not kept in little cages and the vast
> >>>>>>>> majority of them get to enjoy lives of positive value, imo. The same is true of
> >>>>>>>> cage free laying hens in general so if you buy cage free eggs you are supporting
> >>>>>>>> a system which deliberately tries to provide lives of positive value for laying
> >>>>>>>> hens. There's reason to feel good about doing that, not reason to feel bad about
> >>>>>>>> it. There's reason to feel bad about buying battery cage eggs though especially
> >>>>>>>> if you could get cage free simply by spending more money. Not only does buying
> >>>>>>>> cage free eggs and whatever other animal friendly products deliberately
> >>>>>>>> contribute to lives of positive value for livestock animals, but it also puts
> >>>>>>>> you in the position of deliberately contributing to a more considerate type of
> >>>>>>>> society and thinking in general. Notice that it's a level of consideration and
> >>>>>>>> participation that eliminationists do NOT want other people to intentionally
> >>>>>>>> rise to because it works AGAINST their selfish and lowly elimination objective.
>
> >>>>>>>>> OK! *The solution seems simple: *vegetarianism.
>
> >>>>>>>> * * *· Vegans contribute to the deaths of animals by their use of
> >>>>>>>> wood and paper products, electricity, roads and all types of
> >>>>>>>> buildings, their own diet, etc... just as everyone else does.
>
> >>>>>>> Which gives her absolutely no reason why she shouldn't go vegetarian.
>
> >>>>>> * * * *Other things which you snipped suggest why it would be ethically equivalent
> >>>>>> or superior if she becomes a conscientious consumer of both plant AND animal
> >>>>>> products.
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> >>>>> But, as we saw elsewhere, your case for this claim is not actually
> >>>>> grounded in any evidence.
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> >>>> Correct, it isn't grounded in evidence. *It is grounded in logical
> >>>> consideration of plausible and likely true propositions.
>
> >>> If they are plausible and likely to be true, they must be grounded in
> >>> some evidence.
>
> >> No, that's false. *The plausibility has to do with the conceptual
> >> knowledge, not with any empirical investigation. *Plenty of things that
> >> are plausible based on reasonably well conceived ideas turn out to be
> >> wrong upon empirical investigation, which usually leads to the discovery
> >> of some error in the initial conception. *However, even if you give a
> >> little more thought to the concepts involved here, you aren't going to
> >> hit upon something that would reasonably lead you to conclude that the
> >> initial assumption of plausibility was unwarranted.
>
> > I don't believe that an empirical claim about the world can be
> > "plausible based on reasonably well-conceived ideas", except insofar
> > as the judgement of plausibility is in some way related to facts about
> > the world that have in some way been established through empirical
> > investigation.
>
> They have been.
>

Good, so you can tell me what the evidence is, as I requested before.

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> >>>>> Most animal products require more collateral deaths than plant-based
> >>>>> products, because grain needs to be grown and fed to the animals and
> >>>>> it is a less efficient means of producing protein than directly
> >>>>> feeding the grain to humans. Grass-fed beef may possibly be an
> >>>>> exception, but you have demonstrated yourself unable to substantiate
> >>>>> the assertion, which you nevertheless keep making, that one serving of
> >>>>> soy products is likely to involve hundreds of times as many deaths as
> >>>>> one serving of grass-fed beef.
>
> >>>> We aren't talking about "most animal products". *100% grass-fed beef
> >>>> exists, and plausibly, it causes no additional animal deaths at all.
> >>>> You might wish to speculate idly about a beef steer putting its foot
> >>>> into a rodent burrow and crushing some rodents to death, but in fact
> >>>> cattle try to avoid stepping in holes.
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> >>>> It is entirely *implausible* to think that mechanized vegetable
> >>>> agriculture does *not* kill significant numbers of field animals -
> >>>> certainly far more than grazing animals.
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> >>> I'm not aware of any compelling reason to think it causes more deaths
> >>> per calorically equivalent serving.
>
> >> Of *course* you are aware of that.
>
> >>>>> I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that there might be some
> >>>>> dietary choices she might make which are not vegetarian and yet are
> >>>>> nevertheless just as good as a vegetarian diet, but you haven't given
> >>>>> her practical guidance about any specific such choice.
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> >>>> Not his job.
>
> >>> No. It's not his job. But my point that he has given her no especially
> >>> good reason to rethink her decision to go vegetarian stands.
>
> >> I already did.
>
> > You already did what? I was talking about David Harrison.
>
> But *I* have pointed out that she didn't adequately think through her
> decision to go vegetarian.
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On the basis of no good reasons to think so.

> >> * First, her health concerns are unwarranted,
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> > There are legitimate health concerns associated with eating meat.
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> *NOT* any concerns that can't be addressed by proper food handling that
> does not involve extreme measures.
>

Yes. Other concerns apart from that. Eating meat at the levels typical
in modern Western societies increases your risk for various serious
health problems such as heart disease and cancer.


> Anyway, she was talking about chicken specifically, which, due to
> commercial chicken slaughter and packaging practices, has a relatively
> high risk of salmonella contamination (but that contamination can be
> safely addressed quite easily.) *Other kinds of meat, such as beef and
> pork and lamb, don't pose anything close to the risk that commercially
> processed poultry does, and poultry does not pose a hard-to-handle risk.
>
> >> and in fact
> >> are almost certainly just a smokescreen anyway. *The whole way her post
> >> was written reeked with insincerity. *She was striving for a particular
> >> literary "feel", rather than simply to state her concerns. *It reeked of
> >> dishonesty and insincerity from the first paragraph.
>
> >> Second, her typically naive "vegan" concerns about animal cruelty were
> >> obviously those of a neophyte, one who has not given one bit of thought
> >> to the harm caused by what she does consume.
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> > You have no basis for that assertion.
>
> Of course I have. *The entire tone of her post suggests it.
>

It's always good to hear about your mind-reading skills.

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> >>>> What I have done is show that the easy, casual and fatuously
> >>>> ego-gratifying assumption that refraining from consuming animal bits
> >>>> *necessarily* shows one is pursuing the least-harm consumption pattern
> >>>> is false.
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> >>> Oh, good for you.
>
> >> Yes.
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> >>> Obviously it is conceivable that there might be some other consumption
> >>> patterns that wouldn't involve substantial sacrifice which cause no
> >>> more harm. Showing that this might be the case is really not any
> >>> extraordinary achievement.
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> >> It's enough to gut the entire "vegan" proposition.
>
> > Wrong.
>
> No, I'm right, as usual.

What do you think the "vegan" proposition is?