Vaush vs. Vegan Gains: the appeal to futility fallacy (and veganism)

this is October it's the first day of
the year when it has been cool enough for me to wear a scarf indoors the first two minutes of this video are gonna feel like the longest two minutes of your life but we've got more than two hours of really low-quality debate discussion from vegan gains at vows you know this is trimming it down to what I feel is the crux of the argument you may notice that the number three appears in the caption to this argument that's because I feel this is really the third step in vouches reasoning on this issue even though this part is presented first in the order of the video where it originally occurs I believe that people shouldn't be held responsible for their consumptive decision-making in the same way that I wouldn't impugn you for wearing clothing made by slaves I wouldn't have you impugn me morally for eating the corpses of animals I always think it's a good thing to go vegan it's always better to do so this makes you a better person I just don't think it's morally obligatory you're saying that you don't believe somebody should be responsible for their consumption like their economic choices because we buy [ __ ] all the time that's made the silicon farms by slaves in Africa plastic made in like you know factory farms the blue theour like that sort of thing but we don't impugn each other for it ok so if you were to so you know there's pedophiles right who buy child pornography would you say they should not be held responsible for doing that yes really even though they're directly supporting child rape yeah I think that's it's it's hypocritical if I because I bought my computer and the silicon in it was farmed in Africa by slaves if I can do that and that's Lea thin no-one's gonna call me out in my [ __ ] and yeah I have to be consistent in that respect ok look I think there's levels to this so I wouldn't equate buying a computer to buying child pornography the total amount of suffering that goes into the the child slaves that might not like the silicon in Africa you know in terms of me support in that industry I mean that's pretty bad and I didn't have to buy a computer this big I could have bought something smaller I could have bought a little Chromebook um you know and I'm wonder how many more hours slaves had to mine up that silicon to justify me being able to own this well it's not silicon it's Anna's insulate coltan clothing I wear put together by slave shop work or sweatshop worker sorry glasses like it like everything and and if you wanted to step beyond the slavery element like all of the stuff that I buy it goes towards corporations so I feel there are just two clarifications to make here and I choose to say clarifications rather than counter arguments the first is that yes questions of what you consume do matter in terms of virtue ethics he invokes the idea of virtue ethics here specifically as if it backs position and then secondly we have to get in a little bit to that this idea of the appeal the futility fallacy so virtue ethics is really an approach to ethics that puts the subjective experience front and center we were just discussing utilitarian ethics on this channel and very often utilitarians want to be a bit slippery and evasive when they talk about good and benefit and pleasure well well benefit for whom pleasure for whom and then they maybe have like John Stuart Mill himself have some abstract idea of all of humanity or the average of all of humanity what the average man would enjoy the pleasure of not any particular person but what what an idealized rational person should enjoy is the true pleasure and the pleasure of the greatest number of people say no no virtue ethics deals with questions of you and me on a personal subjective scale in a much more immediate way and therefore it is more salient to this kind of question about consumption choices you know I'm often referred to as being an example of virtue ethicist because I ask people question you know well weather or something is right or wrong very often can be exploitative in terms of reflecting on what kind of person do you aspire to be do you want to be the kind of person who stays at home all day and plays video games or do you want to be the kind of person who's trying to make the world a better place and whatever misadventures that may bring you into these kinds of questions putting this subjective experience and subjective moral character front and center asking directly what is good for you as a unique individual those are the distinctive traits of a virtue ethicists approach to ethical questions so why would he suggest that in terms of virtue ethics virtue ethics specifically what we consume and what we buy you know that we shouldn't be judged for it we shouldn't be imputed these choices from a virtue ethicist perspective if you have a choice between buying a basket a hand-woven basket that you know to be made by slaves and you have the choice of buying a hand-woven basket that's made by free enterprising individuals who own their own small company that's a mom-and-pop operation or something they have one employee who's the secretary I don't know whatever the situation people living in a democracy where they have the right to vote in freedom of speech and they're not slaves and they won't these baskets and you have the choice between these two things it's very easy for a virtue ethicist to address this and say well look what kind of person do you want to be do you want to be the kind of person who values human rights and liberties so little that your indifference to this you know this question of who made your baskets you know are wouldn't you rather be the kind of person who has a preference for who chooses to chooses to buy one type of basket and refuses to buy another so virtue ethics doesn't get him out of this it doesn't help his position in whatsoever I don't know why he well he folks that term um he could have just as easily mentioned Kantian ethics or kind of any other name off the bookshelf of you know you academic philosophy but for whatever reason that's that that's piece of jargon he rolled out here yeah the other problem as much foreshadowed already here is of the appeal to futility fallacy now I've called this part three of his argument because he's built this on to earlier stages of what I would call typical 21st century watered-down communism I think those two stages are worth addressing in a separate video to be uploaded soon probably without the scarf appeal the futility fallacy face to face with people it has to be taken seriously I mean on paper or on a chalkboard an academic setting it may seem ridiculous but on a human level it can be very real people can struggle with their own sense of futility you know why should I bother taking a bus rather than driving a car what what difference does my contribution Dec logical problems know why should I bother putting the glass containers in the recycling bowl instead of putting the glass containers in the garbage this kind of thing people struggle with a sense of futility over relatively trivial decisions and also relatively enormous and profound ones I know someone through the internet we're not close friends but another vegan activist and her situation in life is that she became committed to taking care of chickens I think these are almost entirely chickens that have been rescued from factories or that have been thrown away and discarded by you know factory farms by slaughterhouses and she in effect is spending all of her time and energy caring for these chickens dealing with veterinarians I mean involves blood and mucus it's a lot of hands on horrible work trying to give these chickens a decent quality of life for however many months or years they have after being rescued from a slaughterhouse and before dying of natural causes on her on her farm and of course then there's fundraising and there's dealing with other kind of volunteers and employees and dealing with other vegan activist and she is very much aware that she could be doing something better with her time and effort I mean she is really burdened by the crippling depression awareness of the futility of this exercise she knows how many million chickens are being tortured to death every day and how many billion are living in you know factory farm conditions all around the world the numbers are absolutely staggering so what is the meaning of her devoting her life to helping these few dozen chickens I don't know if she has a few hundred now I don't know the numbers sorry but you know but it consumes her life entirely it snuffs out her potential to make a pause the difference in the world in any other way I think also it's you know eliminated her ability to have any hobbies or friends I mean just the location of being out in a remote place on this farm but it's obviously eliminated her ability even to struggle for a better future for the vegan movement through other methods like PCRM PCRM Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine so again you know this thought experiment you can extend it pretty easily is it futile for her to spend all her time caring for these chickens what if the doctors and scientists at PCRM told you that they were just going to give up all of their current activities lobbying government challenging corporations challenging false advertising advancing medical science you know promulgating these new studies on the health effects all the things they do to advance veganism if PCRM said you know what we're gonna cancel all that we're gonna take our time and money and we're gonna spend it sitting on a farm taking care of a few dozen chickens we're gonna spend all our time caring for trying to give a decent quality of life to these chickens that have been rescued from a factory farm while millions of others died in the factory from within one human lifetime within the scope of a few years futility is real appeals to futility matter people have to reflect on what they're doing with their own lives their sacrifices and ask is this meaningful and sure in terms of virtue ethics what kind of person do I want to be Who am I going to become if I devote all my time and energy to take care of these chickens Who am I going to be after five years and you know obviously in my own life I've loved that okay I went to Cambodia seeking a combination of humanitarian work and you know volunteerism and research and scholarship and learning languages and studying the politics in history okay I went to Cambodia with the well after a couple years in Cambodia you know what kind of person you're gonna be where is this leading you so very hard questions tag by the way I completely regret going to Cambodia Laos I have more mixed feelings about but Cambodia yeah Cambodia was the wrong was the wrong move anyway humanitarian work can be enriching it can be educational for you it can leave you a better person than you were before you engage in that work and it can leave you an embittered ruin shell with a man okay all right so look appeal the futility is real but it's something we have to deal with sincerely and earnestly with people on a one-to-one basis you can't just dismiss it as a logical fallacy however in this case what vouch is doing is presenting you with the argument that out of his crypto communist background he presumes all all factory labor all production of any product slavery or non slavery although this in a separate video whether its wage labor or actually compulsory labor like like prison labor whether it's in China or in the United States of America he regards all of it as evil and as evil to such an extent that he doesn't see there he doesn't see any point whatsoever in the individual distinguishing even between we have this absurd example even between the difference being a computer and buying child pornography he doesn't see any moral difference in these things he doesn't see any difference between buying soybeans and buying the flesh of a dead cow that was fed soybeans all its life to produce that flesh he's not willing to concede an ethical difference because he sees any choice to consume anything as evil that is a classical classical appeal to futility fallacy if you drive a car you must kill some insects you prop let's say hypothetically you must kill some birds eventually you're going to hit a blue jay or something drive your car down the highway does that mean you shouldn't care in the least whether or not you hit a human being whether you hit an elk whether or not you hit a deer whether don't you hit a rabbit does it mean you shouldn't even bother to make an effort to avoid hitting a rabbit if a rabbit is going across the road when you're driving a car does it mean there are no measurable consequences that there's no even measurable difference between hitting a human being and hitting an insect or hitting a rabbit the fact that there's some evil that there's some harm involved in driving a car no matter what does not make the other choices meaningless it doesn't make them meaningless in terms of virtue ethics there was the type of person I want to be like hey I want to be the kind of person who takes responsibility and drives in a responsible way and avoids hitting that old woman and avoids hitting the elk and avoids hitting the rabbit even though I know there may be tiny creatures I'm killing I may be driving over snails without even realizing it without perceiving them nevertheless I want to take responsibility I want to make the meaningful choices I can make in a meaningful way while being cognizant of the choices I can't make the things I can't control the things that are beyond my control it's an absolutely classic appeal the futility fallacy he's engaging in here and if he's serious about virtue ethics then all that this leads him to do is reflect on the fact that he is morally a bad person because he's already conceded the point he's already recognized a morally better person would make that choice would make that commitment he just conceived the fact that he's not the person who's couldn't do that all right this not really a lot left there to refute or debate so as I say I can only call this a clarification of his argument I mean really people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that my name is I don't know you