I was very on board with your comment until the Meyers-Briggs pseudoscience BS and then you lost me

I’m in the same camp, but wording it as “unable to assimilate new information” might actually help me have more sympathy for the willfully ignorant. That sounds awful to deal with.

I get you - and am the same. I hold little to nothing against someone unable to learn... but that's not what I am talking about. Imagine someone with an IQ of 50, who decides to pass themselves off as a doctor - you go in for brain surgery and, whoopsie, you get your event taken care of "at a reduced price". Nobody blames someone who is authentically stupid - and if that sounds bad, note that I include myself first among that category:-) - until and unless they step up and decide to become a LEADER. The latter carries with it a societal obligation to do better, than us mere peasants.

Put another way, if you are going to perform literal and actual and fully physical violence against an establishment such as the government of the United States of America (i.e. becoming one who acts rather than being acted upon), then you might want to start with actually reading the document that you are about to overthrow. It does no good to sleep with it under your pillow - you need to pull it out and actually READ it for it to do any good! Although many who were there have self-admitted that they have not in fact read it, even so much as once.

Likewise, more people died in the USA from the recent pandemic than all wars combined. Much of that was preventable, and quite frankly we don't even (nor will ever) know precisely how many are directly attributable to that, b/c those stats were deliberately fudged and forbidden to be counted. The same with school shootings - we counted at one point that there were more "mass events" (involving 5+ people) than there were calendar years, but the government is specifically prohibited from collecting this data, so once again we'll never truly know the extent, only lower-bound estimates (which are already shockingly high). Also people have already died from the ham-handed prevention of "abortion", that somehow includes cancerous masses, dead fetuses (from natural miscarriages) with necrotic tissue rotting away (but can't remove either b/c that could be considered an "abortion"), ectopic "pregnancies", and other life-threatening situations, which are nowhere close to the medical definition of "abortion", yet to the lawmakers (some of whom claim that babies cannot be produced from a rape - I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP - b/c "God has a way of shutting that whole thing down there in the case of rape") are too unintelligent to understand anything at all about what is going on.

However, nobody is that stupid, as to e.g. see Trump wear a mask, then turn around and claim to others that he does not wear masks. We have long ago crossed that line, from "stupidity" to "obstinacy". This is cognitive dissonance, yes likely imposed upon people from others (e.g. Putin), but also willfully held onto by many.

And here is proof: a video by Kurzegatcht that is only 11-minutes long that explains why people should take the vaccine. This is VERY understandable. Anyone who watches this would INSTANTLY understand the situation fully - and it's only 11-minutes long, so for something that could save a life, and possibly that of every one of your family members - is not too much to ask. And yet... people did not do it.

Moreover, much of the subject matters involved in all of what I mentioned above don't even need a video of even 1 minute to explain - e.g. to say that "kids getting shot in schools all across the nation" is... what is is again? good? no wait, bad, yeah, that's it, that's a bad thing!... right?!

That's not stupidity - that's stubbornness.

P->J completely inverts the orientations of the cognitive functions (Ti Ne Si Fe -> Ni Te Fi Se), it wouldn't reflect a singular change but a wholesale shift in how you take in and act on information (also J doesn't mean judgmental).

That's a launching point for a really interesting discussion, which I doubt you wanted so I'll cut it short. The gist is: do words have any meaning at all, and if so, is there such a thing as objective truth, and then shouldn't the former be reflective of the latter?

"Mammal" means something, and all the Reddit-esque "acktwually" aside, it means something different from "animal". But rather than say "thank you for the correction, yes that is what I meant, what you said", the implication being that we all stand together side-by-side in front of Truth, with those closer to it being the ones considered "correct", many instead would hold onto pride and say like "nuh-uh, I know you are but what am I?" One fosters a sense of community, while the other divides it into those who enjoy shitting onto others and those who (surely) enjoy being shat upon.

There is a saying that pride goes before a fall. And with planes having parts falling off of them inside the US, and literally falling from the sky into the ocean (that one off the coast of Africa, in at least one case), I'd say that we could definitely use more of the former where we consider 1+1=2 as a more worthwhile goal than "everyone is always correct, bc even if not, they surely meant to be and that's enough".

Of course if not, then surely you agree with me anyway, since I am responding to the meaning behind your words? ;-)

Or if still not, then you may want to block me, since I have a feeling you may not enjoy much of what I will have to say across the Fediverse.

lectured on semantics rather than responding to the meaning

this is ironic

But you can ignore the response if you decide to not deal with it

The harm side comes in multiple forms:

Harm to the animals; by removing their nutrient dense food source, and feeding them sugar water in its place, impacting colony health

Harm to the ecosystem; by mass producing honey bees we are choking out other pollinators, and the selective breeding for honey bees prioritizes output and makes colonies more susceptible to disease and collapse.

Even if you feel like the bees we're farming lead a good life, that life comes at a cost of other species - we are choosing a winner in the food web in a way that could be done less harmful for similar end result (i.e., plant sugars / syrups). Much of veganism is about harm reduction.

Knowing the importance of pollinators to our food supply, as a vegan I would probably not have much of an issue with pollinator farming if there goal was maintaining biodiversity, instead of min-maxing profit.

This is a false equivalence; the answer is “neither”.

Veganism doesn’t seek to end all animal suffering, but not to exploit animals for humans’ sake. We don’t need animal products to survive, so we shouldn’t add to whatever misery already exists naturally.

In the case of livestock, we should just stop breeding them. No vegan is arguing for dumping all cattle in the savannah to be hunted by lions.

This guy would own slaves

This is pure bullshit. Pigs, cows, chickens all if left to their devices form societies, display complex emotions, and have just as unique of personalities as humans do.

Humans don't even permit most of those animals to live past "teenage" years. Its not decent treatment, I recommend the documentary Pignorant if you want to see first hand what a gas chamber is like.

Obligatory Irish potato famine was a result of British policy. But I agree with your sentiment

The last time it was nerfed, the Irish were pissed to say the least

Why you wanna starve Captain Blond Beard Mark Watney? Uncool.

Every aspect of our globalised and industrialised world is causing harm. Veganism is about reducing the harm we're responsible for as far as possible and reasonable. Renouncing honey is easy. So it's possible and reasonable. No vegan thinks they're responsible for zero suffering or even zero dead animals, we're simply trying to reduce the number as best as we can without starving ourselves.

isn’t most of modern vegetable agriculture at least equally harmful

I'm a going with far more harmful.

Not just insects. Vermin control is critical and often not very ethical. Here in Australia, rabbits and kangaroos can be a big issue for farmers too and are often killed to protect crops when they become too numerous. Ducks can be a big issue for rice farmers here and permits are issued to shoot ducks on crops.

It's a buffer for when the climate is different then normal so they will need more food...

Hmm... Some lichen make use of orobatid mite labour in order to disperse the cells of their photobionts. Are those still ok?

People who don't understand bees and think that the queen is ruling the hive -- if the queen can't swarm then they're going to dispose of her and raise a new one. All you're doing is weakening the hive without actually preventing it from swarming. You might even kill it off.

You let them swarm, you let them get their rocks on, and you also have a nice property ready for them to settle back into.

Iunno, never personally seen it. Just heard about it online when I first started looking into beekeeping (which I ultimately did not take up).

Still interested in doing it (the keeping not the clipping), if you have any advice on getting started for someone with like 18 dollars between paydays. Lol

Takes forever to find the flight feathers on the little guys and it's very intricate work.

Sounds spooked with extra steps

Wow, that's interesting! Does the honey differ from the honey bee one?

So jealous.

Probably yeah. But also the European honeybee is not the only European bee nor pollinator so the argument holds true to some extent.

However I'm not convinced the impact is worse than the monocultures which makes up the majority of our calorie intake. Thousands of hectares of nothing but beets or corn probably does more for killing insect diversity than a handful of beehives, but what do I know.

Bro you're barking up the wrong tree. I was providing information to a question. Regardless of your stance, the statement I made still stands. Talk to a vegan, that's their belief. I'm not even vegan.

my friend, do you think yeast are animals?

Can't digest food. The only reason those trillions of living organisms in your gut microbiome are doing it is you're keeping them enslaved by being their sole food source. Way to practice monopolistic practices on a entirely isolated living ecosystem!

I read an article on this a while back that made me refrain from actually getting bees. I can’t find it right now, but the gist is that domesticated honeybees will compete with a lot of other pollinators (mainly solitary bees) over the exact same food sources.

However, the honeybees have a gigantic advantage in being supervised, housed and generally looked after by the apiary. Which will also employ methods to stimulate hive-growth, driving the hives demand for food.

That is something a solitary bee - or another pollinator depending on the same nutrition - cannot compete with, driving them away.

So, in a nutshell: adding bees to a place already rich in honeybees? Whatever. Adding honeybees into a local ecosystem not having them rn? That will drastically lower biodiversity

I'm no biologist, but as for why they're bad for other pollinators, yeah, what @frosch@sh.itjust.works said sums it up quite well.

I'd like to add that, to my understanding, they're actually relatively ineffective pollinators, too. They might do the highest quantity in total, but I'm guessing primarily because of how many honeybees there are.
I believe, the paper you linked also observes this, at least they mention in the abstract:

With respect to single-visit pollination effectiveness, A. mellifera did not differ from the average non-A. mellifera floral visitor, though it was generally less effective than the most effective non-A. mellifera visitor.

...but I don't understand the data. 🫠

As for why this is the case, for one, honeybees are extremely effective at collecting pollen, with their little leg pockets, which reduces the amount of pollen a flower has to offer.

But particularly when they're introduced into foreign ecosystems, pollinators that are specialized for local plants get displaced.
This may mean just a reduction of pollination effectiveness, or it could mean that the honeybees turn into "pollen thieves", i.e. they collect pollen without pollinating the plant.
Here's a paper, which unfortunately no one may read, but the abstract describes such a case quite well: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20583711/

The dark vegan. Eats only food that causes as much suffering as possible.

I mean it’s accurate because wool shearers are often rushed with the sheep, hurting them to meet the quota of the day.

So honey is not a grey area, it's not for human consumption according to vegan values.

Or animal manure, or pesticides

I'd say no because horses can't consent to being used for this. Horse riding is generally not considered vegan either

Each vegan will have their own answer. If you are truly curious, and a vegan is sharing their mindset with you, ask them.

Here's my weird question: if faux leather is plastic and someone is vegan for environmental reasons, would leather be preferable? What if it's a byproduct and would otherwise be trashed? These are things I think about as someone who tries to reduce my impact on the environment as much as I feasibly can in a capitalist society.

If insects are animals then are vegans getting all of their food from 100% organic gardens that grow in a cooperative manner?

Oooooooh, even using tractors could be considered non-vegan, if they're powered by fossil fuels, then they're powered from the remains of dinosaurs, which were very much animals

I am not confused. I am curious and fascinated on how people come to their conclusions. I know exactly what epistomology means. I have used it for conversations with many vegans about their choices as well as on other personally held beliefs. I could be a lot better at it but it has helped me show that I am curious and respectful.

There was no tone of judgement in my response. I hope that's not what you got from it. I said I find it fascinating the way they think. This is not limited to vegans but it is easier to get someone to talk about this than other beliefs.

I have no doubt that minimizing suffering is the higher goal. I meant that if their goal is to to use no food or product that involves using animals (within their personal definition) that they will find nothing in this world that is without impact from or to animals. That's what makes it impossible.

It's an all well and good philosophy, but i think it's just attempts to feel better about oneself. There's no reason you can't be satisfied with not eating meat and at least feel like you're doing your part, but NOO the dogma must be pushed onto everyone else.

The truth is a lot of meat eaters simply don't care about farm animal suffering, so arguments don't even matter because if every single argument from a meat eater were to be undeniably refuted, many would still not be converts. So many of these vegans want to go the communist route and revolt. Does this seem like a healthy philosophy to you?

Yes, it is fascinating indeed, how applicable to many different actions and intentions that statement was. Thank you for pointing it out.

The response to light color does not stand on its own. That is merely one parallel from many. It is true plants do not have a nervous system like animals, but they do have similar responses to stimuli. Parallels can be drawn to sight, sound/touch and smell/taste.

Sentience is another topic that is defined subjectively. From context it is clear you make a central nervous system a foundational requirement. I could also apply this to technology, so I would need clarification from you to understand what it means to you. I do not hold to a personal definition for sentience because I have found neither a universal nor scientific understanding of the idea.

As for the last paragraph: yup.

Just look at the other responses to my comments.

In real life it can be better or worse. Some of the closest people in my life get immediately defensive. It's sometimes easier to talk with strangers. More often than not, I will find a passion point that is the limit of conversation. At those times I just listen as much as possible. How much I engage depends on how they rect to my questions.

I have conversed with quite a few vegans and none of them have pushed their morals on others. Some of them have been very upfront about their veganism. I am wondering where you are that you see vegans being so revolutionary.

I mean anything commercial comes out to be pretty inhumane. They cut off the queens bees wings in commercial honey harvesting.

I guess bees aren't as animal as chickens are?

The "what about plants" argument is such a thoroughly debunked joke argument that it's amazing anyone would continue to make it. Eating animals and their secretions requires harming significantly more plants than eating the plants directly because animals need to be fed too, and animals as food is by far the least efficient and most environmentally destructive way to have a food system.

Unfortunately, honey bees aren't the bees we need to bee helping

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36457280/

Context matters. In the ancient world starvation was a constant threat, so a source of concentrated calories like honey could in some cases be a matter of life and death despite the dangers of getting that honey. In industrial society we have in many cases the opposite problem - the majority of the top causes of death are lifestyle diseases which ultimately come down to overconsumption and sedentary lifestyles. Too much dietary fat, especially too much saturated fats, too much sugar, too much refined foods, too much concentrated calories, too much easily consumed liquid calories.

By contrast vegans by far have the easiest time maintaining balanced bodyweight levels.

If you all could learn to let go of your prejudice you might learn to recognize that doing the right things for animal's rights is also some of the best things you could do for yourself. These "vegans" you hate so much are just trying to get you to stop self-harming.

Someone is acting hateful.

That would make them an environmentalist then.

Veganism is about reducing the harm our actions cause. You can't pick and choose pieces of it you like and say you are a vegan.

That rule might not come from English language and what was translated to "meat" doesn't necessarily mean all animal flesh. Even English has words like "beef" and "pork" and "poultry", "red meat" etc.

If you want to gotcha lawyer culture or religion, you'll need the actual sources. I'd suggest avoiding that, since it will just make you behave like an asshole.

Northern Cardinals are protected by the Migratory Birds Act even though cardinals are not migratory.

(Strawman)

Killing a few bees when collecting honey

Vs

Killing a lot of insects and rodents when plowing/tilling land to grow sugarcane/corn(sirup).

Why discount one but not the other if they are equal?

Now I'm just curious.

How do you manage the amount of animals that are hurt during agricultural process then?

Tons of invertebrates are killed by pesticides, while harvest or during the cleaning process of the vegetables.

It seems to me that being killed by pesticides or drown with water is worse fate that beeing in a nice artificial honeycomb where they may or may not clip the wings of one queen or make you a little sleepy once in a while with smoke.

On matter of animals hurted/killed during production process honey seems more vegan that most vegetables.

Hey no wait you're supposed to throw your hands in the air and just eat industrially farmed animal corpses because there are also negative outcomes of vegetable production so obviously the two are completely equivalent

Do you avoid all sugar products, or just honey?

Sugar growing also kills animals. You cannot avoid all harm, so why discount honey for the harm you know, but not discounting harm from growing sugar?

Reducing harm, sure, but it seems selective to discount honey for small amount of harm, when other things you (assumed) eat do equal (potentially unknown to you) harm.

Do you need to know every process of growing/transporting something to eat it? Or does you list of edible products shrink as you learn every new form of harm?

I didn't want to go into it in the original comment, but yes. It is a relevant debate whether it's vegan to swallow another humans semen, or even saliva. And yes, it is, if the human consents. Consent is the more or less the basis of whether vegans find it moral to consume something. Humans can give consent to sharing their fluids. Other animals cannot.

Are bees tortured to get honey?

if think so but once they get to the age of consent they are probably not very palatable.

Technically, yes.

Assuming the canabee is consenting freely, and likely has to be done in a way not violating other laws. Like some variety of a pain kink where people slice of small portions of each others meaty bits and eat them. That's probably a thing, though likely not very popular among vegans.

Is it exploitation? I'd argue slave or prison labor is exploitation because the workers have no freedom of choice. Bees are free to leave, and the queen will in fact do so if not content with the conditions in the hive. If the queen leaves, all of the bees will swarm with her and you'd be left with an empty box.

Beekeeping strikes me more as symbiosis. The beekeeper provides ideal conditions, far better than the average location that would be found in the wild, and can help protect the hive against threats like mites. In exchange the beekeeper receives a share of the honey produced by the hive.

No beekeeper takes all of the honey from the hive. Only the top box (the "honey super") of a typical hive stack is harvested. A grate below the top box (a "queen excluder") prevents the queen from entering it so no larva are laid in the top box. The workers bee are smaller and can pass through the grate to build out comb and produce honey. The comb and honey in the bottom boxes are left to the hive to feed its workers and produce the next generation of bees, ensuring the survival of the hive.

A queen excluder cannot be used to prevent swarming long-term as the drones that gather the pollen also won't for through the grate! An excluder might be used to delay swarming and buy time so the beekeeper can offer another solution, like adding more boxes to the hive or splitting it into two hives. Better beekeepers proactively manage their hives, e.g. by setting up an empty hive in advance to essentially offer a swarming hive a new ideal home whenever they're ready for it.

What's fair compensation to the honey bee? Humans aren't allowed to speak on behalf of the honey bees. We don't actually know if this is a fair trade on the side of the honey bee, we can only look at it from our very biased opinion.

I think the point was that many veggies are harvested by farm workers who may also be exploited. The concern about bee exploitation but not focusing on human exploitation is the rub.

Because you mentioned killing off entire hives because they're sick, I was wondering about what a vegans ethical stance on culling would be and what, if any, situations culls might be acceptable from a vegans perspective.

For example, the beehive which has been infected. Bees don't understand virology or social isolation or even the concept of "passing it on". What do you do when a hive of infected bees breaks up and starts infecting other hives? Desieses can be devastating to local domesticated and wild swarms if left unchecked. Would a cull be acceptable in this situation to prevent more death and suffering?

How about in areas where humans have already tinkered with the food chain and wiped out all other apex predators? In some places, controlled culling of heards of deer is necessary to prevent them from overfeeding and wiping out other species further down the food chain and eventually themselves?

As I understand, most vegans would prefer the natural solutions such as reintroducing apex predators but that's not always possible. Likewise, I don't think most vegans would advocate for a dawinist solution to infected beehives.

I'm purely asking this from a point of genuine interest and not out of any desire to be proven right or wrong so please don't take this as any attempt at point scoring.

Sounds like it's not the honey it's the production system, so honey from wild bees would be vegan. Okay.

And this is where I have problems with strict veganism. Animal husbandry can be ethical and beneficial to the species. Animals do produce excess nutrients that can be reused for other animals (culling chickens to feed carnivores for example) and some byproducts can benefit humans in a non exploitative manner.

The real issue is capitalism. Or the exploitation of others for personal benefits.

Seems like a weird thing though. A lot of domesticated animals can't survive in the wild. And even the ones that can, it would only be in certain parts of the world, and they'd be an invasive species.

So do we want all of those animals to go extinct? If you eliminate all farm related activities with these animals, give them a place to live out the rest of their lives, but then what? But do you not allow them to breed? Or just let them all die off so they go extinct?

Or do you keep some of them in zoos? Given they've been bred to live on a farm, does that mean you have zoos that are identical to farms? And if you can get milk, eggs and honey from these animals if they're technically living in zoo (which is exactly like a farm in every way) what's been accomplished?

That being said, it’s bold of you to assume someone conscious of the suffering of plants isn’t eating as sustainably as they can with the choices they have available

Oh so you are a vegan?

Although yeast is technically living, it's more similar to bacteria than animals or other living creatures. It doesn't feel pain and isn't a sentient being - there is absolutely no reason not to consume yeast or foods made with yeast.

And we have to respect the peanuts' right to be everywhere, right?

Peanuts and bees usually don't invade your home. And if they did, some would argue it's acceptable to get rid of them. I'm pretty sure you can figure this out.

What are you on about? There are plenty of great sources of protein that aren't meat, and I have friends that have been vegan for decades and are healthy, some of which are in incredibly good shape. Also, you're not even right about the "recover from a single steak" thing, because our bodies stop processing meat properly after enough time having not eaten it, and too much too soon can make you sick. Additionally, I never claimed to be vegan! Weird takes all around.

They appear to have deleted their comment, this is what it said:

And the common trend of vegans becoming really sickly only to recover after a single steak means nothing to you?

Then agian, you are eating eggs so you aren't REALLY going Vegan, there's still plenty of protein in there.