Vegan Mind Tricks: Sam Harris's "Net Positive" Argument vs. Ask Yourself.

this is now the dawn of October 2018
early October um I'm talking about an issue that for me has been on my mind for quite some time I was partly delayed in making this video just due to illness partly because we have so much on our plate but I had the audio recording of a conversation between Isaac ask yourself and Sam Harris shared with me before it turned up on YouTube before it turned up on the Internet at large so I didn't way back then two weeks ago or something I was already planning to make this video and now lo and behold all this time has gone past with me having to remove snot from my head by means of a handkerchief and I'm finally back at my desk recording videos I said I think I ran a high school I think I was I think it was at least ten months without any illness whatsoever I haven't been sick since I left China but I'm neither immune nor immutable to worldly disease so sooner or later these things catch up with you in my case I'm glad to say it was later rather than sooner okay so part of the argument between sam harris and isaac revolved around this concept of life itself being a net positive now in an earlier video that I think is fully one hour long my girlfriend and I were both on the microphone simultaneously and we both kind of rift and reflected on the absurdity of this a little bit I'm not gonna repeat what I said there um and I'm also not gonna repeat Isaac's argument on this which is actually quite similar to what we recorded those things separately without knowing about what each other said but he made some similar comments of what the fundamental absurdity of applying this notion of a net positive to animals we would never think in that way about about human beings but I want to actually take this video in a very different direction I think that the hypothetical question of how we would write legislation on an issue often disciplines the discussion and debate in a very useful way even when or especially when the legislation you're talking writing is impossible and impractical so to give you an example um I used to be involved in Buddhism Buddhism as a religion but a scholarship I studied the languages in history and politics I wrote essays about that stuff but I also did meet and speak with Buddhist monks face to face and it was quite peculiar the contrast between the ethical issues Buddhist monks wanted to debate amongst themselves Buddhist monks and Buddhist scholars say the kind of people who are supposed to be kind of in the know kind of in the separate elite world um in contrast to what Buddhist laypeople were interested in the parishioners if you like so you know the parishioners would have one set of kind of ethical questions and demands and then when you were in the more rarefied and secluded setting you got to see by contrast what it was but a smoked eye but so some of this stuff has come up on the video before you actually got a lot of questions about living with wild animals in the jungle many of the Buddhist monks prided themselves on going out and living in a living in a cave in the middle of the jungle and then when you live in the cave guess what there were pythons and bears so you know some of that was quite a dread for me unexpected like you know you sit down have this conversation with people I'm doing all this research on history and languages and politics I don't think I'm gonna hear a monologue about the difficulty of handling you know pythons and bears coming into your cave in the middle of the jungle you just got some interesting anecdotes and perspective on life but me very often there'd be detailed in-depth discussions about the ethically correct thing to do when a parishioner asked your advice about medical treatment for an elderly relative so you know you'd have multiple Buddhist monks in the room with some Buddhist scholars and they want to be talking about people being taken off life support people being given this medication or that medication and so on and believe it or not this concern does go back you know approximately 2500 years in the ancient Pal we can and we do have discussions about the ethics and morality and - what sort of advice but a smoke shouldn't shouldn't give and also just from a real-world pragmatic point of view these monks were having to save themselves at least in this private situation they don't feel they have any of the medical expertise necessary to give that kind of advice but remember one discussion that came up repeatedly at that time the internet was a little bit more of a new thing than it is today was the relationship between Buddhist ethics and piracy here meaning software piracy and intellectual property rights and it was quite peculiar from my perspective that the Buddhist monks occupied a variety of extreme contrasting positions on this some took the view that intellectual property doesn't exist that it is not theft to make a copy of a book that doesn't steal the original book so whether that's like a photocopy or via the internet that you're producing multiple copies of the same thing that nothing is being stolen and nothing's being subtracted etc and then on the other side of the bait you could get monks who would put their finger down on the actual ancient writ of Scripture and say no no in the original Pali in the ancient language it doesn't say anything about stealing its forbidding you to take what is not given you know and looking at questions of intellectual property and what having this line now this whole conversation is suddenly disciplined and brought into focus and made productive and we avoid wasting a lot of time when we just refer it to a question of legislation now in some cases that can be done in sincerely you can kind of shut down a productive and worthwhile conversation but I think in many cases whether this is done cynically or sincerely it's really useful to refer the principle being proposed hypothetical legislation to highlight the extent to which this discourse has gotten detached from reality so I can you have a bunch of Buddhist monks who are capable of debating this topic ad infinitum oh the relative merits of property law and the interpretation of ancient scripture in the Internet era as applied to you know mostly the books that were interested in pirating were you know ancient Buddhist scriptures kind of bizarre situation Buddhist monks downloading copies of you know 2,000 year old texts that they can't get ahold of you know on paper at a library what have you interesting situation um say look you know do you really think there's a rule here that could be applied to other people prescriptively do you really think this could possibly be legislated and then all of a sudden what may seem like erudite points being scored in this debate suddenly seem quite ridiculous so in this same way for some years now Sam Harris I know it's Coulomb practical philosopher sam Harris political philosopher sam Harris has been toting this notion of a net positive value being ascribed to the life of an animal and his point is that he thinks it would be permissible to eat the flesh of an animal if their life was in contrast to what he perceives as a net negative in the world's current system of factory farming if this animals life was instead a net positive now again Sam Harris he is a devout Buddhist despite his claims to being an atheist no other I've had other videos discussing that you can read his work in print in which he explains to you just what a developed bonused he is and how he's going to bend over backwards to make it seem as if different doctrines and magical notions and buddhism are based in science or could be validated by science so there's actually a little bit of overlap between these these two examples I've chosen a pig could we possibly say that the life of a pig is a net positive if the pig's life entire life is less than 12 months long can we possibly say that the life of a pig is a net positive if it's castrated and I just know most slaughterhouses most factory farms then we're not even doing surgical castration you can look into the gruesome and painful method of castration that's used to be more economically efficient if a pig is born castrated it has its its largest teeth torn out of its skull with no anesthetic so that it can't grow these tusks and then is killed after just a few months it does vary from farm to farm there are farms that kill pigs after only four months there are pigs that kill monks that kill the pigs after six months you'll you can look it up the different methods and cycles but as you'd imagine part of the efficiency of factory farming is trying to get the the cycle of raising these animals to be as few months as possible because every month for the pigs alive it's eating rather than being packaged as as meat now with just these few principles here yeah because I mean to me of course this is a ridiculous notion the idea of the net positive life of an animal on a farm but by pressing forward saying could we actually produce a set of criteria that could be legislated some in same kind of question with intellectual property laws if you're saying there's some kind of general principle here about not copying a book digitally in this case staring with a book that's in the public domain 2,000 year old book or something um what is that principle how would it be legislated how would it be specified in law how would that be law be enforced and just starting to think that through all of a sudden a lot of a lot of frankly pointless counterproductive questions drop out of the debate in the same way it very rapidly becomes clear that the for-profit farming of hogs the profit that the profitable farming of pigs would completely cease to exist with just these few legal stipulations so if the pig had to live for what's it gonna be is it one year is it two years is it three years how short can a pig's life be in captivity and still be calculated as a net positive now I mean there were other questions that are very obvious what about artificial insemination versus the pig actually reproducing through selecting its mate through having some natural behaviors you know etc you can come up with a checklist I mean it's a completely surreal exercise but my point is exactly to highlight how surreal that inevitably must be so I say the question of legislation for me uh I also want to say this it was quite striking to me that in a recent video um Isaac came out swinging he started a video and he said quite passionately on camera that it was only a matter of time before the slaughter of animals for Mead the buying and selling of cow meat etc would be illegal he felt it was inevitable that it was just a matter of time before this type of morality was legislated and you know I mean he had a very sincere passionate tone in his voice and it was I was just surprised to hear that and I don't I don't actually see that the future of veganism as being in terms of legislation that straightforward to that black and white the comparison I often like to make is to the abolition of cigarettes cigarette smoking nicotine where almost nobody is talking about making cigarettes illegal even though almost everyone agrees that we should I mean in a perfect world in a perfect world would cigarettes be legal or illegal in a perfect world would anyone smoke tobacco that's quite easy to to answer and now to turn to our imperfect world and say well how do you want to actually bring about the end of cigarette smoking what kind of legislation and what kind of enforcement again I think that does discipline the the conversation and you know it seems that even the majority of people who devote devote their lives to politics you know not just the majority in general but even the majority of people who are really passionate about public health policy almost nobody is considering the option of making cigarettes into an illicit drug like cocaine or heroin where you know the full force of the law is used to try to prevent people from from using these things entirely so in the same way I generally emphasize that the transition we're gonna make with meat and dairy is probably going to be primarily one of public education and a cultural transformation but I do I do definitely see there being legal changes along the way that can that can facilitate that transition we have many examples even staying within the example of cigarette smoking the labels on cigarettes telling you that this is not healthy that nobody under the age of 18 should consume it that this causes cancer etc etc public education campaigns there there's a there's a consensus and there's a very overt political conspiracy to try to nudge the public step-by-step into being a public of universal non-smokers but there's also a broad consensus that this should be done with as little outright coercion as possible although we all know what kind of coercion actually exists for example there are many jobs where you cannot smoke on the job you have to go outside to smoke or you have to quit smoking or to keep your job etc so there are there are some coercive elements to it to be sure but anyway that really brought this into a kind of sharp focus in my mind hearing Isaac make that comment because when I look at an example like Isaac's debate with Sam Harris I think the significance of raising legislation is first and foremost to disambiguate the ethical arguments were engaged in and say no no no no this isn't just this isn't just about the parlor room this isn't just about standing in front of a chalkboard or this isn't just about standing in the drawing room of a Buddhist monastery a somewhat peculiar setting I'm familiar with you know and talking about these ideas as somehow having validity in and of themselves let's talk about real-world consequences and let's let you know let's let at least the thought of those real-world consequences guide and discipline the decisions were making you know the fact is I feel this isn't a problem we can solve simply by you know vegans taking over the government and making meat illegal and in talking that through we're talking through what's possible and impossible terms of legislation I think it leads to a more disciplined and refined and focused discussion of what's possible and what we ought to do right now in that framework and in exactly the same way it's not really that I'm all that interested in it's not that I'm all that interested in in treating as valid sam Harris's notion of the net positive life of the the animal on the farm but in a sense one way to direct the conversation back to what it is we do want to do the positive difference we can make which most obviously includes personally living by a vegan diet adopting a vegan discipline is exactly to say well okay if you sincerely believe this if you really believe in this criterion of drawing a line between a net positive and a net negative life which you know ultimately must be a completely subjective and cultural claim just like you know we draw a line for when is the age of consent ones in some countries at 16 incomes immigrants is 18 at what age can somebody drive a car and what age can somebody own a rifle some of these lines we all know they're arbitrary and yet if we're going to discuss them seriously there's a pretty limited range of options for where this line is going to run if you really believe that this is a line that is there to be drawn at what age can you say can you possibly say this pig has lived a good life this pig in its steel cage underneath a shed without seeing the sky this pig having never reproduced having never been a part of a you know a normal social structure for its species having never been a part of a pack having never explored a forest having never lived as a wild animal having never exhibited any of its natural behaviors or traits as a feral pig would as a wild pig would the Pig living in confinement eating out of a trough never foraging never exploring this pig after how many months after how many years could its existence possibly be calculated as a net positive to justify your decision to kill it drink its blood eat its flesh to to to nourish yourself I mean it is an absolutely surreal proposition but I think someone's supporting that position I don't know how many people Sam Harris represents with this philosophy of his I think they're only really forced to think through how surreal it would be when we invite them to to disambiguate and clarify their position what exactly would you legislate net positive may sound viable in the abstract let's bring it down let's make it concrete in particular let's talk about what the law would be hypothetically that you didn't force for these farmers and then right away I think that's going to discipline the debate and direct our conversation towards the difference that we can make and as you guys have heard me say again and again here that's ultimately why veganism is so important to me because as powerless and isolated as we may be as lacking in leadership lobbyists and organizations as we may be veganism is the difference we can make here right now