Kerfuffle

CenturyLink is absolute garbage. I rented a DSL modem from them. It got fried by lightning so they had to replace it. They sent me a modem that wasn't compatible with my service. A couple years later, I had another one get zapped. I double checked with not one but two customer service reps to make sure they were sending me a modem that worked with my service. They sent me one that wasn't compatible with my service. Then they took a few weeks to send me one that actually was compatible. When it got here, it either didn't work or something else in the wiring was messed up (probably more likely).

That last part might not have been their fault but I could have known about it 3 weeks sooner. At that point I didn't have much confidence they'd get it fixed while I still have my youth and good looks. Fortunately a smaller fiber company had just started serving the area and I was able to immediate cancel the CenturyLink service. More than 3 times faster and slightly cheaper as well. Also symmetric upload is pretty nice. CenturyLink is in for a rude awakening as competition appears in places where they previously were the only choice.

If people stopped getting murdered, they’d still be killed by illness, parasites, old age, accidents.

So it's okay for me to murder, because those people would die anyway? If not, then there's no point in bringing it up.

If humans stopped eating meat, millions of animals would still be killed by predators, illness, parasites, old age, accidents

Just like there's no point in saying that, unless it's intended as some kind of justification.

Why is it OK for other animals to prey on other living beings, but not humans?

In other words, why should we hold humans to a higher moral standard than lions? Are you really asking that?

If so, I can give you an answer but it seems like a ridiculous thing to ask and I'm just about positive you don't actually believe that if the standard is good enough for lions and sharks it's good enough for humans.

but not humans?

Think about it for 30 seconds and I bet you can come up with two really good reasons why there should be a different standard. If you give up, I can tell you the answer but it's really obvious. I'm confident you can come up with them if you try.

to prey on other living beings

This is also reframing the problem in a weird way. Living isn't the same as having interests, preferences, emotions, being able to suffer, etc. The majority of people who are against (unnecessarily) eating animal products don't take that position just because animals are living, but because they're sentient.

it’s 2023, upgrade.

Feel free to buy me a new car.

And you’re saying it’s absolutely impossible to exchange meat in such a way as to not increase the incentive of meat being killed to be consumed in the future?

What do you mean by "exchange meat"? I assume you mean exchange value (i.e. money) for meat?

No, it's not impossible to do this without increasing the chance that an animal gets killed to provide the meat. For example, if someone promised they're only selling roadkill and will never kill the animals or do anything to increase the chances the animals get killed then you could buy meat from that person without increasing the probability that animals get killed. Obviously it would have to be reasonable to trust that person to keep their word.

That's a very unlikely exception though. If you go to the grocery store and buy some meat, there is no basis or evidence to believe they're only collecting roadkill. When you buy meat from a grocery store, it's virtually certain that this is increasing the chances of animals being killed (very often after being subjected to extreme suffering). And you will have a share in the responsibility for those effects, because there's a causal link between your choice to buy the product and the things that are done to make it available.

"The car's tires screamed in protest as he drifted around the curve."

From this we can conclude that tires are sentient.

If someone is driving down a wildlife-heavy road thinking “ah well, if I hit anything, the vultures will clean it up”, and a day later, a vulture finds a dead squirrel in the road that was hit, is the vulture to blame for the squirrel’s death by virtue of being a beneficiary of the squirrel’s death? Because that’s analogous to the situation.

That's not analogous to the situation of the vulture going to the store and buying squirrel meat.

The problem isn't benefiting from the squirrels death, the problem is doing something that increases the probability that the squirrel gets killed. If the vulture finds and eats a dead squirrel at the side of the road, that has no effect on the how likely that squirrel (or future squirrels) are to die.

On the other hand, if the edit: vulture goes to the store and exchanges value for some squirrel meat, the vulture is giving others an incentive to kill squirrels to acquire their meat.

If you were the squirrel, would you rather live in an environment where no one benefits from killing you or one where there's a massive bounty on squirrel meat?

A pop science article using misleading language to drive traffic. They don't literally scream.

Anyway, no one is saying that plants can't react to stimuli. There's a difference between nociception and experiencing pain, fear, or other emotions. There's no evidence that plants (or any creature without a CNS) can do that.

It's actually quite easy. I wrote a post about this a while back: https://sh.itjust.works/post/2040870

I like coffee but don't consider it a hobby. I just started roasting my own because it gave me more control/variation and green coffee is cheaper.

I would blame the assassin. They pulled the trigger.

But that's crazy! The assassin didn't kill anyone, all they did was point the gun at the victim and pull the trigger. Maybe we should lay the blame on the gunpowder or the bullet. Actually, that doesn't work either. We can't blame the bullet, it wasn't what killed the victim. The real problem was the massive blood loss. Or maybe the victim survives a bit and dies in the hospital due to an infection from their injury. Now we can't blame the assassin, the bullet, the gunpowder, the gun or the injury caused by the bullet. Right? Those are not what actually caused the victim to die, it was the bacteria!

Thinking that way is obviously ridiculous. Of course, it's easy to understand why you'd want to: it's incredibly self-serving. The bar is set so high for you to be responsible for anything that you basically will never have to consider yourself responsible whatever you do.

The reality is if we can say "but for my actions this wouldn't have happened", then I'm responsible. But for consumers creating demand, there'd be no meat in the grocery store. Therefore the consumer has a share of the responsibility. You have a responsibility if you eat meat, hire an assassin, whatever. Refusing to recognize it doesn't make it go away.

Time to start roasting your own coffee!

I've never understood the minds of people who essentially like having their pizza toppings served on a cracker.

nor does the consumer necessarily have any bearing on the suffering of the animal or future animals.

That's absurd. So if I hire an assassin to kill you, I have absolutely no responsibility if you're killed by an assassin?

Companies won't kill animals to produce meat unless there's demand. If you buy meat, you're creating demand. There is a causal link between your consumption and what happens to the animals. Therefore, you have at least a share of the responsibility.

I am surprised that anyone would mention “supply and demand” at all given Lemmy has a largely (including myself, just not from a Marxist viewpoint) anti-capitalist demographic

Being anti-capitalist doesn't mean one is incapable of understanding how capitalism works. There are rules that govern it, and those exist whether you're in favor of it as a system or not.