A Conversation: Ask Yourself vs. À-Bas-Le-Ciel

so you guys may or may know that some of
you in this group there's a large group you may remember this there was a scandal about the exploitation of monkeys for farming coconuts something yeah so okay can we do that you know we can't just resign ourselves to you comes treating muggy this way but on the other hand I mean again basically all forms of food farming and all forms of grain so I mean you know even unquestionable do we have some obligation should we set aside some research and development money to find out is there a better way to farm wheat that's gonna reduce some of these impacts on you know I just say I think it does open the door to a discourse I don't think anyone on earth is having right now um you know to much to my knowledge and I've always I've always found mastery so this is having it okay solve the world I think there is actually a way to we could stop like death by crop I mean we could greenhouse all of our crops so that there is no pests coming in eat yeah I think I'm moving in that kind of direction is totally good thing to do we do want to put money into that stuff for sure and we want to look at what which uses of money are going to have the best you know reduction of harm and we should put money into those things um but yeah the kind of the kind of core thing I was getting at there is just I don't think eyes'll and I are disagreeing here but there's a way that you could look at a position like mine and look at a deontological position like Francie owns and superficially think that there's a similarity there and there is a similarity but they're not they're not actually the same thing there's a difference between me and somebody who's gonna say okay well no matter how how much we crank up the suffering there is nothing that could possibly justify harming an animal for a given purpose like battery for example Franchione would oppose animal testing no matter what the situation is now I oppose the vast majority I oppose pretty much everything I've ever heard of us doing because it's it's and we have really bad out-of-date ethical standards but there are hypothetical situations where I would say the negative that comes from this is so sufficient that human testing is justified so of course there's situations where I'd bite the bullet on the animal that is the difference between a position like mine and a deontological position like France eons because ISIL cuz it was just it was just your use of the term rights in the way you were talking I don't think you intended it but it was just coming off as if I might hold that kind of absolutist black and white position and I'm just making here that I don't I'm aware that you don't although you know I haven't heard you speak on these issues this directly before you know but you know I assume likewise you know I guess it's sort of come up in passing in some of your videos you know I I didn't I didn't attribute francy on his position you I think is interesting to note that in the level of rhetoric ultimately Francey on his position becomes paralyzing to him that it literally makes him impossible it makes it impossible him to explain himself that he paints himself into a corner and becomes you know he it's it's impossible for him to deal with the implications of his own position it's that self contradictory so when he can completely control the discourse he's kind of okay when he's asked a very simple question with this becomes unsustainable and you know whereas I think your position in my position actually are workable so yeah that's it's interesting it may be a subtle difference but it's obviously according for ya no no it's I mean with a subtle difference between my position and yours and francium you mean sure but yours and mine are fundamentally the same in that in a lot of the specific examples used were grain farming and oh yeah yeah and even vivisection ya know things but one thing that destroyed my financial position on YouTube and I don't regret it was that I came out with my position honestly on vivisection which you know who actually in terms of using yours that vivisection is tragic but it's not something I can oppose absolutely in this sense you know and there was huge okra real hatred against me from other vegans that I was Pro vivisection now you can watch my videos and see exactly what I said I think it's ridiculous to say I'm Pro vivisection but I'm willing to recognize you know the nature of the problem here is not the same as the problem with for example leather shoes that I would contrast it to I'd say well look you you're you vegans vegans criticizing me are saying I should have zero tolerance for scientific research but you don't even have a zero tolerance towards people wearing leather shoes you know in leather shoes had no specification so interesting kind of discourse and spun out of it but I was I was really intensely hated for maybe like six months then well I I would I'd say this um I don't I don't know a lot about the practical reality of vivisection and why we're doing it it sounds like something that would be extraordinarily hard to justify and you know if some time you and I can get into vivisection but the kind of point that I would make just it sort of echoes your point I agree that when you take a deontological stance for anyone who doesn't know what that word means the ontology is when you're holding to a position a principle a rule in all situations and no matter how much you change the outcomes of that situation you'll hold to the rule it's like saying okay my rule is punching is wrong I hold that deontological II even if my not punching someone will cause a Holocaust well it's wrong to punch someone so there's real problems with deontology so just to echo what what eyes'll said I do think that for Franchione there are problem areas that result from his deontological position and in terms of persuading people he basically just has to hope the conversation doesn't really go there for someone like me the worst thing that you can possibly have is a problem area for me I could I could literally define a problem area as an area where I also feel gray about the human ethics and I can't name the trait so the worst case is you push me to something where I say well you know I'm genuinely not sure if that's justified for animals I can't name the trade either so I'm genuinely not sure how I feel about doing that to certain humans so that's that's a far less like that like crazy sounding place to get pushed to then then this full commitment to never harming no matter what the situation is I think I think so just to be really clear to sum up I think there are ethical gray areas that would be crazy to say that ethics has solved all the problems and it's a completed science it's not but the point is that there's consistency for me always between my animal and human positions you won't catch me saying it's a gray area for animals it's not a gray area for humans and I can't name the trait that's a position you won't hear me say ever right as to all of that I agree with you may not have heard this Isaac before Isaac became vegan there was a catch phrase in veganism which people used to simplify conversations with Carnot's which was any justification for eating meat is basically the same as a justification for cannibalism that if you can justify cannibalism in the circumstances you justify see this was to kind of shut down when you were being asked about what if you're on a desert island or this kind of thing we'll look if you if you would resort to cannibalism hi the same token you could resort anybody it's actually kind of the same is the same criterion turned inside out and backwards in but I did I just I just mentioned for your interest Isaac I did speak to research scientists who were vegan or trying to be vegan and who were involved in vivisection involved in you know torturing animals to death and so on and they talked to me and they talked to me about the ethical standards involved and you know I said it would be really worthwhile to have a conference of people in those areas of biomedical science and so on but you know the the sort of standard propaganda line that there's absolutely zero scientific value and torturing animals to death you know is not true and of course in all the articles for example that vegan gains uses on his channel you know these things are very very often based on experiments on on animals even scientific sources I've quoted on my channel when I dealt with you know for example and I was dealing with brain damage caused by marijuana or something you know some of these are the information comes from torturing animals to death so you know it would be convenient to say no there's never any utility in this which of course also doesn't make sense in terms of experiments on human subjects we know both F utility and then we have a difficult set of decisions to make coming out of that absolutely because we can we can look at I mean denying the utility and using an assertion with no evidence a throwaway assertion like there's no value in this I mean that's that's obviously that's not an argument that's [ __ ] no one should ever do that but so when you acknowledge that there is utility then the question becomes does the utility justify the action and I think that making those kind of consequentialists type calculations is hard enough in the first place and even harder when you have this anthropocentric bias that's going to make you err on the side of humans so again that's why that's why I like to use a model based on consistency I just like to look at okay with humans there is summary's where I don't have some kind of bias and I'm not trying to preserve some some crazy right or some like this this is just my honest opinion towards my own species there's certain kind of research that would be justified at least in certain hypotheticals and there's certain research that obviously isn't justified most people would say that what the Nazis did some of those human experiments are in fact all of them h-how'd assume are ethically wrong and should not be done so the question just becomes in the animal context is this a case where we can spell out some kind of relevant factor that if true of humans would make us say it's okay to do this to humans or is it just an actual inconsistency where we're just saying this is okay for animals it's not okay for humans and there's no logically consistent basis for saying so right so two points that one of course has just cost in reality torturing rats to death and torturing monkeys to death is is a lot cheaper than getting human subjects so that's why the question will almost always be the be asked about animals rather than people so I don't know if you wanna respond to that but that's that's course oh well yeah it's just whatever factor you would plug in whether it's like cost or like financial cost or benefit of some type it's always just okay well let's say that that is now the animal cost is now the financial cost for doing this to humans would it be justified if the answer is no and you're still saying it's okay for animals it would be an inconsistent position if once you map the financial cost with the animal situation over to the human situation you actually end up saying yes it's ethical for humans than it would be a consistent position right anyway the United Kingdom has tried to take this seriously tried to take having a procedure whereby research facilities actually guess now all of the European Union does this they go through a protocol where they first have to prove that there isn't a non animal harming alternative so they have to exhaust alternative forms of research so you want to do an experiment on a particular chemical would it be possible to do it in a petri dish instead of doing an animal this sort of thing well yeah I mean sorry no no that's that was the big advance was of having a kind of legally mandated procedure where scientists had to prove that it really was necessary there wasn't a non harmful alternative but I think the other the other interesting aspect is just that very often the benefit of the research almost by definition is unknown is that very often of scientists who say look I want to try this out so hypothesis maybe this is gonna reveal a useful chemical easeful treatment maybe not here's the chemical I don't really know what it does and I want to know that's the part of the nature of experimentation see yeah the the people who are really Pro vivisection I think that's gonna be there their argument fundamentally is the importance of being able to tinker with the unknown yeah I mean I think that if tinkering with the unknown though is the justification well I mean you could tinker with humans and you might be able to tinker with the unknown so you know would that just blanket justify anything most people would probably say no so it just throws you back into the trade trap but when you talk about the bait the big advance it's it's a kind of depressing fact but that is the big advance but it is definitely an advancement to have to at least prove there's not a viable alternative to the testing where you don't have to with the sentient being the floor is open hmm okay well unless someone else wants to say something there's actually some different I was gonna ask guys a little bit but yeah do you guys have any any things you want to say or talk about odds of one thing probably won't last very long but I think a lot of vegans maybe me included unless so the wrong thing would actually probably bore them to death at all and I'm not sure what I wouldn't do to survive and a genuine survival situation on a desert island I'm not sure if there's a being like if there was some being that visited earth that was stuck with me on the desert island encompassed enough well being of an entire like galaxy of worth of something okay I probably would die in a favor so that thing could okay but yeah would you kill me I wouldn't kill you personally I'm not gonna kill you to live nothing else yeah I would I just wouldn't kill you I don't think it's okay well no I'm just I'm just saying if you wouldn't then you're in a situation where okay wait now you're saying it's not okay to do this to humans so if it's okay to do it to animals that's your in the trait trap and you might find a trade maybe you can justify don't know for me personally I definitely don't think that I could justify killing any mammal to survive I I start becoming a little weird around the fish zone definitely around the bug zone I'm like okay at that point you're almost talking about a holocaust of sentience when you're comparing killing a human to a bug but but either way that that's that's a vague question I don't think I'd bite the bullet on killing a human or anything remotely near a human and I'd also just point out that it's where someone stands on a desert island situation or on vivisection all of these things interesting questions but they don't say anything about where you stand on a basic situate yeah personally I would and if we were on the island if we were on the island and we were both gonna die I mean I'm not gonna kill you but I would maybe try to talk to you I'd say okay well like someone needs to die here like do we want one of us to survive this we might be able to and like how are we going to make that decision but I would never impose my role over well yeah I'm not sure I couldn't make any promises in that situation anyone like literally my family or friends yeah you and not your mother I would suggest that it's not really an ethical thing to do to eat your mother I wouldn't know but I know I don't think any of those positions would be an ethical thing to do but I think ethics sort of go out the window once you get to a certain point their ethics either exist or they don't exist well I'm the in a society kind of otherwise I mean look I think ethics are arbitrary and subjective and I'm a nihilist but if you if you're going to set a standard and you're gonna say you want to be I think you've toughened up since we talked like your your year and a half ago because I mean I think part of what you're embracing Isaac is the idea that things like dignity can be more important than suffering you know like yeah maybe you're gonna suffer a little bit more me you're gonna drown yourself like if you're actually on an island you have the option of starving to death or drowning yourself to die more rapidly resign I think that people have strawman to you a little bit on the dignity thing because they kind of talk about it like it's some you know deontological value completely detached from well-being and I think that dignity probably if we get into what your concept of dignity is and we really start hashing it out right no and I'm sure it has some level of connection to well-being so I mean yeah but but either way no I I mean from my position I I don't think there's anything I've actually changed on ethically since getting on YouTube I mean ethics are subjective and you just have a choice of when it comes to ethics do I want to have consistent standards or not if you say it's okay to have inconsistent standards your system can just buy anything if you say I have to have consistent standards then you can't special plea a certain situation out of the case so when we talk about a desert island I'm almost done I'm almost done when you get to a desert island you you can say that I'm setting a standard here where it's okay to kill other humans and you can justify killing animals in a survival situation from there I personally don't set that standard but what I have a problem with is anyone who tries to be dishonest and say I set that standard for humans I don't set it for animals and I can't name the trade that's my problem so I just pointed out implicit though in your position there could be two versions of your position one of which is the tough version and one of which is the weak version or the tough version of the wimpy version and many many people state the wimpy version including say anisia including several of the the atheist leaders who have addressed on my channel you know atheists and skeptics so the the wimpy version being all that is true unless or until your own personal suffering is called into question and then it stops then suddenly because I have to suffer none of this matters anymore and don't they'll kill anyone anything and as it's been alluded to and I just point out it implicitly in position you don't see it that way you actually think that sometimes you've got to suffer sometimes you got to fight sometimes you got to die that you know your own you know your own discomfort elyse ism Oh in here yeah I find that amazing they were one of those guys I'm sorry it wasn't it wasn't Sam Harris but one of the other guys like him that I addressed on my channel once I pointed out that he thought it was too much suffering for him to be vegan and he lived in one of the suburbs of Los Angeles well that's just no like you think I'm you know like in the unitard this going to do humanitarian work in Cambodia or something is this too much suffering or too much risk and I think you know it's a little bit of sovereign risk but so what you know if sign support you to it anyway yeah well I got a pushback on that I don't think that it's too much suffering or something like that it's it's just not what personally preoccupies my mind but I'd never say that it I would never I'd never resist going to Cambodia by saying it's somehow just too big a compromise to my well-being or something sure it's it's just a random example it is pointing out when we put these notes keys into practice there is a question of your own skin your own neck yes on the line and your own you know tolerance for suffering and risk of death and actual death you know like if you're gonna join the army and fight a war maybe you're gonna die maybe because there's one thing I wanted to branch off on earlier you made a sort of a long statement about vivisection you mentioned the the limited relevance of utility so you know you said briefly that you know utility only matters to a limited extent because name the trait will be the same another case because that utility of torture and human versus the utility of torturing and anime but I just want to point out this issue of utility does matter at least in a kind of Socratic and provocative way because I point this out to vegans and opponents of meat-eaters once them also say well there is now in 2018 absolutely no utility in leather shoes we could force everyone to wear the current line of you know Nike sports shoes that are just as functional or more functional than other shoes you don't need to polish them to the US Army no longer uses leather boots they use non leather boots and so on so leather shoes have zero utility and yet this ethical question still is impressed I don't even know a single vegan restaurant that will refuse customers for wearing leather shoes inside you know why you know it isn't that is also an interesting thing as where in some cases within veganism we're in a situation of zero utility for this absolute zero utility for the meat based object or animal exploiting object and yes it still seems to be so hard to press for that's all yeah okay I mean there's so many different things I could say there like with leather I'm not I'm not strong on this position because my legal positions are a bit different what I'm about to say but currently I think that I would just be fine making leather illegal frankly I don't know if there's a good argument against that but I would just be for completely banning it and there is also just one little thing I don't think there's confusion between me and eyes'll on this but just in case anyone else is not tracking when he's talking about a strong and weak version of my position the the weak version you know where where you're fine with this murder just so you can survive and the strong version where you're more stoic and you say no it's not ethical to kill my mother to just kill my friends if I want to live I think that's wrong um I would just point out that name the trait that the name name the trait is a consistency test it is not necessarily my position it's something you apply to a position and either of those positions could pass the name the trait test yeah like it might be partially my fault for how I've framed it because people think name the trait is an argument for veganism and it's not per se like Hannibal Lecter's position passes name the trait and people have a hard time wrapping their head around it name the trade is an argument for veganism if you already have certain beliefs in place like you believe in consistency you believe in basic human rights in most situations and then what was the last thing you said there you're talking about the value of utility basically and you're just saying what even when utility goes to zero right yeah and and the the core point is that when it goes to zero we should we should ban it or that it's just psychologically hard for people to give it up even when it hits zero or what's the what's the core thing there well I guess some just point to the absurdity of it of course it's much more difficult to deal with something like you know finding a cure for cancer by torturing animals because there is there is utility but that at the opposite extreme we actually do have cases we deal with every day like whether shoes where there is now zero utility and yet it seems we you know we can't make for our rasaan that you know i mean you can be asked the question do people think it's a civil right to buy and wear leather shoes what is the basis for leather shoes you know knowing knowing what we know scientifically ethically illogical and otherwise but you know I just say it's interesting that the problems for the vegan argument are the same even when there's zero utility so it's okay weighed that last little bit I didn't catch the Fae yes sorry go ahead you're you're talking about leather and utility and and just hashing that out no I mean it just isn't mean it is more like a thought experiment but it's something I discussed with vegans and it's something I discussed with you know with meat eaters also there's no doubt that 500 years ago leather was a crucially necessary part of human civilization which is it's sad it's it's tragic etc I'm not celebrating that fact but we really had no substitute for it but today the substitutes are superior to leather and has absolutely zero utility and yet we don't seem to have I mean you know we don't have any progress or any possibility of progress leather is instead celebrated as a luxury and so and so forth and what's interesting your response to this is that you would even support leather being made illegal but you know certainly in terms of a baby step or cultural step what have you you know there is pressure to have no smoking areas even where it's basically irrational it's part of a culture of trying to get rid of smoking you know ie in areas will be perfectly safe it wouldn't be a harm to other people to allow smokers to smoke cigarettes but still we're wanting to push for society to make a gradual transition to having less and less smoking and ideally zero but there is no similar pressure to have you know fewer and fewer leather shoes you know there's there's nothing like this not even within Buddhism anyway I was thinking about that earlier because you made an allusion to how these questions are asked when when people agree with certain fundamental moral tenets well everyone who subscribes to the Buddhist religion it's absurd but you'd think there'd be a uniform or vast majority opposition to other shoes and nothing with the kind of this even in that kind of context until 'ti zero utility plus ethical unanimity and still there's no pressure for change so yeah I mean personally this this is somewhere where generally I would a lot like by the consequentialist on this kind of I think that if you can't argue that there is any utility at all to something and you wouldn't you you can't you can't point to any utility and it just causes needless harm especially needless harm as as great as skinning of being alive I mean that's just in the crazy zone of I don't know how anyone could ever think to justify that and then later oh yeah and then with Buddhists I was just gonna say short version I'm perpetually amazed by how hypocritical the spiritual community is on veganism it's crazy agreed and agreed but you know I think they'll the only counter-argument have heard lately that would apply to leather etc is Matt Dillahunty position which is you know he freezes as libertarian that the maximum Liberty pertains to a thing haha so that somehow it's a civil right or a human right that you can buy an own leather that seems to be the the counter you know that Liberty ought to encompass all such things that you're deprived of Liberty don't a chopped up animal reformed into the shape of a Nike shoe yeah you know I I understand that and I understand what you're saying but I think that there is a way to get underneath that because obviously to me or you or vegan the problem with what he is saying there is that he's not considering the liberty of the animals he's only considering the liberty of the humans and once you weigh the liberty of the animals into the picture well now suddenly it doesn't seem like you should have the Liberty to wear the leather just like with humans you can't say it's my liberty to kill you it's like no well there's there's also the liberty of other humans to even live libertarians it's you have as much liberty as you want without harming someone else oh you can swing your fists as much as you want until you hit someone in the face so to get underneath that you have to look at what is the philosophical basis for bootstrapping Liberty as a value for humans and can you find that basis without applying it also to animals so now that would be how I would try to get under that so i actually rhetorically I wouldn't do it that way because I don't want to build an argument on the concept of the liberty of cows or cow rights I would approach it entirely in terms of human responsibility human ecology human ethics that would just be my approach but we do actually agree completely on the this is just a question of rhetoric um but anyway so there was some other topic you want to ask my book I don't remember I think oh yes I do remember um oh yeah and just the well you and I are gonna have to bat our frameworks off each other at some point I don't know if I'm feeling that today I don't know if you are either but because the areas where eyes'll and I are gonna have a problem is when we start talking about something cuz our systems will point to the same answers in I bet like 90 something percent of cases I would assume but there's situations where you've got something that's within the wildlife line that eyes'll draws and you're still saying that it it you're saying it wouldn't have any degree of Rights like if a you know some animal wanders in you can just like kind of do whatever to it I mean that would be where I would start saying well well no I mean I think we should remove it but I don't think that it just loses all its its moral values I don't know if that's a straw man so we can get into that in depth but the other thing I was gonna talk about was the DXE stuff actually so unless you have something else to say about what I just said I can go to that cool well I think a very brief response then we can can move on to DXE so you know I have many many videos on this and there's a whole playlist on what I call the wildlife management approach so if you guys go to my channel and click on playlists you'll see there's a lot of stuff organized I have over 900 videos on YouTube so most of my positions on most things than veganism are set down in video form but you know my approach to ethics is based on the concept of doing the best you can so in terms of this question what happens with animals that come into the city my position is contrast to dude for example will Kim look it up so we'll kill Luca is a proponent of a rights-based approach that actually animals living in the city including rats and snakes have animal rights and have the rights of citizens and he has written long books and academic articles describing this so to me that's that's genuinely laughable and I think we have to acknowledge that meat eaters kind of laugh at that for a reason you know the idea that rats have the right to live in your house just as much as you you part of the fact that it's not practicable I also think just purely theoretically now on the other hand my position doesn't entail I mean I think it really there is an obligation us to do the best we can is it possible to trap the rats alive get rid of them without killing them sometimes sometimes as possible you know I mean that's that's the okay okay well in that case I don't know it seems like we're just getting hung up on the word rights then because for me I I use the word rights really just because it's a shorthand to make people think about that that thing they have in their head that idea that in most situations generally speaking it's wrong to stab a human but I'm not I'm not like wedded to the concept of Rights really it's more just about the treatment and the the consistency between the treatment in whatever situation it might be so yeah I mean when you say when you say oh no I'm sure his views crazy is an intersection list but when when you talk about like a squirrel wandering into the wildlife line you don't actually hold the position that it well I mean I don't like the word right but you don't hold the position that it loses all of its value or I'm gonna say it's right to being treated as best as we can treat it while still getting it the out of wherever we need to get it out of well I think from from a legal perspective yes I mean that that is what it boils down to but you know I think we should still do our best so it's bears a good example is they're big and heavy and you know in a third-world country like Laos their ability to cope with you know sedating a large mammal and relocating it alive to the wilderness is the government doesn't have the budget for that even a country Sri Lanka which is bankrupt the government is really bankrupt they can't do that now in Canada we have enough money to do it to some extent this is the reality we can relocate a certain number of bears per year and we should that's very morally good totally um but you know if on a technical level of what is the law and what are the rights you know you could never say this about a human like well we got to try to see this humans life but if it cost too much just shoot him in the head and it I think you would do that in certain cases if for example like there is a psychopath and he's in some small village and they don't you know it's just a tiny little village they don't have the means to subdue him in fact doesn't have to be a little George will shoot someone if they're on a rampage yeah exactly so I'm actually not sure if we're go to find areas where we reach different answers here we may be will but the guess the confusion for me is when when you talk about rights the way that I was receiving it which is now seeming wrong to me is that you actually mean once once the animal crosses the wildlife line into human space you can just do whatever to it and that would that would seem like wacky land to me if you're actually gonna say that no matter where the animal is it's always entitled to us treating it reasonably then that's actually going to line up very very closely with my position well I I wouldn't say that precisely because of the example of farming the grain and so on I mean I can't say to you that we treat Gophers reasonably in farming grain right so that's why I would argue that there's not actually an inconsistency in that situation I think that if we had a choice I mean we've got humans who for example let's say they were reduced in size burrow underground can't comprehend language or morality well no I'm just being honest though once once you actually map all those traits I'm gonna be like well it I mean there's nothing we can do if we want to produce food we're gonna have to kill those people and if I live in a world where I might catch a virus that turns me into one of these little gopher monster things I would still support living in that world as absurd and hypothetical as you get there I would still support living in that world and saying it's okay for us to be doing farming okay that's pretty close to being a Reducto you know actually don't don't think it is what would you think that if you if you lived in one of the in a world where you might become to go for if we kind of its kind it's really just the veil of ignorance right it's like if you knew you might become to go for would you still say that we shouldn't do agriculture well that need that's a very Buddhist position because if you believe in reincarnation then you literally are asking people that you know if you if you could become the Gopher but look I just point out I avoid getting into that hypothetical just because I accept it's like before when I said I I appreciate that you said yes it's tragic like it's tragical that we have to kill these animals what we do so you can acknowledge that it's bad that's really all the only difference is that I'm willing to acknowledge look you know within like for example with it to go and shoot a bear within the wildlife preserve is a crime like you know this should be punished as a crime you shot this bear but if the bear climbs through the window and goes into your basement in your own home and you shoot the bear it's not a crime what if you don't torture the bear in your basement see I do think that still should be a crime you know the thing is you you said that we have an obligation to treat animals reasonably yeah that's a bit vague but we can get into what I mean no but again my point is I'm not gonna say to you killing Gophers on a farm it's reasonable oh I would say so well you see it's so again this is a different thing where I'm saying look I'm acknowledging this is sad or tragic or bad Sam Sam yeah right but I'm framing it in this different way and saying well there's a special place for Gophers which is the natural wildlife habitat conservation area and then there's this farm and we draw a line on the map and it's arbitrary but on one side of the line we kill the Gophers because we want to eat wheat and on the other side we don't so yeah that's that's my approach yeah yeah I mean my my core point would just be looking at whether it's consistent right and I don't I think that what people do is they picture would you kill a human in a gopher field or an arena in a field if they walked in it's like no well well wait why wouldn't you kill a human well I mean there's a some pretty obvious reasons you can communicate with the human and ask them to move they're not burrowing or some you can you can just push them out of the way they're large and visible they're not popping up into your combine harvester or whatever so there's a ton of there's a ton of these characteristics that make it really unreasonable to do this to a human but I think if you're honest with yourself and you you go okay well if we map those characteristics over to an animal are we suddenly going to say this is so unreasonable personally I would not I don't think so yeah well I I don't like to construct arguments in terms of necessity because I don't think the necessity is real you know we talk more about consistency I think my argument also it's so it's both embracing that these things are not necessary I like hypothetical we could all eat rice and nobody weep but it's also embracing that the line on the map is an inconsistency that the fact that the bearer has different rights inside the conservation area outside that I'm saying that is an inconsistency it's arbitrary and it's okay so that's you know it's recognizing that isn't inconsistent I I'm no I'm not really seeing the inconsistency I think that it's reasonable for us to say that we don't want a bear in our town and I think if you look at a human and you go okay there's a psychopath wandering around in here okay I'll give you actually very close to the head and just to just add to add a tiny little dimension also if the psychopath breaks in your house sure kill him but no torturing him would also be a problem so great with all of these I'm always looking at is it consistent okay well I think this is the real comparison to humans let's say you have quite a large special home for the insane which has a garden they can walk around in so it is a little bit more like a nature conservation area and inside this you know inside this special area they can't hurt other people or can't interrupt their daily business or what have you there are some safeguards but if they wander outside of it they'll be captured and drugged and put back inside it sure and this is not that while leaky hypothetical as you can imagine this is not that so if they're inside the asylum they have certain kinds of liberties and rights and what have you know if they're outside they will in effect be hunted that's kind of what we're saying but again it's a pretty good analogy your position approach my position I don't think there's yeah and the whole thing is unless you're actually going to find some area where I apply a consistency test to your position and it's not consistent then I don't know that your position is out of line with my position yeah this is talking to you no I know it's not shocking to me it's just you you seem to be talking as if there's something fundamentally inconsistent about what we're doing to the gopher I might be misinterpreting you there but I actually don't oh okay all right so right that's that's judgment put I guess you know my point is no we ought not to kill the gopher I mean let's I'm just acknowledging that in terms of what's what's morally right we ought to you know we ought to value that go for his life more than a handful of grain but we don't and I'm willing to bet that is tragic you know it's just kind of a moral an aesthetic evaluation of it sure yeah I I don't I don't even I don't I don't like the reduction in to a handful of grain or a soy latte or whatever it is that someone wants to say right because the thing is you have to look at the standard you're setting once once you're saying it's okay to kill animals in non-essential situations which you have to say to get civilization off the ground we're saying essential situations only we're going back to an agrarian society where read are regressing to the Dark Ages or something so most people would say the the trade-off there for well-being is just you're going so far downhill that we can't set a necessity only standards so but the thing is once you're gonna say okay well I'm gonna set some standard other than necessity then you have a very hard time arguing against something like the grain farming and again for me the core point the core point is just would would I accept this being done to myself if I were put in that situation and to me if I look at something like being stabbed to death completely needlessly to be made into a hamburger no that's ridiculous but if you're talking about a farming that's that's for our civilization be talking about industrial activity and you're talking about a can't avoid getting in the way and there's not really another way to deal with them actually not all of them well at that point I'm just gonna say yes right you know I sympathize with your position but do you disagree is my question or II III only disagree in that it seems to me your position is much more complex than mine now you brought in a lot of a lot of complicating factors and someone because this isn't how I feel about it but something a mediator might say to you a mediator might say to you well you're using the same justification so you can eat bread that a mediator uses so he can eat bacon the meat eater really feels that it's justified that it's that it's reasonable to kill this pig so we can enjoy eating a certain number of pounds of meat and you think it's okay to kill so many thousand Gophers to produce so many kilograms of weed you know this this is the reality altum Utley there's a mathematical formula here for the number of large you know animals with brain day that they have a brain and two eyes and two hands and two feet and the gopher is really are you know they're highly intelligent you know mammals and so on it's not as exotic guys have Skype against act or something so you know I think your your position because of its complexity opens itself that line of questioning and you can answer it and that's that's fine but I think mine is mine is simpler so Occam's razor I think I have a little bit of an advantage thing I don't really know about that because the thing is I could understand how someone could misinterpret it and ask questions like that but for me I mean first of all I'm talking about consistency so consistency I would apply that to your position my position whatever and we'd still ask the same kind of questions to see if your position is consistent if you were one of these beings who if you ran a risk with a like rauzein veil of ignorance of becoming one of the beings outside of the line would you still draw the line that's effectively asking the same thing and then with right one sec one sec let me come back and the the thing is when you're saying oh if you bite the bullet on one you have to bite the bullet on the other that's like the the thing a carnist might put to you I would point out well no there's a real categorical difference there in terms of why the killing is happening I would bite the bullet on one and not the other and I think you would - are you gonna say you'd bite the bullet on being killed for the hamburger I sure don't think so but you orbit been shot because you're saying of why one is done I think it tension matters sure but but just the point being that they're not equivalent you can't say you accept it for this context therefore you have to accept it for this contest so I do I do think my position is a bit stronger than yours they're they're very similar what I do I do think my mode of argumentation for it is stronger than yours because it avoids these things what is my position if I am the gofer I think I have a right to stand up as the gofer and say this is an injustice why am I being punished persecuted hunted and killed for having crossed a line I didn't know was there that I didn't understand I'm living by the laws of my own tribe so to speak and here you are punishing me for breaking a human law human concept that nobody explained to me there was no sign or fence that I could understand her you know and so I left you know I left the conservation area and maybe there is no conservation area even but whatever there is no adjacent conservation area I'm trying to survive in this field and I'm being you know persecuted and murdered in these horrible ways and not only that you humans take no responsibility you do this year after year after year with no end in sight you do it infinitely you have yeah plan they ever address this injustice you do it again oh I don't know III think we should find a plan and and minimize deaths from all of our industrial activity but yeah so that would actually be the point where I would say your position is not consistent and mine is and that means even if mine takes a minute longer to explain which doesn't have to but that it would actually be a superior position because it comports with logic alright so if you're saying that you would not bite the bullet on becoming the gopher in the on the other side of the line with a rauzein veil of ignorance your position actually contains an inconsistency mine doesn't okay so I think I think not because my position is that it's tragic whether I'm on the human side or the the Gopher side so the question okay then let me put it to you precisely that you don't know if you'll become a human or a gopher would you draw the line sir but is the question what the question is you don't know if you're going to become a human or a gopher you're currently just a spirit floating in space you will randomly be chosen to be one or the other would you draw the line do you think the line is generally justified and fair that's what this is getting at so would you draw the line if you don't know if you're gonna be a human or a gopher no I think from the Gophers perspective it's it's terrible and unfair in traffic whoa wait but you're going just you're going just to the Gophers perspective so I'm asking for a universal right though I agree from so I think it's bad both right so yeah and I would just I would take a different angle and I mean I might maybe I can persuade you to because I think it's still in line with your position and can make total sense I would just encourage saying yes of course I'd bite the bullet on the line I mean if I don't know if I'm going to become a human or gofer I'm still gonna say the line is justified because of a broader picture of the nature of what we're doing and what the benefit is and just that it's part of the function and progress of civilization so if you tell me I've got a Rolls iandale I don't know which I'm gonna come out on the other side of the Gopher the human do I think it's ethically reasonable to draw the line I'm going to say yes to that no if you say no then you're actually saying I would you're you're arguing for an inconsistent ethical framework if you would say no and then you'd go ahead and draw the line well right but my that was my initial point I said and just sorry sorry just a final final little thing I just I just want to point out that it doesn't mean that your position is necessarily inconsistent so you can still take this whole wildlife management approach and say yeah I mean if I have the Rawls in vail I am gonna bite the bullet sure I mean I think it's reasonable that we draw the line so it's just if you don't say that though then you have inconsistency right but are you point of view I've said several times this is the inconsistency that I embrace in my system that the line itself is arbitrary and it's a so the problem at the start said what I think it is inconsistent that for example the bear is treated one way on one side line and not on the other and it doesn't make any kind of choice it's not consciously you know choosing it's not being punished for a crime it's it's committed so I'm saying I do think this is a it's kind of a moral flaw in my system but it's not one I'm concealing it's when I'm putting out front and saying look I think this is something we have to commit to and if we commit to it it's gonna lead us down a path of taking seriously a set of moral responsibilities that will meliorate the situation okay there's so much I could say it there okay so first of all I totally agree with you that we should do whatever we can to ameliorate the situation no debate there a hundred percent let's use our resources as best as we can to ameliorate as many animal lives as possible totally agree then I want to make two other points one is if you allow in an inconsistency your ethical system collapses it's kind of like the principle of explosion and logic once you say it's okay to be inconsistent about ethics you can justify any ethical position and then final point sure um I just want to try to tip your intuitions a bit because I think that if we talk about a bit you will actually eventually want to say yeah I'd bite the bullet on on that if we talk about Psychopaths for a second your inner allsey and veil you don't know if you're gonna become a human or a psychopath would you still draw the mental asylum line for the psychopath you're right you you're I think you'd say yes and I think that you're trying to be very kind to animals and think clearly and see the case of the gopher and you could do that with the psychopath - but broader picture the line is justified so I would encourage biting the bullet fully consistent though the counter-argument have is very simple so thus I stated in full because it's incredibly simple I don't believe that in any consistency of this kind causes my moral system to collapse precisely because it's based on the understanding of a plurality of moral systems that I'm talking about two separate moral systems now again that may be evil but I believe that is possible we have to recognize that you could say okay here's one more of an ethical system that exists in the ocean and here's one that exists on hand or even a system of physics we say okay there's a there's the hydrodynamics the way physics work in the water and then we have a separate set of dynamics for how physics works on air in the land now you know we do the math differently we do different kinds of calculations hydrodynamics are very complex math to do um so you know in that sense you know I know your point when you say as soon as you admit an inconsistency and I've seen you I remember seeing you debate this with some neo-nazi type people you say look really yes you can't just say this is where did you see that on YouTube you're talking to you talking to someone who was advocating for the ethno state okay um look if you're gonna if you're gonna accept this kind of inconsistency then you'll accept any inconsistency I understand your point in that but the point is I don't think this is true that you're saying it's a type of flaw that caused an ethical system collapse when you say look here's one set of rules within a nature conservation area which may include for example nobody is the right to cut down a tree whereas obviously on your private property you do other right to cut the country or on a farm or what-have-you it's gonna so we're I'm just drawing attention to the fact that I actually have a different set of you know prescriptive rules a different kind of set of ethical standards on one side of the line first the other so therefore I don't think it's a collapse it is about plural ethical systems yeah so you have also different rules for a human if they're in one country or another right they're in a certain area or another it's it's still I would say one system right if you want to go to the physics analogy it's still all comports broadly with the laws of physics so I would consider the separation into two systems actually I think that it's one system it just does data limits I criticize myself in that nobody else pointed that out first I pointed out that my system would be like having First Nations reservations and saying okay native people have a different set of rights over there than they have over here which is what Canada did and what many countries I don't have a problem with your system per se it's more like your position on your own system because I would accept yourself well that's you saying I partially accept my own system all right yeah no no I accept my system I just view one element of it as tragic so well no because you're saying you'd actually reject the system as yeah you're saying like you're saying if I was in a Rolls Ian van L and I had to I didn't know what position I'm gonna end up in I wouldn't bite the bullet on creating my own system I mean I would and I think you would too if we talk about Psychopaths versus human they said of just going okay when you put it that way would I accept the creation of my system yes no then sorry you've changed your phrasing slightly before you just said would you agree with drawing the line or something okay in the way yes no you're correct so then I guess then I would say it's consistent from a rights discourse perspective you could say well you believe in having one set of animal rights in the city and another set of animal rights you know and the nature was revision for the same Bayers I'm not saying that's not in right well from some from a lay person's perspective it is a type of inconsistency right and someone who's not really literate but me and you aren't gonna say that's inconsiderate but I mean the same way I think someone can attack my system by saying well would you believe in one set of human rights if you're standing over here another set of Rights if you're standing over there and that's the reality we all live with I don't have the same human rights when I'm in England or in Saudi Arabia I do when I'm in Canada that is that is the reality of the world in 2018 yep yeah I mean and I wouldn't want to have the Saudi Arabian rites that that totally violates magical system I'm not down for it but I am down for the fact that there's different rights they are permitted based on your behavior or your location even within one ethical system yes so if you if you wander onto someone's property you're trespassing your rights are slightly different in that situation I mean they're not they're still in line with the overall ethical system but someone is allowed to defend themselves because now you pose a threat and they don't know what the you're doing okay anyway so we agree on everything except kind of matters of rhetoric and aesthetics then and you know sorry I know it's a minor of changing in your phrasing when you put it that way I said in the rest okay yes then even as they go for I do agree with it yeah because I'm using the term would you drop a lot this is kind of an ethical system you make your changeably rules right right that's kind of thing okay from this perspective kind of standing outside the system I'm gonna say that I don't actually see how your system is inconsistent I think that there is any inconsistency within anyone like like actual philosophically necessity not just different no I know it is high praise from you to say that there's no inconsistency and I accept the compliment I was usually on the level of aesthetics and rhetoric though one of the differences is if you think of this argument taking place on a stage your stage has a lot of furniture on and my in is very spare and clean and empty like you brought onto the stage the concept of the progress of civilization and things like this and I don't do that now that doesn't mean you're wrong or bad it really doesn't I'm just noting look when I said before well my approach is simpler that is kind of what I mean that you quite readily bring in these these complicating factors which I which I don't I really try to keep it very very simple I'm no well well that's just cuz I was laying it out in detail for you but if you just ask me quickly I mean if you say was the example we use gophers for for grain farming I mean I would just say basic answer to that is that there are traits that justify the difference of treatment in that city and I would bite the bullet if the traits were present so it doesn't have to be big it can be I can say it in about nine words right no but I just pointed like progress of civilization as a source of necessity you know this gets to no those are the problems like you may feel the progress of civilization requires taking lunatics and locking them up but somebody else doesn't you may feel the progress of civilization justifies grain farming even if it kills a thousand Gophers a month and something else that so I just say I really fastidiously try to avoid bringing those cut those kinds of things onto the onto the stage well yeah I mean the the core thing that I'm looking at is just if you is is there some kind of difference between humans and animals that if true of humans would justify doing this to humans and I would say yes well yeah I mean I would actually consider or the fact that it becomes that funny actually a point for how obvious the truth of what I'm saying is I mean of course it's like that's not the situation with humans obviously well starts looking like a completely different ethical world that's what it does but I think actually it's interesting because if I stick with that so the miniature humans eating the grain I think we would take it much more seriously that we had a responsibility to have nature conservation areas for those miniature humans okay that was the other point I want to hit which is I totally agree with you on that also which is we want to do as much as we possibly can to improve the rights for the beings that are affected by our industrial processes or whatever else we're doing on the ditch or the treatment or whatever they're just there well yeah I'm not throwing off for the use of the word you and I do but of course it's remarkable that that nobody else does and others no well okay remarkably few people give a damn you know I I did a book review on a book written by a scientist although it's not a science book which is called a half earth I can put the I can put the link into the thing but anyway I just I'll say why I'm sharing this link now whatever this is a book review of a book that made the argument that 50% of the Earth's surface should be given over to habitat conservation areas thus title so there I believe that's in the right it's in that hat oh no it's in the hashtag debate crucible Oh monster in the wrong discussion area I'm on I'm outside and on my phone so I can there's other people it's for other people this thing's fine so I'm just gonna post that that link there but to me that was a that was a really interesting you know question to be asked I mean you know I think the book sucks it's a very negative book review but you know when you say what we have a responsibility to do this almost nobody is interested in asking that question I mean you know well no obviously I don't think it can possibly be 50 percent of Canada's landmass that's reserved for well animals but what's gonna be five percent 15 percent twenty five look what you know what is it gonna be I think those are really interesting questions you know ethically pragmatically and otherwise yep and and here's here's another thing when you go to is civilization justified I would actually suggest like most people are not willing to abandon civilization when you're talking about eradicating some particular thing we're doing and it's gonna bring us back to the dark ages or to some like agrarian society that actually I don't see how that's not just completely persuasive on my point we wouldn't bite the bullet on that there's a serious trade-off here for well being right if we set a standard if we set a standard that would make grain farming illegal I mean that what would happen to the world be it be crazily III agree with you completely I think the irony is that the last generation of vegan leaders people like for NC own a who's still alive but fairly old garden right but they're they're not on the same page with us at all you know they're new and I mean were very different people we've come to this conclusion from a totally different logical and philosophical set of premises and we've both come to that exact conclusion as you just stated it you can't possibly have a moral standard that makes grain farming untenable okay with you you you can no one wants it I don't want you well you know we're not and it's just not gonna way right but that that wasn't that wasn't obvious at all - Gary Francis Aaron and his generation of activist so you know that's that's interesting and I significally they say that that that on that what what's his position there does he think it's just this is just different we shouldn't do all for these animals was that his position no he really breaks that connections because he can't he can't accept it and he ultimately just goes back to an ethics of intention that you know ultimately you have to have good intentions because it's it's Tim it's not acceptable to even kill one rat or to kill one groundhog he can't his moral system doesn't abide that so yeah you know I sympathize but it's insane his position is ultimately driving him crazy and drives others crazy well yeah and the ethics of intention thing I think in I think will align here actually I think intention is ethically relevant but not the only thing that matters because if you just go to intention well now it's like what anything is justified just because of your intention yeah look I mean you know my honest opinion is that the ethics of intention arguments are always always kind of pathetic I mean you know well you got drunk but you say you didn't intend to get drunk you know let me give you let me give you a really black and white one um you and I our kitchen scenario one I stab you to death scenario two I turn around with a knife and poke you Batson and you die I mean a huge huge difference and the difference is just in tension right you're right yeah but but again I can point to other situations where you know the intention is constant but some other thing creates the problem so you can tell intention also is not the only thing that matters but in this case they're I mean you're right into talking about intention globally and include don't consensual sex and rape the different business oh yeah of course the difference be murder and manslaughter etc but in the specific locus for this discussion was the idea that killing animals is okay because you didn't mean to kill them you just meant to farm grain even though you know that farming grain absolutely requires you to kill them your that's for this discussion it's like well if you want to talk about intention of this kind of context it seems to me pathetic oh yeah that's my basic feeling okay did you want to send about Dixie yeah I could keep talking about this the other I would just say it's a summing up on that that I'm not actually seeing areas where we diverge because if you ask me technically like I am also drawing and pose a line around civilisation and saying we're gonna treat animals differently when they wander in here and I'm still in all situations saying we should do the best we can for them and we don't seem to actually diverge on treatment anywhere so far so I think or or the fact that we should improve the field animal live so I'm not seeing any actual ethical difference in our position there well maybe a subtle difference is just the question of how you root the meaning sir pardon me how you root animal rights or whatever substitutable what what is the homeostatic norm that you how is it that you think animals ought to be treated my answer the wildlife no you say it's based on their situation in a wildlife reserve so I'm saying that's the norm I want the jury to and the other thing is maybe there's a priority or how you well yeah I mean I I would just say that gets too meta ethics and underlying you give animals the rights we give them and you might find this kind of weird but I I just avoid that I literally don't go into that because people have already bootstrapped certain rights for humans I mean I don't I don't avoid it I've talked meta ethics for hours and hours in here you sure usually vegans not Karnas but um the the point that I go to is I just look at our human rights model and I look for consistency and you can argue to veganism right there and then you're just reduced arguing about weird gray cases okay so I don't even need to deal with why we're bootstrapping well let's go to dmz unless you want to find a word on that well no III think though that is an interesting sort of difference because then you know you're basically saying you argue through a parallelism with human rights and I think that would might you couldn't ever get you to trouble when people say well they're for this dog you know this castrated dog that's lived its whole life as a human plaything this domesticated animal has certain rights or even the rats in the basement and so on you know I don't argue that way for me the norm is not to look at you do the best get dogs to look at thee but it's the law but I zhilie you you do still give like quote unquote we're using rights you loosely yeah I do still quote unquote them the right for example not to be tortured the rat that wanders into your house yes you're right yeah no yeah either way I'm not I'm not seeing I'm seeing a disagreement well I'm seeing I'm seeing a difference of two positions that are incredibly similar kind of proceed well you know I've never heard you I just mentioned in terms of a difference maybe in practice though I've never heard you arguing about the importance of wildlife habitat preservation areas and that kind of thing no maybe it's just never come up which is not what you're debating with people but if that's yeah I'm not talking about that when we're when we have someone sitting across from me who's talking about stabbing an animal for a hamburger we can go to talking about the wildlife and and reasonable hard ethical questions when we when I know I'm at least talking to someone who can solve basic ethical questions well I just mentioned though in terms of because again you may not know how different you are from other vegans in this you may not be aware there's a huge school of thought and veganism that wants to reduce suffering of animals in the wilderness and you know that's that's yeah we've argued about this bro this is where the real Python meme comes from so there you go so maybe that's where our positions really become become different then because you know I think it is you know that basically that's the norm I depart from however much suffering bears and you're in the wild that's okay that's normal that's what those ethical system is based on it's not based on the idea that that Bears should be provided with painkillers and a cushion to put on their head as they lie dying you know in the forest so you know no no maybe we agree practically that any proposed solution to this like dumping tofu packets into the Amazon like whatever you want to talk about it's it's like just full-on like full-blown [ __ ] but if you go to like a technical philosophical abstract situation you and I do diverge here and we diverge massively and I actually will II am NOT on board before you say we did find the difference but this is one that we've known about cuz we argued this before for awhile but the basic difference here is if we go to a situation where you haven't wand and you can wave the wand and nature keeps functioning the exact same way on every single level at the subjective experience of being killed and and eaten to death just disappears from nature I would wave that wand and eyes'll wouldn't so that that's our difference there so we think there's value and meaning to the suffering or something if I believe in nothing but I would I would put it this way so for you the ultimate value here is reducing suffering no it's a value No oh okay but for me the value is the wilderness itself is the wildlife management paradigm as I put it though just managing well like that is value enough where the discourse stops and I'm not going to inquire further I mentioned you mod vegans seriously talking about preventing bears from committing rape against other bears yeah and preventing bears from committing from engaging in cannibalism against other bears in the in the wilderness you know I mean I think I think that's a bizarre question if you have pet bears in your home that's where these things get really ridiculous but you're talking about bears living in the forest that engage in rape and cannibalism you want a police the morality of bears this is that's crazy yeah with my so with my view that's consistence but Isaac I could say to you either you're being inconsistent if you can prevent a bear being raped or dying in cannibalism from your position consistently if you wouldn't do it for a human if you happen to be walking down the street you see a human is gonna be raped or cannibalized you'd intervene if you're walking to the forest and you see a bear do need a pair name that trait why wouldn't you intervene Isaac so you yeah well I think I think that the whole thing there is you're talking about the function of the ecosystem right so for example if we're talking about like just predators what what would happen if we stop the Predators from praying right so the I just want to point out here as well there's there's a level of principle and a level of practice to this so we completely aligned to a thousand percent that the practical solutions like send out anti-rape bear squads into the wilt like that's that's all just crazy zone but the real difference is in the philosophical abstract of you can have everything function just as well you can remove the just barbaric shitty suffering of nature would you do it or not it seems that you say no and I say yes could I just interject here I think there is an a like a ongoing discussion about gene drives and sort of using them to prevent suffering in the wild so it is sort of a discussion that's going on within some philosophical communities oh yeah the affective activists do so-called research about reducing wild animal suffering those scenes and stuff well so what I can tell you though is that when there are you know practical ways to stop these things then yeah I'm all for doing it like if I saw two animals of the same species it's not I know that they have an abundant food source or whatever and it's like let's say it's cats or something and one's killing the other out in the street I would probably yet just stop that cat fight but when you go to a a broader like okay do we want to try to stop wild animal predation or something it's like well the the reason I say no to that is because there is no practical way to do that if there actually were and we can just hypothetically go there we just say we have the the philosophy wand and you can do it at that point I'd say yes so I don't know you can spell out more on that if you but I think that that kind of I think we both agree that in the domain of bears bears are allowed to live by the law of the bear and not by human laws or human concepts you've grated a a very abstract situation in which you could modify the wilderness itself I think both you and I agree in the real world there is no way to modify the wilderness you know not in this sense we're talking about here we can't modify the nature of nature nor do we really want to you know I don't think we want to design the forest or something to to minimize the amount of bear cannibalism for example Goods you could do you could tranquilize bears and separate them or something you could try to come with some crazy scheme or not well yeah my problem with that more stems from things like is that the best use of resources is that actually practically gonna function or is it just some [ __ ] human idea that's going to have some [ __ ] ecological consequence we aren't seeing but if there's real-world practical solutions that are actually attainable and don't cost some massive amount of money or have some huge problem with them then I do say yes to those okay even though it's in the wilderness even though it's in the wilderness but again I don't I don't want me to some weird like like the anti you rape their squads I think you've clarified the difference between us though because the the one of the things the difference this is the difference is that I don't want to apply human values okay the Wilden I just I just don't which is okay you know I just don't want to see a eyes little video come up where any anything is being talked about along the lines of crazy wildlife management strategies and I'm being set definition of wilderness well I think we're actually getting ready to move off of this and talk about DXE I mean well he's just talking like everything I am I am telling the real life wilderness so it's wilderness as it actually exists in Yosemite National Park in the National Park in the real world today it's not anything exotic okay so does anyone have any any idle questions there or do we want to move along for either of us I was gonna ask like wouldn't you say maybe it would be something like a thousand two thousand three thousand years laugh when you want to maybe consider something like actually trying to go in that direction of reducing eyes directed you potentially who's that directed you I I guess both of you guys I mean I guess I wouldn't do it at all you'd say yes morality sort of if it's not suffering then what is it that motivates him to to treat animals well and be vegan etc yeah okay so the two reasonable questions but you know Imran first I think that the answer the first question is almost implicit in the meaning of the word conservation which is just I'm not trying to conserve nature in order to pervert it into something other than nature I don't want to turn the forest into Disneyland like if Disneyland is a place where no animals are harmed that's that's Disneyland that's not the forest that's not with the National Park is forest illustrative things um the question from Scythian actually got to see the person's name while they were speaking you know I have a separate playlist on my channel which is about nihilism lawsuit analysis and historical nihilism but you know the so you can watch those videos and I do I think entertaining exactly those questions but the the short answer is that you know my ethic is based on idea of doing the best you can and you know as simple as that may be I really do not see how doing the best you can is compatible with you know eating bacon or drinking cow milk is a very basic awareness yeah let me push back on that doing the best you can let's say that the best you can actually includes you have the philosophy one sorry I don't you have the philosophy one or so so the philosophy one that can just roll nature but nature still goes on working as perfectly so so now the best you can concludes the ability to do that right so I think I can push back on that by using the same terms I just used which is you know like if you if you rob the venom of its sting so to speak aren't you aren't you destroying nature and a very real sense aren't you turning nature into Disneyland you know nature shouldn't be the golf course you know well the way that I'm saying that is is it has no impact at all on the function of the ecosystem on evolution on anything it still all continues functioning perfectly just you maybe there's even certain types of suffering that we say we leave for some reason because they're valuable in the same sense that the suffering of working out is is valuable or something but we're talking about just just the feeling of like we've ended up here before because I think this is a problem with personally I think it's a problem with your position although I like your position overall but it goes back to just the feeling of being eaten by a Python it's we're back to real pythons though part two I I just would say yes like no one should have to ensure that let's just remove that feeling if that we both agree it doesn't fall within what you can reasonably do so we're not doing that but if it were I would want that 100% so I think I think my position becomes in effect the concert the conservation of nature includes the conservation of suffering that's based on you can quote but that's basically the no that's fine that if you're going to take the the suffering out of nature you're changing nature you're perverting nature and this is you know as I say let's not rob the wasp of its sting let's not rob the snake of its venom you know know if this is you know worth conserving then it's worth conserving so is making something better pretty but yeah I regard I regard the suffering is one more color of pain in the palette sure serving nature is your axiom rather than well-being yes I think that is actually a reasonable thing to say about me I normally don't speak in terms of axioms at all but yes that I'm putting this kind of axiomatic value on the concept of Wildlife thus I describe my position of veganism as well.if major paradigm sure but you're Niall is so why do you value nature so much in its current form right well sorry we did a long conversation I was and thought a week ago because you could turn into a bear form I don't see why you I want to pipe in there for a sec just because cuz I am also a nihilist but I always draw well I always who's laughing right now okay I couldn't even tell who that was but ya know I'm also Annihilus but I draw a very important distinction between two senses of the word nihilism there is a term that refers to the ontology like meta ethics the nature of morality do you think that there is an external source for morality or is it fundamentally meaningless in that sense sherman nihilist but when it comes to so that could you call that descriptive nihilism an accurate description of reality is to say that it is a nihilistic but then when we talk about prescriptive ethics the kind of world that I want to build I do not want to build a world based on the notion that nothing matters so I am a descriptive nihilist I'm not a prescriptive nihilist right that's me but if I guess so if you didn't have if you weren't a do if you are prescriptive or sorry if you are a descriptive nihilist then you would think that that way nature is described currently is irrelevant and we make it better so I think I am full view of descriptive the source no no no whoa whoa whoa no you're not aisel you you believe in in creating in treating beings in certain ways and having an ethical system to give an example in China people believe in communism I want them instead to believe in nothing I don't want instead to be nihilists so that's prescriptive nihilism whoa wait wait one second but a true true full-on prescriptive nihilism like if you interacted with like a krill tarde who's there this other server out there you'd be like I am NOT that full-on prescriptive nihilism is I don't have I don't want to assign I don't want any system of rights for even for humans I don't want anything to do with treatment it's just we we can just do whatever the we want nothing matters at all and you you do want to create an ethical system your wildlife management thing that is an ethical system you're talking sure I think though that would the position you're describing I've never heard of this before the Kuril tardes I think that's really based on a misunderstanding of what nihilism is because nihilism is fundamentally a criticism of belief humne describes the position there there is nothing to be believed in so atheism is merely not believing in a God but nihilism also includes not believing and communism or even not believing in 40 anism other people for whom they're you know Sigmund Freud's theories became virtually religion so you know this is a rejection of belief but prescriptively do I think others or in theory everyone should you belief I do so therefore I think properly understood and defined I am a prescriptive nihilist I yeah well way I think prescriptive and descriptive nihilism and let someone else is already there I don't think those are even like accepted terms in philosophy it's just a short offhand distinction that I've made because people think when I say I'm a nihilist or I don't believe in objective morality I think that it's subjective that what follows from my position is I don't think that we should have a human conversation about how to create a better world and and I really try to separate those things and I stay a descriptive not is someone who says reality is devoid of meaning a prescriptive nihilist is someone who goes on to say and therefore we shouldn't create an ethical system okay I totally understand why you're using that your hand I'm I'm just responding to it so it's so not not by I understand you're probably referring to a formal some kind of definition that's generally accepted flaw like totally but the way I'm putting it right there you wouldn't align with free man you've you've done us the favor of pointing out that this is a philosophical distinction of your own creation I think most of the philosophical distinctions I talked about with nihilism or of my own creation because you know there are a few you know published nihilists like Max Turner and so on but know this stuff um does explain I don't think as well Richard or Oh understood in English or or any other language so yeah no I mean what I've just said to you even about clarifying the nihilism is really about belief sadly I don't think that is widely understood at all though I notice when I talk to other people who identify as nihilists they right away get quite excited to hear and they say wow you're stating something more clearly that I haven't heard stated that way before the you know contrasting I was Davis but no but that that stuff is my own my own material well I mean the whole the whole reason I went there is just because someone was trying to get you on the uran nihilist why do you believe in building a better world and I was like just kind of coming in with well people when they say they're Annihilus they don't necessarily mean that they don't want to create an ethical system they just mean that's that's not what I was saying I was saying because he is a descriptive nihilist why does he have value on the original state of nature instead of trying to prescribe his own value eventually if he could magic wand it but I don't understand that that question quite quite briefly and easily so nihilism means I don't believe in things I don't believe in philosophies or religions or what-have-you but it doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge the difference between a rock crystal and a pebble now I don't believe the rock crystal has magical value or in a sense any cultural value but you know there's there's a difference here it's not about denying reality yeah well rock crystal is different from a pebble a jungle is different from a desert so it's completely absurd it's equally absurd to say to a nihilist well you're a nihilist therefore you can smash up all these diamonds and crystals because you see them as having no value or to say to a nihilist well you're a nihilist therefore it doesn't matter to you if we cut down the forest and allow it to be replaced with the desert desertification destroys the general place of the desert well of course there's a difference you know I I just don't believe that there were gods or spirits or even abstract philosophies or principles like communism involved but it is actually it this goes all the way back to sexism therapists in ancient Greece and Rome sexist in Paris is an underrated philosopher otherwise and classical skepticism people used to say that to the sceptics to like oh well you're a skeptic therefore you don't care if you get hit by a wagon you know no that's that's not what it means it doesn't mean I you know I'm insensate I'm oblivious to the difference between a rock and a crystal or forest in a desert doesn't fall well apparently you want it to stay a forest you don't want it or you don't want it to be changed in any regard which I don't see why you would not want to make it better for the animals if you had radical magical perfect here's the answer the question because I don't believe in your concept of better I regard that as a religious concept so you ask great guys you said why don't you want to make the forest better I'm a nihilist what you've just alluded to is better which maybe you see this how you were opening of humans and animals so I don't see why you wouldn't want there to be more of that and you could still maintain the forest in theory I mean if you have the philosophical magic one you can still maintain something that resembles what you care about as a forest I have nothing further to say on that but no just say I have answer your question you know I appreciate your anyone else on this kind of topic or you guys good because we can move on to some other stuff I was just gonna hear what you want to say to me over THC and wrap it up because my girl yeah there's no my girlfriend's gonna report you to the ocean totally yeah well with DXE I mean I think there's been a lot of stuff in the air lately I don't know it's been in the air for longer than it's been on my radar but I mean people are I watched your video actually the other day on this and I've talked to individuals and organizers for some of the other animal I guess organizations that I think are a bit more credible and there seems to be some general complaints about a lack of transparency with respect to fundraising I have also heard complaints about basically cult-like behavior so yeah I don't know how true all this is but apparently having people separate from their families if they continue eating meat creating this compound housing where everyone is living and then there's some there's some other things like how effective their activism is I mean I personally with look with activism my whole thing is I understand there's huge character variation I'm often on the end of the stick of oh this guy's such an [ __ ] like he is so bad for veganism despite the fact I've turned hundreds and hundreds of people vegan but so I try to be pretty except who's going off right now who's who's got all that noise can you mute whoever that is yeah so I've got a lot of acceptance for different activism styles but I also recognize that there is such a thing as ineffective activism I mean I am sure that that exists and I personally at this point and persuaded that dxc doing like the the cry about a sheep and scream their story at a restaurant full of people who hate you is in that category so yeah just any of that if you want to comment on it and oh one final thing is I'm going to host a debate once I can find someone who will take the pro DXE side which you're right I have had a lot of trouble finding someone who'll do that I can't I want to maybe put out a call and see if I can get an organizer for DXE or someone to actually come and defend the organization live and then I can get a critic like you or someone else to come do the other side and I'll mod it so yeah just any of that if you have anything to say yeah you know my father did not say many wise things to me perhaps none at all but I remember he once said to me we were in a in our Museum and he said you know sort of the common run of people that always ask the one question to make their own statement when they say that's not art like that's not a you know that's not a painting they dislike something they say that's not art see how the question is whether or not it's good art whether on it's great art the fact that it's hanging in a gallery you know means that it's art nothing like this is just ridiculous and you know I'm gonna likewise a large part of what we're talking about as activism is an art form you know it's not a science you know of course I've been involved in political science quote-unquote political science but you know exactly the kind of examples you're talking about running on a baseball field trying to interrupt a baseball game interrupting a lecture from Bernie Sanders screaming in a Chipotle you know the various kinds of antics they engage in then indeed you can even question this about you know the types of videos they make about rescuing animals the cute animals in the farm you know clearly I mean we can talk about this as art you know sorry I don't actually mean we would use the term art but my point is you know yes you can talk about it being effective or ineffective but I mean ultimately there are questions like is this in good taste or is this in bad taste is this you know you know you know is this good or bad activism I think is in large part a kind of aesthetic question you know more than it is one that we can quantify and come to those conclusions sorry that's a depressing answer no no it's fine dad it's bad in that sense you know okay sorry it's just I'm just walking outside yeah and so do you think they are a cult two things one no and two you know it's it kind of is a very easy way to criticize something to reduce it to being a cult I was tempted to make a video recently but a group called landmark who are often referred to as a cult and I decided not to but you know it really lets you dismiss something very rapidly to say it's a cult you know doesn't whereas it's it's much more difficult to get into why is this bad or just why is this stupid you know I think the discourse would be a lot easier if we could just say yeah it's a cult you know and again I agree this I would never accept it as a throwaway statement I was assuming if you took the yes position on that you'd make a case for it but you don't take the S position so basically I basically think it's look when people tell me it's a cult based on their own experiences I'm sympathetic I understand why they're saying that but I think in terms of a strict definition of the word cult you know no it's it's not a goal you know you can call something insane mean or crazy or manipulative it dominates people's lives I mean you know you can say bad things about something but you know I mean people say being a fan of that man as a cult or something you know being a Star Trek fan as a cult you know in a very loose sense you know sure but no III don't think in a meaningful sense it can be called a cult all right well if DXE commits mass suicide I am gonna hold you to that statement yeah and then and then the other was the other I can encourage you I think it's a nice idea you can put up a video trying to invite someone who's who's an organizer you know when you can specify if you want them to be DXE global or something because they have this weird terminology for the hierarchy within the organization I believe DXE global is the the elite group of who's who's in charge you know you know I mean if some lower-level guy comes on and defends and gets spanked then if if higher level people start trying to say oh that's not really us then the response that it's gonna be okay come do a better job okay no but I think that's a very good yeah yeah here you know I think it's a morally positive thing to do to try to invite someone to come out and discuss these things I'd also say you know a lot of the criticism the injury is unreasonable a lot of ex-members a lot of it's about the sex drives of people within DXE which you know is not I've got set teen videos criticising them and that's not what they were about you know it's this very very strange thing yeah well none I think that's come also from like intersectional types largely and they of course are gonna always triumphal if I like that well like some of its real but I mean like look you know people tried to do this to me they tried the painting as a bad guy because the circumstances of my divorce with my ex-wife and it's like you know of course they also what they said about this or relize was well the situations like even if what you're saying is true who cares like if I had a terrible divorce of ex-wife how does that impact my position on dog castration we'll try to organize a protest movement or the future of veganism it just you know doesn't matter so there is a lot of noise about that kind of stuff which I'm not I'm not really concerned about but I think again you or anyone here you can look at the playlist the videos on my channel there are a lot of substantive concerns about txt kind of in principle and in practice and yeah I do have to say that that I felt was a very good video so I do actually encourage people to go and watch that and I would just say like look there's I try to be very upfront about any areas of knowledge where I don't know and I don't really know about a lot of areas of so one of those is the kind of structure and function of our organizations I don't really know much about it but with DXE in particular it's hit a point where I've heard so much complaining from so many different people some of whom I consider pretty credible and not all of whom I would even put a name on that I personally am wondering if they are actually just a bad thing for veganism and I kind of want to see someone defend the other side because I've gotten a bit pushed onto that side at this point so it's not so I know but whole lot about that's why I'd like to just we'll have to bait and it'd be clear for everyone so I sure on the playlist the early videos are the ones that like I think the top two videos they really show the footage of them doing their thing of them actually getting arrested and dragged off by cops I mean it's interesting cuz I agree with you you stated its kind of opening caveat you're really leery about dismissing people as bad for veganism you're aware people have said that about you bury your bad very you know and you should be yes so I'm really on the same page with that I think it's a very lazy it ultimately self-righteous it's okay this is bad for because it should lazy Swayze and just saying all the time unnatural vegan relies on that if it doesn't agree with her sentiments it's bad for veganism but so and she also concluded my channel was bad for veganism so we'll see Swayze we'll see ten years from now who's accomplished what in this moment he puts a but no and and likewise I agree with you this yet though kind of broad heuristic approach to seeing what works and what doesn't in terms of activism and public outreach and education I think those are questions we have to ask and sorry to butt in one thing you have to have some level of patience for troubleshooting people yeah we don't have it all worked out people will do stupid you have to look at what are their intentions because intentions are all that matter ever in any size okay but you do have to look at their intentions and go okay is this a kind of like a one-off [ __ ] on their way to developing a good tactic or is this characteristic of them right you know but look one way I don't know if you know the group two six nine life I don't but two six nine life their distinctive thing is is branding themselves with it with a cattle iron you know so they take a steaming hot piece of metal and while protesting they sear the number 269 into their flesh which you know is not only a spectacle but then their members are marked for life with this it's not a tattoo you know it's burned into their skin you know now as Extreme as that is I mean if that's not extreme what is I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that they're doing more harm than good or that they're bad for veganism I mean you know I would not like but I don't want to do it and I don't want my daughter to do it if my daughter certainly five years old if my daughter grows up and she says hey I'm gonna joint you 69 and get this brand it into my skin you know I'm against it so do you say my tolerance is is pretty wide but in terms of my role as a critic in the movement yes for many years I've been staying uni vocally DXE is bad and it's only getting worse and I've been right so yeah the other question you say about troubleshooting or trial and error which I win with troubleshooting you cannot chalk this up to troubleshooting anymore but it's also true so I gotta go it's very tight after this but you know it's also really said that they used to be committed to this ethic of transparency and receiving all criticism they said they were founded on social science principles again I've talked about this in videos and that like the social sciences that we're going to take on criticism and adapts and all this stuff and today none of that is true I mean it's true by contrast they really have more cult-like behavior anything that's wrong it's covered up and denied and you're denounced as an enemy of the movement if you dare to mention something wrong and so on you know so I just say their original founding principles were supposed to embrace this kind of self criticism and adaptation that was supposedly socials they're their USP their unique selling point was that they were going to take social science principles and apply them to the vegan activism as never before and thus by their own criteria by their own standards they have failed they've moved the goalposts I think that's really when those and the other goalposts they said of themselves was to be a fully horizontal fully transparent leaderless movement and of course you know it's the opposite extreme they are instead again I see why people call it a cult they're this special hierarchical community in you know this one town in California in Berkeley and it is all these hero-worshipping leader worshipping features and so on you know so yeah I mean it's it's uh whether or not they were bad in principle when they when they started kind of on day one there are really instructive example we can all learn about about how things go horribly wrong soon after somebody's talk about someone just full confidence like they're just they're just an example in failure I mean this is this is one of the things that I find funny about I feel like I'll just tell you deadpan I'm Liev that unnatural vegan is literally mentally [ __ ] that was one of the hardest I've laughed in a long time you're always a lot figure when I'm around but maybe when I'm not around you don't know I do I do laugh quite a lot but some things make me laugh particularly hard and and just genuine deadpan belief delivering that it was very funny anyway man if you got to go then go it sounds like with the exe stuff it seems like you know a lot about the history of the movement and the structure of the organization and some of the people in it so I mean you'd be the right kind of person to take the con side so if I do find someone you don't have to commit to y'all know who it will be but I'll show you who that person is and possibly you would debate so - sure I'm willing to commit in broad brush jokes it's just the usual caveats well unless I'm busy you're you know physically can't no sure I mean unless I must have some reason why I can't at the particular time sure it'd be be happy to look at you yeah cool it's good I got some info on side well alrighty people