They might be great to humans but I don’t think that’s universal like your five fingers.

I’m sure mammoths don’t think highly of Alexander Graham Bell.

My five fingers don't apply to caterpillars either. What is your point?

Humans think they’re great because they think they’re special.

They’re not.

I like most bugs more than I like people.

How is that relevant to what I have been saying?

You think humans can achieve greatness without defining greatness. You say it’s like five fingers but you don’t have an objective measure.

Oh yes I have, you just went straight on to assuming I do not

When speaking of greatness here I mean combination of two things:

• deep care for all life
• capability to envision and implement vast changes affecting many lives to make life experience of every life form involved better

The first one is okay, the second is very anthrocentric.

Perfection being the enemy of good (enough).

Lol. Go on and illustrate to me how "all life forms" is anthrocentric

Did they ask the life forms?

Also: Remember how this was about how great humans are and now we’re just a couple apes asserting dominance with electricity we smashed into rocks?

Good times.

Really? All you could come up with is this?

Do I need to ask a lion if it minds some meat to decide whether I should keep him fed?

(and yeah, lion is chosen consciously: one life going on is another life's end, this is how many of them work)

Sometimes. Not often.

What is often the case is that solving the problem correctly is not an option.

Thing is, a bad solution is more likely to be fixed into a good one than that good solution is to be done in the first place.

Gotta get that sunk cost working in your favor.

If that is the case, then that should be your argument

That's exactly what I thought when I read this. We have multiple antivegan accounts on my instance that spout this crap and troll others. If they get banned, they come crying back instead of realizing how unwelcome they are. What a waste of time to spend it this way instead of actually helping people. You can't talk about veganism on here without the same type of asshole coming out of the woodworks.

I'm sorry you ran into assholes.

Edit: yeah you can tag this one as an antivegan debate pervert and move on.

This random stranger is really proud of you! Good on you, for real. :) Keep up the good work! <3

Focus on the outside paint so that the rotten foundation never gets fixed, yet expect the edifice to continue to stand.

no, it shows that being vegan hasn't decreased meat production

I'm not antivegan

Yes that is the random idea I'm talking about, professor. It absolutely doesn't show anything like that. It does, however, make everyone think you're an idiot.

I think you're anti-brain.

I’m sure the meat donor would like to have been consulted.

So you are not dispirited, just dumb. Good luck

Thanks for the encouragement. This is why I think we’re all doomed.

I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn't mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.

The difference is I can look back across the decades and see a lot of people who I have helped, and who have helped me in turn, things have been directly made better as a result (well, at least some of the time). Meanwhile, their "more realistic" approach centred on voting has seen periods of glacial progress and rapid retreat, leaving them further back than ever before in my lifetime.

I feel like this is type of thinking is a cope for people who don't want to actually do anything but maintain what they think is the moral high ground.

They realize that if they admit that you doing something is positive, then they'll be forced to confront why they aren't doing it.

Nice argument

meat production hasn't decreased. therefore nothing can be said to have decreased it.

Even your pea brain could understand that there is literally zero way you could know what it would've been if not for vegans. "I thought something" is not a scientific experiment. You came here to shit on an idea and it's pretty obvious that is all you intend to focus on. You have made no point, added nothing, and said nothing correct. Delete your account.

I went with "anti-vegan troll moron"

here is literally zero way you could know what it would’ve been if not for vegans.

which is what i've been saying.

No it fucking isn't you trolling dipshit. Delete your account

Actually it's a logical fallacy. As in your previous comment makes no sense at all so it doesn't need to be argued against. Just dismissed as the drivel that it is.

anyone can read the thread and see it's exactly what i've been saying. calling me names and using coded kys rhetoric won't change what i've written, or its truth.

I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn't mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.

Same. Ive never believed it.

Be a helper.

And here we are. The exact sentiment described by OP.

You are the one describing the solution as "placebo". I think the effort I implement is a positive step. I believe strongly that you are one of two types of people: Anti-solution and an agitator trying to divide and dishearten; or... maybe... you're invested in the positive outcome and you will continue the greater work while I try to ensure you still can.

If you were only doing it because it was 100% bad, then you're just as much of an idiot as those 'why wouldn't you rape without sky-daddy watching you' christians. You can still work to solve it when it's only 90% as bad as it was, since it will still be 100% bad.

Hint: Telling people to either be fully dedicated to solving the big issues or give up and 'go to brunch' is reductive and not encouraging the way you want it to be.

"I use a paper straw, so I dont have to reduce my plastic usage"

I think this is an example of what this commentor was pointing out.

History has taught us that reform doesn't work. It makes the current mode of production, something clearly unfair, slightly more palatable. This is not a solution. Revolution is the only method of improving society as a whole in meaningful ways.

I encourage anyone curious about these topics that are unsatisfied with the concept of reform to study Marxism.

I suggest we start calling this The Musk Argument.

As in, I won't spend an inconsequential fraction of my money to solve world hunger -- after I literally challenged you for a proposal to do so -- because I don't think you will be 100% successful.

Instead, I think I will take public actions to kill untold numbers of poor people around the world while I continue my quest to be the first smart boy with one million million dollars.

You have been consistently downvoted precisely because you've literally said nothing except "this graph didn't go down so that proves no difference was made". That is all. It is "counterfactual" or as a non-troll says, incorrect. It is not a conclusion you can draw. But you've drawn it repeatedly.

And this bizarre accusation that I told you to kill yourself is also made up bullshit. Delete your account has a clear meaning and is a valid thing to say to a troll with nothing of value to add. As is blocking them which I will now be doing. Enjoy your sad little trolling campaign but I won't be involved any further.

calling me names, speculating on the reasons for others votes, and mischaracterizing my position all indicate you're not engaging in good faith. have a nice day.

No.

The "solution" they're clearly trying to defend without naming it to make it obvious is "voting for liberal politicians". That absolutely 100% is a placebo, and every time the liberal shitbag wins, all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved

Hint: "go back to brunch" is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn't intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.

This is a very serious take around Lemmy tho

History has shown that reform doesn’t work as a method for establishing socialism. I agree that establishing socialism would solve most of the world’s problems and we should spend the bulk of our political energy trying to make revolution, but that doesn’t mean that trying to fix one little issue within capitalism or taking an hour to vote for an imperfect candidate doesn’t have a meaningful impact.

Marxists should be simultaneously working to achieve revolution and improve life for their communities in the immediate term. The fun thing is that often the first directly leads to the second.

all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved

From the other poster: Using a paper straw does reduce plastic usage. So will using reusable grocery bags. A person can quite easily do both. Deriding the paper straw as a useless step just seems unhelpful to me. When the plastic bags and straws are reduced, we can attack other angles too. As an anecdote, I rarely even get offered a choice of straw nowadays - it's either not present or paper. that's a minor win, but a win nonetheless. Some people worked hard to make that happen and this talk of placebo is derisive of that work.

This is you presuming to know the motivations of all other people and deciding for them when they stop working on new things. Just because I want people to be involved in their political processes doesn't mean I stop at the voting booth, or can't also be doing service in my community. I don't love the catchphrase 'Blue no matter Who' - but I recognize that not voting blue is always going to be detrimental to the cause until enough people are involved in local level organizations to change the candidates from the ground up. Until we get there, I recommend we vote blue.

Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy. Wanna fight fascism and oligarchs? Encourage people to participate instead of telling them it doesn't matter or there can only be revolution instead of incremental progress.

Hint: “go back to brunch” is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn’t intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.

That's my whole point. Don't discourage.

More encouragement of participation is better. Tell me that's wrong.

Even though I agree on parts of it, don't forget that Trump has upended the whole system and decades of progression in six months. So next time democrats tell you that "change takes time and needs patience" you should also show them the middle finger. Especially so if they say this in relation to changing back things Trump has done.

"This is not a perfect solution, and therefore it is not a solution" is called the nirvana fallacy, and is poor reasoning. Somehow people are really susceptible to it.

The argument "this solution only partially solves the problem, and further entrenches us into a system that makes the problem this solution aims to solve much, much worse in the long run, and as such the benefits do not outweight the costs" is a different argument, but it is often mistaken for the former argument because people are incapable of long term thinking.

So you're a maga/republican cultist? Or just support them? Seems like you're just deflecting from the original point I was making since you have no argument with substance🤷‍♂️

Right but you see the analogy of like union negotiations, like when management makes a sweet deal for a certain class of worker like full-timers, or people over a certain "grade", then leaves everyone else out to dry.

I've seen it happen first hand. Things get better for us inside the new circle of privilege, but it's only because most of us voted for self interest.

I don't want to be like letting the 💯 be the enemy of the 👌🏻, but I also think we should talk about how we plan on keeping from being the 1% to someone else.

Does that make sense? I'm not against UBI, but it can't be the end of the discussion.