Basman

In my opinion, the healthiest diet is a semi-vegetarian diet because you'll eat more veggies and avoid more of the processed garbage while still covering both nutrition and taste. I think this is much more realistically possible for most people than veganism.

So you agree then LOL.

There is no reason not to eat meat from a purely health oriented perspective. It just a matter of quality and quantity of certain kinds of products. Quality meat is perfectly healthy and highly nutritious. Choosing not to eat meat is necessarily an ideological orientation the vast majority of the time.

As nice as that would be, I doubt that it would ever truly replace, be a competitor at best. Growing an animal is way easier. Pigs do what artificial cell culture tries to do by just rolling around in the dirt, eating trash and fucking without having to worry about sterility or having to pay technicians for their 5 year degree. If you consider that there will always be a market for meat, then there necessarily must be an ideological battle.

Who knew that holocaust survivors weren't being starved. They where just vegan.

It doesn't really matter which diet is healthier when health isn't the top priority in an average person's lifestyle. People prioritize taste, culture and convenience over health generally speaking. Hence why meat consumption is the highest in the countries that can afford it. And also why there is such a push for meat alternatives industry-wise. If veganism is to become mainstream it needs to subsume popular culture somehow. Also hence the endless debates.

To add what I previously wrote, being critical of information is adjacent to being open-minded. Being open-minded doesn't mean you assume presented information to be true but that you examine it critically. That doesn't mean you can't know when something is true or false with a degree of certainty. Being close-minded would be to not even engage with information in the first place. Of course if people are being belligerent then you need to set a boundary for yourself and not engage with them. Your not obligated to entertain morons.

Starting to love this channel. Great political analysis.

You can with certainty defend something you feel certain about while still being open-minded to different views. Being open-minded doesn't mean you have to assume the view of the last person you spoke with. Its more like a sense of curiosity than an obligation in my opinion. An examination of potential truth when presented with new information. Open-mindedness would be something like agreeing with Andrew Tate on a thing or two while dismissing the rest of his world view as obviously misogynistic. Close-mindedness would be to dismiss anything he says regardless of validity due to a preconceived notion. You can often intuit when something is very biased or lacking in depth of understanding in my experience. Usually I don't give such opinions much weight unless they can present something actually insightful, like the aforementioned example with Andrew Tate.

This was about vegan activism. None of what I said is precludes personal life style choices. My critique of veganism is mostly against the P. Singer brand of extreme veganism and idiotic activism. I'd love to see a more realistic and informative dialogue that doesn't use emotional blackmail and outrage as a crutch because veganism can be a positive influence. The problem is if you subsume that veganism is the only solution, which I fundamentally disagree with philosophically and I believe to be simply impossible considering the world we live in, hence "flawed". The reason people disrespect vegans is because your insufferable. That should say something about your politics. Its unserious and merely groupthink. Altruism is when you harbor a concern for others, independent of personal benefit. Vegans care about the welfare of animals primarily as an ideology. Therefore veganism is an altruistic ideology.

I get the hustle but this whole pick-up thing comes off as so manipulative and gamey sometimes. The crazy part is that girls don't even recognize all the tactics on display. All the work that goes into it all. They are so in their own little world.

The ideological point of veganism is equalizing animals with humans in terms of rights and ethics. There is hardly any point in being vegan if not for ethical reasons. Veganism is sorely focused on the welfare of individuals as opposed to collectives, like for example an ecology, a forest or a city. Vegans do not prioritize the environment over individual animal welfare for example. For someone like P. Singer, the environment is something to be undermined for that exact reason, advocating for euthanizing predators via contraceptives. I never said that veganism is necessarily harmful to society. I'm merely pointing out that it is a flawed premise in execution when taking into account the reality we live in. People are simply not going to agree that animals are equivalent to human being across the board. This is obvious. This was about vegans. The problem with acts like releasing fur minks is that its hypocritical and makes vegans/animal rights activist look stupid and myopic, only being able to focus on the suffering of individual animals. And the fact that the animals vegans/animal rights activists care about are almost always cute makes them seem unprincipled and merely emotional. Releasing an invasive species into the wild isn't even being registered as a potential issues. The consequences don't matter. It all about destroying what you hate right now, which is why I call it childish. I once lived in close proximity of a dairy farm and one night a group of activists snuck in released all of the cows. Did the cows live happily ever after? No, they got run over by cars and got stuck in ditches. This is why people don't vegans/animal rights activists seriously.

Nothing of what I said precludes questioning the ethics of something or changing the status quo. What you are demonstrating here is that veganism can't even be question. That is not even post-modern, that's modern. Your trying to impose an absolute rule and the fact is most people judging by how they live and think don't agree with the premise that animals have the same status as a person. That doesn't mean that there is no value what so ever to be gained from dialogue, for example vegans have been a positive influence on animal welfare in factory in farming. However, it is like I said, the value of veganism is the critique not the means. Acting as if veganism is inherently correct comes of as short-sighted and myopic. It assumes people think the same which is my biggest critique. Animal exploitation is not equivalent to slavery. While you could have an argument in terms of welfare the fact is that animals aren't people. A human in slavery is not the same as a chicken coup. To compare the two as equal is ridiculous and childish. Veganism is extreme relative to what is normative. When I call veganism extreme is descriptive not pejorative. And its perfectly fair to call veganism extreme considering the lengths you have to alter your lifestyle to be vegan not to mention the often cult-like and misanthropic community that subscribes to the ideology.

But ethics is a matter of perspective. Ascribing altruism to animals isn't something everybody is going to agree on to the same extent that vegans tend to do. That doesn't mean your necessarily less developed or that you don't value animal welfare. The problem with veganism, or at least the more extreme version of P. Singer, is that it prioritizes individuals over systems. If you start giving every animal rights you start undermining human society as well as natural ecosystems. That is when you get people who release fur minks into the wild, which then devastate the ecosystem driving native bird species to extinction. Veganism is like communism in that its more about the critique than the means in my opinion. Just like how its not truly possible for there to be a true communist state outside of perhaps a hunter-gatherer tribe its not possible for everyone to be vegan.

You don't need a free market of guns to achieve that. Just acquire one illegally. In practice, a bomb is probably more effective than small arms, like that scooter trap that killed that Russian general recently. When Luigi Mangione used a handgun to kill that CEO it was no doubt in part a statement. In fact, I'd argue most premeditated acts of gun violence are in parts statements rather than just pure acts of elimination. Like a school shooting or the terrorist attack on Utøya in Norway by Anders Breivik.

In N. Europe access to guns is highly regulated and mostly just for hunting. I do envy America a little for all the fun toys you can get access to and I think there is some merit to guns as a self-defense measure in a trained and regulated fashion but on the other hand we have next to no serious gun violence. All we get are these Elmer Fudd guns with a max capacity of two. Doesn't inspire much in the way of fervor. In Norway you can't even use an airgun to shoot rats (legally).

But Leo, in your "when does the left go too far?" series you said "it could be done" relative to a citizen population resisting its government, citing Afghanistan as an example. Have you changed your mind on that premise?

It makes them look like a cult and not a serious diet. And its the only diet that is like this. You don't see paleo folk giving a shit what you eat. And it just stupid. At a certain point, these Stage Green oafs need to accept that people are just going to think differently on certain issues. Unless of course its kind of a cult thing its more about signaling to other members. I won't say veganism as a whole is stupid, it has highlighted the importance of animal welfare in their exploitation, but the end goal of completely ending all animal exploitation is extreme and impossible. If it where up to someone like Peter Singer, nature would be turned into a daycare center and predators would be euthanized via contraceptives.

No its because they are Stage Blue countries. There is no objective measure with which they choose what religious they brainwash themselves with. They happen to be Muslim so that's what they are. Separating church and state is a relatively recent development. The difference between historically Muslim and Christian countries is that Christian countries are much more developed, thanks in part due to a more hospitable geography.

How so? That's crazy considering the size of Google.

@NewKidOnTheBlock Addictive design is primarily a feature of social media. Unless you think social media fundamentally define our current age then it wouldn't really be accurate to say that addiction defines this period we live in. While the economy, especially the job market, could be better your taking for granted just how well you have it today. People in the past have lived through extreme poverty (couldn't afford a loaf of bread) and war less than a 100 years ago. Even during an economic recession you are living more comfortably than a medieval king.

I'd still rather be born a beautiful women than and an ugly minger though.

I understand your concerns but you're fear mongering and you need to relax. These are projections, not claims of particular substance unless you can provide evidence. I think you should focus more on what you can actually act on. Like voting proper or sharing your political views in a diplomatic way with others. You could write to congress with your concerns if your really serious about it. But ultimately, its not really something you can control if the political debauchery takes place. So let it go a little. You can't live your life being bummed out constantly that Trump won.

@Hardkill Its over man. Just let it go. Save your strength for the next election.

Voting against someone because you feel talked down to is essentially voting against someone just because they are annoying. Yes, its terrible messaging. You can't expect everyone to be on the same page as you on every topic then act superior when they inevitably fail to meet those expectations but it does illustrate how unserious voting practice is in America. About 36% of Americans, about one third, didn't bother voting. They don't truly care about politics.