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The myth of food production "efficiency" in the "ar" debate

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Rudy Canoza

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May 25, 2007, 2:50:37 PM5/25/07
to
Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
reed of so-called "ethical" vegetarianism is entirely
ineffectual, have seized on the supposed "inefficiency"
of producing meat as a reason to decry meat
*consumption*.

The "vegan" pseudo-argument on "inefficiency" is that
the resources used to produce a given amount of meat
could produce a much greater amount of vegetable food
for direct human consumption, due to the loss of energy
that results from feeding grain and other feeds to
livestock.

In order to examine the efficiency of some process,
there must be agreement on what the end product is
whose efficiency of production you are examining. If
you're looking at the production of consumer
electronics, for example, then the output is
televisions, stereo receivers, DVD players, etc.
Rather obviously, you need to get specific. No
sensible person is going to suggest that we ought to
discontinue the production of television sets, because
they require more resources to produce (which they do),
and produce more DVD players instead. (For the
cave-dwellers, an extremely high quality DVD player may
be bought for under US$100, while a comparable quality
television set is going to cost several hundred
dollars. $500 for a DVD player is astronomical - I'm
not even sure there are any that expensive - while you
can easily pay $8000 or more for large plasma TV
monitor, which will require a separate TV receiver.)

What are the "vegans" doing with their misuse of
"inefficiency"? They're clearly saying that the end
product whose efficiency of production we want to
consider is "food", i.e., undifferentiated food
calories. Just as clearly, they are wrong. Humans
don't consider all foods equal, and hence equally
substitutable. As in debunking so much of "veganism",
we can see this easily - laughably easily - by
restricting our view to a strictly vegetarian diet,
without introducing meat into the discussion at all.
If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food production
efficiency, they would be advocating the production of
only a very small number of vegetable crops, as it is
obvious that some crops are more efficient to produce -
use less resources per nutritional unit of output -
than others.

But how do "vegans" actually behave? Why, they buy
some fruits and vegetables that are resource-efficient,
and they buy some fruits and vegetables that are
relatively resource-INefficient. You know this by
looking at retail prices: higher priced goods ARE
higher priced because they use more resources to
produce. If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food
production efficiency, they would only be buying the
absolutely cheapest fruit or vegetable for any given
nutritional requirement. This would necessarily mean
there would be ONLY one kind of leafy green vegetable,
one kind of grain, one variety of fruit, and so on.

If "vegans" were to extend this misuse of "efficiency"
into other consumer goods, say clothing, then there
would be only one kind of shoe produced (and thus only
one brand). The same would hold for every conceivable
garment. A button-front shirt with collars costs more
to produce - uses more resources - than does a T-shirt,
so everyone "ought" to wear only T-shirts, if we're
going to focus on the efficiency of shirt production.
You don't "need" any button front shirts, just as you
don't "need" meat. But look in any "vegan's" wardrobe,
and you'll see a variety of different kinds of clothing
(all natural fiber, of course.) "vegans" aren't
advocating that only the most "efficient" clothing be
produced, as their own behavior clearly indicates.

The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product,
then see if that product can be produced using fewer
resources. It is important to note that the consumer's
view of products as distinct things is crucial. A
radio can be produced far more "efficiently", in terms
of resource use, than a television; but consumers don't
view radios and televisions as generic entertainment
devices.

The critical mistake, the UNBELIEVABLY stupid mistake,
that "vegans" who misconceive of "inefficiency" are
making, is to see "food" as some undifferentiated lump
of calories and other nutritional requirements. Once
one realizes that this is not how ANYONE, including the
"vegans" themselves, views food, then the
"inefficiency" argument against using resources for
meat production falls to the ground.

I hope this helps.

Dean Wormer

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May 28, 2007, 12:11:24 PM5/28/07
to
Hello Rudy,

Thanks for posting this. It's too long, of course, but that's par for
the course in these internet groups, isn't it.

Your main argument is actually quite elegant, and could be expressed
in almost mathematical terms. Alas, it was not. Instead, you have
let your fingers do your shouting, and you have succumbed to several
nasty habits of the truly indignant, such as capitalizing things that
read quite well without the inverted commas - including, as just one
but probably the silliest example, the word "food" itself in the last
paragraph.

Rudy, you are the sort of opponent that some of us on the other side
(!) treasure: intelligent, articulate, logical, etc.; and I for one
look forward to seeing your argument expressed in plain English.

Yours,

D.W.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 28, 2007, 1:17:56 PM5/28/07
to

Thanks for the constructive criticism regarding style.
It's a pity you couldn't address the substance.

ontheroad

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May 28, 2007, 1:57:19 PM5/28/07
to

"Dean Wormer" <dwo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1180368684.3...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> Hello Rudy,
>
> Thanks for posting this. It's too long, of course, but that's par for...
========================
"...braindead wannbe vegans on usenet.... Anything over 3 words is too
much for us..".

Too bad you can't address substance....


ricky's babysitter

unread,
May 28, 2007, 10:26:44 PM5/28/07
to

That's because there wasn't any.

- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -


Dutch

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May 28, 2007, 11:32:46 PM5/28/07
to
"ricky's babysitter" <rudy-...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:1180405604....@d30g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

According to Dean there was, in fact he called the arguments "elegant", he
just had no meaningful response, like you.


pearl

unread,
May 29, 2007, 8:13:56 AM5/29/07
to
On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp

'Bullies project their inadequacies, shortcomings, behaviours
etc on to other people to avoid facing up to their inadequacy
and doing something about it (learning about oneself can be
painful), and to distract and divert attention away from
themselves and their inadequacies. Projection is achieved
through blame, criticism and allegation; once you realise this,
every criticism, allegation etc that the bully makes about their
target is actually an admission or revelation about themselves.'

The Socialised Psychopath or Sociopath
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm

> reed of so-called "ethical" vegetarianism is entirely
> ineffectual, have seized on the supposed "inefficiency"
> of producing meat as a reason to decry meat
> *consumption*.
>
> The "vegan" pseudo-argument on "inefficiency" is that
> the resources used to produce a given amount of meat
> could produce a much greater amount of vegetable food
> for direct human consumption, due to the loss of energy
> that results from feeding grain and other feeds to
> livestock.

"Right now, in addition to producing grains, vegetable
and fruits for direct human consumption, farmers also
raise livestock, and millions of acres are planted in
feed crops for livestock. The theoretical question at
hand is, what if Americans suddenly stopped raising any
livestock at all - how would we feed ourselves?

The answer is trivially simple. All of the resources
going into raising livestock, PLUS all of the resources
going into raising crops as livestock feed, would no
longer be needed for that purpose. To make up the food
deficit for humans, a fraction of those resources would
be needed to grow additional human-edible crops. That
fraction would be quite small, due to the fact that
livestock consume more calories and protein than we get
back out of them: the feed-conversion ratio for all of
them is substantially above 1:1." - "Rudy Canoza" 1/Apr/05

> In order to examine the efficiency of some process,
> there must be agreement on what the end product is
> whose efficiency of production you are examining. If
> you're looking at the production of consumer
> electronics, for example, then the output is
> televisions, stereo receivers, DVD players, etc.
> Rather obviously, you need to get specific. No
> sensible person is going to suggest that we ought to
> discontinue the production of television sets, because
> they require more resources to produce (which they do),
> and produce more DVD players instead. (For the
> cave-dwellers, an extremely high quality DVD player may
> be bought for under US$100, while a comparable quality
> television set is going to cost several hundred
> dollars. $500 for a DVD player is astronomical - I'm
> not even sure there are any that expensive - while you
> can easily pay $8000 or more for large plasma TV
> monitor, which will require a separate TV receiver.)

'Livestock a major threat to environment
..
... a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report,
Livestock's Long Shadow -Environmental Issues and Options.
"The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must
be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening
beyond its present level," it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included,
the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from
human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even
more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-
related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming
Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced
methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced
by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia,
which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth's entire land surface,
mostly
permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable
land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As
forests
are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of
deforestation,
especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of
former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

Land and water

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about
20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing,
compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands
where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management
contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the
earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other
things to water pollution, euthropication and the degeneration of
coral
reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and
hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides
used
to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles,
reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources.
Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous
and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to
biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all
terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's presence in vast tracts of
land
and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss;
15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline,
with livestock identified as a culprit.
...'
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html

> What are the "vegans" doing with their misuse of
> "inefficiency"? They're clearly saying that the end
> product whose efficiency of production we want to
> consider is "food", i.e., undifferentiated food
> calories. Just as clearly, they are wrong. Humans
> don't consider all foods equal, and hence equally
> substitutable.

'Dietary Risk Factors for Colon Cancer in a Low-risk Population
..
A high intake of legumes (beans, lentils, and split peas) showed
the strongest protective associations among the foods shown in
table 3, ..
..
Strong positive trends were shown for red meat intake among
subjects who consumed low levels (0-<1 time/week) of white meat
and for white meat intake among subjects who consumed low levels
of (0-<1 time/week) of red meat. The associations remained evident
after further categorization of the red meat (relative to no red meat
intake: relative risk (RR) for >0-<1 time/week = 1.38, 95 percent CI
0.86-2.20; RR for 1-4 times/week = 1.77, 95 percent CI 1.05-2.99;
and RR for >4 times/week = 1.98, 95 percent CI 1.0-3.89
and white meat (relative to no white meat intake: RR for >0-<1
time/week = 1.55, 95 percent CI 0.97-2.50; RR for 1-4 times/week
= 3.37, 95 percent CI 1.60-7.11; and RR for >4 times/week = 2.74,
95 percent CI 0.37-20.19 variables to higher intake levels.
..'
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/148/8/761.pdf

> As in debunking so much of "veganism",
> we can see this easily - laughably easily - by
> restricting our view to a strictly vegetarian diet,
> without introducing meat into the discussion at all.
> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food production
> efficiency, they would be advocating the production of
> only a very small number of vegetable crops, as it is
> obvious that some crops are more efficient to produce -
> use less resources per nutritional unit of output -
> than others.

'Cornell Ph.D. student works the land by hand at Bison Ridge
Farming in harmony with nature

By Lauren Cahoon
Special to The Journal
August 4, 2006

VAN ETTEN - What if every farmer decided to turn off his machinery and
go without fossil fuels once and for all? And along with that, what if
they
all stopped putting pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers on
their fields?

What if every gardener stopped pulling out their weeds and tilling
their
soil? Chaos, you say? Mass shortages in crops and foods, gardens
choked
with weeds? Perhaps so. But Rob Young, a Ph.D. student and lecturer at
Cornell University, has done all of the above with his small farm -
and
the business, like the crops, is growing.

"We just got a new client who's running a restaurant in one of the
local
towns - we brought them some of our lettuce and they went crazy over
it
.... our lettuce just knocked them over, it's so good."

Young's Bison Ridge farm, located in Van Etten, runs almost completely
without the use of fossil fuels, fossil fuel-derived fertilizers, or
pesticides.

The land has been farmed since the 1850s. Young and his wife,
Katharine,
purchased the farm in 1989. Before that, Young worked as the
Sustainable
Business Director for New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman.
When he discovered Bison Ridge, Young started working the land even
while he was still living in New Jersey. Eventually, Young and his
wife
moved to the Ithaca area so they could start their graduate program at
Cornell.

"We started doing a little gardening... then added more and more
fields
.... at first, we just wanted it to be an organic farm" Rob explained.
Running an organic farm is admirable enough, but at some point, Young
took it a step farther.

"I had an epiphany," he said. "I was transplanting beets after a
spring
rain, and I noticed how the land felt all hot and sticky - almost like
when you wipe out on your bike and you get a brush burn. I know it
sounds
cheesy, but I could feel how that (farmed) land had gotten a 'brush
burn'
when it was cleared and plowed.

"That's when I decided, I want to work with this land rather than
against it."

After that, Young started throwing common farming practices out the
window. He reduced weeding, adding copious amounts of composted
mulch instead and, because of the life teeming in the healthy soils
and fields
around the farm, Young lets natural predators get rid of any insect
pests.

No mechanized machinery is used except for the primary plowing of new
fields. In fact, except for driving to and from the farm (in a hybrid
car,
no less), no fossil fuels are used in any part of production.
Irrigation
of crops is either gravity-fed from an old stone well dug in the 1800s
or
through pumps driven by solar energy. Super-rich compost is used on
all of the crops along with clover, which fixes nitrogen and adds
organic
matter to the soil. Crops are grown in multi-species patches, to mimic
natural communities (insect pests wreak less havoc when they're faced
with diverse types of vegetation).

In addition, the farm has a large greenhouse where most of the crops
are
grown as seedlings during the late winter/early spring to get a head
start. The entire structure is heated by a huge bank of compost, whose
microbial activity keeps the growing beds at a toasty 70 degrees.
During
the spring and summer, most of the plants are grown in outdoor raised
beds - which yield about three times as much per square meter as a
regular
field.

"When people visit the farm, they comment on how we're not using a lot
of the land - they don't realize we're producing triple the amount of
crops
from less land," Young said. "It is labor intensive, but you can
target
your fertility management, and the produce is so good."

Young's passion for earth-friendly farming has proved to be
infectious.
As a student, teaching assistant and teacher at Cornell, Young has had
the
chance to tell many people in the community about Bison Ridge, which
is how Marion Dixon, a graduate student in developmental sociology,
got
involved with the whole endeavor.

"I had wanted to farm forever - and was always telling myself, 'I'll
do it
when I'm not in school,'" she said. But when she heard Young give a
speech about recycling and sustainable living at her dining hall, she
knew
she had found her chance to actually get involved.

Dixon and Young now work the farm cooperatively, each contributing
their time and effort into the land.

"I've had a lot of ideas," Young said, "but the work has been done by
a
lot of people - it's a community of people who have made his happen."

He said that because of Dixon's input, they now have a new way of
planting lettuce that has doubled production.

Although Young and Dixon are the only ones currently running the farm,
during the summer there are always several people who contribute, from
undergrads to graduate students to local people in the community - all
united by a common desire to work with the land.

"There's personal satisfaction in working the soil, being on the land
and
outdoors," Dixon said. "You get to work out, and get that sense of
community - plus there's the quality, healthy food. ... It's about
believing
in a localized economy, believing in production that's ecologically
and
community-based."

The combination of working with the earth's natural systems and
community involvement has paid off. Over the course of several
seasons,
Bison Ridge has grown a variety of vegetables, maple syrup, wheat as
well
as eggs from free-range chickens. They have a range of clients,
including a
supermarket and several restaurants, and have delivered produce to
many
families in CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) programs.

Although small, Bison Ridge Farm has prospered due to its independence
from increasingly expensive fossil fuel. Young said that, since little
if any
of their revenue is spent on gas, advertising or transportation, it
makes
the food affordable to low-income people, another goal that Young and
Dixon are shooting for with their farming.

Although Young and Dixon are happy about the monetary gains the farm
is
producing, they have the most passion and enthusiasm for the less
tangible
goods the farm provides.

"It's such a delight to work with," Dixon said. "You feel alive when
you're
there."

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D/20060804/NEWS01/608040306/1002

> But how do "vegans" actually behave? Why, they buy
> some fruits and vegetables that are resource-efficient,
> and they buy some fruits and vegetables that are
> relatively resource-INefficient. You know this by
> looking at retail prices: higher priced goods ARE
> higher priced because they use more resources to
> produce.

Is horticultural produce subsidized like feed-grain, flesh, etc.?

> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food
> production efficiency, they would only be buying the
> absolutely cheapest fruit or vegetable for any given
> nutritional requirement. This would necessarily mean
> there would be ONLY one kind of leafy green vegetable,
> one kind of grain, one variety of fruit, and so on.

'Analyses of data from the China studies by his collaborators and
others,
Campbell told the epidemiology symposium, is leading to policy
recommendations. He mentioned three:

* The greater the variety of plant-based foods in the diet, the
greater the benefit.
Variety insures broader coverage of known and unknown nutrient needs.

* Provided there is plant food variety, quality and quantity, a
healthful and
nutritionally complete diet can be attained without animal-based food.

* The closer the food is to its native state - with minimal heating,
salting and
processing - the greater will be the benefit.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/6.28.01/China_Study_II.html

"Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions to
protect
his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals
by the
billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions,
because
eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health
conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then
man
tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these
diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed
by
hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to
fatten
domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter
at the
absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a
year
sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth." -- C. David Coates

Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 29, 2007, 10:58:06 AM5/29/07
to
pearl wrote:
> On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
>> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
>> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
>
> [snip bullshit psychobabble - all lesley has]

Yes, a true statement - but irrelevant. It dealt with
another issue. The fact is, raising livestock is not
inefficient. It is a use of resources consistent with
consumer demand.

Calling livestock production "inefficient" is the same
as calling automobiles "inefficient" because we all
could use bicycles. People want meat. As long as the
meat is produced using the lowest price resource
combination, it is efficient in the only meaning that
matters.


>> In order to examine the efficiency of some process,
>> there must be agreement on what the end product is
>> whose efficiency of production you are examining. If
>> you're looking at the production of consumer
>> electronics, for example, then the output is
>> televisions, stereo receivers, DVD players, etc.
>> Rather obviously, you need to get specific. No
>> sensible person is going to suggest that we ought to
>> discontinue the production of television sets, because
>> they require more resources to produce (which they do),
>> and produce more DVD players instead. (For the
>> cave-dwellers, an extremely high quality DVD player may
>> be bought for under US$100, while a comparable quality
>> television set is going to cost several hundred
>> dollars. $500 for a DVD player is astronomical - I'm
>> not even sure there are any that expensive - while you
>> can easily pay $8000 or more for large plasma TV
>> monitor, which will require a separate TV receiver.)
>
> 'Livestock a major threat to environment

> [snip bullshit that isn't about efficiency]


>
>> What are the "vegans" doing with their misuse of
>> "inefficiency"? They're clearly saying that the end
>> product whose efficiency of production we want to
>> consider is "food", i.e., undifferentiated food
>> calories. Just as clearly, they are wrong. Humans
>> don't consider all foods equal, and hence equally
>> substitutable.
>
> 'Dietary Risk Factors for Colon Cancer in a Low-risk Population
>

>[snip study lesley never read, and that isn't about efficiency]


>
>> As in debunking so much of "veganism",
>> we can see this easily - laughably easily - by
>> restricting our view to a strictly vegetarian diet,
>> without introducing meat into the discussion at all.
>> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food production
>> efficiency, they would be advocating the production of
>> only a very small number of vegetable crops, as it is
>> obvious that some crops are more efficient to produce -
>> use less resources per nutritional unit of output -
>> than others.
>
> 'Cornell Ph.D. student works the land by hand at Bison Ridge
> Farming in harmony with nature
>

> [snip self-congratulatory bullshit that has nothing to do with efficiency]


>
>> But how do "vegans" actually behave? Why, they buy
>> some fruits and vegetables that are resource-efficient,
>> and they buy some fruits and vegetables that are
>> relatively resource-INefficient. You know this by
>> looking at retail prices: higher priced goods ARE
>> higher priced because they use more resources to
>> produce.
>
> Is horticultural produce subsidized like feed-grain, flesh, etc.?
>
>> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food
>> production efficiency, they would only be buying the
>> absolutely cheapest fruit or vegetable for any given
>> nutritional requirement. This would necessarily mean
>> there would be ONLY one kind of leafy green vegetable,
>> one kind of grain, one variety of fruit, and so on.
>
> 'Analyses of data from the China
>

>[snip bullshit that has nothing to do with efficiency]

Yes.

Whining, Crying, Bawl

unread,
May 29, 2007, 8:59:08 PM5/29/07
to
On May 28, 9:32 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "ricky's babysitter" <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote in message

"Elegant" but without SUBSTANCE you clueless ninny.

Whining, Crying, Bawl

unread,
May 29, 2007, 9:02:43 PM5/29/07
to
clueless Goo the retarded woman abusing dwarf squealed:

You are truly an idiot Goo.

Meat is inefficient as a food source when compared to plants.

End of argument.

Now shut up.

> Yes.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

Dutch

unread,
May 29, 2007, 10:48:12 PM5/29/07
to
"Whining, Crying, Bawl" <bunghol...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:1180486748.4...@q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

How exactly can an argument be elegant and not have substance? Substance is
the essence of argument, only it's substance can have elegance. Or, an
argument without substance cannot be elegant, by definition.

So who's the clueless ninny now, huh?

pearl

unread,
May 30, 2007, 8:29:01 AM5/30/07
to
On May 30, 2:02 am, "Whining, Crying, Bawl" <bunghole-
jon...@lycos.com> wrote:

> clueless Goo the retarded woman abusing dwarf squealed:
>

> On May 29, 8:58 am, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> whiffed:


>
> > pearl wrote:
>
> > > On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
> > >> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
> > >> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
>
> > > [snip bullshit psychobabble - all lesley has]

'Bullies project their inadequacies, shortcomings, behaviours


etc on to other people to avoid facing up to their inadequacy
and doing something about it (learning about oneself can be
painful), and to distract and divert attention away from
themselves and their inadequacies. Projection is achieved
through blame, criticism and allegation; once you realise this,
every criticism, allegation etc that the bully makes about their
target is actually an admission or revelation about themselves.'

The Socialised Psychopath or Sociopath
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm

> > >> reed of so-called "ethical" vegetarianism is entirely

Only to you and your ilk, ball. People want [!need!] *food*.

'FEEDING THE WORLD

"The world must create five billions vegans in the next several
decades, or triple its total farm output without using more land."
Dennis Avery, Director of the Centre for Global Food Issues . [1]

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that
around 840 million people are undernourished. That's roughly 14%
of the human population. On average, around 25,000 people die
every day from hunger-related causes. Each year 6 million children
under the age of 5 die as a result of hunger and malnutrition - this
is
roughly equivalent to all the under-5s in France and Italy combined.
[2] With the world's population expected to increase from 6 billion
to 9 billion by 2050, one of the most urgent questions we now face
is how we, as a species, will feed ourselves in the 21st century.

Land availability is one of the main constraints on food production.
The earth has only a limited area of viable agricultural land, so how
this land is used is central to our ability to feed the world. At the
moment, the problem is not lack of food - it is widely agreed that
enough food is produced worldwide to feed a global population of
8-10 billion people - but lack of availability. Poverty,
powerlessness,
war, corruption and greed all conspire to prevent equal access to
food, and there are no simple solutions to the problem. However,
Western lifestyles - and diet in particular - can play a large part in
depriving the world's poor of much needed food.

"In this era of global abundance, why does the word continue to
tolerate the daily hunger and deprivation of more than 800 million
people?" Jacques Diouf, Director-General, UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation. [3]

THE LIVESTOCK CONNECTION

World livestock production exceeds 21 billion animals each year.
The earth's livestock population is more then three and a half times
its human population. [4]

In all, the raising of livestock takes up more than two-thirds of
agricultural land, and one third of the total land area. [5] This is
apparently justifiable because by eating the foods that humans can't
digest and by processing these into meat, milk and eggs, farmed
animals provide us with an extra, much-needed food source. Or so
the livestock industry would like you to believe. In fact, livestock
are
increasingly being fed with grains and cereals that could have been
directly consumed by humans or were grown on land that could have
been used to grow food rather than feed. The developing world's
undernourished millions are now in direct competition with the
developed world's livestock - and they are losing.

In 1900 just over 10% of the total grain grown worldwide was fed to
animals; by 1950 this figure had risen to over 20%; by the late 1990s
it stood at around 45%. Over 60% of US grain is fed to livestock. [6]

This use of the world's grain harvest would be acceptable in terms of
world food production if it were not for the fact that meat and dairy
production is a notoriously inefficient use of energy. All animals use
the energy they get from food to move around, keep warm and
perform their day to day bodily functions. This means that only a
percentage of the energy that farmed animals obtain from plant foods
is converted into meat or dairy products. Estimates of efficiency
levels
vary, but in a recent study [7], Professor Vaclav Smil of the
University
of Manitoba, Canada, calculated that beef cattle raised on feedlots
may convert as little as 2.5% of their gross feed energy into food for
human consumption. Estimated conversion of protein was only a little
more efficient, with less than 5% of the protein in feed being
converted
to edible animal protein. These figures are especially damning since
the
diet of cattle at the feedlot consists largely of human-edible
grains.

Feedlot-raised beef is an extreme example, being the least feed-
efficient
animal product, but even the most efficient - milk - represents a
waste
of precious agricultural land. Prof Smil calculates that the most
efficient
dairy cows convert between 55 and 67% of their gross feed energy into
milk food energy.

Efficiency can also be measured in terms of the land required per
calorie of food obtained. When Gerbens-Leenes et al. [8] examined
land use for all food eaten in the Netherlands, they found that beef
required the most land per kilogram and vegetables required the least.
The figures they obtained can be easily converted to land required for
one person's energy needs for a year by multiplying 3000 kcal (a day's
energy) by 365 days to obtain annual calorie needs (1,095,000 kcal)
and dividing this by the calories per kilogram. The figures obtained
are summarised in table 1:

Food Land per kg (m2) Calories per kilogram Land per person per

year (m2)
Beef 20.9
2800 8173
Pork 8.9
3760 2592
Eggs 3.5
1600 2395
Milk 1.2
640 2053
Fruit 0.5
400 1369
Vegetables 0.3
250 1314
Potatoes 0.2
800 274

On the basis of these figures, a vegan diet can meet calorie and
protein needs from just 300 square metres using mainly potatoes.
A more varied diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, grains and
legumes would take about 700 square metres. Replacing a third
of the calories in this diet with calories from milk and eggs would
double the land requirements and a typical European omnivorous
diet would require five times the amount of land required for a
varied vegan diet.

In looking at land use for animal products this research makes
the very favourable assumption that by-products of plant food
production used in animal agriculture do not require any land.
For example, soybean land is assigned 100% to human soy oil
consumption with no land use attributed to the oil cakes used
for meat and dairy production. This stacks the odds in favour
of animal foods, so the figures in this paper are all the more
compelling as to the higher land demands of animal farming.

GHOST ACRES

Most of the land wasted on growing feed for livestock is in
developing countries, where food is most scarce. Europe, for
example, imports 70% of its protein for animal feed, causing a
European Parliament report to state that 'Europe can feed its
people but not its [farm] animals.'

[9] Friends of the Earth have calculated that the UK imported
4.1 million hectares of other people's land in 1996 [10].

"In Brazil alone, the equivalent of 5.6 million acres of land is used
to grow soya beans for animals in Europe. These 'ghost acres'
belie the so-called efficiency of hi-tech agriculture..." Tim Lang of
the Centre for Food Policy. [11]

This land contributes to developing world malnutrition by driving
impoverished populations to grow cash crops for animal feed, rather
than food for themselves. Intensive monoculture crop production
causes soils to suffer nutrient depletion and thus pushes economically
vulnerable populations further away from sustainable agricultural
systems. All so that the world's wealthy can indulge their unhealthy
taste for animal flesh.

PUT OUT TO PASTURE

Although grain-dependent industrial agriculture is the fastest growing
type of animal production, not all farmed animals are raised in this
way. Much of the world's livestock is still raised on pasture.
Worldwide, livestock use roughly 3.4 billion hectares of grazing land.

Proponents of animal agriculture point out that most pastureland is
wholly unsuitable for growing grain to feed for humans. They argue
that by converting grass, and other plants that are indigestible to
humans, into energy and protein for human consumption, livestock
provide a valuable addition to our food resources. The reality is that
land currently used to graze cattle and other ruminants is almost
invariably suitable for growing trees - such a use would not only
provide a good source of land-efficient, health-giving fruit and nuts,
but would also have many environmental benefits.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quite simply, we do not have enough land to feed everyone on an
animal-based diet. So while 840 million people do not have enough
food to live normal lives, we continue to waste two-thirds of
agricultural land by obtaining only a small fraction of its potential
calorific value.

Obviously access to food is an extremely complex issue and there
are no easy answers. However, the fact remains that the world's
population is increasing and viable agricultural land is diminishing.
If we are to avoid future global food scarcity we must find
sustainable ways of using our natural resource base. Industrial
livestock production is unsustainable and unjustifiable.

Related Items
. Biodiversity
. Deforestation
. Impact of Soya
. The Wasteland

http://www.vegansociety.com/html/environment/land/

> You are truly an idiot Goo.

"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing whereby
we fly to Heaven." - Shakespeare, Henry VI., iv. 7.

He's Mammon's minion.

'12. No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. And
the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things,
and they derided him.
13. And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves
before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is
highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
...'
http://reluctant-messenger.com/essene/gospel_3.htm

dh

unread,
May 30, 2007, 3:04:12 PM5/30/07
to
On 29 May 2007 18:02:43 -0700, "Whining, Crying, Bawl" <bunghol...@lycos.com> wrote:

>clueless Goo the retarded woman abusing dwarf squealed:
>

>> Calling livestock production "inefficient" is the same
>> as calling automobiles "inefficient" because we all
>> could use bicycles.

That was a good point, which is really remarkable for
the Goober.

>>People want meat. As long as the
>> meat is produced using the lowest price resource
>> combination, it is efficient in the only meaning that
>> matters.
>>
>
>
>
>You are truly an idiot Goo.

Well, there's no evidence to conflict with that.

>Meat is inefficient as a food source when compared to plants.

· From the life and death of a thousand pound grass raised
steer and whatever he happens to kill during his life, people
get over 500 pounds of human consumable meat...that's well
over 500 servings of meat. From a grass raised dairy cow people
get thousands of dairy servings. Due to the influence of farm
machinery, and *icides, and in the case of rice the flooding and
draining of fields, one serving of soy or rice based product is
likely to involve more animal deaths than hundreds of servings
derived from grass raised animals. Grass raised animal products
contribute to fewer wildlife deaths, better wildlife habitat, and
better lives for livestock than soy or rice products. ·

Here we see plowing:
http://tinyurl.com/8fmxe

and here harrowing:
http://tinyurl.com/zqr2v

both of which kill animals by crushing, mutilation, suffocation,
and exposing them to predators. We can see that planting
kills in similar ways:
http://tinyurl.com/k6sku

and death from herbicides and pesticides needs to be
kept in mind:
http://tinyurl.com/ew2j5

Harvesting kills of course by crushing and mutilation, and
it also removes the surviving animals' food, and it exposes
them to predators:
http://tinyurl.com/otp5l

In the case of rice there's additional killing as well caused
by flooding:
http://tinyurl.com/qhqx3

and later by draining and destroying the environment which
developed as the result of the flooding:
http://tinyurl.com/rc9m3

Cattle eating grass rarely if ever cause anywhere near
as much suffering and death. ·
http://tinyurl.com/q7whm

_________________________________________________________
Grass (Forage) Fed Claim Comments and Responses

By the close of the comment period for the December 30, 2002
notice, AMS received 369 comments concerning the grass (forage) fed
claim from consumers, academia, trade and professional associations,
national organic associations, consumer advocacy associations, meat
product industries, and livestock producers. Only three comments
received were in general support of the standard as originally
proposed. Summaries of issues raised by commenters and AMS's responses
follow.

Grass (Forage) Definition and Percentage

Comment: AMS received numerous comments suggesting the percentage
of grass and forage in the standard be greater than the 80 percent
originally proposed. Most comments suggested the standard be 100
percent grass or forage. Other comments recommended various levels of
90, 95, 98 and 99 percent grass and forage as the primary energy
source.
. . .

AMS determined the most appropriate way to integrate the
grass (forage) fed claim into practical management systems and still
maximize or keep the purest intent of grass and/or forage based diets
was by changing the standard requirements to read that grass and/or
forage shall be 99 percent or higher of the energy source for the
lifetime of the animal.
. . .

http://www.ams.usda.gov/lsg/stand/ls0509.txt
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
_________________________________________________________
Back to Pasture. Since 2000, several thousand ranchers and farmers
across the United States and Canada have stopped sending their animals
to the feedlots.

http://www.eatwild.com/basics.html
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

dh

unread,
May 30, 2007, 3:24:39 PM5/30/07
to
On Fri, 25 May 2007 18:50:37 GMT, Goo wrote:

>The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
>to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product

And of course in the case of livestock, the lives of
the animals themselves should also always be given
much consideration.

dh

unread,
May 30, 2007, 3:25:14 PM5/30/07
to

Exactly.

>you clueless ninny.

That's his most regular position.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 30, 2007, 3:41:47 PM5/30/07
to
Fuckwit David Harrison, hopelessly overmatched as always, blabbered:

> On Fri, 25 May 2007 18:50:37 GMT, Rudy Canoza wrote:
> >The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
> >to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product
>
> And of course in the case of livestock, the lives of
> the animals themselves should also always be given

zero consideration. They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and
unless the livestock exist. There is no reason to want livestock to
"get to experience life."

You lose, Fuckwit.

dh

unread,
May 30, 2007, 3:30:55 PM5/30/07
to

By being written elegantly, but still being a load of shit.

>Substance is the essence of argument,

Elegance would be more like the style used in presenting the
argument, or the bullshit, or whatever is being presented.

>only it's substance can have elegance.

Bullshit. People like the Goober have been trying to flower
up bullshit and pretend it's something more for a long time:

"Wisdom without eloquence has been of little help to the states,
but eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstcle
and never an advantage." - Cicero

>Or, an
>argument without substance cannot be elegant, by definition.

Only by a definition invented by a clueless ninny.

>So who's the clueless ninny now, huh?

You've still got it.

dh

unread,
May 30, 2007, 3:31:04 PM5/30/07
to
On 29 May 2007 05:13:56 -0700, pearl <lil...@esatclear.ie> wrote:

>On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
>> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
>> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
>
>'Bullies project their inadequacies, shortcomings, behaviours
>etc on to other people to avoid facing up to their inadequacy
>and doing something about it (learning about oneself can be
>painful), and to distract and divert attention away from
>themselves and their inadequacies.

White bread is green

By Fred Pearce
vegetarians may be healthier, but meat eaters do more for the environment. A
survey of the energy used to produce and distribute various foods has found
that meat and processed food such as sweets, ice cream, potato chips and white
bread are among the most energy-efficient--and so least polluting--foods in our
diet. Tea, coffee, tomatoes, salad vegetables and white fish, on the other
hand, are distinctly environmentally unfriendly.

David Coley and colleagues of the Centre for Energy and the Environment at the
University of Exeter have analysed how much energy from fuel is used in the
complete production cycle of food in a typical shopping basket.

The analysis includes the manufacture and application of fertilisers and other
chemicals, harvesting, processing, packaging, transport and waste disposal.
Geographical differences have been averaged out.

In a study of the diets of more than 2000 people, they found that it takes
around 18 000 mega-joules of energy each year to get a typical Briton's food to
the table. This is almost six times the energy contained in the food itself. In
all, the process consumes almost a tenth of the national energy budget, adding
15 million tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

But people's diets vary hugely. The study suggests that a sixth of Britons
consume food over a year that requires less than 10 000 MJ to produce, while
the annual diets of another sixth require more than 25 000 MJ.

The study will trouble those trying to be both healthy and green. The most
energy-intensive item is coffee, which requires 177 MJ of energy to produce 1
MJ of food intake. But typical salad vegetables require 45 MJ and white fish
36, compared to 8 MJ for beef and burgers, 7 for chicken and 6 for lamb.

Worse still for the environmental consciences of healthy eaters, while fresh
fruit consumes between 10 and 22 MJ, sugary confectionery, crisps, white bread
and ice cream are all right at the bottom of the table, consuming less than 1
MJ each.

"Meat does well because it is not highly processed, provides a lot of calories
and is often grown locally," says Coley. "But obviously it makes a lot of
difference whether the meat comes from the local farm or Brazil. I live close
to Dartmoor, where local cabbages and lamb would produce a very different score
from New Zealand lamb and Kenyan green beans."

In a sense, says Coley, we all "eat oil". The modern food industry is "in many
ways a means of converting fossil fuels into edible forms. Food is a large part
of an individual's impact on the greenhouse effect. Many of us could change our
diets to have a lot less impact."

From New Scientist, 6 December 1997

http://www.ex.ac.uk/EAD/Extrel/Annrep/a98-phy.htm#top
D A Coley, E Goodliffe and J Macdiarmid
'The embodied energy of food: the role of diet', Energy Policy, 26 1998: 455-9.

Dutch

unread,
May 30, 2007, 4:33:16 PM5/30/07
to
<dh@.> wrote


No, the welfare of the animals should be given consideration, not "the
lives".

Dutch

unread,
May 30, 2007, 4:43:06 PM5/30/07
to
<dh@.> wrote in message news:rsjr53pkoojf7okb3...@4ax.com...

No, that's not what "an elegant argument" means.

>>only it's substance can have elegance.
>
> Bullshit. People like the Goober have been trying to flower
> up bullshit and pretend it's something more for a long time:

Then that would be bullshit, gilding the lily, not elegant argument.

> "Wisdom without eloquence has been of little help to the states,
> but eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstcle
> and never an advantage." - Cicero

An elegant argument by definition displays both eloquence and wisdom, along
with logic and reason.

The Logic of the Larder is missing these characteristics, except that it
contains one fundamental logical hook, it is not reasonable nor wise, and
decidely not elegant.

>>Or, an
>>argument without substance cannot be elegant, by definition.
>
> Only by a definition invented by a clueless ninny.
>
>>So who's the clueless ninny now, huh?
>
> You've still got it.

I fear that you and your erstwhile buddy are leagues ahead.

Leif Erikson's Smarter Brother

unread,
May 30, 2007, 5:12:40 PM5/30/07
to
On May 30, 2:43 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> <dh@.> wrote in messagenews:rsjr53pkoojf7okb3...@4ax.com...

> > On Wed, 30 May 2007 02:48:12 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>
> >>"Whining, Crying, Bawl" <bunghole-jon...@lycos.com> wrote in message

You clearly are a ninny Dutch.

You don't know the difference between elegant and eloquent.

>
> > "Wisdom without eloquence has been of little help to the states,
> > but eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstcle
> > and never an advantage." - Cicero
>
> An elegant argument by definition displays both eloquence and wisdom, along
> with logic and reason.
>
> The Logic of the Larder is missing these characteristics, except that it
> contains one fundamental logical hook, it is not reasonable nor wise, and
> decidely not elegant.

Common sense and inheirent rights need none of your much vaunted
"ELEGANCE" you twat.

You're getting goofier than Goo.

>
> >>Or, an
> >>argument without substance cannot be elegant, by definition.
>
> > Only by a definition invented by a clueless ninny.
>
> >>So who's the clueless ninny now, huh?
>
> > You've still got it.
>

> I fear that you and your erstwhile buddy are leagues ahead.- Hide quoted text -

Dutch

unread,
May 31, 2007, 3:18:27 AM5/31/07
to
"Leif Erikson's Smarter Brother" <ban...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1180559559.9...@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

I do, but you don't, dummy. You had never heard the adjective elegant used
to describe an argument before, now you're befuddled. Here's a clue, it is
commonly used when referring to mathematical arguments that are very
succinct and pure in their application of logic, clear and irrefutable. It
never, ever applies to arguments that lack substance, that would
automatically disqualify them. An eloquent argument *might* lack substance,
but eloquent usually refers to the speaker, not the speech.

>> > "Wisdom without eloquence has been of little help to the states,
>> > but eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstcle
>> > and never an advantage." - Cicero
>>
>> An elegant argument by definition displays both eloquence and wisdom,
>> along
>> with logic and reason.
>>
>> The Logic of the Larder is missing these characteristics, except that it
>> contains one fundamental logical hook, it is not reasonable nor wise, and
>> decidely not elegant.
>
>
>
> Common sense and inheirent rights need none of your much vaunted
> "ELEGANCE" you twat.

Or, "What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason
away." - The Doobie Brothers

> You're getting goofier than Goo.

A "Goo" is a person who rejects as nonsense Fuckwit Harrison's campaign to
convince the world that anyone who opposes the consumption of animal
products is being selfish for wanting to deny life to livestock animals. By
that definition aren't you a Goo too? Isn't everyone?


pearl

unread,
May 31, 2007, 5:34:42 AM5/31/07
to
On May 30, 8:04 pm, dh@. wrote:

>
> · From the life and death of a thousand pound grass raised
> steer

http://www.wasteofthewest.com/Chapter6.html

pearl

unread,
May 31, 2007, 6:42:20 AM5/31/07
to
On May 30, 8:31 pm, dh@. wrote:

> vegetarians may be healthier, but meat eaters do more for the environment.

http://www.wasteofthewest.com/Chapter6.html

> "Meat does well because it is not highly processed, provides a lot of calories
> and is often grown locally," says Coley. "But obviously it makes a lot of
> difference whether the meat comes from the local farm or Brazil. I live close
> to Dartmoor, where local cabbages and lamb would produce a very different score
> from New Zealand lamb and Kenyan green beans."

"In Brazil alone, the equivalent of 5.6 million acres of land is used


to grow soya beans for animals in Europe. These 'ghost acres'
belie the so-called efficiency of hi-tech agriculture..." Tim Lang of
the Centre for Food Policy. [11]

..'
http://www.vegansociety.com/html/environment/land/

> In a sense, says Coley, we all "eat oil". The ***modern food industry*** is "in many


> ways a means of converting fossil fuels into edible forms. Food is a large part
> of an individual's impact on the greenhouse effect. Many of us could change our
> diets to have a lot less impact."

'Cornell Ph.D. student works the land by hand at Bison Ridge

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article%3FAID%3D/200608...

Kickin' Goober's Faggot Ass

unread,
May 31, 2007, 12:46:36 PM5/31/07
to
On May 31, 1:18 am, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "Leif Erikson's Smarter Brother" <banm...@hotmail.com> wrote in messagenews:1180559559.9...@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> that definition aren't you a Goo too? Isn't everyone?- Hide quoted text -


YOU are worse than Goo!

I have NEVER opposed animal consumption because it would preclude life
for "livestock".

I oppose it because it is an unhealthy choice for humans and the
planet as a whole and a terrible, horrible, life and death for the
animals.

>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

dh

unread,
May 31, 2007, 1:52:18 PM5/31/07
to

In order to consider whether or not it is cruel to *the animals*
for them the be raised for food, their lives plus the quality of their
lives necessarily MUST be given consideration.

dh

unread,
May 31, 2007, 1:52:51 PM5/31/07
to
On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Goo wrote:

>They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
>the livestock exist.

If you think you have any clue about any of this Goo,
then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
do exist. Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent
"entities" Goobs, just try to tell us about the real ones.

dh

unread,
May 31, 2007, 1:55:38 PM5/31/07
to

Then Dean used the wrong term, that's all. I couldn't find a dictionary
definition, but here it is explained:
_________________________________________________________
from: Jeremy
. . .
It is sort of unfortunate when natural language adjectives get used
scientifically, because they carry over connotations we don't
necessarily want for their technical uses. This is particularly
confusing when the adjectives connote something positive, like
"elegance" . It is hard to imagine someone using the word "elegant"
in natural language without it connoting something positive, and that
can make the technical use of the term seem a little pompous.

"Elegance" in the technical sense is something that can be defined
technically --although not 100% precisely-- , but no one is required
to find this property "elegant" in the natural language sense. They
might even find what we call elegant distasteful, and in fact many do.

Contrast this with an adjective like "concise" , which has both a
technical and natural language use; but these both coincide.

http://tinyurl.com/38ubnn
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
That tells us the term itself was the wrong one to use and doesn't
even apply to what Goo wrote, much less is the misused term
correct in suggesting that the Goober's argument is elegant. He
presented it fairly eloquently, and that's the most that can be said
for it in that regard.

>It never, ever applies to arguments that lack substance, that would
>automatically disqualify them. An eloquent argument *might* lack substance,
>but eloquent usually refers to the speaker, not the speech.
>
>>> > "Wisdom without eloquence has been of little help to the states,
>>> > but eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstcle
>>> > and never an advantage." - Cicero
>>>
>>> An elegant argument by definition displays both eloquence and wisdom,
>>> along
>>> with logic and reason.
>>>
>>> The Logic of the Larder is missing these characteristics, except that it
>>> contains one fundamental logical hook, it is not reasonable nor wise, and
>>> decidely not elegant.
>>
>>
>>
>> Common sense and inheirent rights need none of your much vaunted
>> "ELEGANCE" you twat.
>
>Or, "What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason
>away." - The Doobie Brothers
>
>> You're getting goofier than Goo.
>
>A "Goo" is a person who rejects as nonsense Fuckwit Harrison's campaign to
>convince the world that anyone who opposes the consumption of animal
>products is being selfish for wanting to deny life to livestock animals.

No. You're very wrong. Goo is Goobernicus because he's a moron
who thinks he's a genius, and that is what gives him his glorious Goobal
distinction.

>By that definition aren't you a Goo too? Isn't everyone?

No, because you're lying. You can't be put in the Goobernicus category
for the same reason the Goober lives there, because you're not as extreme
as he is in the Goobal respect. But! Since you're his boy and you support
his lies in similar opposition to giving consideration to the lives of the creatures
on this planet, you are voluntarily on team Goober because you love being
there, making you a goo too.

Dutch

unread,
May 31, 2007, 2:35:40 PM5/31/07
to
"Kickin' Goober's Faggot Ass" <shrub...@excite.com> wrote

>> A "Goo" is a person who rejects as nonsense Fuckwit Harrison's campaign
>> to
>> convince the world that anyone who opposes the consumption of animal
>> products is being selfish for wanting to deny life to livestock animals.
>> By
>> that definition aren't you a Goo too? Isn't everyone?- Hide quoted text -
>
>
> YOU are worse than Goo!
>
> I have NEVER opposed animal consumption because it would preclude life
> for "livestock".

It may not be the reason, but it would be the inevitable result.

> I oppose it because it is an unhealthy choice for humans and the
> planet as a whole and a terrible, horrible, life and death for the
> animals.

Yup, yer a Goo. Welcome to the club, Goos come in all ages and sizes, from
ARAs to staunch anti-ARAs, all have one thing in common, we realize that
there is no moral significance in the idea that livestock would not get to
be born and experience the wonder of life if we stopped using animal
products.

Have you seen the movie "Fast Food Nation"? That'll get your juices flowing.

Dutch

unread,
May 31, 2007, 2:50:19 PM5/31/07
to
<dh@.> wrote in message news:kq2u53hktgjepn7dq...@4ax.com...


Livestock who exist only need us to pay attention to their welfare. What
benefit do you imagine your "appreciation" gives them? I'll tell you, Zero.
It's your misguided, blundering way to deal with the accusations of ARAs who
say that it's cruel to raise livestock.

Dutch

unread,
May 31, 2007, 3:04:00 PM5/31/07
to
<dh@.> wrote

> On Thu, 31 May 2007 07:18:27 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
[..]

>>> You don't know the difference between elegant and eloquent.
>>
>>I do, but you don't, dummy. You had never heard the adjective elegant used
>>to describe an argument before, now you're befuddled. Here's a clue, it is
>>commonly used when referring to mathematical arguments that are very
>>succinct and pure in their application of logic, clear and irrefutable.
>
> Then Dean used the wrong term, that's all.

Nonsense, Dean used the word, we have to assume it was what he meant to say
unless he says otherwise.

> I couldn't find a dictionary
> definition,

There are 26 of them here http://www.onelook.com/?w=elegant&ls=a
From the first, Encarta..
2. concise: pleasingly and often ingeniously neat, simple, or concise
an equation elegant in its simplicity

> but here it is explained:
> _________________________________________________________
> from: Jeremy
> . . .
> It is sort of unfortunate when natural language adjectives get used
> scientifically, because they carry over connotations we don't
> necessarily want for their technical uses. This is particularly
> confusing when the adjectives connote something positive, like
> "elegance" . It is hard to imagine someone using the word "elegant"
> in natural language without it connoting something positive, and that
> can make the technical use of the term seem a little pompous.
>
> "Elegance" in the technical sense is something that can be defined
> technically --although not 100% precisely-- , but no one is required
> to find this property "elegant" in the natural language sense. They
> might even find what we call elegant distasteful, and in fact many do.
>
> Contrast this with an adjective like "concise" , which has both a
> technical and natural language use; but these both coincide.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/38ubnn
> ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
> That tells us the term itself was the wrong one to use and doesn't
> even apply to what Goo wrote, much less is the misused term
> correct in suggesting that the Goober's argument is elegant. He
> presented it fairly eloquently, and that's the most that can be said
> for it in that regard.

None of that says that it was the wrong term. His argument, which was not
included, needed to be concise and ingenious, I have no doubt that it was.

Ahh! That makes you the greatest of all Goos, because the gap between your
intelligence and your self-image is infinite.

>>By that definition aren't you a Goo too? Isn't everyone?
>
> No, because you're lying. You can't be put in the Goobernicus category
> for the same reason the Goober lives there, because you're not as extreme
> as he is in the Goobal respect. But! Since you're his boy and you support
> his lies in similar opposition to giving consideration to the lives of the
> creatures
> on this planet, you are voluntarily on team Goober because you love being
> there, making you a goo too.

Opposition to your circular, self-serving nonsense is the essence of what
makes us all Goos. It is rare that a concept is conceived that is so lame,
so vile, that it causes mortal enemies to see eye-to-eye. The LoL is that.


Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 31, 2007, 3:13:31 PM5/31/07
to
Fuckwit David Harrison, hopelessly overmatched as always, lied:

> On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Rudy Canoza wrote:
>
> >They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
> >the livestock exist.
>
> If you think you have any clue about any of this Rudy,

Much, much more than a clue, Fuckwit. I have done the entire
analysis.


> then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
> to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
> do exist.

Fuckwit, you stupid pig-fucking cracker: we *always* and *only* have
been talking about the "consideration" you wish to give livestock
*PRIOR* to their existence. You are far too stupid and inept and shit-
brained to try to get away with the switch you just attempted, you
stupid cunt.


> Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent

> "entities" Rudy,

No, Fuckwit - YOUR "imaginary nonexistent 'entities'", except,
Fuckwit, that you stupidly and irrationally think they exist. This
has *always* and *only* been about YOUR belief that the "future farm
animals" are, today, morally considerable entities. They are not,
and you are a fuckwit.

Guppy the Corpse Pumper

unread,
May 31, 2007, 3:42:01 PM5/31/07
to
On May 31, 1:13 pm, Rudy Canoza <notgen...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Fuckwit David Harrison, hopelessly overmatched as always, lied:
>
> > On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Rudy Canoza wrote:
>
> > >They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
> > >the livestock exist.
>
> > If you think you have any clue about any of this Rudy,
>
> Much, much more than a clue, Fuckwit. I have done the entire
> analysis.


bWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Is that like your EXPLANATION of how cows are raised for 12 years
exclusively to become pet food?

>
> > then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
> > to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
> > do exist.
>
> Fuckwit, you stupid pig-fucking cracker: we *always* and *only* have
> been talking about the "consideration" you wish to give livestock
> *PRIOR* to their existence. You are far too stupid and inept and shit-
> brained to try to get away with the switch you just attempted, you
> stupid cunt.

What eloquence!!
Douche will be proud of you Goo.


>
> > Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent
> > "entities" Rudy,
>
> No, Fuckwit - YOUR "imaginary nonexistent 'entities'", except,
> Fuckwit, that you stupidly and irrationally think they exist. This
> has *always* and *only* been about YOUR belief that the "future farm
> animals" are, today, morally considerable entities. They are not,
> and you are a fuckwit.

Goo,...yer so elegant.
Even Douche says so...........but can you EXPLAIN any of it?


Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 31, 2007, 4:02:15 PM5/31/07
to
On May 31, 10:52 am, dh@. wrote:
> On Wed, 30 May 2007 20:33:16 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> ><dh@.> wrote
> >> On Fri, 25 May 2007 18:50:37 GMT, Goo wrote:
>
> >>>The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
> >>>to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product
>
> >> And of course in the case of livestock, the lives of
> >> the animals themselves should also always be given
> >> much consideration.
>
> >No, the welfare of the animals should be given consideration, not "the
> >lives".

*EXACTLY* right.


>
> In order to consider whether or not it is cruel to *the animals*
> for them the be raised for food, their lives

NO. There is zero reason to give "their lives" any consideration. Of
course, what you mean, Fuckwit, is that their lives "ought" to occur,
and that's just wrong. You will never persuade anyone of that. The
*welfare* of their lives, if the lives occur, is important; "their
lives", as something that should be given even a moment's
consideration before the lives occur, are not important.

You'll never get there, Fuckwit, no matter how much bullshit you spew
and how much wasted time you put into it: you will never persuade
anyone that livestock "ought" to exist out of any consideration of
their lives.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 31, 2007, 4:04:52 PM5/31/07
to
On May 31, 11:50 am, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> <dh@.> wrote in messagenews:kq2u53hktgjepn7dq...@4ax.com...

> > On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Goo wrote:
>
> >>They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
> >>the livestock exist.
>
> > If you think you have any clue about any of this Goo,
> > then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
> > to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
> > do exist. Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent
> > "entities" Goobs, just try to tell us about the real ones.
>
> Livestock who exist only need us to pay attention to their welfare. What
> benefit do you imagine your "appreciation" gives them? I'll tell you, Zero.

Exactly right. That was a great comment you made about the welfare in
their lives, rather than "their lives", that merits any consideration.

Fuckwit is still trying to get people to think the livestock "ought"
to exist, for moral reasons, and he just can't do it. He has wasted
eight years of his life - but no big loss, because his time is
worthless - trying to get people on board with him, and so far no one
has. No one ever will.


> It's your misguided, blundering way to deal with the accusations of ARAs who
> say that it's cruel to raise livestock.

Yep. Fuckwit is too stupid to realize it, but he is essentially
acknowledging that "aras" are right. He is so fucking stupid...

Dutch

unread,
May 31, 2007, 4:26:05 PM5/31/07
to
"Rudy Canoza" <notg...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180641892....@p47g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...

He arrogantly believes that he has discovered a clever way to turn their own
argument back on them. He thinks that it's inconsistent to wish for the
liberation of animals when that liberation would result in the elimination
of the very species of animals you are liberating. He can't understand that
it simply doesn't matter if livestock species exist or not, apart from their
utility, nobody cares. You're right, by imparting this false importance to
their existence he is unwittingly supporting the AR position. I emphasize
*unwittingly* because that characterizes him to a tee. He needs to get a
clue in order to be a half-wit.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
May 31, 2007, 5:03:05 PM5/31/07
to
On May 31, 1:26 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "Rudy Canoza" <notgen...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

I told him that back in 1999.


> He thinks that it's inconsistent to wish for the
> liberation of animals when that liberation would result in the elimination
> of the very species of animals you are liberating. He can't understand that
> it simply doesn't matter if livestock species exist or not, apart from their
> utility, nobody cares.

Certainly not the "prevented" livestock themselves.


> You're right, by imparting this false importance to
> their existence he is unwittingly supporting the AR position. I emphasize
> *unwittingly* because that characterizes him to a tee. He needs to get a
> clue in order to be a half-wit.

Even as a half-wit, he'd still be Fuckwit.

Anybody

unread,
May 31, 2007, 5:24:18 PM5/31/07
to


When are you and Douche going into your Net-cop routine Goo?

Surely there must be some spelling felons you're just itchin' to ream
out.

Dutch

unread,
May 31, 2007, 6:13:41 PM5/31/07
to
"Anybody" <anyb...@canada.com> wrote in message
news:1180646658.6...@p47g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...

Why do you keep changing your nym Ronnie? Nobody cares enough to killfile
you.

Kickin' Goober's Faggot Ass

unread,
May 31, 2007, 7:17:30 PM5/31/07
to
On May 31, 4:13 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "Anybody" <anybod...@canada.com> wrote in message

Flags of convenience Douche.

Rupert

unread,
May 31, 2007, 10:14:54 PM5/31/07
to
On May 26, 4:50 am, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
> reed of so-called "ethical" vegetarianism is entirely
> ineffectual, have seized on the supposed "inefficiency"
> of producing meat as a reason to decry meat
> *consumption*.
>
> The "vegan" pseudo-argument on "inefficiency" is that
> the resources used to produce a given amount of meat
> could produce a much greater amount of vegetable food
> for direct human consumption, due to the loss of energy
> that results from feeding grain and other feeds to
> livestock.
>
> In order to examine the efficiency of some process,
> there must be agreement on what the end product is
> whose efficiency of production you are examining. If
> you're looking at the production of consumer
> electronics, for example, then the output is
> televisions, stereo receivers, DVD players, etc.
> Rather obviously, you need to get specific. No
> sensible person is going to suggest that we ought to
> discontinue the production of television sets, because
> they require more resources to produce (which they do),
> and produce more DVD players instead. (For the
> cave-dwellers, an extremely high quality DVD player may
> be bought for under US$100, while a comparable quality
> television set is going to cost several hundred
> dollars. $500 for a DVD player is astronomical - I'm
> not even sure there are any that expensive - while you
> can easily pay $8000 or more for large plasma TV
> monitor, which will require a separate TV receiver.)
>
> What are the "vegans" doing with their misuse of
> "inefficiency"? They're clearly saying that the end
> product whose efficiency of production we want to
> consider is "food", i.e., undifferentiated food
> calories. Just as clearly, they are wrong. Humans
> don't consider all foods equal, and hence equally
> substitutable. As in debunking so much of "veganism",
> we can see this easily - laughably easily - by
> restricting our view to a strictly vegetarian diet,
> without introducing meat into the discussion at all.
> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food production
> efficiency, they would be advocating the production of
> only a very small number of vegetable crops, as it is
> obvious that some crops are more efficient to produce -
> use less resources per nutritional unit of output -
> than others.
>
> But how do "vegans" actually behave? Why, they buy
> some fruits and vegetables that are resource-efficient,
> and they buy some fruits and vegetables that are
> relatively resource-INefficient. You know this by
> looking at retail prices: higher priced goods ARE
> higher priced because they use more resources to
> produce. If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food
> production efficiency, they would only be buying the
> absolutely cheapest fruit or vegetable for any given
> nutritional requirement. This would necessarily mean
> there would be ONLY one kind of leafy green vegetable,
> one kind of grain, one variety of fruit, and so on.
>
> If "vegans" were to extend this misuse of "efficiency"
> into other consumer goods, say clothing, then there
> would be only one kind of shoe produced (and thus only
> one brand). The same would hold for every conceivable
> garment. A button-front shirt with collars costs more
> to produce - uses more resources - than does a T-shirt,
> so everyone "ought" to wear only T-shirts, if we're
> going to focus on the efficiency of shirt production.
> You don't "need" any button front shirts, just as you
> don't "need" meat. But look in any "vegan's" wardrobe,
> and you'll see a variety of different kinds of clothing
> (all natural fiber, of course.) "vegans" aren't
> advocating that only the most "efficient" clothing be
> produced, as their own behavior clearly indicates.

>
> The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
> to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product,
> then see if that product can be produced using fewer
> resources. It is important to note that the consumer's
> view of products as distinct things is crucial. A
> radio can be produced far more "efficiently", in terms
> of resource use, than a television; but consumers don't
> view radios and televisions as generic entertainment
> devices.
>
> The critical mistake, the UNBELIEVABLY stupid mistake,
> that "vegans" who misconceive of "inefficiency" are
> making, is to see "food" as some undifferentiated lump
> of calories and other nutritional requirements. Once
> one realizes that this is not how ANYONE, including the
> "vegans" themselves, views food, then the
> "inefficiency" argument against using resources for
> meat production falls to the ground.
>
> I hope this helps.

The argument is that we can produce perfectly tasty and nutritious
food at the cost of a lot less environmental destruction. Also, we
could feed more people from a given amount of land. That's the sense
of "efficiency" being used. It shouldn't be too obscure. You may argue
that we shouldn't bother to take into account environmental
externalities or the fact that a lot of people are going hungry, but
that's precisely the point at issue. There's no "unbelievably stupid
mistake" involved. I hope this helps.

Rupert

unread,
May 31, 2007, 10:24:26 PM5/31/07
to
On May 30, 12:58 am, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
> pearl wrote:

> > On May 25, 7:50 pm, Rudy Canoza <rudy-can...@excite.com> wrote:
> >> Some "vegans", in a desperate attempt to find some club
> >> with which to beat on meat eaters, given that the limp
>
> > [snip bullshit psychobabble - all lesley has]

>
> >> reed of so-called "ethical" vegetarianism is entirely
> >> ineffectual, have seized on the supposed "inefficiency"
> >> of producing meat as a reason to decry meat
> >> *consumption*.
>
> >> The "vegan" pseudo-argument on "inefficiency" is that
> >> the resources used to produce a given amount of meat
> >> could produce a much greater amount of vegetable food
> >> for direct human consumption, due to the loss of energy
> >> that results from feeding grain and other feeds to
> >> livestock.
>
> > "Right now, in addition to producing grains, vegetable
> > and fruits for direct human consumption, farmers also
> > raise livestock, and millions of acres are planted in
> > feed crops for livestock. The theoretical question at
> > hand is, what if Americans suddenly stopped raising any
> > livestock at all - how would we feed ourselves?
>
> > The answer is trivially simple. All of the resources
> > going into raising livestock, PLUS all of the resources
> > going into raising crops as livestock feed, would no
> > longer be needed for that purpose. To make up the food
> > deficit for humans, a fraction of those resources would
> > be needed to grow additional human-edible crops. That
> > fraction would be quite small, due to the fact that
> > livestock consume more calories and protein than we get
> > back out of them: the feed-conversion ratio for all of
> > them is substantially above 1:1." - "Rudy Canoza" 1/Apr/05
>
> Yes, a true statement - but irrelevant. It dealt with
> another issue. The fact is, raising livestock is not
> inefficient. It is a use of resources consistent with
> consumer demand.
>

No-one's disputing that. The argument is being made that consumers
should take into account the consequences of their choices. There is
not enough internalization of externalities.

> Calling livestock production "inefficient" is the same
> as calling automobiles "inefficient" because we all
> could use bicycles.

You've totally missed the point.

> People want meat. As long as the
> meat is produced using the lowest price resource
> combination, it is efficient in the only meaning that
> matters.
>

Ipse dixit. It should be clear to any reasonably intelligent person
what the intended sense of efficiency is. If you want to argue that
considerations of efficiency in that sense don't matter, then, um,
you've got to do just that, argue the point. Offer the slightest
reason to think that efficiency in that sense doesn't matter. In other
words, actually engage with the argument instead of talking about an
irrelevant sense of "efficiency".


>
>
>
>
> >> In order to examine the efficiency of some process,
> >> there must be agreement on what the end product is
> >> whose efficiency of production you are examining. If
> >> you're looking at the production of consumer
> >> electronics, for example, then the output is
> >> televisions, stereo receivers, DVD players, etc.
> >> Rather obviously, you need to get specific. No
> >> sensible person is going to suggest that we ought to
> >> discontinue the production of television sets, because
> >> they require more resources to produce (which they do),
> >> and produce more DVD players instead. (For the
> >> cave-dwellers, an extremely high quality DVD player may
> >> be bought for under US$100, while a comparable quality
> >> television set is going to cost several hundred
> >> dollars. $500 for a DVD player is astronomical - I'm
> >> not even sure there are any that expensive - while you
> >> can easily pay $8000 or more for large plasma TV
> >> monitor, which will require a separate TV receiver.)
>

> > 'Livestock a major threat to environment
> > [snip bullshit that isn't about efficiency]


>
> >> What are the "vegans" doing with their misuse of
> >> "inefficiency"? They're clearly saying that the end
> >> product whose efficiency of production we want to
> >> consider is "food", i.e., undifferentiated food
> >> calories. Just as clearly, they are wrong. Humans
> >> don't consider all foods equal, and hence equally
> >> substitutable.
>

> > 'Dietary Risk Factors for Colon Cancer in a Low-risk Population
>
> >[snip study lesley never read, and that isn't about efficiency]


>
> >> As in debunking so much of "veganism",
> >> we can see this easily - laughably easily - by
> >> restricting our view to a strictly vegetarian diet,
> >> without introducing meat into the discussion at all.
> >> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food production
> >> efficiency, they would be advocating the production of
> >> only a very small number of vegetable crops, as it is
> >> obvious that some crops are more efficient to produce -
> >> use less resources per nutritional unit of output -
> >> than others.
>

> > 'Cornell Ph.D. student works the land by hand at Bison Ridge
> > Farming in harmony with nature
>

> > [snip self-congratulatory bullshit that has nothing to do with efficiency]


>
> >> But how do "vegans" actually behave? Why, they buy
> >> some fruits and vegetables that are resource-efficient,
> >> and they buy some fruits and vegetables that are
> >> relatively resource-INefficient. You know this by
> >> looking at retail prices: higher priced goods ARE
> >> higher priced because they use more resources to
> >> produce.
>

> > Is horticultural produce subsidized like feed-grain, flesh, etc.?


>
> >> If "vegans" REALLY were interested in food
> >> production efficiency, they would only be buying the
> >> absolutely cheapest fruit or vegetable for any given
> >> nutritional requirement. This would necessarily mean
> >> there would be ONLY one kind of leafy green vegetable,
> >> one kind of grain, one variety of fruit, and so on.
>

> > 'Analyses of data from the China
>
> >[snip bullshit that has nothing to do with efficiency]

> > "Isn't man an amazing animal?
>
> Yes.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 12:47:43 AM6/1/07
to

Yes, stupid "vegans" are. They're bitching that the demand itself is
for "inefficient" things. They're stupid, and they're wrong. Things
cannot be inefficient; the method of production of particular things
can be.


> > Calling livestock production "inefficient" is the same
> > as calling automobiles "inefficient" because we all
> > could use bicycles.
>
> You've totally missed the point.

No. I absolutely get the point. Stupid "vegans" - you, for example -
think people want "food". That's false.


> > People want meat. As long as the
> > meat is produced using the lowest price resource
> > combination, it is efficient in the only meaning that
> > matters.
>
> Ipse dixit.

False. That is *the* definition of efficiency, rupie-the-boy.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 12:48:35 AM6/1/07
to

That's the wrong argument. But it figures that's the one a stupid,
over-reaching fuck like you would try to make.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 1:01:31 AM6/1/07
to

They're saying that consumer preferences are having a pernicious
impact on the environment and on the global distribution of food. The
onus is on you to argue that this is false or that we shouldn't be
concerned about these things.

> > > Calling livestock production "inefficient" is the same
> > > as calling automobiles "inefficient" because we all
> > > could use bicycles.
>
> > You've totally missed the point.
>
> No. I absolutely get the point. Stupid "vegans" - you, for example -
> think people want "food". That's false.
>

Sane people do not dispute the fact that people want food. What you
are really trying to say is that I think that food is homgeneous. This
is not what I think, and I don't think anyone else thinks it either.
The argument is that meat production has effects which are
undesirable. The onus is on you to argue that these effects don't
really happen, or that they're not really undesirable. You haven't
made the slightest attempt to do that, so you haven't really engaged
with the argument.

> > > People want meat. As long as the
> > > meat is produced using the lowest price resource
> > > combination, it is efficient in the only meaning that
> > > matters.
>
> > Ipse dixit.
>
> False.

It's clearly true. You offered no argument.

>That is *the* definition of efficiency, rupie-the-boy.
>

The onus is on you to show that the considerations raised by the
argument you are attacking "don't matter". You haven't made the
slightest attempt to do this.


Rupert

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 1:05:09 AM6/1/07
to

Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.

> But it figures that's the one a stupid,
> over-reaching fuck like you would try to make.

I have not endorsed any particular argument for veganism in this
thread, I have merely pointed out that you have totally failed to
engage with any argument that is actually endorsed by a significant
number of people.

The irony of your calling me "stupid" and "over-reaching" is very
amusing. However, I won't bother to reply to your next post unless you
adhere to reasonable rules of civility.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 2:19:13 AM6/1/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180664666....@d30g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

No, you have. He is saying, correctly, that the efficiency argument as
presented by the advocates of veganism is nothing but a smokescreen. This is
clearly demonstrated by the errors of omission he illustrated which are
committed by vegans. A true efficiency equation would be far more complex
than "veganism", for one thing it would use animals and plants in symbiosis,
and it would utilize animals where plants were not as efficient to produce.
An obvious example is the consumer choice between South American grown
asparagus and locally obtained fish or game.


Rupert

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 2:43:46 AM6/1/07
to
On Jun 1, 4:19 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

Nope. The argument you give below is completely different to the one
he gives.

> He is saying, correctly, that the efficiency argument as
> presented by the advocates of veganism is nothing but a smokescreen.

No, he's saying that it's based on a misconception about what
constitutes efficiency.

> This is
> clearly demonstrated by the errors of omission he illustrated which are
> committed by vegans. A true efficiency equation would be far more complex
> than "veganism", for one thing it would use animals and plants in symbiosis,
> and it would utilize animals where plants were not as efficient to produce.
> An obvious example is the consumer choice between South American grown

> asparagus and locally obtained fish or game.- Hide quoted text -
>

All this is as may be, but it's completely different to Jon's
argument.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 3:03:26 AM6/1/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180674309....@q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

Tasty and nutritious for whom? What if I hate it and do not thrive on it?

Vegans argue categorically that meat causes more environmental destruction
than plants, this is the insidious lie of veganism which hides the real
truth about agriculture, the truth that vegans can't abide in their
simplistic worldview, that in many cases plants are worse than meat. The
truth is much more complex, and it does not offer an easily defined soapbox
for groups like vegans to announce their moral superiority.

>> That's the wrong argument.
>
> Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
> is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
> haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.

He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero. And now
you're demanding HE offer reasons?? You have nerve, if nothing else.

>> But it figures that's the one a stupid,
>> over-reaching fuck like you would try to make.
>
> I have not endorsed any particular argument for veganism in this
> thread,

Right, NOTHING. You say nothing, you refer indirectly and vaguely to implied
arguments allegedly made by other people. Then you have the gall to demand
that others support their arguments.

> I have merely pointed out that you have totally failed to
> engage with any argument that is actually endorsed by a significant
> number of people.

Another one of your impertinent little references to the opinions held by
some cohort of "significant" people who shall remain silent.

> The irony of your calling me "stupid" and "over-reaching" is very
> amusing.

I'd call you a dilettante. Does that amuse you too? You project this
attitude that we ought to be grateful that a deep thinker like you deigns to
grace us with his presence. Well you ought to get over yourself rupe, you
ain't half as smart as you think you are.

> However, I won't bother to reply to your next post unless you
> adhere to reasonable rules of civility.

Nice little back door you painted for yourself there rupe, but unecessary,
you won't reply to any of his points anyway, you never do. You just posture
and bluff until we lose patience with you then you play the victim.


Dutch

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Jun 1, 2007, 3:10:15 AM6/1/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180680226....@g37g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

No it isn't, I dealt with the same issues, what constitutes efficiency, and
the fact that veganism only pretends to be about efficiency. Efficiency is a
cover story for veganism, just like animal suffering.

Rupert

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Jun 1, 2007, 4:34:07 AM6/1/07
to
> cover story for veganism, just like animal suffering.- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

You did not deal with the issue of what constitutes efficiency. You
accepted (for the sake of argument only, perhaps) the basic premises
of the argument about what constitutes efficiency and tried to turn
them against the advocate of the argument, arguing that on this
account certain non-vegan foods would be more "efficient" than vegan
foods. It's a completely different approach to Jon's.

What you have succeeded in showing is the following. Let us ignore all
arguments for veganism except the efficiency argument. Let us grant
for the sake of argument the conception of efficiency advocated by the
efficiency argument. Let us assume that the typical vegan diet is
adequately "efficient". Then this argument will not suffice to rule
out some non-vegan diets. This is correct. Well done.

It's a completely different approach to Jon's. Jon is rejecting the
conception of "efficiency" on which the argument is based.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 4:54:56 AM6/1/07
to
On Jun 1, 5:03 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

Poor you.

I don't believe you that you don't thrive on it, that seems very
unlikely to me if you took reasonable efforts to plan your diet in a
sensible way.

If you really couldn't find any vegan food that you found tasty, well,
doesn't life suck. I've never met any other vegans with that problem.
Does that fact justify you in eating factory-farmed meat? Well, you
can have a go at justifying that if you like, that goes beyond what I
was discussing in my post.

> Vegans argue categorically that meat causes more environmental destruction
> than plants,

No. They argue that this is almost always true, which is undeniable.

> this is the insidious lie of veganism which hides the real
> truth about agriculture, the truth that vegans can't abide in their
> simplistic worldview, that in many cases plants are worse than meat.

Give some examples.


> The
> truth is much more complex, and it does not offer an easily defined soapbox
> for groups like vegans to announce their moral superiority.
>

The environmental argument for veganism is basically correct. A
typical vegan diet causes much less environmental damage than a
typical meat-eater's diet. Yes, there are some complexities. You know
perfectly well that I acknowledge those complexities, yet for some
reason you choose to ignore that fact. There are many different
arguments for veganism, perhaps they do not suffice to exclude every
conceivable non-vegan diet. If you want to berate people for not
acknowledging that fact, you should be talking to people other than
me.


> >> That's the wrong argument.
>
> > Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
> > is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
> > haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
>
> He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
> to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.

Er, actually, no. I've explained why the argument which he's
addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes. When you say
"he's claiming that it's the wrong argument" you're just repeating
what he said, you're not doing much to clarify his point. Is he
claiming that that's not the argument he was talking about? Well,
fine, but then the onus is on him to show why anyone should be
interested in his refutation of the argument he was talking about,
i.e. that it isn't just a straw man he made up. Or if he's claiming
that the argument is flawed, then again the onus is on him to show
that. However that may be, he's done absolutely nothing to cast any
doubt on this argument.


> And now
> you're demanding HE offer reasons??

Yes. Because he hasn't offered the slightest reason to doubt this
argument.

> You have nerve, if nothing else.
>

Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have, Dutch. Do you
think there are any reasons to doubt the argument, apart from your
pitiful whingeing that you haven't managed to find any vegan food that
you like? The issue is whether the benefits to the environment
achieved by going vegan are such as to provide rational motivation for
a concerned individual to go vegan. That's what the argument is about.
You want to try and argue against this, go ahead.

> >> But it figures that's the one a stupid,
> >> over-reaching fuck like you would try to make.
>
> > I have not endorsed any particular argument for veganism in this
> > thread,
>
> Right, NOTHING. You say nothing, you refer indirectly and vaguely to implied
> arguments allegedly made by other people.

What I'm saying is that Jon's babbling does not bear on any "pro-
vegan" argument anyone has actually made. Since he obviously believes
he has undermined a popular argument for veganism that is a relevant
point.

> Then you have the gall to demand
> that others support their arguments.
>

Get a life.

> > I have merely pointed out that you have totally failed to
> > engage with any argument that is actually endorsed by a significant
> > number of people.
>
> Another one of your impertinent little references to the opinions held by
> some cohort of "significant" people who shall remain silent.
>

God help me, Dutch, you are so fucking stupid. Jon thinks he's made an
objection to a widely promoted argument for veganism. He hasn't, and I
was pointing out this fact. Very simple. No impertinence involved.

> > The irony of your calling me "stupid" and "over-reaching" is very
> > amusing.
>
> I'd call you a dilettante. Does that amuse you too?

Yes, I find it absolutely hysterical.

> You project this
> attitude that we ought to be grateful that a deep thinker like you deigns to
> grace us with his presence. Well you ought to get over yourself rupe, you
> ain't half as smart as you think you are.
>

Well, not that this has anything to do with finding it ironic that
Ball calls me "stupid" and "over-reaching", but actually, I'm afraid I
am. I've spent a lot more time studying moral philosophy and thinking
about these issues than any of you antis have. I've got a much better
insight into the arguments than you do. I know you don't recognize
that, well, that's fine by me. I don't need any validation from you.
I'm still happy to engage with you as long as you remain reasonably
civil.

> > However, I won't bother to reply to your next post unless you
> > adhere to reasonable rules of civility.
>
> Nice little back door you painted for yourself there rupe,

Get a life, you stupid twit.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 5:28:58 AM6/1/07
to
On Jun 1, 5:03 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

Okay, let's just say for the sake of argument that I've got an over-
inflated idea about my level of insight into moral philosophy. Well,
there it is. We know what I think about it and we know what you think
about it. What of it? I'm here to discuss issues in animal ethics, not
to discuss my failings as a person. You want to set up a forum about
what a contemptible individual Rupert McCallum is, go ahead. This
forum is about animal ethics.

> > However, I won't bother to reply to your next post unless you
> > adhere to reasonable rules of civility.
>
> Nice little back door you painted for yourself there rupe, but unecessary,
> you won't reply to any of his points anyway, you never do. You just posture

> and bluff until we lose patience with you then you play the victim.-

I made some perfectly reasonable comments about Jon's arguments, and
predictably, he immediately resorted to personal abuse. Which
basically means he's lost the argument. As always. It's not about
playing the victim. It's just that I've decided that I don't choose to
engage with people who want to argue about their opponents rather than
about the issues. Which goes for you too. Stick to addressing the
points I've made about Jon's arguments, not to commenting on my merits
as a person. Otherwise I won't bother responding.

Dutch

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Jun 1, 2007, 6:11:13 AM6/1/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180686847.7...@g37g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

What I am saying is that when advocates of veganism point out that consuming
plants is more efficient from a strict calorie-conversion point of view than
consuming animals, then extrapolate that to conclude that we should never
consume animals, they are perpetrating a hoax. Nobody lives their lives
according to strict caloric efficiencies, if they did then they would have a
much more complex and difficult job than simply avoiding animal products.

>
> It's a completely different approach to Jon's. Jon is rejecting the
> conception of "efficiency" on which the argument is based.

It's not a completely different approach, his was simply more thorough. The
essence of his argument is that efficiency in the sense of choosing the food
that causes the least environmental damage is not followed by vegans,
because avoiding meat and other animal products in and of itself does not do
that, and that is essentially all vegans do. That is also the point I made.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 7:02:05 AM6/1/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote

> On Jun 1, 5:03 pm, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:


[..]

>> >> > The argument is that we can produce perfectly tasty and nutritious
>> >> > food at the cost of a lot less environmental destruction.
>>
>> Tasty and nutritious for whom? What if I hate it and do not thrive on it?
>>
>
> Poor you.

Why poor me? I eat a delicious and varied diet. I am extremely fortunate to
have the resources and opportunity to have access to the very best food
available

> I don't believe you that you don't thrive on it, that seems very
> unlikely to me if you took reasonable efforts to plan your diet in a
> sensible way.

You don't know everything, despite what you think. I followed a vegetarian
diet for many years, eventually it stopped serving my needs, and I did plan
it well. Humans have relied on meat as a source of nutrition since our
species evolved, why is it so difficult to believe that some people cannot
thrive without it at all times of their life?

> If you really couldn't find any vegan food that you found tasty, well,
> doesn't life suck.

Not at all, fortunately I am not hogtied by some irrational eating disorder
that controls my eating habits.

> I've never met any other vegans with that problem.

None that would admit it you mean.
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1b.shtml

> Does that fact justify you in eating factory-farmed meat?

Oooo the big boogie-man "factory-farmed meat"! You forget that not everyone
cringes in horror when you utter that phrase.

> Well, you
> can have a go at justifying that if you like, that goes beyond what I
> was discussing in my post.

How do you know I eat factory farmed meat? I have said to you that I can
justify it, just as you can justify eating conventional commercially grown
produce. That doesn't mean I do.

>
>> Vegans argue categorically that meat causes more environmental
>> destruction
>> than plants,
>
> No. They argue that this is almost always true, which is undeniable.

No they don't argue almost, they're not the paragons of reason you portray.
Most vegans here say that it is cruel and horrible to kill animals to eat
their flesh. It is like a religious belief.

>> this is the insidious lie of veganism which hides the real
>> truth about agriculture, the truth that vegans can't abide in their
>> simplistic worldview, that in many cases plants are worse than meat.
>
> Give some examples.

Surely I don't need to. The basic hard truths about conventional agriculture
are synthetic nitrogen, herbicides and pesticides, which strip the life out
of the food and the soil and pollute the water. Not to mention the
collateral killing of animals and exploitation of cheap immigrant labour.
Contrast this horror show with the raising of organic free-range livestock
in conjunction with plant foods in a symbiosis, as is done in some places.

>> The
>> truth is much more complex, and it does not offer an easily defined
>> soapbox
>> for groups like vegans to announce their moral superiority.
>>
>
> The environmental argument for veganism is basically correct.

No it's not, it's simplistic and basically misleading and dishonest.

A
> typical vegan diet causes much less environmental damage than a
> typical meat-eater's diet.

That's what I mean by dishonest. A person's morals are not based on
averaging, they are based on how well they adhere to principles which they
claim to believe in. The claim you just made nobody would disagree with, but
that is NOT the claim vegans make, they claim that is WRONG to kill animals
to eat their flesh. It is a visceral aversion to that act which they express
like a religious belief.

> Yes, there are some complexities. You know
> perfectly well that I acknowledge those complexities, yet for some
> reason you choose to ignore that fact.

You don't talk like you acknowledge them, you wave your hand at them and pay
them lip service.

>There are many different
> arguments for veganism, perhaps they do not suffice to exclude every
> conceivable non-vegan diet. If you want to berate people for not
> acknowledging that fact, you should be talking to people other than
> me.

There are no valid arguments for veganism, it's corrupt and should be
rejected by any thinking person. If people want to follow strict vegetarian
diets that is a different thing.

>> >> That's the wrong argument.
>>
>> > Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
>> > is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
>> > haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
>>
>> He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable
>> effort
>> to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.
>
> Er, actually, no. I've explained why the argument which he's
> addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes.

You didn't explain anything, you asserted it.

When you say
> "he's claiming that it's the wrong argument" you're just repeating
> what he said, you're not doing much to clarify his point. Is he
> claiming that that's not the argument he was talking about? Well,
> fine, but then the onus is on him to show why anyone should be
> interested in his refutation of the argument he was talking about,
> i.e. that it isn't just a straw man he made up. Or if he's claiming
> that the argument is flawed, then again the onus is on him to show
> that. However that may be, he's done absolutely nothing to cast any
> doubt on this argument.

Did you even read what he wrote?


>> And now
>> you're demanding HE offer reasons??
>
> Yes. Because he hasn't offered the slightest reason to doubt this
> argument.
>
>> You have nerve, if nothing else.
>>
>
> Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have, Dutch. Do you
> think there are any reasons to doubt the argument, apart from your
> pitiful whingeing that you haven't managed to find any vegan food that
> you like?

I not only found it unsatisfying after 18 years, as I said, it was not
serving my family's health either. Those are important concerns you little
shit, not pitiful whinging.

The issue is whether the benefits to the environment
> achieved by going vegan are such as to provide rational motivation for
> a concerned individual to go vegan. That's what the argument is about.
> You want to try and argue against this, go ahead.

I could argue that you should only eat broccoli and tomatoes and nothing
else or something like that because that would arguably cause less
enviromental damage than the diet you advocate. I could argue that any
concerned indivdual should do that. What is your argument against that and
how is different than my argument against veganism?

>> >> But it figures that's the one a stupid,
>> >> over-reaching fuck like you would try to make.
>>
>> > I have not endorsed any particular argument for veganism in this
>> > thread,
>>
>> Right, NOTHING. You say nothing, you refer indirectly and vaguely to
>> implied
>> arguments allegedly made by other people.
>
> What I'm saying is that Jon's babbling does not bear on any "pro-
> vegan" argument anyone has actually made. Since he obviously believes
> he has undermined a popular argument for veganism that is a relevant
> point.

Well you're mistaken, the bogus efficiency argument comes up all the time.

>
>> Then you have the gall to demand
>> that others support their arguments.
>>
>
> Get a life.

Get more orginal lines.

>> > I have merely pointed out that you have totally failed to
>> > engage with any argument that is actually endorsed by a significant
>> > number of people.
>>
>> Another one of your impertinent little references to the opinions held by
>> some cohort of "significant" people who shall remain silent.
>>
>
> God help me, Dutch, you are so fucking stupid. Jon thinks he's made an
> objection to a widely promoted argument for veganism. He hasn't, and I
> was pointing out this fact. Very simple. No impertinence involved.

Yes he has, we hear it here constantly in one form or another, at least once
a week.

I Googled "Arguments for vegetarianism" and the first hit was this
http://puffin.creighton.edu/phil/Stephens/FiveArgumentsforVegetarianism.htm

And here is the text that follows right after the introduction

----------------------------------------------
The Arguments for Vegetarianism

A. The Argument from Distributive Justice

This first argument was advanced as early as 1971 by Frances
Moore Lappé,[v] and has been repeated by such philosophers as Peter
Singer,[vi] James Rachels,[vii] Stephen R. L. Clark,[viii] and Mary
Midgley,[ix] and mentioned in passing by still others.[x] The argument can
be reconstructed as follows:


1. 16 to 21 lbs. of grain and soy are needed to produce 1 lb. of beef. 6
to 8 lbs. of grain and soy are needed to produce 1 lb. of pork. 4 lbs. of
grain and soy are needed to produce 1 lb. of turkey meat. 3 lbs. of grain
and soy are needed to produce 1 lb. of chicken meat.[xi]

2. Therefore, converting grain and soy to meat is a very wasteful means of
producing food. [From 1]

3. Every day millions of human beings in the world suffer and die from
lack of sufficient grains and legumes for a minimally decent diet.

4. By choosing to eat meat when sufficient grains and vegetables are
available for a healthy diet for oneself, one participates in and
perpetuates a very wasteful means of producing food.

5. If one eats meat knowing 3 and 4, then one endorses a very wasteful
means of producing food, and shows an insensitivity to malnourished and
starving human beings.

6. By knowingly participating in and perpetuating a very wasteful means of
producing food, the meat-eater shows a selfish refusal to share with
starving human beings food that could have been made available to them, and
thereby shows disregard for the principle of distributive justice.

7. Developing nations mimic the dietary habits of Americans, and
Americans are setting a harmful, irresponsible example by wasting grain to
produce and consume meat.

8. Therefore, members of affluent nations ought to adopt vegetarian diets
and boycott meat so as not to be implicated in the wasteful and unjust
system of meat production, and to show concern for the welfare of
unfortunate human beings.

Basically, the idea here is that eating meat perpetuates a system which
indirectly harms other human beings. Therefore, to choose to be a part of
this system indicates a disregard for those people, and this in effect
contaminates one's moral character.
---------------------------------------------

Essentially the efficiency argument he dismantled.


>
>> > The irony of your calling me "stupid" and "over-reaching" is very
>> > amusing.
>>
>> I'd call you a dilettante. Does that amuse you too?
>
> Yes, I find it absolutely hysterical.

Good, its true.

>> You project this
>> attitude that we ought to be grateful that a deep thinker like you deigns
>> to
>> grace us with his presence. Well you ought to get over yourself rupe, you
>> ain't half as smart as you think you are.
>>
>
> Well, not that this has anything to do with finding it ironic that
> Ball calls me "stupid" and "over-reaching", but actually, I'm afraid I
> am. I've spent a lot more time studying moral philosophy and thinking
> about these issues than any of you antis have. I've got a much better
> insight into the arguments than you do. I know you don't recognize
> that, well, that's fine by me. I don't need any validation from you.
> I'm still happy to engage with you as long as you remain reasonably
> civil.

I find you a complete waste of time. You're an arrogant toad who doesn't
answer questions and assumes he's right by royal appointment. And reading
and thinking a lot doesn't make you intelligent or smart. You can't aquire
wisdom by reading.

>
>> > However, I won't bother to reply to your next post unless you
>> > adhere to reasonable rules of civility.
>>
>> Nice little back door you painted for yourself there rupe,
>
> Get a life, you stupid twit.

I have a fine life thanks, and a healthy diet, in large part thanks to my
ability to break out of the chains of "ethical vegetarianism". And in case
you're concerned, I eat a restricted calorie diet, locally raised organic
chicken and locally caught salmon most nights, along with all organically
grown produce, and I would bet the impact on the earth and of animal
suffering caused by my diet beats the hell out of most vegan diets.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 7:34:44 AM6/1/07
to

That's my criticism of it, and the criticism is correct. But it *is*
offered as a smokescreen. The stupid "vegans" can't win the battle of
ethics, so they try to venture into economics with their stupid
"inefficiency" smokescreen, and they lose there, too.


> > This is
> > clearly demonstrated by the errors of omission he illustrated which are
> > committed by vegans. A true efficiency equation would be far more complex
> > than "veganism", for one thing it would use animals and plants in symbiosis,
> > and it would utilize animals where plants were not as efficient to produce.
> > An obvious example is the consumer choice between South American grown
> > asparagus and locally obtained fish or game.- Hide quoted text -
>

> All this is as may be, but it's completely different to Rudy's
> argument.
>
>
>


> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 7:38:06 AM6/1/07
to

Of course you're not.

> You claim the argument
> is flawed?

Yes, because it's based on a misconception of efficiency.


> Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you.

Already done.


> You haven't done this yet,

Yes, I have. I have thoroughly explained the misconception.


> I was simply pointing out this fact.

No, because it's not a fact.

> > But it figures that's the one a stupid,
> > over-reaching fuck like you would try to make.
>
> I have not endorsed any particular argument for veganism in this
> thread, I have merely pointed out that you have totally failed to
> engage with any argument that is actually endorsed by a significant
> number of people.
>
> The irony of your calling me "stupid" and "over-reaching" is very
> amusing. However, I won't bother to reply to your next post unless you

> adhere to reasonable rules of civility.- Hide quoted text -

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 1, 2007, 10:15:53 AM6/1/07
to

You disbelieve him because of your dogmatic approach, not because you
have any legitimate reason to doubt him.


> that seems very unlikely to me

No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.

> > >> That's the wrong argument.
>
> > > Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
> > > is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
> > > haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
>
> > He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
> > to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.
>
> Er, actually, no.

ERRRRRRRRR, yes, rupie - you've done zero apart from spouting classic
"vegan" dogma.


> I've explained why the argument which he's
> addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes.

You're lying. People *do* make this phony "inefficiency" argument.
The environmental argument is something different.

"vegans" say that the resources going to meat production are "wasted",
because it isn't "necessary" to eat meat in order to eat healthfully.
That is a misconceived efficiency argument, and people do indeed make
it. That stupid cunt lesley has made it dozens of times.


> > And now
> > you're demanding HE offer reasons??
>
> Yes. Because he hasn't offered the slightest reason to doubt this
> argument.

You're mixing it up with another argument.

Understand, rupie, that even if the environmental effects of livestock
production were fully mitigated, it still would take more resources to
produce livestock, and "vegans" would be claiming, wrongly, that the
resources are "wasted".


> > You have nerve, if nothing else.
>
> Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have,

No, you really do show an appalling amount of arrogance, rupie.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 2:16:05 AM6/2/07
to

Yes, the last point is certainly correct. I don't think anyone's
really advocating that we live our lives according to strict caloric
efficiencies. If they were, then of course you're right, they're being
hypocritical. It may, however, still be that people who are concerned
about the impact their lifestyle has on the environment might have a
rational motivation to go vegan. The typical vegan diet is not the
only possible equilibrium point between the desire to reduce one's
environmental impact and other, more self-interested desires, but it
is one possible equilibrium point. Someone might learn about the
environmental impact of modern farming and thereby become rationally
motivated to reduce their consumption of animal products, possibly to
the point of going vegan, possibly not that far, possibly even
further. Other strategies might be possible as well.

But this is a completely different point to the one Jon is making.
What Jon is doing is questioning the relevance of the notion of
calorie-conversion efficiency. That's a completely different strategy.
And I happen to believe he hasn't really addressed the most common
arguments that might be made for the relevance of this notion. So you
were wrong to say I missed the point. I was addressing Jon's argument,
then you introduced a completely new argument of your own, with which,
as it happens, I essentially agree.

>
>
> > It's a completely different approach to Jon's. Jon is rejecting the
> > conception of "efficiency" on which the argument is based.
>
> It's not a completely different approach, his was simply more thorough. The
> essence of his argument is that efficiency in the sense of choosing the food
> that causes the least environmental damage is not followed by vegans,

No, he never made that argument. He argued that the notion of
efficiency in question wasn't relevant.

> because avoiding meat and other animal products in and of itself does not do
> that, and that is essentially all vegans do. That is also the point I made.

You're seeing things that aren't there. Jon never made that point.
It's your point, not his.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 2:40:56 AM6/2/07
to

In my view, you've misread the argument.

> But it *is*
> offered as a smokescreen. The stupid "vegans" can't win the battle of
> ethics, so they try to venture into economics with their stupid
> "inefficiency" smokescreen, and they lose there, too.
>

The ethical arguments for veganism (or some diet which is comparable
in terms of its impact on animals) are good ones. You've never offered
any good criticisms of these arguments in their strongest form, which
is simply: production of animal food products *usually* causes a lot
more suffering than plant food production, it is ethically obligatory
(or at least preferable) not to financially support gratuitous
unnecessary suffering when you can avoid doing so with no real
sacrifice, therefore it is ethically obligatory (or at least
preferable) to follow a vegan diet or at least a diet with only some
specially-selected animal products. That's basically the argument
which motivates most people to go vegan. You haven't shown that
there's anything wrong with it. You've shown that some of the strict
animal rights positions which are advanced in the literature might be
hard to sustain in a non-hypocritical way once we confront certain
facts about what it takes to sustain our lifestyles. Fine, so maybe we
should abandon these strict animal rights positions, or alternatively,
maybe we should make radical changes to our lifestyles such as growing
all our own food. But, if we decide to abandon the strict animal
rights positions, it doesn't at all follow that the status quo is
perfectly all right. You seem to think it does, but you've never
really produced any good arguments for this.

You've raised interesting questions about how far the ethical
arguments for veganism might be taken, and posed the challenge of
fitting them into a coherent and comprehensive ethical framework,
which is an important challenge. But you haven't shown that your own
ethical views are superior.

The argument you're addressing in this thread is really an
environmental argument, and I don't think you've done much to
undermine it. You haven't shown that the generally accepted definition
of economic efficiency has any bearing on the issue.

There are basically two arguments. One argument is that an individual
concerned about the impact of his lifestyle on the environment might
be rationally motivated to cut down on animal products. Interestingly,
I saw a news item recently indicating that the Environmental
Department of the UK Government appears to agree with this position,
although they fall short of recommending a vegan lifestyle, believing
that making such recommendations is not very likely to be productive.

Now, one way to read your argument is as a sort of free-market
environmentalism. You might be saying that the environmental costs of
meat production are fully reflected in the price, because as land,
high-quality soil, and so forth become more scarce, the price will
increase, and farmers who own land will have an incentive to farm it
in a sustainable way, and so forth. We might need some government
regulation to deal with the possible problem of anthropogenic climate
change, but never mind that. This is basically an economic debate, and
I acknowledge that your knowledge of economics is superior to mine,
but I also believe there are some qualified people who would take a
different position. Hence I suspend judgement on this matter. However,
I'm not sure this really affects the main point that an individual
concerned to reduce his environmental impact might rationally be
motivated to cut down on animal products. That's what the so-called
"efficiency argument" is really about. If you've got a good criticism
of this argument, then I don't think we've seen it yet.

Another argument, which Mylan Engel Jr. made in his essay "Taking
Hunger Seriously", is that if large numbers of people go vegan that
will have a desirable effect on global food distribution. He wasn't
very clear about the mechanism by which this would happen, but I think
the idea is that the demand for the crops which we produce to feed to
farm animals would decrease, hence the market price would decrease,
hence the parts of the crops suitable for human consumption would
become more affordable to starving people in the Third World, so that
fewer people would starve.

Now, perhaps you want to claim that this is shoddy economics and that
the effect in question wouldn't really happen. That's as may be.
Again, I acknowledge your superior knowledge in this department.

Alternatively, you might want to make an argument in moral philosophy,
saying that people shouldn't be coerced into making such choices,
because the entitlement theory of justice is correct, and that means
that, just as a suitor who is rejected because the object of his love
finds a more desirable partner has not had his rights violated, so the
starving people in the Third World who find it more difficult to buy
food because people in the developed world with more buying power want
to eat meat have not had their rights violated.

Well, that's all very well, but the suggestion that people should be
coerced into making those choices was never really on the table. The
claim was that if you were concerned about starvation in the Third
World you might rationally be motivated to go vegan. If it is conceded
that the effect in question would happen, then this argument from the
entitlement theory of justice doesn't really undermine that claim.

I'm not all that crazy about Mylan Engel Jr's argument. But the
environmental argument seems like a pretty reasonable one to me. If
you're concerned about climate change, or soil degradation, or
deforestation, then you might rationally be motivated to cut down on
your consumption of animal products in an effort to do something about
these problems. That's what all the talk about "efficiency" really is
about. Your notion of efficiency which is used by economists is not
really germane to the argument, as far as I can tell.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:13:36 AM6/2/07
to
On Jun 1, 9:02 pm, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:

> > Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have, Dutch. Do you
> > think there are any reasons to doubt the argument, apart from your
> > pitiful whingeing that you haven't managed to find any vegan food that
> > you like?
>
> I not only found it unsatisfying after 18 years, as I said, it was not
> serving my family's health either. Those are important concerns you little
> shit, not pitiful whinging.
>

When you say it wasn't serving your family's health, I'm not sure what
situation you're describing, exactly. Is it that some of your other
family members were financially dependent on you, and you were only
buying them vegan food because of your ethical beliefs, and they were
experiencing diet-related health problems? Yes, certainly, those are
important concerns. If I were in that situation I would probably have
consulted a dietitian. The ADA agrees that well-planned vegan diets
(supplemented by Vitamin B12) are nutritionally adequate at all stages
of life and have many significant health benefits. Was the only
solution to your family members' health problems for them to start
eating meat again? Well, that's as may be. I would want to hear what a
qualified dietitian had to say about the matter. Anyway, you made your
own decision about that situation (assuming that I have the situation
right). Perhaps you decided that seeing a dietitian was too expensive
and that you would just start eating meat again and see how that went.
Or perhaps you decided to see a dietitian and she advised you to start
eating meat again. I don't know. In my last post I was not really
trying to make a comment about your individual situation, about which
I obviously know very little. What I did was ask you for your view
about a particular argument. I guess I confused the issue somewhat by
making references to your "pitiful whingeing". If you want to say that
vegan diets are likely to undermine health and that undermines the
argument, fine, let's hear the evidence.

Anyway, I'm sorry you feel you have to swear at me. I really don't
think it's called for. There was an occasion a while back where I was
arguing that going vegan indicates a significant level of commitment
to reducing suffering, and you replied that in your experience going
vegan was no sacrifice at all and that I was a spoiled little punk.
Now you seem to want to say that it caused significant personal
problems for you. If I seemed to you to be suggesting that you stopped
being vegan for trivial reasons and that offended you, then I
apologize. I wasn't really trying to make that suggestion, I just
thought that your concerns about not having a tasty enough diet could
have been overcome with a little imagination. As I say, I know quite a
few vegans and I don't know anyone who finds the diet unsatisfying.
Obviously, you may have had concerns other than taste and I didn't
wish to suggest that any concerns you had were necessarily trivial.

I would have thought it should be possible for us to get on, at least
to the extent of discussing these issues in a reasonably civil way. I
mean, I don't have any personal grudge against you and I'm not trying
to offend you. If you really feel that the way I behave is so
offensive that you can't refrain from calling me a little shit, then
maybe we'd better just leave it. But if you think it might be possible
for us to have a polite conversation, then say so and I'll address the
rest of your post.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:25:01 AM6/2/07
to

The scientific consensus is that most people are perfectly capable of
thriving on a vegan diet. I'm perfectly justified in being skeptical
that it was impossible for him to be vegan and healthy.

> > that seems very unlikely to me
>
> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>

I mean what I say. It is unlikely, given what is known about the
nutritional adequacy of vegan diets, that he would have had to stop
being vegan in order to resolve whatever problems he was having.

> > > >> That's the wrong argument.
>
> > > > Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
> > > > is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
> > > > haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
>
> > > He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
> > > to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.
>
> > Er, actually, no.
>
> ERRRRRRRRR, yes, rupie - you've done zero apart from spouting classic
> "vegan" dogma.
>

No, I'm afraid you're mistaken, Ball. For one thing, I haven't made
any arguments for veganism at all. What I've done is correctly point
out that you're misconstruing the argument that meat production is a
wasteful use of resources. It's nothing to do with economic
efficiency.

> > I've explained why the argument which he's
> > addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes.
>
> You're lying.

No, I'm not. I sincerely believe what I'm saying.

> People *do* make this phony "inefficiency" argument.

Show me where.

> The environmental argument is something different.
>
> "vegans" say that the resources going to meat production are "wasted",
> because it isn't "necessary" to eat meat in order to eat healthfully.
> That is a misconceived efficiency argument, and people do indeed make
> it. That stupid cunt lesley has made it dozens of times.
>

Very interesting. Well, I've never seen anyone make it. There are
closely related arguments about environmental impact and food
distribution. I'd never encountered anyone who totally divorces the
argument from those concerns. Why would anyone care about how much
resources are used, apart from these other concerns?

You think people really do make this argument, well you might be
right, frankly I think there's a pretty good chance you might just be
misreading them. I'm not all that fussed either way, anyway. Yes,
you're correct that the argument is flawed, but it's a bit like
shooting fish in a barrel, isn't it?

> > > And now
> > > you're demanding HE offer reasons??
>
> > Yes. Because he hasn't offered the slightest reason to doubt this
> > argument.
>
> You're mixing it up with another argument.
>
> Understand, rupie, that even if the environmental effects of livestock
> production were fully mitigated, it still would take more resources to
> produce livestock, and "vegans" would be claiming, wrongly, that the
> resources are "wasted".
>

Says you. I really find it very implausible. But I'm not too fussed.
If it was your goal to demolish this argument, well, congratulations,
you've succeeded.

> > > You have nerve, if nothing else.
>
> > Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have,
>
> No, you really do show an appalling amount of arrogance, rupie.

Ball, you're a fool. Your hobby is treating people you meet on usenet
like dirt. *That* is arrogance. I express myself in a reasonable and
polite way. You calling me arrogant is utterly absurd.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:32:14 AM6/2/07
to

Well, if you could have foreseen that without my telling you, then
perhaps you should have made an effort to clarify what you were
saying.

> > You claim the argument
> > is flawed?
>
> Yes, because it's based on a misconception of efficiency.
>

Elaborate. How is the argument that meat production has undesirable
environmental consequences based on a misconception of efficiency?
Elsewhere you were saying this was a different argument to the one you
wanted to attack.

> > Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you.
>
> Already done.
>

Elsewhere you said this argument wasn't your target. Make up your
mind. How does anything you've said bear on the environmental
argument?

> > You haven't done this yet,
>
> Yes, I have. I have thoroughly explained the misconception.
>

Make up your mind what we're talking about, the environmental
argument, or your "efficiency argument" (which I am not convinced
anyone actually makes). Yes, you have demolished this "efficiency
argument". Do you claim that your points have a bearing on the
environmental argument? If so, you'll have to explain further I'm
afraid, I'm still in the dark as to what the relevance is.

> > I was simply pointing out this fact.
>
> No, because it's not a fact.
>

I believe it is a fact that you haven't addressed the environmental
argument, and I believe elsewhere you agree with me. But if you think
you have... well, by all means try to convince me.


Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:42:48 AM6/2/07
to

Sorry, he did make this point in his first post. But it's not his main
point, it's just an aside. It's certainly not the "essence of his
argument". There were no grounds for saying I'd missed the point just
because I didn't comment on this observation he'd made.

But yes, he did make the point, and of course the observation is
correct, eating a diet which is optimal in terms of resources-per-
calories requires more than just veganism.


> He argued that the notion of
> efficiency in question wasn't relevant.
>
> > because avoiding meat and other animal products in and of itself does not do
> > that, and that is essentially all vegans do. That is also the point I made.
>
> You're seeing things that aren't there. Jon never made that point.
> It's your point, not his.
>
>
>
> > - Hide quoted text -
>

> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 9:58:59 AM6/2/07
to

Your myopically limited view, and of course, you're
wrong. You haven't been here as long as I have.

"vegans" do it all the time, rupie: they claim it is
an "inefficient" use of resources to produce meat - and
they are wrong, for the well elaborated reason I gave.


>> But it *is*
>> offered as a smokescreen. The stupid "vegans" can't win the battle of
>> ethics, so they try to venture into economics with their stupid
>> "inefficiency" smokescreen, and they lose there, too.
>>
>
> The ethical arguments for veganism (or some diet which is comparable
> in terms of its impact on animals) are good ones.

They are sophomoric and wrong; they're just shit. The
fact that YOU participate in animal killing proves it.

> You've never offered
> any good criticisms of these arguments in their strongest form, [snip 1500 words of chaff]

I've offered very good criticisms of them in all their
forms, and their strongest form is quite weak indeed.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 10:18:26 AM6/2/07
to

No. Without evidence, and with no legitimate reason to
consider him a liar, you have no valid reason to
disbelieve him.


>
>>> that seems very unlikely to me
>> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>>
>
> I mean what I say.

You mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.


>>>>>> That's the wrong argument.
>>>>> Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
>>>>> is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
>>>>> haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
>>>> He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
>>>> to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.
>>> Er, actually, no.
>> ERRRRRRRRR, yes, rupie - you've done zero apart from spouting classic
>> "vegan" dogma.
>>
>
> No, I'm afraid you're mistaken

No. I'm not. You've done zero apart from spouting
classic "vegan" dogma.

>>> I've explained why the argument which he's


>>> addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes.
>> You're lying.
>
> No, I'm not. I sincerely believe what I'm saying.

No, you know you're lying.


>
>> People *do* make this phony "inefficiency" argument.
>
> Show me where.

lesley, aka the slut "pearl". Do your own search for
her laughable bullshit about "feed conversion ratio".

Also:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/msg/81fb0c24458944ce


But farming animals is an inefficient, unsustainable and
problematic way of producing food. Apart from those who
feed on
pasture where it is difficult to grow crops, farmed
animals use more
food calories than they produce in the form of meat.
They also compete
directly with people for other precious resources,
notably water.
http://groups.google.com/group/demon.local/msg/f1ee116aa6b75f46

[meat production] is an inefficient use of fresh water
and land for the production of food,
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/msg/e59bd38a04228c74

Clearly meat production is a very inefficient use of water
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/86411178db014ccf


rupie, do your own research from now on.

The point is, rupie, you fat fuck, that "vegans" make
this "inefficiency" argument all the time. It is a
*separate* argument from the environmental degradation
argument, although the "vegans" often state them
together. The "inefficiency" argument is made all the
time, it is based on a laughable misconception of
efficiency, and it is fatuous of you to dispute that.


>
>> The environmental argument is something different.
>>
>> "vegans" say that the resources going to meat production are "wasted",
>> because it isn't "necessary" to eat meat in order to eat healthfully.
>> That is a misconceived efficiency argument, and people do indeed make
>> it. That stupid cunt lesley has made it dozens of times.
>>
>
> Very interesting. Well, I've never seen anyone make it.

You're willfully blind.


> You think people really do make this argument, well you might be
> right, frankly I think there's a pretty good chance you might just be
> misreading them.

There is zero chance of that.

dh

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 1:04:54 PM6/2/07
to
On Thu, 31 May 2007 18:35:40 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:

>"Kickin' Goober's Faggot Ass" <shrub...@excite.com> wrote
>
>>> A "Goo" is a person who rejects as nonsense Fuckwit Harrison's campaign
>>> to
>>> convince the world that anyone who opposes the consumption of animal
>>> products is being selfish for wanting to deny life to livestock animals.
>>> By
>>> that definition aren't you a Goo too? Isn't everyone?- Hide quoted text -
>>
>>
>> YOU are worse than Goo!
>>
>> I have NEVER opposed animal consumption because it would preclude life
>> for "livestock".
>
>It may not be the reason, but it would be the inevitable result.
>
>> I oppose it because it is an unhealthy choice for humans and the
>> planet as a whole and a terrible, horrible, life and death for the
>> animals.
>
>Yup, yer a Goo. Welcome to the club, Goos come in all ages and sizes, from
>ARAs to staunch anti-ARAs, all have one thing in common, we

You are a goo because you like to lick the Goober's ass, and
everybody is aware of that. Calling anyone a goo who does not
lick the Goober's ass is the lowest form of insult. Try to get that
straight! You and your brother Derek are gooboys and that
makes you proud, because you are amusingly proud of and
admire the Goober. Since most people are more sickened by
him than anything else, you are insulting them terribly to lump
them into the same toilet as you gooboys are happy to be in.

>realize that
>there is no moral significance in the idea that livestock would not get to
>be born and experience the wonder of life if we stopped using animal
>products.

That has nothing at all to do with it, and I don't believe
even you are too stupid to understand that fact.

dh

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 1:06:51 PM6/2/07
to
On Thu, 31 May 2007 19:04:00 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:

><dh@.> wrote
>> On Thu, 31 May 2007 07:18:27 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>[..]
>
>>>> You don't know the difference between elegant and eloquent.
>>>
>>>I do, but you don't, dummy. You had never heard the adjective elegant used
>>>to describe an argument before, now you're befuddled. Here's a clue, it is
>>>commonly used when referring to mathematical arguments that are very
>>>succinct and pure in their application of logic, clear and irrefutable.
>>
>> Then Dean used the wrong term, that's all.
>
>Nonsense, Dean used the word, we have to assume it was what he meant to say
>unless he says otherwise.

No we don't, especially since it doesn't even apply to the Goobal situation.

. . .
>what makes us all Goos.

What makes a VERY FEW of you goos, is your lipstick all over the Goober's
ass. People who don't kiss up to Goo are NOT gooboys like you. DUH! It's
another one of those things that even you--as challenged as you are--should
be able to comprehend.

dh

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 1:07:08 PM6/2/07
to
On Thu, 31 May 2007 18:42:15 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:

><dh@.> wrote


>> On Wed, 30 May 2007 20:33:16 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>>
>>><dh@.> wrote

>>>> On Fri, 25 May 2007 18:50:37 GMT, Goo wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>The correct way to analyze efficiency of production is
>>>>>to focus as narrowly as possible on the end product
>>>>

>>>> And of course in the case of livestock, the lives of
>>>> the animals themselves should also always be given
>>>> much consideration.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>No, the welfare of the animals should be given consideration, not "the
>>>lives".
>>
>> In order to consider whether or not it is cruel to *the animals*
>> for them the be raised for food, their lives plus the quality of their
>> lives necessarily MUST be given consideration.
>
>Why? If they are not made to suffer then it's not cruel to them. "Their
>lives", apart from the quality of those lives, is of no moral consequence.

So you selfishly continue to insist, without being able to explain
why. Why do you think it's ethically superior not to consider what
the animals gain?

dh

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 1:07:40 PM6/2/07
to
On 31 May 2007 13:04:52 -0700, Rudy Canoza <notg...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On May 31, 11:50 am, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>> <dh@.> wrote in messagenews:kq2u53hktgjepn7dq...@4ax.com...
>> > On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Goo wrote:
>>
>> >>They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
>> >>the livestock exist.
>>
>> > If you think you have any clue about any of this Goo,
>> > then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
>> > to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
>> > do exist. Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent
>> > "entities" Goobs, just try to tell us about the real ones.
>>
>> Livestock who exist only need us to pay attention to their welfare. What
>> benefit do you imagine your "appreciation" gives them? I'll tell you, Zero.
>
>Exactly right. That was a great comment you made about the welfare in
>their lives, rather than "their lives", that merits any consideration.
>
>Fuckwit is still trying to get people to think the livestock "ought"
>to exist, for moral reasons

That's a fantasy of yours, and it's something else you can't
explain Goober. I challenge you to try to explain exactly
WHICH particular potential future livestock you are stupidly
attempting to insist I think "ought" to exist. You can't do it
Goob, because the concept itself is so stupid that even you
can't clarify it enough to attempt to support your own
stupid, dishonest accusation. You have proven yourself
a liar once again by your own ineptitued, Goo.

dh

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 1:09:36 PM6/2/07
to
On Thu, 31 May 2007 20:26:05 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:

>Goo wrote in message
>news:1180641892....@p47g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...


>> On May 31, 11:50 am, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>>> <dh@.> wrote in messagenews:kq2u53hktgjepn7dq...@4ax.com...
>>> > On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Goo wrote:
>>>
>>> >>They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
>>> >>the livestock exist.
>>>
>>> > If you think you have any clue about any of this Goo,
>>> > then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
>>> > to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
>>> > do exist. Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent
>>> > "entities" Goobs, just try to tell us about the real ones.
>>>
>>> Livestock who exist only need us to pay attention to their welfare. What
>>> benefit do you imagine your "appreciation" gives them? I'll tell you,
>>> Zero.
>>
>> Exactly right. That was a great comment you made about the welfare in
>> their lives, rather than "their lives", that merits any consideration.
>>
>> Fuckwit is still trying to get people to think the livestock "ought"

>> to exist, for moral reasons, and he just can't do it. He has wasted
>> eight years of his life - but no big loss, because his time is
>> worthless - trying to get people on board with him, and so far no one
>> has. No one ever will.
>>
>>
>>> It's your misguided, blundering way to deal with the accusations of ARAs
>>> who
>>> say that it's cruel to raise livestock.
>>
>> Yep. Fuckwit is too stupid to realize it, but he is essentially
>> acknowledging that "aras" are right. He is so fucking stupid...
>
>He arrogantly believes that he has discovered a clever way to turn their own
>argument back on them.

I recognise a significant aspect of human influence on animals that
you don't want people to consider, ONLY because it suggests that
there are alternatives that could be considered ethically equivalent
or superior to the elimination objective.

>He thinks that it's inconsistent to wish for the
>liberation of animals when that liberation would result in the elimination
>of the very species of animals you are liberating.

You are trying to defend ELIMINATION as always, this time
by contemptibly referring to ELIMINATION as liberation. LOL...
it's just another lie that you "aras" want people to believe.

>He can't understand that
>it simply doesn't matter if livestock species exist or not, apart from their
>utility, nobody cares.

That's another lie.

>You're right, by imparting this false importance to
>their existence he is unwittingly supporting the AR position.

That's another lie, and that's more evidence that you're an
"ara". No one in favor of decent AW would have reason to lie
about what I point out, but someone in favor of "ar" would have,
and you do it constantly. In fact, here's one of the biggest lies
you have told:

"I will NOT quote a position as yours once you reject it" - Dutch

and it follows your familiar pattern of trying to grab credit
for something you don't deserve. Trying to gab browny
points by lying about yourself like that is undoubtedly on the
bottom...but it explains why you like being a gooboy too...

Dutch

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 2:56:00 PM6/2/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180768416.6...@z28g2000prd.googlegroups.com...

> On Jun 1, 9:02 pm, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
>
>> > Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have, Dutch. Do you
>> > think there are any reasons to doubt the argument, apart from your
>> > pitiful whingeing that you haven't managed to find any vegan food that
>> > you like?
>>
>> I not only found it unsatisfying after 18 years, as I said, it was not
>> serving my family's health either. Those are important concerns you
>> little
>> shit, not pitiful whinging.
>>
>
> When you say it wasn't serving your family's health, I'm not sure what
> situation you're describing, exactly.

Of course you don't, but when I stated clearly that I encountered health
*and* satisfaction problems with my vegetarian diet in my original message
and you chose to dismiss those concerns as "pitiful whinging". That was
rude and uncalled for.

> Is it that some of your other
> family members were financially dependent on you, and you were only
> buying them vegan food because of your ethical beliefs, and they were
> experiencing diet-related health problems? Yes, certainly, those are
> important concerns. If I were in that situation I would probably have
> consulted a dietitian. The ADA agrees that well-planned vegan diets
> (supplemented by Vitamin B12) are nutritionally adequate at all stages
> of life and have many significant health benefits. Was the only
> solution to your family members' health problems for them to start
> eating meat again? Well, that's as may be. I would want to hear what a
> qualified dietitian had to say about the matter. Anyway, you made your
> own decision about that situation (assuming that I have the situation
> right). Perhaps you decided that seeing a dietitian was too expensive
> and that you would just start eating meat again and see how that went.
> Or perhaps you decided to see a dietitian and she advised you to start
> eating meat again. I don't know. In my last post I was not really
> trying to make a comment about your individual situation, about which
> I obviously know very little. What I did was ask you for your view
> about a particular argument. I guess I confused the issue somewhat by
> making references to your "pitiful whingeing". If you want to say that
> vegan diets are likely to undermine health and that undermines the
> argument, fine, let's hear the evidence.

I was a vegetarian for 18 years, as was my wife. We worked hard to keep our
diet balanced and well-rounded, and we took supplements. Despite our best
efforts we increasingly experienced health issues, hers were even more
pronounced than mine. We consulted a dietician and doctors. The final
recommendation was to add some meat to our diets. Following this advice in
our experience was clearly the right choice. I am not saying that vegan
diets are " likely to undermine health", I am reporting that we had a very
good experience with vegetarian diets for a long time, but eventually
experienced failure to thrive. I attribute the change to our aging cells.

> Anyway, I'm sorry you feel you have to swear at me. I really don't
> think it's called for.

It was called for. You had no call to dismiss my experience as pitiful
whinging.

> There was an occasion a while back where I was
> arguing that going vegan indicates a significant level of commitment
> to reducing suffering,

You're trying to have it both ways. In one argument you say we should go
vegan because according to you it's an easy step that we can all take to
reduce suffering and now you refer to it as a significant level of
commitment. Which is it, an easy step or a significant commitment?

> and you replied that in your experience going
> vegan was no sacrifice at all and that I was a spoiled little punk.
> Now you seem to want to say that it caused significant personal
> problems for you.

Both are true, it was easy and pleasant as long as it served us well, but
our circumstance changed as years passed and ultimately it became a problem.

> If I seemed to you to be suggesting that you stopped
> being vegan for trivial reasons and that offended you, then I
> apologize. I wasn't really trying to make that suggestion, I just
> thought that your concerns about not having a tasty enough diet could
> have been overcome with a little imagination.

You overlooked the part about it effecting my health, but even if I had made
the change only for taste reasons, so what? As you have admitted, none of us
operates on a strict efficiency model, and certainly there is no clear
imperative to live by the vegan model..

> As I say, I know quite a
> few vegans and I don't know anyone who finds the diet unsatisfying.

There is an issue of denial to deal with. If a person has himself convinced
that morally he cannot justify consuming animal products, then by what means
can he rationalize complaining about his vegan diet? He is trapped by his
choice to see morality through this particular lens.

> Obviously, you may have had concerns other than taste and I didn't
> wish to suggest that any concerns you had were necessarily trivial.

I accept your apology.

>
> I would have thought it should be possible for us to get on, at least
> to the extent of discussing these issues in a reasonably civil way. I
> mean, I don't have any personal grudge against you and I'm not trying
> to offend you. If you really feel that the way I behave is so
> offensive that you can't refrain from calling me a little shit, then
> maybe we'd better just leave it. But if you think it might be possible
> for us to have a polite conversation, then say so and I'll address the
> rest of your post.

Maybe you could think twice before using phrases like "pitiful whingeing" if
you are trying to have a polite conversation. Or better yet, stop worrying
about it. This is usenet, insults are used like punctuation, just ignore
them. You are not going to change the culture of usenet.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:03:12 PM6/2/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote

> On Jun 2, 12:15 am, Rudy Canoza <notgen...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[..]

>> > > >> > The argument is that we can produce perfectly tasty and
>> > > >> > nutritious
>> > > >> > food at the cost of a lot less environmental destruction.
>>
>> > > Tasty and nutritious for whom? What if I hate it and do not thrive on
>> > > it?
>>
>> > Poor you.
>>
>> > I don't believe you that you don't thrive on it,
>>
>> You disbelieve him because of your dogmatic approach, not because you
>> have any legitimate reason to doubt him.
>>
>
> The scientific consensus is that most people are perfectly capable of
> thriving on a vegan diet. I'm perfectly justified in being skeptical
> that it was impossible for him to be vegan and healthy.

"Most people" leaves some of the population who can't. I am one of them.

>> > that seems very unlikely to me
>>
>> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>>
>
> I mean what I say. It is unlikely, given what is known about the
> nutritional adequacy of vegan diets, that he would have had to stop
> being vegan in order to resolve whatever problems he was having.

You're not in a position to say what was possible for me and my family in
our particular medical circumstances. You are neither qualified nor aware of
the specifics of our cases. He is correct, your reaction is motivated by
ideology.


Dutch

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:21:57 PM6/2/07
to
<dh@.> wrote in message news:vn8363hpsuba1pf9v...@4ax.com...

That is it exactly fuckwit. Deal with it.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:25:16 PM6/2/07
to
<dh@.> wrote in message news:np8363pebv92t5mjn...@4ax.com...

> On Thu, 31 May 2007 19:04:00 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>
>><dh@.> wrote
>>> On Thu, 31 May 2007 07:18:27 GMT, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>>[..]
>>
>>>>> You don't know the difference between elegant and eloquent.
>>>>
>>>>I do, but you don't, dummy. You had never heard the adjective elegant
>>>>used
>>>>to describe an argument before, now you're befuddled. Here's a clue, it
>>>>is
>>>>commonly used when referring to mathematical arguments that are very
>>>>succinct and pure in their application of logic, clear and irrefutable.
>>>
>>> Then Dean used the wrong term, that's all.
>>
>>Nonsense, Dean used the word, we have to assume it was what he meant to
>>say
>>unless he says otherwise.
>
> No we don't, especially since it doesn't even apply to the Goobal
> situation.

Yes, you do.

> . . .
>>what makes us all Goos.
>
> What makes a VERY FEW of you goos, is your lipstick all over the
> Goober's
> ass. People who don't kiss up to Goo are NOT gooboys like you. DUH! It's
> another one of those things that even you--as challenged as you
> are--should
> be able to comprehend.

The Goos are a group of people who see through your pathetic little charade
and regularly take the time to remind you of that fact. You comprehend
nothing that we don't.


Dutch

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:33:37 PM6/2/07
to
<dh@.> wrote in message news:dt83639on6c65nh8e...@4ax.com...

Why do you keep calling it selfish when you are unable to explain why it's
selfish?

>Why do you think it's ethically superior not to consider what
> the animals gain?

Give me one reason to to consider what the animals gain. Describe one
benefit that would accrue to one animal if I began doing that right now.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 3:42:49 PM6/2/07
to
<dh@.> wrote in message news:uu83631dr1mghf9iv...@4ax.com...

Yet you have never once been able to articulate what that significance is.

> ONLY because it suggests that
> there are alternatives that could be considered ethically equivalent
> or superior to the elimination objective.

No, because the facts you "point out" have no significance.

>>He thinks that it's inconsistent to wish for the
>>liberation of animals when that liberation would result in the elimination
>>of the very species of animals you are liberating.
>
> You are trying to defend ELIMINATION as always, this time
> by contemptibly referring to ELIMINATION as liberation. LOL...
> it's just another lie that you "aras" want people to believe.

There is nothing morally wrong with the the idea of eliminating livestock
species. Livestock species that existed in past years have been eliminated
by producers and replaced with other species, others will no doubt follow.

>
>>He can't understand that
>>it simply doesn't matter if livestock species exist or not, apart from
>>their
>>utility, nobody cares.
>
> That's another lie.

No, it's a fact you don't like. Livestock animals have importance only
because we use them.

>>You're right, by imparting this false importance to
>>their existence he is unwittingly supporting the AR position.
>
> That's another lie,

It's another fact, this time one you can't grasp. By insisting that the
lives of livestock animals have moral significance you lend credibility to
the AR position. Your little game backfires and you can't even see it.

> and that's more evidence that you're an
> "ara". No one in favor of decent AW would have reason to lie
> about what I point out, but someone in favor of "ar" would have,
> and you do it constantly. In fact, here's one of the biggest lies
> you have told:
>
> "I will NOT quote a position as yours once you reject it" - Dutch

So reject the Logic of the Larder and we can all move on.

> and it follows your familiar pattern of trying to grab credit
> for something you don't deserve. Trying to gab browny
> points by lying about yourself like that is undoubtedly on the
> bottom...but it explains why you like being a gooboy too...

We don't deserve any brownie points for enabling livestock to experience
life. The idea has no place in the debate over animal use.


Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 4:10:50 PM6/2/07
to

I spoke with complete and perfect clarity. Even given
that, I could foresee that you would not comprehend.

>>> You claim the argument
>>> is flawed?
>> Yes, because it's based on a misconception of efficiency.
>>
>
> Elaborate.

I already did.


> How is the argument that meat production has undesirable
> environmental consequences

That isn't the argument, you fuckwit.


> based on a misconception of efficiency?

The argument I'm addressing is indeed based on a
misconception of efficiency, rupie. You're talking
about some other argument.


> Elsewhere you were saying this was a different argument to the one you
> wanted to attack.

It is.


>
>>> Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you.
>> Already done.
>>
>
> Elsewhere you said this argument wasn't your target.

You stupid uncomprehending fuck, rupie. The
environmental degradation argument is not the one I'm
addressing. The (misconceived) "efficiency" argument
is the one I'm addressing. Try to pay better
attention, rupie.


>>> You haven't done this yet,
>> Yes, I have. I have thoroughly explained the misconception.
>>
>
> Make up your mind what we're talking about, the environmental
> argument, or your "efficiency argument"

Not "my" efficiency argument; the one that that
fuckwitted prostitute lesley keeps trying to advance.


> (which I am not convinced
> anyone actually makes).

Yes, people do.

> Yes, you have demolished this "efficiency
> argument".

Of course.


>>> I was simply pointing out this fact.
>> No, because it's not a fact.
>>
>
> I believe it is a fact that you haven't addressed the environmental
> argument,

I haven't.


> and I believe elsewhere you agree with me. But if you think
> you have... well, by all means try to convince me.

Once again, vegetarians are guilty of promoting
environmental degradation with their diets. Thus, what
it comes down to is how much environmental degradation
is acceptable. Since some degradation must, by logical
necessity, be acceptable to vegetarians, then
environmental degradation _per se_ is not a reason to
oppose meat production.

Once again, "vegans" are seen as hypocrites.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 4:17:16 PM6/2/07
to
Fuckwit David Harrison, badly overmatched as always, lied:

> On 31 May 2007 13:04:52 -0700, Rudy Canoza <notg...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On May 31, 11:50 am, "Dutch" <n...@email.com> wrote:
>>> <dh@.> wrote in messagenews:kq2u53hktgjepn7dq...@4ax.com...
>>>> On 30 May 2007 12:41:47 -0700, Goo wrote:
>>>>> They have no intrinsic moral meaning until and unless
>>>>> the livestock exist.
>>>> If you think you have any clue about any of this Goo,
>>>> then attempt to explain any sort of meaning you're able
>>>> to comprehend and appreciate regarding livestock who
>>>> do exist. Don't even refer to your imaginary nonexistent
>>>> "entities" Goobs, just try to tell us about the real ones.
>>> Livestock who exist only need us to pay attention to their welfare. What
>>> benefit do you imagine your "appreciation" gives them? I'll tell you, Zero.
>> Exactly right. That was a great comment you made about the welfare in
>> their lives, rather than "their lives", that merits any consideration.
>>
>> Fuckwit is still trying to get people to think the livestock "ought"
>> to exist, for moral reasons
>
> That's a fantasy of yours,

No, it is absolutely your position, Fuckwit. That's
what allllllllll this blabber about considering "their
lives", as opposed to the *welfare* of their lives, is
about.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 10:58:50 PM6/2/07
to

True, I haven't been here as long as you. Still, I've been here a fair
while, and I've also read quite a lot of animal rights theory, written
by academic philosophers, legal theorists, and activists, and I've
been involved with the animal rights movement for a few years and know
quite a few vegans and activists. There's nothing "myopically limited"
about my view. I'm a well-informed person and I've never encountered
this "efficiency argument" that you've been telling us about, based
purely on resource-intensiveness. I doubt that anyone actually makes
it. I might be wrong. You are welcome to convince me otherwise, but
saying that my view is "myopically limited" is silly.

> "vegans" do it all the time, rupie: they claim it is
> an "inefficient" use of resources to produce meat - and
> they are wrong, for the well elaborated reason I gave.
>

But I think that when they make the statement that it is an
inefficient use of resources, what they are really doing is appealling
to considerations about environmental costs and global food
distribution of the kind that I have referred to. It's conceivable
that someone actually makes an argument based on resource-
intensiveness alone, but that I've never encountered such a person.
You're welcome to bring on the evidence any time you feel like it, all
this bare assertion is fairly tedious. Yes, of course you're right,
such an argument would be flawed, that's not in dispute by me.

> >> But it *is*
> >> offered as a smokescreen. The stupid "vegans" can't win the battle of
> >> ethics, so they try to venture into economics with their stupid
> >> "inefficiency" smokescreen, and they lose there, too.
>
> > The ethical arguments for veganism (or some diet which is comparable
> > in terms of its impact on animals) are good ones.
>
> They are sophomoric and wrong; they're just shit. The
> fact that YOU participate in animal killing proves it.
>

No, Jon, that's nonsense. That doesn't prove any such thing. You're
not listening. Those who still financially support some processes
which harm animals (yes, "financially support" is the correct term,
deal with it) and yet make an argument based on the idea that we
should never engage in such financial support are not acting
consistently with their stated convictions. Yes, you've made this
point very often, it's a correct and interesting point. Does that mean
that there are no sound arguments against the moral acceptability of
the typical Western diet? Of course not. That's absolute rubbish. If
you can't see that, then I'm afraid you're just not thinking very
clearly. There's no reason at all why someone shouldn't be rationally
motivated to move to a vegan diet, or some other diet similar in its
impact on animals, out of a desire to reduce their contribution to
animal suffering. And there's no reason at all that you've never
offered why this might not be morally preferable, or even morally
required. There are plenty of arguments out there in the literature
that take this approach, Mylan Engel Jr's essay "Why YOU are committed
to the Immorality of Eating Meat" is an example, David DeGrazia's
discussion of the issue in "Taking Animals Seriously" is another.
Saying that all these arguments are sophomoric bullshit just doesn't
cut it. Yes, you've offered an interesting criticism of a strict
animal rights position of the kind taken by Tom Regan or Gary
Francione. They may or may not be able to come up with a satisfactory
reply, it's probably fair to say that this issue hasn't really been
seriously engaged with in the literature yet. If you think that means
you've debunked every possible reason that might be given for cutting
down on animal product consumption, I'm afraid you're just wrong.
Saying "they're sophomoric and wrong, they're just shit" is not a
serious criticism. You're going to have to do better than that if your
ambition is to engage with these arguments in a credible way. Your
thought-experiment about sodomizing the boy with the broomstick is not
good enough. There can be deontological positions which are not
absolutist, and in any case there's more to morality than rights.


> > You've never offered
> > any good criticisms of these arguments in their strongest form, [snip 1500 words of chaff]
>
> I've offered very good criticisms of them in all their
> forms, and their strongest form is quite weak indeed.

No, I'm afraid not. You offer a tu quoque argument against a person
who makes the argument for veganism based on absolute rights but still
supports commercial agriculture. Even here, you haven't achieved much
by way of criticism of the argument. If someone advocates a moral rule
but doesn't follow it, well, he's a hypocrite, but that by itself
doesn't resolve the question of whether the moral rule might be valid.
So even this argument you haven't really offered any serious criticism
of, unless "Well, no-one's going to go that far" counts as a serious
criticism. But, in any case, the point is this is not the only
argument that can be made. You've convinced yourself that if that
argument fails, then it follows that no serious criticism can be made
of the status quo. That's obvious nonsense. You've got to do more than
that if your ambition is to defend the status quo.


Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 11:25:30 PM6/2/07
to

If someone says to me that they were vegan and they were experiencing
diet-related health problems, it is quite reasonable for me initially
to assume that those health problems could probably be adequately
resolved while still remaining vegan, because that is the view that is
supported by the scientific evidence. He says a dietitian told him
otherwise, all right, well, I have to acknowledge that at least one
dietitian with knowledge of his case had that opinion. There was
nothing unreasonable about my initial response, given what is known
about nutrition.

>
> >
> >>> that seems very unlikely to me
> >> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
> >>
> >
> > I mean what I say.
>
> You mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>

You're a fool. I mean what I say. It seems very unlikely to me, based
on what is known about nutrition. There's nothing ideological about
it. It's a reasonable judgement based on what I know about the current
scientific consensus. Now we know that at least one dietitian with
knowledge of the case made a different judgement. All right, well,
we'd better take that on board as well.

>
> >>>>>> That's the wrong argument.
> >>>>> Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
> >>>>> is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
> >>>>> haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
> >>>> He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
> >>>> to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.
> >>> Er, actually, no.
> >> ERRRRRRRRR, yes, rupie - you've done zero apart from spouting classic
> >> "vegan" dogma.
> >>
> >
> > No, I'm afraid you're mistaken
>
> No. I'm not. You've done zero apart from spouting
> classic "vegan" dogma.
>

You're a fucking idiot, Ball. Just stick with engaging with the
arguments, instead of talking silly nonsense.

>
>
> >>> I've explained why the argument which he's
> >>> addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes.
> >> You're lying.
> >
> > No, I'm not. I sincerely believe what I'm saying.
>
> No, you know you're lying.
>

Well, it's as I keep saying, your reality-testing skills are really
not very good, and this is an illustration of this. You were just now
saying that I had no legitimate reason to call Dutch a liar, well I
wasn't calling him a liar, I was just expressing my initial view that
he probably could have resolved his health problems without starting
to eat meat again. Now you're expressing the totally irrational
conviction that I'm not sincere and that I know I'm lying. Pot,
kettle, black. Instead of spending so much time calling other people
irrational, you really ought to do something about your own
irrationality and your seriously impaired reality-testing skills.

>
> >
> >> People *do* make this phony "inefficiency" argument.
> >
> > Show me where.
>
> lesley, aka the slut "pearl".

You really despicable and pathetic. You know that, don't you?

> Do your own search for
> her laughable bullshit about "feed conversion ratio".
>

That's an environmental argument.

> Also:
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/msg/81fb0c24458944ce
>
>
> But farming animals is an inefficient, unsustainable and
> problematic way of producing food. Apart from those who
> feed on
> pasture where it is difficult to grow crops, farmed
> animals use more
> food calories than they produce in the form of meat.
> They also compete
> directly with people for other precious resources,
> notably water.
> http://groups.google.com/group/demon.local/msg/f1ee116aa6b75f46
>

This is an implicit appeal to the argument from environmental costs
and the argument from global food distribution.

> [meat production] is an inefficient use of fresh water
> and land for the production of food,
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/msg/e59bd38a04228c74
>

Environmental argument.

> Clearly meat production is a very inefficient use of water
> http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/86411178db014ccf
>

Environmental argument.

>
> rupie, do your own research from now on.
>

Why? It's your job to back up your contentions.

> The point is, rupie, you fat fuck,

You're such a fool. "Fat fuck" - what on earth is that supposed to
mean? Why do you get such enormous gratification from talking silly
nonsense?

> that "vegans" make
> this "inefficiency" argument all the time. It is a
> *separate* argument from the environmental degradation
> argument, although the "vegans" often state them
> together.

Well, that's your reading of the situation. I don't think you've
produced very good evidence for it. I don't particularly care, anyway.
It doesn't strike me as a very interesting issue. Yes, all right, you
have made a good criticism of this alleged "inefficiency argument".

> The "inefficiency" argument is made all the
> time, it is based on a laughable misconception of
> efficiency, and it is fatuous of you to dispute that.
>

I dispute the former, not the latter. You can try to present evidence
of the former if you want, I don't think you've presented very good
evidence so far. But in any case, I'm not particularly interested in
the issue.

>
> >
> >> The environmental argument is something different.
> >>
> >> "vegans" say that the resources going to meat production are "wasted",
> >> because it isn't "necessary" to eat meat in order to eat healthfully.
> >> That is a misconceived efficiency argument, and people do indeed make
> >> it. That stupid cunt lesley has made it dozens of times.
> >>
> >
> > Very interesting. Well, I've never seen anyone make it.
>
> You're willfully blind.
>

You're a fool.

>
> > You think people really do make this argument, well you might be
> > right, frankly I think there's a pretty good chance you might just be
> > misreading them.
>
> There is zero chance of that.
>

Well, actually, given the enormous numbers of examples of how you
manage to convince yourself that you have insight into another
person's motives and thoughts, when in fact it is just a silly fantasy
that you made up without any rational basis, there's a pretty good
chance of it. But in any case, I don't particularly care either way.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 11:31:36 PM6/2/07
to
On Jun 3, 5:03 am, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:

> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote> On Jun 2, 12:15 am, Rudy Canoza <notgen...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [..]
>
>
>
> >> > > >> > The argument is that we can produce perfectly tasty and
> >> > > >> > nutritious
> >> > > >> > food at the cost of a lot less environmental destruction.
>
> >> > > Tasty and nutritious for whom? What if I hate it and do not thrive on
> >> > > it?
>
> >> > Poor you.
>
> >> > I don't believe you that you don't thrive on it,
>
> >> You disbelieve him because of your dogmatic approach, not because you
> >> have any legitimate reason to doubt him.
>
> > The scientific consensus is that most people are perfectly capable of
> > thriving on a vegan diet. I'm perfectly justified in being skeptical
> > that it was impossible for him to be vegan and healthy.
>
> "Most people" leaves some of the population who can't. I am one of them.
>

Possibly.

> >> > that seems very unlikely to me
>
> >> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>
> > I mean what I say. It is unlikely, given what is known about the
> > nutritional adequacy of vegan diets, that he would have had to stop
> > being vegan in order to resolve whatever problems he was having.
>
> You're not in a position to say what was possible for me and my family in
> our particular medical circumstances.

True. I was never in a position to do anything more than conjecture, I
never claimed to have reliable knowledge. Still, my conjecture was
reasonable.

> You are neither qualified nor aware of
> the specifics of our cases. He is correct, your reaction is motivated by
> ideology.

No, it was a reasonable conjecture, which I never presented as fact,
made on the basis of what I knew about your situation at the time and
what I know about the scientific evidence. Nothing ideological about
it. People often tell me anecdotes about their medical histories which
strike me as implausible in the light of what I know about the
scientific evidence. I conjecture to myself that some of their
interpretations of what happened are mistaken, but acknowledge that I
am not in a position to know. This was a case of that. Now that I know
that at least one dietitian had a different view the situation is
different.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 2, 2007, 11:56:44 PM6/2/07
to
On Jun 3, 4:56 am, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

>
> news:1180768416.6...@z28g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Jun 1, 9:02 pm, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
>
> >> > Well, that's a very interesting perspective you have, Dutch. Do you
> >> > think there are any reasons to doubt the argument, apart from your
> >> > pitiful whingeing that you haven't managed to find any vegan food that
> >> > you like?
>
> >> I not only found it unsatisfying after 18 years, as I said, it was not
> >> serving my family's health either. Those are important concerns you
> >> little
> >> shit, not pitiful whinging.
>
> > When you say it wasn't serving your family's health, I'm not sure what
> > situation you're describing, exactly.
>
> Of course you don't, but when I stated clearly that I encountered health
> *and* satisfaction problems with my vegetarian diet in my original message
> and you chose to dismiss those concerns as "pitiful whinging". That was
> rude and uncalled for.
>

Perhaps I should have been more open to the possibility that they
might have been serious concerns which you couldn't reasonably have
resolved in any other way. I still do not know whether that is the
case. I find it very difficult to take this claim of satisfaction
concerns seriously, and when you said "I do not thrive on it" I didn't
know whether you were talking about serious health problems and tended
to make the assumption that you were making a fuss about nothing.
Perhaps I should have recognized the possibility that you were not
making a fuss about nothing and not used the phrase "pitiful
whingeing". If I was rude, I apologize.

Perhaps not. Nevertheless, if you choose not to apologize for calling
me a little shit then I choose not to continue this conversation.

> > There was an occasion a while back where I was
> > arguing that going vegan indicates a significant level of commitment
> > to reducing suffering,
>
> You're trying to have it both ways. In one argument you say we should go
> vegan because according to you it's an easy step that we can all take to
> reduce suffering and now you refer to it as a significant level of
> commitment. Which is it, an easy step or a significant commitment?
>

A lot of people find it difficult to imagine ever going vegan and
think of it as something really hard. However, most people, once
they've committed to being vegan, don't find it all that hard and find
it easy to keep going. Nevertheless, it is a significant step to take
and it demonstrates that you are serious about reducing your
contribution to suffering. I think it's consistent to say all this.

> > and you replied that in your experience going
> > vegan was no sacrifice at all and that I was a spoiled little punk.
> > Now you seem to want to say that it caused significant personal
> > problems for you.
>
> Both are true, it was easy and pleasant as long as it served us well, but
> our circumstance changed as years passed and ultimately it became a problem.
>
> > If I seemed to you to be suggesting that you stopped
> > being vegan for trivial reasons and that offended you, then I
> > apologize. I wasn't really trying to make that suggestion, I just
> > thought that your concerns about not having a tasty enough diet could
> > have been overcome with a little imagination.
>
> You overlooked the part about it effecting my health,

Yes, when you said "I do not thrive on it", I made the assumption,
perhaps unwarranted, that you were not referring to any serious health
concerns.

> but even if I had made
> the change only for taste reasons, so what? As you have admitted, none of us
> operates on a strict efficiency model, and certainly there is no clear
> imperative to live by the vegan model..
>

Well, we might talk about that later.

> > As I say, I know quite a
> > few vegans and I don't know anyone who finds the diet unsatisfying.
>
> There is an issue of denial to deal with. If a person has himself convinced
> that morally he cannot justify consuming animal products, then by what means
> can he rationalize complaining about his vegan diet? He is trapped by his
> choice to see morality through this particular lens.
>

No, I think most vegans are pretty honest with themselves about the
extent to which their diet makes life difficult for them. They
acknowledge that they miss some particularly enjoyed food like cheese,
for example. I don't think there's any denial going on. They have a
satisfying, tasty, and varied diet.

> > Obviously, you may have had concerns other than taste and I didn't
> > wish to suggest that any concerns you had were necessarily trivial.
>
> I accept your apology.
>
>
>
> > I would have thought it should be possible for us to get on, at least
> > to the extent of discussing these issues in a reasonably civil way. I
> > mean, I don't have any personal grudge against you and I'm not trying
> > to offend you. If you really feel that the way I behave is so
> > offensive that you can't refrain from calling me a little shit, then
> > maybe we'd better just leave it. But if you think it might be possible
> > for us to have a polite conversation, then say so and I'll address the
> > rest of your post.
>
> Maybe you could think twice before using phrases like "pitiful whingeing" if
> you are trying to have a polite conversation.

All right, I'll keep that in mind.

> Or better yet, stop worrying
> about it. This is usenet, insults are used like punctuation, just ignore
> them. You are not going to change the culture of usenet.

I'm not going to change the culture of this particular newsgroup, no.
Not all of usenet is like this. I hang out in maths and logic
newsgroups and the discussion there is perfectly civil, even though
sometimes there are significant differences of opinion.

I think discussion on this newsgroup is valuable in that there are
important criticisms presented here of some of the positions taken by
animal rights advocates and animal liberation advocates which have not
yet received a very extensive discussion in the literature. I think
it's good to identify these issues and think about the foundations of
one's position, hopefully ultimately achieving a more defensible
position. Nevertheless, I think the conduct of people like Jon Ball
and Rick Etter is absolutely despicable and I'm tired of it. My
ambition is to discuss the issues, not the people. I don't think it's
relevant to discuss whether or not such and such a person is a
hypocrite, whether they're a fool, whether they've got an over-
inflated conception of their competence in moral philosophy, whether
or not they're soliciting gay sex on a houseboat, and so forth. I'm
planning to try to stick more consistently to a policy of not engaging
with people who aren't capable of civil discussion. Which, if
followed, would probably significantly curtail my activities on this
newsgroup, but there it is.

You're not as bad as the other antis, and you're right that I'm not
blameless myself, but I still think that calling me a little shit was
over the top. I've put up with far worse than what you got from me
without resorting to language like that. You seem to have the idea
that all the treatment I receive here is justified, that I try
people's patience, that I have "a nerve", that somehow or other simply
stating my position is so offensive that people are justified in
treating me the way they do, that I'm the one who's guilty of
arrogance and effrontery and that it's people like you who are the
aggrieved party. Well, I just think that's absurd. You're entitled to
your view, but if you're going to stick to your view that calling me a
little shit was called for and you're not going to apologize for it
we'll just leave it there.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:05:32 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote
>
> Rudy Canoza wrote:

[..]

>> > The scientific consensus is that most people are perfectly capable of
>> > thriving on a vegan diet. I'm perfectly justified in being skeptical
>> > that it was impossible for him to be vegan and healthy.
>>
>> No. Without evidence, and with no legitimate reason to
>> consider him a liar, you have no valid reason to
>> disbelieve him.
>>
>
> If someone says to me that they were vegan and they were experiencing
> diet-related health problems, it is quite reasonable for me initially
> to assume that those health problems could probably be adequately
> resolved while still remaining vegan, because that is the view that is
> supported by the scientific evidence.

No, that is how a devotee of veganism prefers to interpert the scientific
evidence. The evidence actually says that the best evidence shows that a
vegetarian diet is *generally speaking*, capable of providing the necessary
nutritional requirements for human health, with some additional
supplementation (B-12). However a legitimate nutritionist would never assert
that in any given indivdual case a strict vegan diet will always be adequate
for every person in every state of health.

> He says a dietitian told him
> otherwise, all right, well, I have to acknowledge that at least one
> dietitian with knowledge of his case had that opinion. There was
> nothing unreasonable about my initial response, given what is known
> about nutrition.

What YOU know about nutrition Rupert, not what *IS* known. There was nothing
unreasonable (rude perhaps) given what YOU know about nutrition. Serious
nutritionists know that there is a LOT that we still do not understand about
nutrition.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:11:22 AM6/3/07
to

When you said "That's the wrong argument", it could mean one of two
things. It could mean that the argument is flawed, or it could mean
that it wasn't the argument that you were talking about in the
original post. I wasn't clear about which of these two you meant. If
you foresaw that, then it would have been helpful to add some
clarification. Whether you think you were speaking with "perfect
clarity" or not is not really the issue, if your desire is to
communicate with someone then it would seem rational to take steps to
ensure that you are understood.

> >>> You claim the argument
> >>> is flawed?
> >> Yes, because it's based on a misconception of efficiency.
>
> > Elaborate.
>
> I already did.
>

You have given details of why this "inefficiency argument" which you
claim that people make is flawed, and I agree with you. I do not think
that you have said anything which bears on the environmental argument.
If you think you have, I would appreciate it if you try and make this
clearer to me.

> > How is the argument that meat production has undesirable
> > environmental consequences
>
> That isn't the argument, you fuckwit.
>

It is the argument that *I* was talking about. We are at cross-
purposes. I'm sorry you misunderstood me.

> > based on a misconception of efficiency?
>
> The argument I'm addressing is indeed based on a
> misconception of efficiency, rupie. You're talking
> about some other argument.
>

That's right. And when I said "You claim this argument is flawed?" I
was talking about this other argument, on which by your own admission
your arguments do not bear. And then you said "Yes, because it's based
on a misconception of efficiency", apparently talking about the first
argument. It looks like you got confused about which argument we were
talking about. That's fine, we all get confused sometimes.

> > Elsewhere you were saying this was a different argument to the one you
> > wanted to attack.
>
> It is.
>

I thought so. So if you want to attack this argument as well, then by
your own admission you'll have to come up with some new arguments.

>
>
> >>> Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you.
> >> Already done.
>
> > Elsewhere you said this argument wasn't your target.
>
> You stupid uncomprehending fuck, rupie. The
> environmental degradation argument is not the one I'm
> addressing. The (misconceived) "efficiency" argument
> is the one I'm addressing. Try to pay better
> attention, rupie.
>

Um, that is exactly what I was saying. You seem to be quite confused.
I think you'll find you are the one who needs to pay better attention.
But note that I nevertheless refrain from calling you a "stupid
uncomprehending fuck", because I am a decent, civilized human being
who does not take joy in gratuitous, unnecessary rudeness.

> >>> You haven't done this yet,
> >> Yes, I have. I have thoroughly explained the misconception.
>
> > Make up your mind what we're talking about, the environmental
> > argument, or your "efficiency argument"
>
> Not "my" efficiency argument; the one that that
> fuckwitted prostitute lesley keeps trying to advance.
>

(1) There is nothing wrong with being a prostitute, it is a perfectly
legitimate form of employment.
(2) Lesley is not a prostitute.
(3) Anyone who tries to denigrate someone by calling them a
"prostitute" is a thoroughly inferior human being and is only
degrading themselves.
(4) I doubt that Lesley actually intends to make the "efficiency
argument" as you interpret it, and I have yet to see any evidence for
this.

> > (which I am not convinced
> > anyone actually makes).
>
> Yes, people do.
>

So you say. Not that it particularly matters.

> > Yes, you have demolished this "efficiency
> > argument".
>
> Of course.
>

Well done.

> >>> I was simply pointing out this fact.
> >> No, because it's not a fact.
>
> > I believe it is a fact that you haven't addressed the environmental
> > argument,
>
> I haven't.
>

Great. So it looks like your remarks in the earlier post were based on
a confusion about which argument we were talking about. Maybe you
should acknowledge this, and perhaps apologize for calling me a
"stupid uncomprehending fuck" when you were the one who was confused.

> > and I believe elsewhere you agree with me. But if you think
> > you have... well, by all means try to convince me.
>
> Once again, vegetarians are guilty of promoting
> environmental degradation with their diets. Thus, what
> it comes down to is how much environmental degradation
> is acceptable.

Yes, certainly.

> Since some degradation must, by logical
> necessity, be acceptable to vegetarians, then
> environmental degradation _per se_ is not a reason to
> oppose meat production.
>
> Once again, "vegans" are seen as hypocrites.

No, you can specify a threshold about how much environmental
degradation is acceptable, what weight considerations of personal
convenience have, and so on, without being a hypocrite. Presumably
everyone specifies *some* threshold about these things. Saying that
any amount of environmental degradation is acceptable, no matter how
trivial the inconvenience of avoiding it, would not be very plausible.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:16:34 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180841496....@q19g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

> On Jun 3, 5:03 am, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
>> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote> On Jun 2, 12:15 am, Rudy
>> Canoza <notgen...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> [..]
>>
>>
>>
>> >> > > >> > The argument is that we can produce perfectly tasty and
>> >> > > >> > nutritious
>> >> > > >> > food at the cost of a lot less environmental destruction.
>>
>> >> > > Tasty and nutritious for whom? What if I hate it and do not thrive
>> >> > > on
>> >> > > it?
>>
>> >> > Poor you.
>>
>> >> > I don't believe you that you don't thrive on it,
>>
>> >> You disbelieve him because of your dogmatic approach, not because you
>> >> have any legitimate reason to doubt him.
>>
>> > The scientific consensus is that most people are perfectly capable of
>> > thriving on a vegan diet. I'm perfectly justified in being skeptical
>> > that it was impossible for him to be vegan and healthy.
>>
>> "Most people" leaves some of the population who can't. I am one of them.
>>
>
> Possibly.

Plausibly, you yourself left the possibility open with "most people are
perfectly capable of thriving on a vegan diet". In fact making that
eminently reasonable interpertation of scientific consensus then immediately
rejecting my own case without knowing anything about me shows that you are
heavily influenced by idealogical considerations.

>> >> > that seems very unlikely to me
>>
>> >> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>>
>> > I mean what I say. It is unlikely, given what is known about the
>> > nutritional adequacy of vegan diets, that he would have had to stop
>> > being vegan in order to resolve whatever problems he was having.
>>
>> You're not in a position to say what was possible for me and my family in
>> our particular medical circumstances.
>
> True. I was never in a position to do anything more than conjecture, I
> never claimed to have reliable knowledge. Still, my conjecture was
> reasonable.

Your conjecture contradicted your statement which left open the possibility
that vegans diets are not always adequate.

>
>> You are neither qualified nor aware of
>> the specifics of our cases. He is correct, your reaction is motivated by
>> ideology.
>
> No, it was a reasonable conjecture, which I never presented as fact,
> made on the basis of what I knew about your situation at the time and
> what I know about the scientific evidence. Nothing ideological about
> it. People often tell me anecdotes about their medical histories which
> strike me as implausible in the light of what I know about the
> scientific evidence. I conjecture to myself that some of their
> interpretations of what happened are mistaken, but acknowledge that I
> am not in a position to know. This was a case of that. Now that I know
> that at least one dietitian had a different view the situation is
> different.

I didn't need a dietician to know that I did the right thing for me and my
family. My wife went from being wiry and energetic to being frail and
lethargic, much more so than the process of aging alone would have dictated.
These effects were reversed almost immedately when we began to vary our
diets. I have since read anecdotal reports of other who have similar
experiences.

http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1c.shtml
When there is too deep an emotional investment in diet, open-mindedness is
more difficult. For those of us whose diets are based not just on
nutritional ideas but on philosophical principles or beliefs that may
underlie an entire lifestyle, the toughest aspect of making a transition to
a different diet that may serve you better is not food. It is being able to
transcend your emotional identification with the philosophy or worldview
underlying the diet you may have lived by for many years. This can often be
very difficult psychologically, because our food habits help to comprise a
literally "visceral" sense of who we are. Integrating a new or more
all-inclusive dietary vision based on new information that one may only be
beginning to realize the implications of, takes not only intellectual
understanding and assent but also patience and emotional honesty. Even when
one is faced with well-corroborated research like what is presented in some
sections of this site, we recognize it is difficult to change the beliefs of
a lifetime, or half a lifetime.


Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:19:28 AM6/3/07
to
On Jun 3, 2:05 pm, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote

>
>
>
> > Rudy Canoza wrote:
>
> [..]
>
> >> > The scientific consensus is that most people are perfectly capable of
> >> > thriving on a vegan diet. I'm perfectly justified in being skeptical
> >> > that it was impossible for him to be vegan and healthy.
>
> >> No. Without evidence, and with no legitimate reason to
> >> consider him a liar, you have no valid reason to
> >> disbelieve him.
>
> > If someone says to me that they were vegan and they were experiencing
> > diet-related health problems, it is quite reasonable for me initially
> > to assume that those health problems could probably be adequately
> > resolved while still remaining vegan, because that is the view that is
> > supported by the scientific evidence.
>
> No, that is how a devotee of veganism prefers to interpert the scientific
> evidence. The evidence actually says that the best evidence shows that a
> vegetarian diet is *generally speaking*, capable of providing the necessary
> nutritional requirements for human health, with some additional
> supplementation (B-12). However a legitimate nutritionist would never assert
> that in any given indivdual case a strict vegan diet will always be adequate
> for every person in every state of health.
>

Never suggested they would. My comment still stands.

> > He says a dietitian told him
> > otherwise, all right, well, I have to acknowledge that at least one
> > dietitian with knowledge of his case had that opinion. There was
> > nothing unreasonable about my initial response, given what is known
> > about nutrition.
>
> What YOU know about nutrition Rupert, not what *IS* known. There was nothing
> unreasonable (rude perhaps) given what YOU know about nutrition. Serious
> nutritionists know that there is a LOT that we still do not understand about
> nutrition.

It was reasonable for me to conjecture, what still might very well be
true for all I know, that your health problems could have been
resolved without abandoning veganism. The current state of knowledge
about nutrition supports the view that this will be true in most
cases. It may or may not have been true in your case. There was
nothing unreasonable or rude about what I originally said.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:41:40 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180843004....@j4g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

Even if were only for "satisfaction" reasons that should be good enough for
anyone to accept. Nobody I know of is in a position to criticize any diet
within the range of reasonable diets that I am aware of.

Poor you.

>> > There was an occasion a while back where I was
>> > arguing that going vegan indicates a significant level of commitment
>> > to reducing suffering,
>>
>> You're trying to have it both ways. In one argument you say we should go
>> vegan because according to you it's an easy step that we can all take to
>> reduce suffering and now you refer to it as a significant level of
>> commitment. Which is it, an easy step or a significant commitment?
>>
>
> A lot of people find it difficult to imagine ever going vegan and
> think of it as something really hard. However, most people, once
> they've committed to being vegan, don't find it all that hard and find
> it easy to keep going. Nevertheless, it is a significant step to take
> and it demonstrates that you are serious about reducing your
> contribution to suffering. I think it's consistent to say all this.

Perhaps it is consistent, but in my opinion you are doing the person a
disservice. Anyone who first embarks on veganism is unlikely to be prepared
for the kind of one-way "shark's teeth" the habit can have.
See http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1c.shtml


>
>> > and you replied that in your experience going
>> > vegan was no sacrifice at all and that I was a spoiled little punk.
>> > Now you seem to want to say that it caused significant personal
>> > problems for you.
>>
>> Both are true, it was easy and pleasant as long as it served us well, but
>> our circumstance changed as years passed and ultimately it became a
>> problem.
>>
>> > If I seemed to you to be suggesting that you stopped
>> > being vegan for trivial reasons and that offended you, then I
>> > apologize. I wasn't really trying to make that suggestion, I just
>> > thought that your concerns about not having a tasty enough diet could
>> > have been overcome with a little imagination.
>>
>> You overlooked the part about it effecting my health,
>
> Yes, when you said "I do not thrive on it", I made the assumption,
> perhaps unwarranted, that you were not referring to any serious health
> concerns.

They were serious enough for me and quite serious for her. When is a problem
"serious enough"? What about never feeling really satisfied or full even
when consuming large numbers of calories? What about having poor
concentration? Aren't these personal matters?

>> but even if I had made
>> the change only for taste reasons, so what? As you have admitted, none of
>> us
>> operates on a strict efficiency model, and certainly there is no clear
>> imperative to live by the vegan model..
>>
>
> Well, we might talk about that later.

The issue is not debatable. The whole problem with veganism is that is
perceived by adherents in such a rigid and uncompromising fashion. Yet even
as vegans allow themselves the slack to continue to use certain animal
products, they view the use of other animal products on the no-go list as
near cannibalism in ethical status.

>
>> > As I say, I know quite a
>> > few vegans and I don't know anyone who finds the diet unsatisfying.
>>
>> There is an issue of denial to deal with. If a person has himself
>> convinced
>> that morally he cannot justify consuming animal products, then by what
>> means
>> can he rationalize complaining about his vegan diet? He is trapped by his
>> choice to see morality through this particular lens.
>>
>
> No, I think most vegans are pretty honest with themselves about the
> extent to which their diet makes life difficult for them. They
> acknowledge that they miss some particularly enjoyed food like cheese,
> for example. I don't think there's any denial going on. They have a
> satisfying, tasty, and varied diet.

http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1c.shtml

Why do you consider that such an egregious insult? Are we all not little
shits sometimes? That phrase seems completely benign to me. You ought to
grow thicker skin Rupert.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:43:41 AM6/3/07
to
On Jun 3, 2:16 pm, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

I made the conjecture that you could have resolved your health
problems without abandoning veganism. I acknowledged that I did not
know for sure. This was a reasonable conjecture based on what my state
of knowledge about your situation at the time, and what I know about
the scientific consensus. Now that I know that at least one dietitian
had a different view things are different. There is no ideology
involved.

Whatever. This is boring, anyway. Yes, I acknowledge the possibility
that it might have been very difficult to resolve your health problems
without abandoning veganism, as I always did, and I am now less
skeptical about that possibility than before now that I know that at
least one dietitian held that view. All right?

This all started with Ball saying that the fact that I claimed you
were lying (which I didn't) shows that I am influenced by ideological
considerations, which is very amusing and ironic given how often Ball
expresses convictions that people are knowingly lying which are
obviously totally irrational.

You say I'm influenced by ideology. Well, I don't think so, but I'll
strive to watch out for any such tendency in myself and try to
overcome it.

> >> >> > that seems very unlikely to me
>
> >> >> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>
> >> > I mean what I say. It is unlikely, given what is known about the
> >> > nutritional adequacy of vegan diets, that he would have had to stop
> >> > being vegan in order to resolve whatever problems he was having.
>
> >> You're not in a position to say what was possible for me and my family in
> >> our particular medical circumstances.
>
> > True. I was never in a position to do anything more than conjecture, I
> > never claimed to have reliable knowledge. Still, my conjecture was
> > reasonable.
>
> Your conjecture contradicted your statement which left open the possibility
> that vegans diets are not always adequate.
>

No, not at all.

Health problems from eating too much meat are much more common than
health problems from avoidance of animal products. Yes, of course
people become emotionally invested in their diet for one reason or
another, and in the event of diet-related health problems they have to
work out what their priorities are and how they are going to resolve
their problem. Just as if someone finds they think they have reason to
cut down on meat for ethical or health reasons, they have to work out
how to balance this against whatever attachment they have to eating
meat.

This website is presenting a one-sided view of the issue in that it
ignores the fact that for most people vegan diets are nutritionally
adequate and in fact have significant health benefits. It's trying to
say "Thinking of going vegetarian or vegan? Well, be careful, you
might run into health problems" when the reality is that it is much
more likely than not to improve your health in the long run. Every
health professional with whom I have ever spoken about my diet has
said that being vegan is really healthy.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:51:13 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180844368.2...@r19g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

You did suggest it, strongly, by refusing to acknowledge that my own
experience was valid.

>> > He says a dietitian told him
>> > otherwise, all right, well, I have to acknowledge that at least one
>> > dietitian with knowledge of his case had that opinion. There was
>> > nothing unreasonable about my initial response, given what is known
>> > about nutrition.
>>
>> What YOU know about nutrition Rupert, not what *IS* known. There was
>> nothing
>> unreasonable (rude perhaps) given what YOU know about nutrition. Serious
>> nutritionists know that there is a LOT that we still do not understand
>> about
>> nutrition.
>
> It was reasonable for me to conjecture, what still might very well be
> true for all I know, that your health problems could have been
> resolved without abandoning veganism. The current state of knowledge
> about nutrition supports the view that this will be true in most
> cases. It may or may not have been true in your case. There was
> nothing unreasonable or rude about what I originally said.

You get your panties all in a bunch about a harmless epithet like "little
shit", yet I reveal something about my personal health problems, you
respond "Poor you!" and call it "pitiful whingeing" and I'm not supposed to
take that personally. You really are a piece of work Rupert.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 12:58:32 AM6/3/07
to

Well, as you know I think that some widely followed diets can be
criticized. I make no comment about your diet, I don't know very much
about it.

Poor me? I'm fine.

> >> > There was an occasion a while back where I was
> >> > arguing that going vegan indicates a significant level of commitment
> >> > to reducing suffering,
>
> >> You're trying to have it both ways. In one argument you say we should go
> >> vegan because according to you it's an easy step that we can all take to
> >> reduce suffering and now you refer to it as a significant level of
> >> commitment. Which is it, an easy step or a significant commitment?
>
> > A lot of people find it difficult to imagine ever going vegan and
> > think of it as something really hard. However, most people, once
> > they've committed to being vegan, don't find it all that hard and find
> > it easy to keep going. Nevertheless, it is a significant step to take
> > and it demonstrates that you are serious about reducing your
> > contribution to suffering. I think it's consistent to say all this.
>
> Perhaps it is consistent, but in my opinion you are doing the person a
> disservice. Anyone who first embarks on veganism is unlikely to be prepared
> for the kind of one-way "shark's teeth" the habit can have.
> Seehttp://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1c.shtml
>

I seem to be having problems opening two windows at once on this
computer, so I'll have to look at it later. Look, I think that's a
propaganda website. It's trying to argue that there are serious
pitfalls in being vegan while ignoring the fact that actually there
are much more likely to be benefits. I think you've got a distorted
view of the "habit" of veganism as well. It's a lifestyle choice,
quite a healthy one, and one which is quite good from the point of
view of reducing one's environmental impact and contribution to animal
suffering. I don't think you're doing anyone a disservice by
encouraging them to consider the reasons for going vegan.

>
>
> >> > and you replied that in your experience going
> >> > vegan was no sacrifice at all and that I was a spoiled little punk.
> >> > Now you seem to want to say that it caused significant personal
> >> > problems for you.
>
> >> Both are true, it was easy and pleasant as long as it served us well, but
> >> our circumstance changed as years passed and ultimately it became a
> >> problem.
>
> >> > If I seemed to you to be suggesting that you stopped
> >> > being vegan for trivial reasons and that offended you, then I
> >> > apologize. I wasn't really trying to make that suggestion, I just
> >> > thought that your concerns about not having a tasty enough diet could
> >> > have been overcome with a little imagination.
>
> >> You overlooked the part about it effecting my health,
>
> > Yes, when you said "I do not thrive on it", I made the assumption,
> > perhaps unwarranted, that you were not referring to any serious health
> > concerns.
>
> They were serious enough for me and quite serious for her. When is a problem
> "serious enough"? What about never feeling really satisfied or full even
> when consuming large numbers of calories? What about having poor
> concentration? Aren't these personal matters?
>

As I say, I made the assumption at the time and it may not have been
justified.

> >> but even if I had made
> >> the change only for taste reasons, so what? As you have admitted, none of
> >> us
> >> operates on a strict efficiency model, and certainly there is no clear
> >> imperative to live by the vegan model..
>
> > Well, we might talk about that later.
>
> The issue is not debatable.

Of course it is reasonable to debate which diets are good enough from
the point of view of not contributing to animal suffering,
environmental destruction, and so forth. I acknowledge that if a
typical vegan diet is good enough then there might well be non-vegan
diets which are also good enough.

> The whole problem with veganism is that is
> perceived by adherents in such a rigid and uncompromising fashion. Yet even
> as vegans allow themselves the slack to continue to use certain animal
> products, they view the use of other animal products on the no-go list as
> near cannibalism in ethical status.
>

Yeah, sure, some vegans have that problem. It's reasonable to
criticize the set of attitudes that they hold.

>
>
> >> > As I say, I know quite a
> >> > few vegans and I don't know anyone who finds the diet unsatisfying.
>
> >> There is an issue of denial to deal with. If a person has himself
> >> convinced
> >> that morally he cannot justify consuming animal products, then by what
> >> means
> >> can he rationalize complaining about his vegan diet? He is trapped by his
> >> choice to see morality through this particular lens.
>
> > No, I think most vegans are pretty honest with themselves about the
> > extent to which their diet makes life difficult for them. They
> > acknowledge that they miss some particularly enjoyed food like cheese,
> > for example. I don't think there's any denial going on. They have a
> > satisfying, tasty, and varied diet.
>
> http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1c.shtml
>

As I say, I'll have to look at that later.

Well, maybe. As I say, I think I've put up with quite a lot on this
newsgroup and I'm tired of it. I'm going to draw some lines.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 1:09:37 AM6/3/07
to
On Jun 3, 2:51 pm, "Dutch" <n...@home.com> wrote:
> "Rupert" <rupertmccal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

Not at all.

>
>
> >> > He says a dietitian told him
> >> > otherwise, all right, well, I have to acknowledge that at least one
> >> > dietitian with knowledge of his case had that opinion. There was
> >> > nothing unreasonable about my initial response, given what is known
> >> > about nutrition.
>
> >> What YOU know about nutrition Rupert, not what *IS* known. There was
> >> nothing
> >> unreasonable (rude perhaps) given what YOU know about nutrition. Serious
> >> nutritionists know that there is a LOT that we still do not understand
> >> about
> >> nutrition.
>
> > It was reasonable for me to conjecture, what still might very well be
> > true for all I know, that your health problems could have been
> > resolved without abandoning veganism. The current state of knowledge
> > about nutrition supports the view that this will be true in most
> > cases. It may or may not have been true in your case. There was
> > nothing unreasonable or rude about what I originally said.
>
> You get your panties all in a bunch about a harmless epithet like "little
> shit", yet I reveal something about my personal health problems, you
> respond "Poor you!" and call it "pitiful whingeing" and I'm not supposed to
> take that personally. You really are a piece of work Rupert.

I am not getting my panties in a twist about anything, I am simply my
announcing my intentions regarding the conditions under which I will
engage with people.

At that stage all you had said was that you "do not thrive on it". At
that stage I was not aware that you were referring to any serious
health problems. I thought that it was unlikely that you were
experiencing any serious health problems, and that you were just
making a fuss about nothing. I have already apologized for this
twice. I am very sorry that I caused you offence by making the
assumption, on the basis of your saying "I hate it and do not thrive
on it", that you did not have any serious concerns and were making a
fuss about nothing. Perhaps it was an unreasonable assumption to make.
I was surprised at the extent to which you took offence, but
nevertheless I have gone to quite some lengths to smooth things over
now. Perhaps we can hear an apology from you for calling me a little
shit. I do find that quite offensive. Perhaps I am thin-skinned, but
there it is.

We were talking about my original statement that I doubted that you
were experiencing any health problems that could not have been
satisfactorily resolved without abandoning veganism. There was nothing
rude about *that*, and it was a perfectly reasonable conjecture to
make at the time on the basis of what had been said so far, there was
nothing ideological about it.


Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 1:32:37 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180845821.6...@d30g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

Of course it is, if anything I have ever said to you is true, that is it.

Granted, no question, but these profound psychological barriers are no less
real.

Yes, of course
> people become emotionally invested in their diet for one reason or
> another, and in the event of diet-related health problems they have to
> work out what their priorities are and how they are going to resolve
> their problem. Just as if someone finds they think they have reason to
> cut down on meat for ethical or health reasons, they have to work out
> how to balance this against whatever attachment they have to eating
> meat.

Yes, absolutely.

> This website is presenting a one-sided view of the issue in that it
> ignores the fact that for most people vegan diets are nutritionally
> adequate and in fact have significant health benefits. It's trying to
> say "Thinking of going vegetarian or vegan? Well, be careful, you
> might run into health problems" when the reality is that it is much
> more likely than not to improve your health in the long run. Every
> health professional with whom I have ever spoken about my diet has
> said that being vegan is really healthy.

I think that is true in most cases. The key here being pointed out is to
avoid allowing oneself to be so emotionally invested in a diet that one is
blocked from going back by psychological barriers.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 1:39:20 AM6/3/07
to

We've covered that before, rupie. You didn't read
honestly. You only read searching to confirm what you
already believed.


>> "vegans" do it all the time, rupie: they claim it is
>> an "inefficient" use of resources to produce meat - and
>> they are wrong, for the well elaborated reason I gave.
>>
>
> But I think that when they make the statement that it is an
> inefficient use of resources, what they are really doing is appealling
> to considerations about environmental costs and global food
> distribution of the kind that I have referred to.

No, stupid uncomprehending rupie; they aren't. Most of
them go on to suggest that we ought to devote some of
the resources used to produce meat to feed "the hungry"
of the world instead. In other words, rupie, they want
to continue to degrade the environment, they just want
the output redirected. You stupid fuck.

>>>> But it *is*
>>>> offered as a smokescreen. The stupid "vegans" can't win the battle of
>>>> ethics, so they try to venture into economics with their stupid
>>>> "inefficiency" smokescreen, and they lose there, too.
>>> The ethical arguments for veganism (or some diet which is comparable
>>> in terms of its impact on animals) are good ones.
>> They are sophomoric and wrong; they're just shit. The
>> fact that YOU participate in animal killing proves it.
>>
>

> No, Rudy, that's nonsense.

No, rupie, it isn't. It's correct.


>>> You've never offered
>>> any good criticisms of these arguments in their strongest form, [snip 1500 words of chaff]
>> I've offered very good criticisms of them in all their
>> forms, and their strongest form is quite weak indeed.
>
> No, I'm afraid not.

Yes, I'm quite certain.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 1:41:57 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180846712.0...@r19g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

Anyone can criticize, the question remains, does the critic actually have
the moral standing to criticize.

You're acting like a wounded sparrow.

You're doing them a greater service if you let them know that no diet is
perfect and to keep in mind that if veganism doesn't work for them that they
should never allow themselves to feel guilty about returning to a more
standard diet.

Not a question about it.

> As I say, I think I've put up with quite a lot on this
> newsgroup and I'm tired of it. I'm going to draw some lines.

You've been whinging about this since you arrived and you've never followed
through, enough already. You're interested in the topic enough to continue
to participate, so whenever you see an insult just ignore it, snip it, and
respond to the subject matter.


Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 1:45:16 AM6/3/07
to

No, that isn't reasonable to assume.


>>>>> that seems very unlikely to me
>>>> No, you mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>>>>
>>> I mean what I say.
>> You mean it conflicts with your ideology, rupie.
>>
>
> You're a fool. I mean what I say.

You mean it conflicts with your ideology.


>>>>>>>> That's the wrong argument.
>>>>>>> Sorry, I'm not clear here what you're claiming. You claim the argument
>>>>>>> is flawed? Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you. You
>>>>>>> haven't done this yet, I was simply pointing out this fact.
>>>>>> He's claiming that it's the wrong argument. He's made a considerable effort
>>>>>> to delineate his argument, you've done nothing in this thread, zero.
>>>>> Er, actually, no.
>>>> ERRRRRRRRR, yes, rupie - you've done zero apart from spouting classic
>>>> "vegan" dogma.
>>>>
>>> No, I'm afraid you're mistaken
>> No. I'm not. You've done zero apart from spouting
>> classic "vegan" dogma.
>>
>
> You're a fucking idiot,

No, rupie.


>>>>> I've explained why the argument which he's
>>>>> addressing is an argument which no-one actually makes.
>>>> You're lying.
>>> No, I'm not. I sincerely believe what I'm saying.
>> No, you know you're lying.
>>
>
> Well, it's as I keep saying,

You're lying, rupie.


>>>> People *do* make this phony "inefficiency" argument.
>>> Show me where.
>> lesley, aka the slut "pearl".
>
> You really despicable and pathetic.

Write in English, shitbag.


>> Do your own search for
>> her laughable bullshit about "feed conversion ratio".
>>
>
> That's an environmental argument.

No. It's an ill-conceived and bogus efficiency argument.


>> Also:
>> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/msg/81fb0c24458944ce
>>
>>
>> But farming animals is an inefficient, unsustainable and
>> problematic way of producing food. Apart from those who
>> feed on
>> pasture where it is difficult to grow crops, farmed
>> animals use more
>> food calories than they produce in the form of meat.
>> They also compete
>> directly with people for other precious resources,
>> notably water.
>> http://groups.google.com/group/demon.local/msg/f1ee116aa6b75f46
>>
>
> This is an implicit appeal to the argument from environmental costs
> and the argument from global food distribution.

No. It's about the "waste" of resources. If the
resources were used with no environmental degradation
at all, the fuckwitted "vegan" would still consider
them "wasted", in that more were used to create the
same nutritional input to humans than would be the case
for a strictly vegetarian diet. It's about
"efficiency", rupie, or at least the fuckwitted
"vegan's" misconception of it.


>> [meat production] is an inefficient use of fresh water
>> and land for the production of food,
>> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian/msg/e59bd38a04228c74
>>
>
> Environmental argument.

FALSE. It's an ill-conceived and wrong "efficiency"
argument. You don't know what you're talking about,
shitbag.


>
>> Clearly meat production is a very inefficient use of water
>> http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/86411178db014ccf
>>
>
> Environmental argument.

FALSE. It's an ill-conceived and wrong "efficiency"
argument. You don't know what you're talking about,
shitbag.

>
>> rupie, do your own research from now on.
>>
>
> Why?

Because I'm tired of leading you by your dainty hand,
rupie. I'd rather punch you in the face.


>> The point is, rupie, you fat fuck,
>
> You're such a fool.

Shut your fucking mouth, you fat fuck.


>> that "vegans" make
>> this "inefficiency" argument all the time. It is a
>> *separate* argument from the environmental degradation
>> argument, although the "vegans" often state them
>> together.
>
> Well, that's your reading of the situation.

My *correct* reading, rupie.


>> The "inefficiency" argument is made all the
>> time, it is based on a laughable misconception of
>> efficiency, and it is fatuous of you to dispute that.
>>
>
> I dispute the former,

Without basis.


>>>> The environmental argument is something different.
>>>>
>>>> "vegans" say that the resources going to meat production are "wasted",
>>>> because it isn't "necessary" to eat meat in order to eat healthfully.
>>>> That is a misconceived efficiency argument, and people do indeed make
>>>> it. That stupid cunt lesley has made it dozens of times.
>>>>
>>> Very interesting. Well, I've never seen anyone make it.
>> You're willfully blind.
>>
>
> You're a fool.

You're an arrogant and insular fat fuck.


>>> You think people really do make this argument, well you might be
>>> right, frankly I think there's a pretty good chance you might just be
>>> misreading them.
>> There is zero chance of that.
>>
>
> Well, actually,

Fuck off, you insular narrow-minded fat fuck.

Rudy Canoza

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 1:50:14 AM6/3/07
to

I was right.


>>>>> You claim the argument
>>>>> is flawed?
>>>> Yes, because it's based on a misconception of efficiency.
>>> Elaborate.
>> I already did.
>>
>
> You have given details of why this "inefficiency argument" which you
> claim that people make is flawed, and I agree with you.

Then shut up.


>>> How is the argument that meat production has undesirable
>>> environmental consequences
>> That isn't the argument, you fuckwit.
>>
>
> It is the argument that *I* was talking about.

It's not the argument that this entire thread is about,
you arrogant fuckwit.


>>> based on a misconception of efficiency?
>> The argument I'm addressing is indeed based on a
>> misconception of efficiency, rupie. You're talking
>> about some other argument.
>>
>
> That's right.

So get the fuck out and go start your own thread, shitbag.


>>> Elsewhere you were saying this was a different argument to the one you
>>> wanted to attack.
>> It is.
>>
>
> I thought so.

You dense clod.


>>>>> Fine, then offer reasons why we should agree with you.
>>>> Already done.
>>> Elsewhere you said this argument wasn't your target.
>> You stupid uncomprehending fuck, rupie. The
>> environmental degradation argument is not the one I'm
>> addressing. The (misconceived) "efficiency" argument
>> is the one I'm addressing. Try to pay better
>> attention, rupie.
>>
>
> Um, that is exactly what I was saying.

No, it's what *I* was saying, dope.


>>>>> You haven't done this yet,
>>>> Yes, I have. I have thoroughly explained the misconception.
>>> Make up your mind what we're talking about, the environmental
>>> argument, or your "efficiency argument"
>> Not "my" efficiency argument; the one that that
>> fuckwitted prostitute lesley keeps trying to advance.
>>
>
> (1) There is nothing wrong with being a prostitute, it is a perfectly
> legitimate form of employment.

It's corrosive and disgusting.


> (2) Lesley is not a prostitute.

lesley is a whore. She provides sex services for money
to "foot massage" customers.


> (3) Anyone who tries to denigrate someone by calling them a
> "prostitute" is a thoroughly inferior human being

ipse dixit


> (4) I doubt that Lesley actually intends to make the "efficiency
> argument" as you interpret it

She does. You're full of shit.


>>> (which I am not convinced
>>> anyone actually makes).
>> Yes, people do.
>>
>
> So you say.

So I have shown.


>>> Yes, you have demolished this "efficiency
>>> argument".
>> Of course.
>>
>
> Well done.

Of course. It's the usual outcome.


>>>>> I was simply pointing out this fact.
>>>> No, because it's not a fact.
>>> I believe it is a fact that you haven't addressed the environmental
>>> argument,
>> I haven't.
>>
>
> Great.

So fuck off.


>>> and I believe elsewhere you agree with me. But if you think
>>> you have... well, by all means try to convince me.
>> Once again, vegetarians are guilty of promoting
>> environmental degradation with their diets. Thus, what
>> it comes down to is how much environmental degradation
>> is acceptable.
>
> Yes, certainly.

So, "vegans" are not clean.


>> Since some degradation must, by logical
>> necessity, be acceptable to vegetarians, then
>> environmental degradation _per se_ is not a reason to
>> oppose meat production.
>>
>> Once again, "vegans" are seen as hypocrites.
>
> No, you can specify a threshold about how much environmental
> degradation is acceptable,

"vegans" do so arbitrarily. There is nothing sound
about where they draw the line. It's based purely on
self image.

Dutch

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 2:05:39 AM6/3/07
to
"Rupert" <rupertm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1180847377.2...@d30g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

All

You're all huffy, it's bloody ridiculous, especially since that epithet was
in direct response to two condescending remarks by you.

> At that stage all you had said was that you "do not thrive on it". At
> that stage I was not aware that you were referring to any serious
> health problems. I thought that it was unlikely that you were
> experiencing any serious health problems, and that you were just
> making a fuss about nothing. I have already apologized for this
> twice.

You're still holding a previous thread up for ransom because of that one
retort.

I am very sorry that I caused you offence by making the
> assumption, on the basis of your saying "I hate it and do not thrive
> on it", that you did not have any serious concerns and were making a
> fuss about nothing. Perhaps it was an unreasonable assumption to make.
> I was surprised at the extent to which you took offence, but
> nevertheless I have gone to quite some lengths to smooth things over
> now. Perhaps we can hear an apology from you for calling me a little
> shit. I do find that quite offensive. Perhaps I am thin-skinned, but
> there it is.

I'm sorry I called you a little shit, I am quite sure that you are actually
a very big one.

> We were talking about my original statement that I doubted that you
> were experiencing any health problems that could not have been
> satisfactorily resolved without abandoning veganism. There was nothing
> rude about *that*, and it was a perfectly reasonable conjecture to
> make at the time on the basis of what had been said so far, there was
> nothing ideological about it.

Sure Rupert, there's absolutely nothing ideologically driven about you.


Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 3:21:20 AM6/3/07
to

Yes, you've expressed this belief of yours many times and you've
evidently convinced yourself that it's the case. For example, you
believe that when I started reading animal ethics I already held quite
strong views about it. Now, I happen to know that that's not the case.
And it's very clear to any reasonable observer that you don't have any
rational grounds for believing anything about the matter one way or
the other, except my testimony, which you have some rational grounds
for believing since there is no particular reason to think I would
lie. So this is another example of your convincing yourself that you
have some insight into facts about another person, about their
thoughts, motives, intellectual history, and so on, when in fact all
that's happening is that you're convincing yourself of a fantasy which
you've made up which you really have no rational grounds for believing
in. You do this all the time. It's a mild version of what happens with
people who are mentally ill. They form beliefs and become utterly
convinced of them despite the fact that they lack any real rational
foundation. I myself have some experience of this.

You really should try to understand that you have no real reason for
this belief of yours. I tell you that this is what happened. I had
some thoughts about the issue of ethical vegetarianism and animal
ethics in general when I was an adolescent, but I didn't come to any
particular conclusion and I never really seriously contemplated giving
up meat. However, I had quite strong environmentalist views as an
adolescent. I also had idealistic aspirations to do something to make
the world a better place as a young child. When I entered university,
I saw Peter Singer's book "How are We to Live?" in a bookshop and I
thought it looked interesting, so I bought it and started to read it.
I was also required to read Peter Singer's essay "Famine, Affluence,
and Morality" in my first philosophy course and write an essay about
it. Peter Singer's book "How are We to Live?" did not really deal with
issues of animal ethics. It discussed the benefits that many people
can get from having a commitment to doing something towards making the
world a better place. It also mentioned some aspects of the
environmental impact of meat production. Shortly afterwards I began
volunteering for Oxfam and getting involved with animal activism, and
some time in 1995 I decided to become pesco-vegetarian.

Then I saw Peter Singer's book "Animal Liberation" in a bookshop. I
decided it might be a good idea for me to look at some arguments about
the issue of how we should treat animals, so I bought it and read it.
I found the basic argument in Chapter 1 that there is no justification
for discrimination on the basis of species alone to be compelling. I
have never seen any good reason to revise this view, although I now
acknowledge that it raises difficult questions. Influenced by the
description of modern farming in Chapter 3 of the book, I decided to
become nearly vegan. I then proceeded to read some of Peter Singer's
other works and also David DeGrazia's book "Taking Animals Seriously".
It was some years before I read Tom Regan. I acknowledge that it was
quite a while before I started looking at serious attempts to
criticize views that are highly critical of the status quo regarding
our treatment of animals. That doesn't mean I wasn't engaging with
these works in an intellectually serious and honest way. I'm well-read
in animal ethics, and ethics and philosophy generally, and I've always
engaged with everything I've read in an intellectually serious and
honest way, because I have genuine intellectual curiosity and passion
for seeking out the truth. I'm still engaging with these issues in an
intellectually serious and honest way.

For example, I've just written a talk which I'm going to be giving to
a group of Honours students who are about to embark on animal research
projects. They're required to do a course which includes a lecture
given by myself on animal rights philosophy, and by my friend on the
politics of the animal protection movement. In that talk, I set forth
what I think is one of the most important arguments against using
animals in harmful ways in research, and I also frankly set forth the
difficulties with this argument that I'm aware of, such as those that
have been discussed on this newsgroup, and I encourage them to read
the literature further. You can read the talk if you like, it's in the
Files section of my Yahoo group discussion_of_animal_ethics.

You think that I haven't engaged with these issues in an
intellectually serious and honest way, but I happen to know that your
view is ignorant and utterly without rational foundation. At the very
least, I've done as much as you by way of seriously thinking about
this issue and reading the relevant arguments and thinking seriously
about them. I've come to different conclusions than you, and my views
are at least as well-informed and deserving of respect as yours. There
are difficult questions raised by the position I've taken, and the
same is true of yours.

You've got no grounds for denigrating the seriousness with which I've
approached these questions. I have approached these questions with
extreme seriousness and honesty. Your attempts to put me down are just
foolishness, and based on delusions.

I am honestly facing up to the difficulties with my position. You're
not seriously thinking about the difficulties with your own position.
When I ask you why all sentient humans have rights and only humans
have rights, you utter the single word "Kind", as if that settled the
matter. Cohen's kind argument as he has presented it is not presented
with sufficient clarity and rigor. Even with Neil Levy's help, there
are still important criticisms to be made of it. You're not thinking
seriously about these criticisms. You've just found an argument which
confirms what you already believe, and you're not subjecting it to any
real scrutiny. You're also not seriously thinking about the question
of whether there might be moral considerations other than rights which
can be used as grounds for criticizing the status quo regarding our
treatment of animals. I acknowledge that difficult questions are
raised by my views and am subjecting them to critical examination.
That's why I'm here, despite the unreasonable behaviour of the people
on this newsgroup. You're not subjecting your position to any honest
critical examination, you're not engaging with the criticisms that can
be made of it. You're just here to slag people off because that's what
you like doing. It's totally farcical for you to try and put down the
intellectual seriousness with which I approach these issues. It's a
joke.

> >> "vegans" do it all the time, rupie: they claim it is
> >> an "inefficient" use of resources to produce meat - and
> >> they are wrong, for the well elaborated reason I gave.
>
> > But I think that when they make the statement that it is an
> > inefficient use of resources, what they are really doing is appealling
> > to considerations about environmental costs and global food
> > distribution of the kind that I have referred to.
>
> No, stupid uncomprehending rupie; they aren't. Most of
> them go on to suggest that we ought to devote some of
> the resources used to produce meat to feed "the hungry"
> of the world instead. In other words, rupie, they want
> to continue to degrade the environment, they just want
> the output redirected. You stupid fuck.
>

The suggestion of directing the resources towards feeding the hungry
is a suggestion that would result in less environmental damage, and a
fairer global distribution of food on their conception of fairness,
you silly fool. What you've produced is clear evidence that their
arguments *are* based on environmental considerations and
considerations of distributive justice. And you call me stupid and
uncomprehending. What a joke.

> >>>> But it *is*
> >>>> offered as a smokescreen. The stupid "vegans" can't win the battle of
> >>>> ethics, so they try to venture into economics with their stupid
> >>>> "inefficiency" smokescreen, and they lose there, too.
> >>> The ethical arguments for veganism (or some diet which is comparable
> >>> in terms of its impact on animals) are good ones.
> >> They are sophomoric and wrong; they're just shit. The
> >> fact that YOU participate in animal killing proves it.
>
> > No, Rudy, that's nonsense.
>
> No, rupie, it isn't. It's correct.
>

It's utterly absurd, and I patiently gave a very clear explanation of
why in the part that you snipped. You choose not to engage with it and
you have the idea that you can content yourself with saying "No,
rupie, it isn't. It's correct" and still maintain some credibility.
And you talk about my level of intellectual seriousness. Oh, well.

> >>> You've never offered
> >>> any good criticisms of these arguments in their strongest form, [snip 1500 words of chaff]
> >> I've offered very good criticisms of them in all their
> >> forms, and their strongest form is quite weak indeed.
>
> > No, I'm afraid not.
>
> Yes, I'm quite certain.

Yes, you are quite certain, but if you were engaging with this issue
in an intellectually serious and honest way, as you accuse me of not
doing, you would understand that my points, which you are completely
ignoring, deserve serious consideration and need some kind of answer.
Your certainty is without rational foundation. You are choosing not to
engage seriously with my arguments, confining your attention instead
to the argument that you like to attack. Even your criticism of that
argument has its problems. You are deluding yourself if you think this
means you are seriously undermining the best case for ethical
veganism. There are important arguments which seriously challenge your
position, which you are simply not engaging with. But you ignore this
and continue to maintain that you are quite certain that you are right
and I am wrong. Well, such is life.

Rupert

unread,
Jun 3, 2007, 3:51:55 AM6/3/07
to

Er, yes, you certainly attach a lot of importance to this question.
For me the more important question is whether their criticisms have
some merit.

But in any case, why shouldn't someone who eats tofu and vegetables
have the moral standing to criticize people who eat meat? Do you have
the moral standing to criticize people who buy child pornography? You
say yes, because you're not participating in the sexual exploitation
of children. Well, I'm not buying meat, so why shouldn't I criticize
people who do? You say that buying tofu and vegetables is more
relevantly similar to buying meat than buying meat is relevantly
similar to buying child pornography, well, that's precisely the point
that has to be shown, hasn't it?

It's a pretty weak line of response, anyway. In the end, either you
can give a good response to an argument or you can't. I say to someone
"I think you should do more to reduce your contribution to animal
suffering". He says "Well, you're not doing everything you possibly
could, so who are you to criticize me?" I say "Well, it may or may not
be the case that I am doing enough, but I still maintain that you are
not doing enough." What happens next? Surely he either has to try and
defend the view that he *is* doing enough, or else opt out of serious
discussion of the issue.

There's no reason at all why it not might be the case that a typical
vegan diet is morally acceptable, but a typical Western diet is not.
You've never offered any good reasons why this can't be. If you want
to defend the typical Western diet, go ahead. You seem instead to want
to spend your time arguing that I'm in no position to criticize the
typical Western diet. Well, what exactly is your point here? It's not
like I spend my time telling you people "You're all sinners". I've
never made any unsolicited comments about any person's diet. Are you
trying to say that I have no right to publicly defend my position, or
no right to distribute literature advocating veganism? Doesn't that
strike you as a little absurd?

If you think there's some good reason why I should abandon my
position, then tell me what it is. If you think it's presumptuous of
me to publicly state my position and attempt to defend it against
criticism, well, um, yeah, this doesn't strike me as an adequately
justified view. I really don't see that you've given any good reason
for me to think that it's presumptuous of me to do that. So perhaps
you might want to try a little harder to formulate rational arguments
for that conclusion.

Well, if that's the way it strikes you, so be it. As far as I'm
concerned, I'm just making decisions regarding the circumstances under


which I will engage with people.

>
>

Well, yes, possibly, that doesn't contradict what I said. Regarding
your contention that they should *never* allow themselves to feel
guilty about that, I don't think it's as simple as that, everyone's
got to decide for themselves how they weigh the balance between
personal convenience and other considerations. So, are you going to
abandon your original claim that you do someone a disservice by
encouraging them to consider the case for veganism?

Well, I question it, for one. I put up with a lot of nonsense on this
newsgroup. I've made a decision that I'm going to draw some lines. I
think that's a perfectly reasonable decision. I don't think it's being
"thin-skinned", it's just a decision about how I'm going to spend my
time. It struck me that you over-reacted to my remarks about "pitiful
whingeing", but nevertheless I went to some trouble to patch things
up. Now you think that I'm over-reacting to your calling me a "little
shit", well, everyone has certain things that push their buttons. I'm
not mortally offended, and I'm not, as you claim, "acting like a
wounded sparrow", I've just made a decision that I'm going to wait for
some kind of apology before I engage with the rest of that post. You
think I'm being silly, well, fine.


> > As I say, I think I've put up with quite a lot on this
> > newsgroup and I'm tired of it. I'm going to draw some lines.
>
> You've been whinging about this since you arrived and you've never followed
> through, enough already. You're interested in the topic enough to continue
> to participate, so whenever you see an insult just ignore it, snip it, and
> respond to the subject matter.

"Whingeing"? Now, hang on a moment, you thought it was rude and
uncalled for to talk about you "whingeing". So perhaps you could do me
the courtesy of acknowledgeing that the treatment I receive here is
rude and unreasonable and that I have legitimate grounds for
complaint, and that my pointing this out is not just "whingeing". You
antis make it your business to attack other people's sincere and
deeply-held ethical convictions, you have an obligation to do this in
a reasoned and polite way. Jon and Rick think they're entitled to heap
abuse on people simply because they've chosen to go vegan in an
attempt to reduce animal suffering. Jon explicitly told me, in my very
first conversation here, that he was entitled to abuse me because I
was a sanctimonious hypocrite, and sanctimonious hypocrisy merits
abuse. He came to this conclusion based solely on the information that
I thought going vegan to reduce animal suffering was a good idea. It's
ridiculous. It's bigotry. You really ought to be just a little bit
embarassed about being associated with such people and make some
effort to distance yourself from them. Instead you choose to focus on
the alleged smugness and self-righteousness of vegans, and carry on as
though I have tested these people's patience and deserve everything I
get. It's ridiculous.

You're right, I do often find it hard to stick to a policy of not
responding to rude people because I often feel tempted to reply to
certain points they make. It's my decision how I resolve that dilemma.
I'm not going to stop voicing my opinions about the way people behave
here, and I will decline to engage with a person if I feel like it.

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