Vegan Mind Tricks (vs. "Name the Trait" & Peter Singer)

- yen one of the ways I first try to get
people to think about veganism is in terms of what I call scale and Futurity so when I was living in the island of Taiwan it's a very peculiar context to be preaching veganism and I would sign up to ask people for example look this is a pretty small island we have more than 30 million people living on this island if all 30 million people eat pork every day how many pigs do you think have to live on on this same small island and at the time I looked up the statistic I knew approximately how many million pigs the Rinella so let's say it was 100 million pigs all those pigs they eat food every day right they drink water every day they generate feces in plain language they have to poo every day and that poos got to go somewhere does it go into a sewage system no it goes into a river right so on this island today how many rivers still have unpolluted water that's safe to drink straight out of the river I think the answer was zero so when we're looking to the future tell you about these 30 million people on this small island with a hundred million pigs how long how long do you think it's gonna go on for the forest is already gone we can't drink the water in the rivers about ninety percent of this island you can't breathe the air so air pollution in Taiwan is terrible you know this situation so you think it's gonna go on for a hundred years do you think this is gonna go on for a thousand years do you think five hundred years from now we're gonna have 30 million people keeping alive a hundred million pigs so they can eat food that we know is unhealthy unnecessary and as all these consequences but it actually isn't opening the topic in a way that's about your plate your health your diet your moral character the name that trade argument that Isaac presents makes this very precisely about whether or not you look in the mirror and think of yourself as a moral or an immoral human being about us yen hey guys I just came from a sincere conversation between vegans / discord who were really talking about what is there a game what are the cards they play what are the arguments they deploy when they're explaining veganism to meat-eaters and when basically they are trying to persuade meat-eaters to try veganism adopt veganism or at least take veganism seriously as an ethical position and this conversation was framed to some extent by the fact that many of the people in the room many people having the conversation were themselves really frustrated and impatient with the name that trait argument advanced by ask yourself so in this video I'm going to very briefly mention basically what are the vegan mind tricks that I deploy what I like to use when I'm having that kind of conversation when I'm presenting veganism to meat eaters who are like their low-key hostile against it or just never thought about it before in most cases you're talking about people who are not anti vegan but they just have no position on it they've never thought thought these issues - before or indeed they may have some degree of hostility and resistance and I'm gonna improv us point out one aspect of Isaac's name that trade argument the argument that's now been promoted so much by ask yourself and fecund gains in the last year something I pointed out this discussion that I think was genuinely new to a roomful of people who are really experienced with hashing out the implications and inadequacies of the name that trade argument is that this argument originates from the philosophy of Peter Singer and it's actually been adapted and profoundly changed in its purpose by ask yourself aka Isaac and I think to some extent he's aware of the adaptation and to some extent he's not when Peter Singer made the argument that one ought to name the trait that justifies killing animals and that would consistently be applied to justify killing humans his implicit purpose was not what Isaac's purposes Isaac States his position as being anti stabbing he's being cute and joking that way he doesn't think there's a justification for stabbing any animal basically and that likewise he doesn't think there's any justifications gonna apply to human beings this way it's quite insidious that Peter singers purpose in deploying the same argument to believe first appeared in marginal cases Peter Singer but also in deploying this type of reasoning because Peter Singer has many orbits along these lines not necessarily precisely following this logical formula he's not trying to argue that the lives of all animals are sacrosanct and he's not trying to argue that the lives of all human beings are sacred sacrosanct Peter singers position is instead that killing animals is completely morally neutral he is in favor of killing animals because of his so-called cognitivist bias and he has spent his entire career arguing for likewise the right to kill human beings when their level of cognition drops below a certain standard and he never quite defines what that is so he does believe for example that human beings have the right to exterminate other human beings who are severely mentally now he doesn't mean someone with a very minor mental disability I don't he doesn't mean wiping out everyone who has dyslexia but when you read criticisms of his work points out that it is somewhat troubling that he refuses to in any way commit to what the moral standard is that he wants to be applied or how that would be different from his perspective for a couple terminating a pregnancy ie having an elective abortion because they know what a disability in the child yet to be that may be minor or may be major or may be somewhere between as opposed to actually exterminating human being after they've been born as a baby as a teenager as an adult or what have you so Peter singers moral position is actually in favor of slaughtering animals if you don't believe me you can google this right now and you can see all the arguments on it you can Gary you can Google Gary French Sione's name also because he's made a we're out of cataloging all these very embarrassing things that Peter Singer says in favor of killing and slaughtering animals Peter singers position is strictly speaking not vegan although it comes close enough that many people mistake Peter Singer for an ethical vegan which he is not so anyway I'm not gonna go further to summarize the philosophy of Singer but what we have right now is actually very peculiar situation in which ask yourself Isaac has adapted the moral purpose of the name that trade argument he has adapted both the allegory and the actual thing of being represented by the allegory this is originally an argument in favor of exterminating more partly exterminating mentally disabled human beings who fall below a certain standard and likewise of justifying the extermination of animals within a certain peculiar animal rights animal liberation framework I can quote Peter Singer verbatim from memory his position is that quote you know as long as the animals are treated decently really decently it is he argues ok to slaughter them with envelopes and indeed ok to eat their flesh after they've been slaughtered which is not a position any vegan would agree with and therefore it's ridiculous to confuse with ethical veganism so this isn't misstated the conversation is participated in was asking a question then well if name the trait isn't the most persuasive way to approach these problems what is and a couple of people contributed from their experience how they actually approach media is how they actually you know basically try to broach this topic of conversation so I heard other people's suggestions and I said look if I can put in mine from experience one of the ways I first try to get people to think about veganism is in terms of what I call scale and Futurity so when I was living in the island of Taiwan should very peculiar contacts to be preaching veganism and I would sign up to ask people for exam look this is a pretty small island we have more than 30 million people living on this island if all 30 million people eat pork every day how many pigs do you think have to live on on this same small island to feed those 30 million people so this is the question of scale now most of the time people speak to would just respond since they'd never thought about it before and at the time I looked up the statistic I knew approximately how many million pigs they were now so let's say it was 100 million pigs it's like well guess what it's like a four to one ratio or something we have more than a hundred million pigs sharing the same island all those pigs they eat food every day right they drink water every day they generate feces in plain language they have to poo every day and that poos got to go somewhere does it go into a sewage system no it goes into a river right so on this island today how many rivers still have unpolluted water that's safe to drink straight out of the river I think the answer is zero right so talking in this way about questions of scale and then shifting to implicitly questions of sustainability in talking about the future now I do that for many reasons including the fact that I don't want to tackle traditional values I don't want to tackle what your grandmother taught you about eating meat or how meaningful it is in Christian Jewish or Muslim tradition or whatever it is one thought with the future is say so when we're looking to the future tell you about these 30 million people on this small island with a hundred million pigs how long how long do you think it's gonna go on for the forest is already gone we can't drink the water in the rivers about 90% of this island you can't breathe the air so air pollution in Taiwan is terrible you know this situation so you think it's gonna go on for a hundred years do you think this is gonna go on for a thousand years do you think five hundred years from now we're gonna have 30 million people keeping alive a hundred million pigs so they can eat food that we was unhealthy unnecessary and has all these consequences now again this is talking about opening the subject with somebody who hasn't thought about it probably is loki hostel the idea but it's actually isn't opening the topic in a way that's about your plate your health your diet your moral character the name that trade argument that Isaac presents makes this very precisely about whether or not you look in the mirror and think of yourself as a moral or an amoral human being he very quickly gets into allegations of you know slave ownership and rape asking questions are you morally equivalent to a rapist and so on and I realized he's doing this partly just to create you know what he thinks of as entertaining videos on the internet but this is obviously a very hostile kind of productive way to actually carry out outreach and public education on veganism um and now the conversation may eventually go there I mean I think that is something if somebody is really interested they're asking you about the ethical property maybe you do get on to talking about you know these kinds of parallelism but talking about the future is very different from talking about the history of slavery or history in any category it's the sense of Futurity and the sense of scale in a sense this alienates the discussion from the close confines of me and my moral character the food on my plate etc and gets us thinking from a bird's-eye view or even a satellite view about the whole landscape the whole island the whole country the whole planet and the long-term consequences of what now seems like a trivial short-term sensory indulgence the idea that you know what you eat for lunch is really so many people or so important compared to this you know tremendous sense of moment and consequence all right anyway the next question that was asked in this discussion I just participated on concerned the question of well what do you do then when people want to move on to the ethical question you know even if you open this way or that way because there were other suggestions from other the discussion or how to open the conversation what then if if their specific interest the person who talked to you where they want to press on to the direction they take is to talk about the ethics wouldn't you then turn to to name that trade as an argument wouldn't that be useful and you know various people said no and offered their their approach and after they spoke I said oh I'd also also to mention what what direction I take it in there and I the Lord of the discussion was about the nature of virtue and obligation and a lot of the interest was in consistency because Isaac's approach is all about moral consistency and saying to people well you you must desire to be consistent if you don't want to be consistent then you're as bad as an ax-murderer sort of thing and then base building or consistency so I pointed out in contrast to this that my own approach is not built on an appeal to consistency in this way but is instead I think can be called and appealed egoism you'll see what I mean in the following sense and when I say egoism you're gonna see I don't mean weight loss or lift or being more beautiful or being more powerful with this sort of thing an argument I've made several times in this channel that I made many times face to face with people in real life is to ask people well ethically morally or otherwise why do you refuse to use cocaine there are negative consequences to using cocaine yes there are side effects there were health effects there are even ecological and political effects you know to using cocaine but I think it bought them for most people the reason why they don't use cocaine is that they don't want to be the sort of person who uses cocaine people refuse to smoke crack because they don't want to be a crackhead you know there really is a sense in which I can say or I can I can concede the point that someone may say to me well if you eat one hamburger today that doesn't have this immediate effect on ecology this doesn't have this immediate effect in the ecology in front of me on the economy it doesn't have this immediate effect on the lives and deaths of animals ie the particular was involved are still going to be slaughtered whether or not one person buys one one hamburger and in the same sense people can rationalize and make excuses for using cocaine even whether it's oh and I should say also sorry if somebody eats a hamburger they're not going to have an immediate push-button effect whereby eating one hamburger they're gonna have one heart attack or they're gonna eat a hamburger and they're gonna have cancer there isn't some kind of direct they're not even with gaining weight people can eat hamburgers and stay skinny there are lots of people to do and brag about on the internet you know there isn't going to be this kind of direct cause-and-effect relationship and the same way you can't really argue persuasively to someone that if they use cocaine once or once a year that it's going to have this disastrous impact of their life in terms of health in terms of mental alacrity even in terms of the the damage done of the tissue in their nose which is horrible for cocaine cocaine has all kinds of terrible folks don't get me wrong but they won't have this direct visible cause-and-effect reaction that perhaps we'd like to be able to appeal to in making this kind of argument the reality is at bottom in your heart of hearts when you look in the mirror the fundamental reason why you never use cocaine not just not why you're not an addict but why you wouldn't even use it occasionally why you wouldn't use it once in a while or a couple of times a year is that you do not want to be that sort of person this is a question of who you want to be who you aspire to be not lifestyle but identity and that is why I say this is an argument from egoism or a document for egoism it's an egoistic argument rather than one based on on consistency mm I think you could logically find fault with that that it's not the case that people refuse to commit murder because they don't want to be a murderer but I think when we're talking about the discipline of never eating meat in contrast to just eating less meat and cutters to being an inconsistent person who cares about the animals to some extent but still eats free-range meat is on their terms of making the commitment and not being a reduce Italian but to being an absolute vegan I think that that question of identity and egoism is is a very fundamental part of it and we normally express that more in terms of passion in terms of a positive aspiration to make the world a better place but yes at bar there is a question of ego and identity of taking pride in saying no I'm the kind of person who doesn't compromise I'm the kind of person who never dabbles in this stuff who never touches cocaine who never touches pork who never touches beef whatever it may be I'm making a further commitment and I think all of us feel it even if it becomes something we're so accustomed to that we can sometimes forget that we're vegan that once you get used to the discipline of living as a vegan it's it's not such a burden at all it feels light on your shoulders because you've got the discipline of of living that way that's still yes fundamentally there is an element if you go there and I think it's honest for both parties to jump jump to that conclusion and to talk about that because ultimately what you're inviting this person to do is take that next step and make that same commitment themselves [Laughter] bonus yen