oshitwaddup

I think that having sex with sentient beings without their consent is extremely immoral

I'm not saying it is objective, I'm saying it's not arbitrary.

If my dna was isolated in a test tube and it could experience things then I would also care about what it experiences. There isn't any evidence I'm aware of that that's the case. Dna is the instructions and tool to build the sentient being, not the sentient being itself. So no, the same couldn't be said of dna. Extrapolating from how much I care about what I experience, I think it's reasonable to care about what things that experience things experience

We disagree very strongly

Really? What about bestiality?

Based on my understanding of the brain and nervous system, and the strong evidence that those things give rise to my sentience, I think that it's reasonable to extrapolate that other, similar nervous systems/brains are also sentient and their experience is worth consideration in a similar way to how I consider my own experience (among the many other reasons to have a basic level of empathy)

Tell which thing? I wrote a lot

but, one thing we could do is divert the massive subsidies and bailouts the US gives to animal agriculture (and a lot of the subsidies to plant ag too! It leads to a tremendous waste, iirc the reason corn syrup is so common is we grow too much corn cause it's overly subsidized. People need good food, not corn syrup) and spend that on actually feeding those people

While we're redirecting funds, the military budget could use some massive cuts that could also be used to provide food, shelter, and healthcare to people

Are you saying everything we can talk about is arbitrary because everything we can talk about is with words and concepts?

Are you talking about meriological nihilism? (thanks alex oconnor for teaching me that term lol)

I know sentience is real based on the fact that I'm experiencing things right this moment. Based on my understanding of the brain and nervous system, and the strong evidence that those things give rise to my sentience, I think that it's reasonable to extrapolate that other, similar nervous systems/brains are also sentient and their experience is worth consideration in a similar way to how I consider my own experience (among the many other reasons to have a basic level of empathy)

Then present yours lol

Sentientism answers the question of "who/what matters?", not "what ethical framework should be used to care about who/what matters?". It can underly many ethical frameworks, personally I don't care that much what ethical framework you use as long as we can agree on who's included in the moral scope (although there are some utilitarians who I think have bad definitions of utility and/or do a bad job weighing the utility)

I don't. I try to get people's goals to align and recognize that these are important issues, and I'm working to grow more of my own food and get in a position where I'm able to have more of an impact, but no I don't have an answer for everything and I don't need one to be able call out injustice when I see it. And like most people I'm a hypocrite in some ways, I see these massive injustices and I still buy avocados and contribute to capitalism and waste time watching tv and arguing with people online instead of using that mental energy to actually do something in the world. I'm working on being better tho

Almost certainly we do. But, do you think if there was a culture that ran dog fights, that would be ok just because it's part of their culture?

I would not find that ok, because all sentient beings are worth moral consideration, and culture is not a good reason to hurt sentient beings. I might not focus on it especially if that culture was already marginalized and discriminated against and there were bigger problems to solve, but I'd still have the understanding that it's bad

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-there-s-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands did you read the editors note at the bottom?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/veganism-environment-veganuary-friendly-food-diet-damage-hodmedods-protein-crops-jack-monroe-a8177541.html the main thrust of the article is buy more locally grown food, grow your own food? I agree with that lol. To go a step further, community gardens are good!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa yeah I agree eat less quinoa and asparagus. See also the footnote

Those things are failures of our food system, and problems we could and should solve. The cool thing about eating plants is it doesn't inherently require exploiting other sentient beings, but it does still happen unfortunately. That goes for animal ag too tho, and animal agriculture inherently depends on the exploitation

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37034619 last two paragraphs

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/16/parents-raise-children-vegans-should-prosecuted-say-belgian/ the vegans in that post make good points. Obviously negligent parents are a problem, vegan or no

To maintain a nutritionally complete vegan diet for an individual year round actually requires far more use of fossil fuels and directly released carbon emissions due to limited seasonality and local accessibility than a cow produces for the same nutrient density and complexity locally

did I miss the source on this?

Here's a source for you to read, I read the ones you linked https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w

while this doesn't go super in depth, it's a counterpoint to the idea that veganism (And definitely vegetarianism) is only possible with global trade. https://www.iamgoingvegan.com/vegan-cultures/

sure, there are a lot of factors that would make it difficult. If most people can't afford to be vegan (for monetary or other cost reasons especially) that reflects a failure of our food system. Our food system hasn't even gotten to the point of ensuring nobody goes hungry, we should be using our cropland to feed humans not other animals (look up how much of our crops go to livestock)

we should end the biggest problems first, and start with ending factory farms, but we should also remember that culture is not a good reason to hurt others