Vegan vs. Vegan: the online debating club fad (vs. "Ask Yourself").
11 April 2017 [link youtube]
Two of my earlier videos are mentioned, and here are the links:
(1) Veganism: Motivational Methods for Vegan Advocacy, by Casey T. Taft, Book Review. https://youtu.be/c59ckXsUcgI
(2) Veganism: Don't Debate the Details. (Vegan Artichoke Response) https://youtu.be/05V_v2Qd8G0
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I've seen different fashions come and go
within this YouTube vagin demi-monde maybe we're now going to see a fashion lasts for some time of invoking the name of reason with a capital R of getting out these notions of strictly formal logic and beating meat-eaters over them maybe that's going to be involved maybe a few people are going to get Fame notoriety and money at a YouTube and patreon by doing exactly that and maybe cuz you know maybe it's going to be entertaining to the audience to see vegans beating meat-eaters over the head with these ideas of logic it's saddening for me to see that it's saddening because I feel that all the issues were dealing with here or in a category of things that are hard to evaluate much less like the science of economics and more like the science of education what is effective activism this is like asking what is effective art we're not going to be able to measure it I mean what is progress you can't measure progress with the ruler change is an objective fact but progress is an ideology all right I was sitting in a juice juice shop the other day where they take fresh fruit oranges mangoes bananas they take ten cents where the fresh fruits put into a machine grinding into a juice and then sell it for two dollars and you can measure the transaction down to a tenth of a cent every element of that right the value of the machine that's used to do it the cost of the electricity the cost to replace that machine when it's worn out the cost of the plastic cup it's put into the value of the labor the cost of wages e every element of that formula can be worked out and it's beautiful the science of economics in that sense it gives you this thrilling feeling that the world is a logical rational machine you know that unseen cogs and gears behind reality around us are perfectly in tune okay you look at the job I do by contrast is it rational to pay a Canadian to fly on an airplane ticket around the world to this remote part of China to stand in the classroom with 40 students and teach them how to speak English 40 students in a university context what do the outcomes justify that cost you know the ochem justify my salary can I measure the progress my students are making or can I prove that there's really something special about them hearing a lecture for me as opposed to someone born and raised in China you know the fact that you can't measure it doesn't mean that it's not worth researching worth investigating but we're really in this category of what is effective art and what is effective education if we're seriously going to discuss comparing one argument to another and saying is this early it's not a good argument for veganism at that level i find the discussions a bit bizarre but that is what some people want to do don't say well this argument is rational in this argument not who we all got to watch yourselves carefully here guys because it's very easy to invoke the name of reason well actually being unreasonable okay and that is the main impression that these debates if you can even call them debates that I see on youtube lately have on me they simply convince me that these people are not interested in being reasonable and being reasonable is a tremendously important virtue when you're sitting down and talking with people about veganism and being reasonable as a virtue this is not something I can quote I can turn into a formal methodology it's not saying I can draw up a flowchart for it's not something i can easily preach or teach or publish a book about you know and I would encourage people to go back and watch the video i did some weeks ago book review of a seat at kc taft PhD comes of a background in psychology he's trying to make a formula he's trying to make a methodology of how to effectively preach teach educate people about veganism i feel the book is a failure but i think the failure is worth reflecting on it's worth learning from why it failed it's not wrong to care about logic it's not wrong to care about being rational nobody is going to tell you that being irrational is better than being rational or that being illogical is better than being logical but when you're sitting down with somebody face-to-face and they're telling you that they grew up on a farm and they remember the first time their father you know slit a pig's throat in front of them and how they felt about it they remember what it was like the first time they went fishing and watching a fish get clubbed on the head you know as it's thrashing around and suffocating you know what is the role of logic and reason in these discussions because that is bizarrely you know the locus for this debate is not talking about effective activism organization a larger scale but effective argumentation there's another earlier video I can refer back to you that has artichoke in the title where I say you know don't don't debate the details of another video I'll give the link to both those well this one that's been quite a while ago where I talk with the problem of eating's getting burnt out and frustrated and emotional exhausted because many vegans go around every time this kind of debate comes up on Facebook or in the workplace or in their family they end up trying to engage in these things in a way that I think is counterproductive both of the meat-eaters and for the vegans yes now you can you can insist on these rules of formal logic and snub people and reproach them for being guilty of logical fallacies or you know you could you could practice some other virtues their other virtues out there for you to choose between you could practice saying Socratic method you could just try to really empathize with not just the argument of presenting but why they're presenting it what are the motivations behind why they're presenting this argument even if the argument is irrational I mean if their argument is that their grandparents eat me therefore they need how can it possibly advance that conversation how could it be of real educational value she just say to them oh well that's an appeal to tradition fallacy they've just told you that their relationship with their grandparents is deeply meaningful to them and you've told them it's it's an appeal to tradition fallacy well that's fallacious okay end of conversation all right let's let's put into a human face on it I used to be studying Korean a jib way so if I meet someone and they're struggling very hard to continue the tradition of fur trapping and hunting because their grandparents did it that they're going out to the the trapline in the forest and killing and eating moose and beaver because they say that's deeply meaningful because that's their relationship with their grandparents and their ancestors you can say that you can throw it in their face that this is a logical fallacy where do you think that that conversation is going and the other more bizarre thing is and what I see is then the use of this really harsh castigating counter productive use of reason with a capital R that is completely unreasonable being used within veganism so that basically one vegan can bully another and shut down another and what have you I mean this is the problem too even the example I used to open this of looking at the fruit juice shop and how it works the economics of taking ten cents worth of fruit and turning into two dollars of the juice that already is an analysis so it's positive and productive right whether we're looking at education or economics right I don't see these logical categories used in an analytical way they're not being used in a productive analysis to not being used for research they're being used just a bully and intimidate other p whether it's vegans bullying meat eaters or vegans bullying other vegans and all it does is convince me that you are being unreasonable that you are not someone I can organize the movement with that you are not someone I can participate with collaborate with whether it's on a YouTube video or it's ultimately incorporating a charity and doing a fundraiser and trying to make something happen veganism as a formal political movement which is the future I'm really fundamentally concerned about here not so much who called who stupid or who called him fat in the last week on I'm vegan YouTube um look a lot of these guys to meet you know this kid ask yourself as the honesty to say that he's got a minimum wage job in a call center and what he really wants is to come on YouTube and make enough money from YouTube and patreon that he can quit his job okay my heart goes out to him that's real that's keeping it real and he already makes more money than I do on patreon so good luck to them you know maybe we'll work out and maybe overall in the next ten years maybe he's going to do something really positive for future vegan movement and that's great but kid in your interaction with me vegan to vegan and this is YouTube vegan to YouTube begin the Canadian youtube vid we have a lot in common what we're both Canadian atheists via you couldn't you make a list of how much we've got in common okay the effect of your approach on me is only to alienate me and convince me that you're an irrational person to your person who is not interested in being reasonable and that is while you're invoking the name of reason with a capital R and the name of logic with a capital L so even if that's just one anecdote about what the outcomes of your method are I'd encourage you to take that anecdote seriously because in principle on this channel I have all kinds of vegans here on casts and doing videos of me and stuff just to promote them just because they're vegan and they offer a different perspective I mean I promoted the hell out of American unicorn she was the only Mormon the vegan as another guy talked into the day is a Muslim vegan be addressed at another channel and get his perspective you know he can be vegans who disagree with me in a fundamental way but the interest in having a channel killer said so you went from being someone who I would have been happy to welcome on this channel for that reason and somewhere I might have had some glimmer of hope than the next five years of the next 50 years we're going to find ourselves working together in Canada as part of the same vegan movement and now you're somebody where if I get an email from you it's going into the spam folder okay that's the effect that on me and you're promoting this method this methodology as if it is the best way to engage with meat eaters right all i can say is i think you're one hundred and ten percent wrong okay and there are other methods out there Socratic method is not logical all right it's not there's nothing logical about directional I guess is another question but to say look even if you're starting off of the awareness the other person is wrong morally wrong ethically wrong logically wrong to say hey I'm I'm not in it to win it I think I minute understand where this person is coming from I'm going to suspend my disbelief I'm going to pretend ignorance for long enough that when I engage that the person across the table yeah you know what the appeal to tradition fallacy isn't it more meaningful for me to try to learn what tradition means to them why it's shaping their behavior and then for me to have whatever kind of influence I can have in that argument I mean the response to that when somebody tells you they grew up on a farm a very often my responses oh I have memories of growing up on our farm too is that a logical response is that is that a repost is that a rebuttal it's just human being is coming together and with some level of decency sharing information contrasting their perspectives and learning from one another Arians and if you can't do that and if you can't do that vegan the vegan someone who shares as much in common with you in terms of values objectives even methods as me I think you do have a problem and again if it's fashionable and it makes money and it gets viewers to some extent all I can say is I'm happy for you but there's another extent to which i can come on here and tell you this whole methodology beating meat-eaters over the head with formal logic and beating your fellow vegans over the head with formal logic at best it makes you a buffoon and at worst i think it makes people who could be at least your colleagues into your enemies
within this YouTube vagin demi-monde maybe we're now going to see a fashion lasts for some time of invoking the name of reason with a capital R of getting out these notions of strictly formal logic and beating meat-eaters over them maybe that's going to be involved maybe a few people are going to get Fame notoriety and money at a YouTube and patreon by doing exactly that and maybe cuz you know maybe it's going to be entertaining to the audience to see vegans beating meat-eaters over the head with these ideas of logic it's saddening for me to see that it's saddening because I feel that all the issues were dealing with here or in a category of things that are hard to evaluate much less like the science of economics and more like the science of education what is effective activism this is like asking what is effective art we're not going to be able to measure it I mean what is progress you can't measure progress with the ruler change is an objective fact but progress is an ideology all right I was sitting in a juice juice shop the other day where they take fresh fruit oranges mangoes bananas they take ten cents where the fresh fruits put into a machine grinding into a juice and then sell it for two dollars and you can measure the transaction down to a tenth of a cent every element of that right the value of the machine that's used to do it the cost of the electricity the cost to replace that machine when it's worn out the cost of the plastic cup it's put into the value of the labor the cost of wages e every element of that formula can be worked out and it's beautiful the science of economics in that sense it gives you this thrilling feeling that the world is a logical rational machine you know that unseen cogs and gears behind reality around us are perfectly in tune okay you look at the job I do by contrast is it rational to pay a Canadian to fly on an airplane ticket around the world to this remote part of China to stand in the classroom with 40 students and teach them how to speak English 40 students in a university context what do the outcomes justify that cost you know the ochem justify my salary can I measure the progress my students are making or can I prove that there's really something special about them hearing a lecture for me as opposed to someone born and raised in China you know the fact that you can't measure it doesn't mean that it's not worth researching worth investigating but we're really in this category of what is effective art and what is effective education if we're seriously going to discuss comparing one argument to another and saying is this early it's not a good argument for veganism at that level i find the discussions a bit bizarre but that is what some people want to do don't say well this argument is rational in this argument not who we all got to watch yourselves carefully here guys because it's very easy to invoke the name of reason well actually being unreasonable okay and that is the main impression that these debates if you can even call them debates that I see on youtube lately have on me they simply convince me that these people are not interested in being reasonable and being reasonable is a tremendously important virtue when you're sitting down and talking with people about veganism and being reasonable as a virtue this is not something I can quote I can turn into a formal methodology it's not saying I can draw up a flowchart for it's not something i can easily preach or teach or publish a book about you know and I would encourage people to go back and watch the video i did some weeks ago book review of a seat at kc taft PhD comes of a background in psychology he's trying to make a formula he's trying to make a methodology of how to effectively preach teach educate people about veganism i feel the book is a failure but i think the failure is worth reflecting on it's worth learning from why it failed it's not wrong to care about logic it's not wrong to care about being rational nobody is going to tell you that being irrational is better than being rational or that being illogical is better than being logical but when you're sitting down with somebody face-to-face and they're telling you that they grew up on a farm and they remember the first time their father you know slit a pig's throat in front of them and how they felt about it they remember what it was like the first time they went fishing and watching a fish get clubbed on the head you know as it's thrashing around and suffocating you know what is the role of logic and reason in these discussions because that is bizarrely you know the locus for this debate is not talking about effective activism organization a larger scale but effective argumentation there's another earlier video I can refer back to you that has artichoke in the title where I say you know don't don't debate the details of another video I'll give the link to both those well this one that's been quite a while ago where I talk with the problem of eating's getting burnt out and frustrated and emotional exhausted because many vegans go around every time this kind of debate comes up on Facebook or in the workplace or in their family they end up trying to engage in these things in a way that I think is counterproductive both of the meat-eaters and for the vegans yes now you can you can insist on these rules of formal logic and snub people and reproach them for being guilty of logical fallacies or you know you could you could practice some other virtues their other virtues out there for you to choose between you could practice saying Socratic method you could just try to really empathize with not just the argument of presenting but why they're presenting it what are the motivations behind why they're presenting this argument even if the argument is irrational I mean if their argument is that their grandparents eat me therefore they need how can it possibly advance that conversation how could it be of real educational value she just say to them oh well that's an appeal to tradition fallacy they've just told you that their relationship with their grandparents is deeply meaningful to them and you've told them it's it's an appeal to tradition fallacy well that's fallacious okay end of conversation all right let's let's put into a human face on it I used to be studying Korean a jib way so if I meet someone and they're struggling very hard to continue the tradition of fur trapping and hunting because their grandparents did it that they're going out to the the trapline in the forest and killing and eating moose and beaver because they say that's deeply meaningful because that's their relationship with their grandparents and their ancestors you can say that you can throw it in their face that this is a logical fallacy where do you think that that conversation is going and the other more bizarre thing is and what I see is then the use of this really harsh castigating counter productive use of reason with a capital R that is completely unreasonable being used within veganism so that basically one vegan can bully another and shut down another and what have you I mean this is the problem too even the example I used to open this of looking at the fruit juice shop and how it works the economics of taking ten cents worth of fruit and turning into two dollars of the juice that already is an analysis so it's positive and productive right whether we're looking at education or economics right I don't see these logical categories used in an analytical way they're not being used in a productive analysis to not being used for research they're being used just a bully and intimidate other p whether it's vegans bullying meat eaters or vegans bullying other vegans and all it does is convince me that you are being unreasonable that you are not someone I can organize the movement with that you are not someone I can participate with collaborate with whether it's on a YouTube video or it's ultimately incorporating a charity and doing a fundraiser and trying to make something happen veganism as a formal political movement which is the future I'm really fundamentally concerned about here not so much who called who stupid or who called him fat in the last week on I'm vegan YouTube um look a lot of these guys to meet you know this kid ask yourself as the honesty to say that he's got a minimum wage job in a call center and what he really wants is to come on YouTube and make enough money from YouTube and patreon that he can quit his job okay my heart goes out to him that's real that's keeping it real and he already makes more money than I do on patreon so good luck to them you know maybe we'll work out and maybe overall in the next ten years maybe he's going to do something really positive for future vegan movement and that's great but kid in your interaction with me vegan to vegan and this is YouTube vegan to YouTube begin the Canadian youtube vid we have a lot in common what we're both Canadian atheists via you couldn't you make a list of how much we've got in common okay the effect of your approach on me is only to alienate me and convince me that you're an irrational person to your person who is not interested in being reasonable and that is while you're invoking the name of reason with a capital R and the name of logic with a capital L so even if that's just one anecdote about what the outcomes of your method are I'd encourage you to take that anecdote seriously because in principle on this channel I have all kinds of vegans here on casts and doing videos of me and stuff just to promote them just because they're vegan and they offer a different perspective I mean I promoted the hell out of American unicorn she was the only Mormon the vegan as another guy talked into the day is a Muslim vegan be addressed at another channel and get his perspective you know he can be vegans who disagree with me in a fundamental way but the interest in having a channel killer said so you went from being someone who I would have been happy to welcome on this channel for that reason and somewhere I might have had some glimmer of hope than the next five years of the next 50 years we're going to find ourselves working together in Canada as part of the same vegan movement and now you're somebody where if I get an email from you it's going into the spam folder okay that's the effect that on me and you're promoting this method this methodology as if it is the best way to engage with meat eaters right all i can say is i think you're one hundred and ten percent wrong okay and there are other methods out there Socratic method is not logical all right it's not there's nothing logical about directional I guess is another question but to say look even if you're starting off of the awareness the other person is wrong morally wrong ethically wrong logically wrong to say hey I'm I'm not in it to win it I think I minute understand where this person is coming from I'm going to suspend my disbelief I'm going to pretend ignorance for long enough that when I engage that the person across the table yeah you know what the appeal to tradition fallacy isn't it more meaningful for me to try to learn what tradition means to them why it's shaping their behavior and then for me to have whatever kind of influence I can have in that argument I mean the response to that when somebody tells you they grew up on a farm a very often my responses oh I have memories of growing up on our farm too is that a logical response is that is that a repost is that a rebuttal it's just human being is coming together and with some level of decency sharing information contrasting their perspectives and learning from one another Arians and if you can't do that and if you can't do that vegan the vegan someone who shares as much in common with you in terms of values objectives even methods as me I think you do have a problem and again if it's fashionable and it makes money and it gets viewers to some extent all I can say is I'm happy for you but there's another extent to which i can come on here and tell you this whole methodology beating meat-eaters over the head with formal logic and beating your fellow vegans over the head with formal logic at best it makes you a buffoon and at worst i think it makes people who could be at least your colleagues into your enemies