Neil deGrasse Tyson Doesn't Understand Vegetarianism (Is There An Ethical Diet?)
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- čas přidán 17. 11. 2023
- Neil deGrasse Tyson has some interesting ideas about vegetarianism and sentience. My thoughts on "Is There An Ethical Diet?" from the StarTalk podcast.
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As @820monster put it: Neil tends to say things in a way where you can tell he thinks it'll blow your mind. He says it slowly then leans back proudly gazing at you waiting for you to digest it. He acts like every sentence he utters is a precious gift to humanity.
Arrogance, shame
I feel inclined to give him a bit of a pass on that one since it seems like the kind of thing you'd be trained to do as a presenter. Especially for a TEDtalk or something 🤷♀
As a physicist I haven't met another physicist that thinks of Neil as intelligent. He is universally mocked within my profession, and openly mocked as an example of a sophist.
also as a physicist, i have no idea why we listen to people talking outside of their expertise
As a physics student, I agree. I have never ever heard any of my professors recommended any of his books, our college library doesn't even have them. He cannot compare in any regard to Sagan who is, even after all this time, so much better both as a person and as a popularizator of science.
Isn't that the point? His books were never meant to be for physicists, they were for laymen to develop a curiosity for the subject. @@daenerystargaryen
As a non-physics student but someone who has a deeply rooted interest in science and has grown up with parents who are amature astronomers and fans of Carl Sagan, I agree. I haven't really ever been head-over-heels for him. I always felt like he was an attempt to take Sagan's place as a spokesperson for astrophysics.... and I think that was evident with the newer The Cosmos series that came out...
I love how Niel simply ignores that farm animals also need to eat plants and that the production of animal products leads to more plants being killed than eating the plants directly.
It's also weird that he doesn't think that the sentient plant beings - who can travel across space - cannot see that the production of animal products leads to way more dead brethren than eating the brethren directly. If those sentient plants would care about plants on earth, they would like vegans more than animal product eaters.
projecting much? you pretend to know what spacetravelling plant aliens think? are you sure these aliens see us as "brethren"? such creatures would be far more advanced than our civilization, that we must seem like ants to them... and all of that aside... somehow we like dogs and cats, which are carnivores, more than some plant eating fungus. it almost seems that the diet of a species has no impact on its appeal to us. so why is that different for spaceplants?
@@MrNukedawhales
You make no sense.
That's exactly my point is lol. I love how these people suddenly show care for plants, but ends up killing alot more plants, insects, and bio diversity(just so they can eat an animal) than a non-meat eater ever will.
Exactly. It takes 8 lbs of grain to make a pound of beef. So the sentient plants would be eight times as pissed at Neil.
Actually 16 times as Neil must eat double the usual amount of steak to grow his enormous fat buttocks.
The planet aliens would chop Neil into small bits and feed him to their pet venus fly traps.
@@HopDavid how many studies does it take to make vegans stop using fake numbers?
I wrote off Tyson a long time ago. He sets himself up as this uber scientist and then makes ignorant pronouncements. Just the kind of media personality we do not need right now.
This was great! If plant aliens care about dumb plants, then the obvious next conclusion Neil should be making is that us animals should care about other animals...
True!
So much this! The mental gymnastics done in order to preserve cognitive dissonance is ah-mazing.
He might understand astrophysics, but in all other ways, I think he is an intellectual lightweight.
Why? Is it because he is not in the hypocritical vegan cult?
Nah. Few scientists are willing to debate the right wing on trans rights or other progressive issues. People should be able to disagree on a few issues without considering each other intellectually deficient.
He's said some of the dumbest things I've ever heard. He has a huge ego
I disagree, like Swayze says I don't think this comes down to intelligence. He's clearly intelligent. If someone doesn't want to think about the ethics of eating animals, it probably has more to do with an emotional block. I'm sure he understands the reasoning but irrationally, he just doesn't want to actually follow it to its logical conclusions.
He is smart and great at mental gymnastics. I generally love what he does with his podcast, but obviously he likes his steak too much to be intellectually honest on this particular subject.
I'm impressed he managed to say all this with a straight face.
Being an expert in one field doesn't make you an expert in everything.
I’m sure that Neil wouldn’t be OK if his dog was living in a cruel torturous situation. It’s easy to ignore animal cruelty when it doesn’t affect an animal that you have affection for.
You’re so right - he is displaying willful ignorance.
It is malicious. He can't possibly be that ignorant.
@@sensis3235 I'm having a hard time believing that too. My brain refuses to accept someone who supposedly understands "science" would think this way! But it looks like it's true
While anything is possible, when you know better, do better. When you have more choices, pick the one that causes the least harm and pain. Thank you for your videos 👍
Tyson is a narcissist and a bully. He gets very defensive whenever he is challenged. I doubt that he has ever had a meaningful conversation with an actual vegan who has given a lot of thought to their moral choices. This was a great critique, Swayze. When you break down his arguments, they fall apart because they have nothing to do with actual vegan philosophy.
it would be great to get him and Earthling Ed together. Ed is calm, fact based, non-reactive and not easily intimidated. That would be a great conversation to see!
Totally aside from the main topic, but I remember being at a workplace potluck where I brought some pickles, olives, and baby corn (I'm not a good cook, so bringing some hor'doerve type stuff seemed like a good idea).
A woman I worked with loaded up her plate with all sorts of meat, but when she got to the appetizer section and saw the baby corn, she said, "Oh, I don't know how anyone can eat baby corn; they're so cute and just babies!"
So, veal is okay to eat but baby corn is an atrocity.
My husband and I were going to get tickets to see him when he comes to Detroit. Not now! Oh my word…
The extent people will go to justify animal abuse knows no bounds
Plants probably aren't conscious. First, it seems obvious that they aren't. Second, they don't have nervous systems. But they do have intercellular signaling that results in some form of information integration and processing. So they might be conscious. But even w/ that in mind, there's much more reliable metaphysical grounding in the claim that animals w/ nervous systems are conscious. It's about as certain as a thing can be in physical sciences that they are. So I think Tyson's challenge about "slaughtering" plants is a reasonable one to make, but the response is "it's a near certainty most animals we eat are conscious, whereas we can only say it's not impossible that plants might be, so the balance of probability, combined with empathy, necessitates that the plants be destroyed for our consumption."
Please educate yourself and watch David Attenborough's plant life documentary...you will see how smart, conscious and continuously adaptive plants are. There are long planners and so ahead you can't even consciously think of ....
@@viralpatel5338 I'm educated on the topic by way of having earned a PhD in neuroscience and, in the process, learning more than David Attenborough knows about putative plant consciousness. Thank you for your efforts to spread knowledge.
I think it is common for most people to mistake sentience for sapience. Essential almost anything that is living could be sentient, or able to sense and react to the environment around and within them. Sapience is more about being self-aware and possibly able to ask why am I here.
I can't believe that this is not satire 😂
He never should have strayed from his lane
Oml I can’t take their discussion serious at all. It’s meant to be a joke, right? They don’t think they’re making an actual point, right?
what I find most obnoxious about NDT is that he doesn't seem to even consider that Vegans might have actually thought about these things
He denies the existence of god for lack of evidence. Fair enough. But then uses an imaginary life form in an argument to maintain his own "feelings".
He is more of a cartoon character.
I genuinely don't understand that argument that because it's impossible to do no harm, there's no point making any effort to do less harm.
DeGrasse seems to have been roganised - unable to make a logical argument. The thing that made me laugh the most about the sentient plant aliens is that people who eat meat also eat plants. Does DeGrasse think that it's immoral when he eats plants?
He probably doesn't think it is immoral to eat plants, because he doesn't think it is immoral to eat animals
DIY Mouse trap that worked brilliantly for me was one using a wine bottle and a bucket. All other humane traps worked half the time but this wine bottle one is brilliant. I can't seem to find a tutorial on the internet (an old man told me about it). First, drink a bottle of wine. Then place it on a table or counter where the mice go, having the neck of the bottle over the edge of the surface. Place a bucket under the wine bottle neck with some soft things inside to soften the fall. Put a smidge of peanut butter just in the rim of the wine bottle. The mice come and climb onto the bottle to try to get the peanut butter then fall into the bucket. I caught all the mice in my little house like that, watching them fall in is very cute.
I do not eat oysters myself, but I agree that it one must eat animal protein, oysters are the best choice, as they more than likely are not fully sentient. In my mermaid novel I'm writing, the merfolk primarily eat plant-based, but also eat bivalves for extra protein, and also use their shells and pearls for clothing and accessories ;)
Why would they need extra protein? I can see them eating bivalves for B12 though, if supplements are not yet invented.
merfolk sounds like a musical genre that hipsters would like
@@carinaekstrom1 yeah, I was thinking along of the lines of B12, as in a fairy tale world with medieval-type level of technology, vitamin pills wouldn't be much of a thing
i’m native but i’m also a vegetarian. i believe that the way that my people consume animals is as ethical as it gets, and i still make the choice not to eat animals. it’s all relative to each individual tbh
Why do you hate male baby chicks and cows so much that you pay for the male chicks to ground up alive?
No Excuse For Animal A B U S E Live Vegan
“Giving farm animals more space, more natural environments, more companions does not right the fundamental wrong [treating them as resources], any more than giving lab animals more anesthesia or bigger, cleaner cages would right the fundamental wrong in their case.” - Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights
“If you really care about animals, then stop trying to figure out how to exploit them ‘compassionately’. Just stop exploiting them.” - Gary Francione
Yessss thank you for making this! I stumbled across his video on Facebook and was just stupified lol
I knew you had a more thoughtful response. If only he could see this.
Also, would this plant-like aliens diferentiate between people who eat only plants and people who eat plants along with meat, and only be disturbed by the vegans? How does one complete that thought process and chooses to post it??
because the whole thought experiment was trying to tear down vegans rather than think abut *his* contribution to animal cruelty. Just a ridiculous deflection, wrapped up in the pretense & arrogance of someone who thinks far too highly of himself
Yikes-I also saw a video come up recently of him “participating” (in theory) in a scientific panel Q&A discussion thing… didn’t matter who the question was actually directed to, he would just assume it was all for him and immediately dominate over every single question. Between that and these few responses you’ve done to his idiotic takes, it’s clear the man is not truly the sage he presents himself as, just often the loudest and biggest egomaniac in the room. Others making comparisons to Trump are spot on. Definitely written him off at this point.
Thank you for being a sane and logical voice for the animals.
I think it is very important to point out that killing mice with the sticky mats or poisoning results in them dying agonizing deaths (I am a veterinarian so feel qualified to say this). You kind of brushed over these as options for dealing with a mouse infestation (although you have been dealing with yours in a very humane way). Poisoning and the sticky mats are the opposite of humane.
Ok your explanation of the "plant based plant being" with wings constantly moving and fighting for the sun light makes a wonderful synopsis for a good sci-fi movie 😅
I don't know that It's necessarily that vegetarians and vegans "don't care about wild animal suffering" at all, I think it's at least mostly that most of us are focused on humans because we know how humans work, we know their impact, how they could change it, all that stuff. We've heard of and read numerous studies and arguments for humans going vegan. Comparatively I don't have the slightest idea how we could go about reducing suffering for wild animals in a sustainable or practicable way.
(I did write that when you were halfway to your own argument and you do echo most of what I'm saying, but I'll leave it up I guess)
Also this has nothing to do with anything but I recently heard that ko-fi takes a way smaller cut than Patreon does. Since you branched out to the CZcams join button maybe you'd find that interesting.
ko-fi takes $5/month flat, patreon 8 cents per transaction (if i remember correctly). if you have 50 "patrons" that would be $4/month on patron and therefore cheaper. so wether ko-fi is cheaper or not depends on the numbers of "patrons".
@@MrNukedawhales well yeah but that means you really need a very low amount of patrons for Patreon to be better, and that doesn't apply to most creators I see
The thing that occurred to me is that I can imagine Donald Trump’s voice speaking NDGs words here. Both NDG and Trump are self-proclaimed really smart people so it would be logical if they had the same take on veganism.
It makes my head hurt to listen to their convo. 😂
Re: line caught tuna is just harm reduction in general for me, why do I gotta have other animals needlessly killed to get my tuna? (I don't buy often, but do choose line caught when I do). But I'm also willing to admit I'm incredibly speciesist.
"If you left it alone in your basement, it would live up to 6 years." My cat would beg to differ...
Definitely the most entertaining video on this channel :)
for releasing wild animals, in wildlife rehab they leage them some temporary shelter (like the box you transported them in) and some food to keep them fed and sheltered until they figure out their situation. idk what to do in the situation of spiders 😬 i leave them inside if i can cos theyre chill.
At this point, he's just a troll. There was maybe three years after his first pbs/nova? special when he was a decent science communicator, he even explained that he couldn't answer public questions beyond the scope of astrophysics-- then right around the time he started appearing on daytime talk shows he suddenly became arrogant as hell. Duning Kruger all the way.
And "fractal wrongness" is going in my vocab bank. 😅
Let me just say, when I became vegan about 6 years ago, that channel was fundamental to me (Unnatural vegan of course). I think not only veganism, but most of our decisions and actions, must come from critical thinking about all we now, and learn about what we don't know, and thats exactaly what this channel do. Thank you very much, for helping me beeing vegan by thinking, not by "the energy of the nature" hahahaha best regards from Brazil 😊
@9:25 yes, but nature isn't nice. It's a system, not a sentient being with moral values. For humans to behave like a system in that way is monstrous. It's a mockery of charity and good will towards others. No vegan should self-sacrifice and we don't. We just create a space for the least amount of harm possible and it's wonderful.
"We basically eradicated smallpox. What about the smallpox microbes? How do they feel about this?"
Tbf eradicating agricultural animals would arguably be more ethical than continuing to factory farm them.
4:57 We typically require a much higher threshold for how much harm must come about from the *abstension from* a moral act until one has a moral obligation to do it , compared to the exceptionally lower threshold for how much harm must come about from *going out of your way to do* an immoral act until it becomes a moral obligation to avoid.
Being morally obligated to spend time away from actualizing other preferences is what makes the moral obligation of "avoid abstaining from moral actions" more lenient
For example, typically it's not considered a moral obligation to donate 1% of your income to a live-saving charity for your whole life, despite this undoubtedly resulting in a greater reduction in suffering than what most would say is a moral obligation, like say avoiding pinching 1 person in public transport once per month
Yet another expert in one field acting like they’re an expert in ALL fields 🙄 (can we call this the Huberman-effect?!).
Truth be known Neil is not really an expert in the field of astrophysics. As an astrophysicist he is a joke.
He excels in the fields of hype and self promotion.
That would be interesting to talk about humane way of what we can do with mice, cockroaches and other insects and other unwanted guests.
The idea that Neil thinks that Mother Nature thinks blows my mind.
Yes. Life wants to survive, that's all we know.
I have the same debate about spiders :-( I get a lot of big house spiders during breeding season and I even found a false widow- the UKs most venomous spider - earlier in the autumn. I don't like to kill them because little leggy boi didn't ask for this but I do put them outside- and then hope they find their way back in, just out of sight 😅
I love how they basically acknowledged that vegans are doing so much more in terms of the environment and were basically like "Keep it up, we'll be over here watching". You would think that as someone who studies space and planets Neil would think that doing whatever we can to protect the planet we live on as important.
This hypothetical alien species he talks about seems to only share the same type of metabolism as plants, but other than that shares no relevant similarities. It’s like comparing humans to fungi. We share the same type of metabolism but other than that there are relevant similarities between us and fungi in the discussion of sentience.
The editing was funny 😀😀😀
I’m plant strong. I’m working on cutting down on oil,salt,& sugar. I cut the meat about 4 years ago.I thought they were having great fun!😂
This is off topic, but did you say you have a cat? I would love to hear more about your cat, I remember you used to have cats but decided not to get another cat once they passed away, what changed your mind? I love cats, they’re the best ☺️
Some primitive animals do have a symbiotic relationship with algae and benefit partially from photosynthesis but I don't think they rely solely on photosynthesis to meet their nutrional and caloric needs, plus their caloric needs are very low to begin with. On a planet with different parameters though, I wouldn't rule out an environment where that would be possible. My uneducated guess on the limitations is that higher solar radiation than Earth's would mean higher water evaporation, so not great if you believe liquid water is necessary for life to appear. Maybe living close to the poles would mitigate that, or the difference in atmospheric pressure would allow for water to remain liquid.
Anyway, Neil was ridiculous here and it seems he often is on a variety of topics. He doesn't seem to be a very smart person, as you initially said.
"Stay in your lane!" Very much applies to Neil deGrasse Tyson because he becomes an idiot outside his field.
I have always had a problem with him, he’s always seemed a little upside down to me. Idk if I read a book by him or listened to an interview with him in like 2017 but it made me soooooo not into him. And I’ve been avoiding him ever since. His accusations in MeToo didn’t surprise me, and this doesn’t surprise me.
Yeah...
I have an issue with the ethical argument for a vegan diet, if the notion is not killing animals for food what about the loss of life during crop production. It is also wasted life as the mice, rabbits, voles, moles , snakes, birds, skunks and whatever else are not consumed. One grass fed cow can feed a family for up to a year. To reduce the loss of life which one is better? Is it not more ethical to sacrifice one life for food as opposed to potentially hundreds of wasted lives as a byproduct for food. Grass fed cows , regeneratively grown, don't require crops and can potentially be carbon neutral or even negative. It's something to consider imho.
Not this crap again: Nobody eats a single cow for a year. This is a stupid trope divorced from reality: If all they ate was a cow, they'd be dead of scurvy by the end of the year. Further, regenerative animal ag, with all those hoofed animals tromping around, definitely causes harm to all the critters you list. Lastly, there is a distinct moral difference between deliberate harm and collateral harm. If all of you were vegans, our farming--which happens according to your lack of ethics--wouldn't cause harm to all those critters you list.
I don’t understand, he’s seemingly so intelligent. How can he be so out of touch when it comes to speciesism
He is a human like you and me AKA the same species.
he is pretty fucking dumb with other topics as well.
Arrogance.
As you say he is "seemingly" intelligent, that is not enough to prove the intelligence of anybody.
A cunning person can appear way more intelligent than they are, and he is definitely the perfect example of it, his level in astrophysics is meh, he is good at appearing intelligent, and that is the kind of people you should avoid when seeking for science education.
@@GarudaLegends yes, what is your point?
Has nothing to do with speciesism. If you answer a question that you don’t know what is being asked maybe you should do some checking first. OF COURSE we are the same species. Do not understand the basic concept of speciesism?
There is a sea slug ( I think that is what is it) that uses photosynthesis. Legit its like a sheep slug or something. Its soooo cute!
you are so right: it's so much better if he's joking!
I think that there is value in veganism and wanting to preserve animal life. Yet, I also think that there is no deeply logical reason why we value animals over vegetable life. Yes, there are behavioral and conservational reasons but not deep or logical. Yet just because something isn't deeply philosophical doesn't mean that there isn't value in it. The beautiful and sad part of life remains the same: we must consume life to be alive...hopefully we can find responsible ways to do that in the next couple of decades.
Imagine if those space aliens were some kind of highly intelligent jellyfish and learned about humans harvesting their terrestrial Brethren. Would they feel morally outraged?
Many pop scientists pride themselves on a lack of philosophical thinking, as they view science as "above" philosophy. Most scientists I've met who aren't working in the public eye and therefore trying to generate extreme viewpoints and foster a sense of authority within an audience understand that philosophy and science are inextricably linked, and ignoring one does not erase the other.
I do, however, agree with him even though he spent most of the speech being facetious. Most people unconsciously draw the distinction not between sentience and non-sentience, but between rationality vs pure instinct. Obviously, very few species exist in the former category. For me, eating animals, fungi, and plants are morally equal choices, though they all involve killing. Some people perceive killing animals as worse than killing other kingdoms of life, because they evolved more similarly to us. It's not plants/fungi's fault that they evolved quite differently than us. I would only consider a diet philosophically sound if someone consumed completely synthetic food. Obviously, this does not exist yet.
Herbivores, Omnivores, and Carnivores are equal morally to me. I would not judge a lion for eating a panda, and I would not judge a panda for eating a root. Vegans often argue that death causes more suffering for animals, because they evolved more similarly to us. Thus, factory farming of animals is the same as activating millions of pain receptors before they die. It's an anthropocentric, and it's a very utilitarian way to measure suffering. If you gave any form of life the option to suffer and die or live, obviously they would choose to live. Mass factory farming of plants just to kill them all is also odd and dystopian. Again, I say, the only tenable position is a full synthetic diet that may arise in the future.
You don't understand veganism at all. It's amusing.
You could say why you think this and attack the argument instead of attacking the person. @@tamcon72
The ‘big picture’ can also be health. I wonder if Mr. Tyson is on any medication that is dependent on indulging on the SAD diet.
Cool video. ❤ These guys hurt my head. I mean, do they even hear themselves? Absolute ridiculousness!
A photosynthesizing conscious alien species coming to earth and being horrified by human plant eating sounds like a hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy gag.
I say this as both it is incredible funny to me and absolutely stupid of a point, how in their right mind thinks about this and decides it's worth the saliva? Talk about mental gymnastics.
#20:40 Nature is a numbers game. Right, it doesn't care about the individual because it can't care (it's a system/ecosystem). I don't think he honestly believes nature is a living or moral creature but he did also have a strange interview with other scientists not that long ago that makes me think he's loony enough to think so.
Also I think it's funny that they argue that not wanting to kill a mouse, in this example, is selfish and how one feels. But you're still abstaining from eating a lot of delicious food (imo)? Selfish?
I think releasing the mouse back to the wild is not bad. The thing is if you live in the wild you have more freedom. You live better because you use your senses and emotions that are relative to the environment you are in. Getting swallowed by an owl is sad, but that is a part of life. Without this system there would not be life. Vegans are not against nature or life. Because when we are, we end up becoming sociopaths.
There is a balance of ethical factors. I am a vegan because I cause the least of harm to others. And as a human being, a part of an ethically aware species, which also needs to be as ethical as possible in order to control its own population, reduce corruption, prevent rain forest and other life forms from being eradicated, it is the next level of adaptation. If we really care about the future of this planet and a society that is inclined towards a utopian future, this is a must.
@15:50 Don't even laugh at that super power! 😂 I WISH I could live on just air and sunshine here in Florida. LOL, do you have any idea how much time that would free up for advancing as an organism?!?! ...if it made sense which it wouldn't but if we're talking fiction (as Neil is doing now) yeah that would be awesome.
@10:20 wildlife rehabilitators and conservationists will unanimously DISSAGREE with his statement. To live free and to die free is something someone privileged doesn't understand. Wild animals are like adults in that good or bad, they want a say in the decisions being made about them. No wild animal wants to give up freedom like no self-sufficient human adult wants to live in their room from when they were teens under their parents rules and ask permission to do adult things.
"A 75-year-old Italian woman sued her two sons, aged 40 and 42, after repeatedly asking them to move out and live more independently, which they refused. (...) The 'children' refused to move out while their mother was doing all the cooking and cleaning at her own expense.
The woman eventually grew so tired of the situation that she decided to sue her two sons, especially as both have jobs but apparently refused to help out with household chores or expenses, according to Italian news agency ANSA. (...) In 2022, 67.6% of Italians aged between 18 and 34 lived with their parents, about 7 million people." - euronews, 30.10.2023
sadly i couldnt find the argument of the two sons, so im paraphrasing: "its the responsibility of the parents to care for their children."
your generalisations are nonsense... and arent true for the "animal kingdom" either. ever wondered where dogs come from? wolves which "gave up their freedom".. if you will. ever heard of cats? google it, you will be amazed! many other wild animals would love to give up their "freedom", but humans dont want them... e.g. mice. animals arent some noble creatures with high principles.. give them food and shelter and they will very quickly give up their freedoms.
"I am Groot"
Not the b plugs on the shelf.
😂
These types of arguments are just exhausting lol why don’t people understand… it’s about LIMITING suffering to the best of ones ability. It isn’t about eliminating ALL suffering, that’s not possible. At least not on this day and age. Unless you literally eat air (I’m aware of breathitarians lol sorry for the spelling lol) then you are causing some type of suffering, somewhere down the line of food production. Not to mention in all other aspects of our lives lol so as much as I real respect Neil Degrasse Tyson and trust his judgment on some pretty complex subjects… he has completely missed the basis of what he is arguing against.
Edit: I’m wrote this comment 9mins into the video. It might be very relevant to the rest of the video lol
Edit #2: did Swayze actually say “Husband” instead of “partner “??? Lol 😆
Ok watching him talk here hurts my brain. I wanted to send the original vid to a friend because its funny but i actually want it out of my brain as soon as possible
Sentient plants seeing is eating fruit and veg would like us seeing a person eating sea urchin. It's not "one of us". His analogy was so dumb
Our dog chooses to catch and kill the mice in our house before the mice ever enter our humane trap so no mice living a long life in this house.
I do also put out poison but only where our dog won't have access. It is the stuff that dries out their corpses. Glue traps are horrifying, they just gnaw their leg off.
There's no way two people (one a scientist!) would just sit down and say all of those things without joking!! The length some people go to, only to justify their ignorance
It’s Always sad to hear how otherwise smart people “don’t understand “ vegetarianism.
I stopped listening to him (on this subject) when he said “So, you are completely willing to slaughter all manner of plant species .”
Ugh 🤦♂️
Yep, Mr. Tyson, that’s us vegetarians - the cruel “slaughterers “ of plants 🤦♂️.
Completely unrelated, but what dolphin video are we talking about? 🤪
You don't need alien plant based sentient life ther are alreay here ... Please educate yourself and watch David Attenborough's plant life documentary...you will see how smart, conscious and continuously adaptive plants are. There are long planners and plan so ahead you can't even consciously think of ....
There is actually a snail that commit photosynthesis
People need to understand that all arguments to support meat eating can be, with minor modifications, can be used to support $l@v£ry.
I don't think plant sentience is a likely development at all. Just looking at our planet it seems, that one deciding requirement for sentience is movement, or the ability to move.
Once an organism can move it makes sense for it to develop the ability to sense dangers (feel pain) to learn and to move away from them.
Plants, for the most part, are stationary, and they've evolved the ability to adapt their whole bodies to the environment they live in, to an extent.
They also have the ability to transmit very simple information throughout their bodies and between individuals. But I think that's about as far as it will go. I don't see any more complex or fast signaling in their future, because their signal transmission is exactly tailored to their ability to react to those signals.
Stationary animals have the same limitations, which explains the simplicity of the bivalves and corals.
He is not dumb, he is ignorant because he is too comfortable with his lifestyle that he does not want to hear opinions(doesn't matter how sound they are) that challenge his comfort, so he does all these mental gymnastics to prove to himself that he is on the right side. Its ok the time will take care of everything 😊😊
So, is it that NDGT just doesn't care and doesn't want to be seen as not caring. Or is it he really does care, yet feels incapable of doing what it takes?
You hit it exactly right. NDGT is brilliant in many realms, but not this one. This is clearly a case of willful ignorance, or perhaps a contract with animal ag.
Obviously not probably liked by Vegans but the Steak-Ums twitter calls out Neil all the time. It’s hilarious.
I respect every diet but pescaterian.
Does he really think that a mouse could live up to 6 years if sheltered from predators? Even well cared for (and well bred) pet mice only live for 2-3 years.
Edit: That alien scenario is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Are vegans/vegetarians the only people who eat plants? What about the subset of humans who harvest plants to feed to other animals (animals that they eventually slaughter and eat)? How do the alien plants feel about house plants? Will they be happy that some humans care for and nurture their brethren, or will they think that humans are enslaving them?
I really wish vegans, especially ones w a big juicy platform, would quit saying “factory farming” as if small family farms aren’t more unsustainable and equally exploitive as large factory farms. The world would need to be ten earths to support the amount of small family farms needed to support the demand for meat, and at the end of the day, the animals are all still slaughtered.
Putting the mouse outside to get eaten by an owl doesnt cause any extra suffering cause if that owl eats that mouse then that owl wont need to eat another mouse. If there are 2 mice, one in your home and one outside then the owl will eat the outside one. So 50% death rate among the 2 mice. If you put your house mouse outside and the owl eats that mouse then its still a 50% death rate among those 2 mice. Theres no extra suffering. So it doesn't go against any vegan principles to put your mouse outside.
The whole mouse example he uses is misguided. He basically describes what would be the more vegan action according to him. Not that veganism is wrong.
This is just small step away from making argument that silicon based aliens would be angry at you for smashing rocks.
(Should we start movement for not cutting diamonds since we are both carbon based.)
Another example is if we traveled to planet with plants that have intelligence level of human and some soft muscle mushroom with intelligence level of well mushroom I think we would care way more about the plants.
(Now if there are vegans that just care about what they eat having cell wall then I do view them as smart * -1)
About the rats: just get a cat.😂 Never seen one in my house since i got cats.
Groot!
@18:06 wait! What is the "head" of this said plant, Neil? They don't have heads to decapitate. What is he talking about?! 😂 This man is a well learned idiot. Ok, his hilarious botany lecture aside, I only kill if I have to. That's it. I don't have to kill cows to eat, so I don't. Now I can be friends with them and not have any weird feelings about it. It's really nice to be able to broaden your circle as an intelligent and caring being. It's too bad he doesn't understand that.
I used to like him.
As someone who spent years in STEM grad school, it’s so insulting that he is clearly using his educated image to promote unrationnal ideas on which he clearly did zero research to the general public that will believe any words he says