 and you know I've met Alex, I met him at the camp out, I think he's a good guy, he's a nice guy, he's a nice guy to me, he had me on his channel, he's been a gentleman, things like this and you know I quite like him, I just see some, there's a point where you go like what are you doing? Hello everyone, so by the title of this video you will know that I'm going to discuss Alex O'Connor, cosmic skeptic and him no longer being vegan or reevaluating, I'm reading his post here, reevaluating his ethical position on eating animals. It's not to say that I didn't see this coming, I'm going to share with you some of the big red flags that I saw with cosmic skeptic and they were, they're in the, within the last year I think, the first red flag I got, now I'm not in the business of sharing DMs and things like this but Alex did reach out to me at one point and he was like, hey man like I'm in, I'm in France and it's really hard to be, to find vegan food here, what would practicability entail in such a scenario, something along these lines and then I said well where are you and you told me where he was and then I looked up on Happy Cow, I found about 20 vegan options nearby in restaurants nearby him and I was like kind of perplexed and I was like, that's a, that's quite a bizarre thing to reach out to someone like me to ask considering like I've done, I've done 13, 14, 15 countries in Europe, I've been to quite obscure locations in Europe and I've never had issues finding vegan food, finding, finding bread and canned beans and smoked tofu and even like these other specialty health stores that sell like nutritional yeast or something like this or you know, finding vegan options or being able to translate no animal products, no milk, no, no honey, no, no eggs at certain restaurants and then being able to understand that. I've never had issues like that so I was kind of perplexed by it and I thought that sounds like someone who is not very dedicated to avoiding products that cause these rights violations to animals. From that point I was kind of like just, just watching Cosmic Skeptic, he made a couple posts about that I was kind of a little confused by, one that like, like we're not dogmatists and things like this, something so dogmatic about people avoiding certain animal products, there might be reasons for them to consume animal products based on their like allergies or something like this or I just really didn't really get to the bottom of what he meant and I kind of thought maybe he just thinks oh maybe there's some lactose in some medication that people need to consume for their allergies or something like that so I said maybe it's something like this, I didn't really know. Then I kind of started to like think about Cosmic Skeptics like ethical position and I remember he put out a video which I never responded to, there was enough responses on it and I've been very caught up doing, you know, do investigative work, I do a lot of, I've got a lot of big projects offline that I'm, that I'm currently doing. I never really responded to him and I thought oh should we, I don't really want to create, but I disagree with a lot of activists at times and I think maybe we just philosophically disagree but we can agree on the end goal or something like this so I never really like made a response to, I didn't want like two large activists to be like in some battle over some philosophical disagreement but it was something along the lines of animals do not deserve rights to their life because we don't even apply that out in practice because animals die in in crop production therefore if if we thought animals deserve the right to their life we wouldn't allow them to to to die in in crop production something along these lines again I'm just spitting this video off the top of my head I felt compelled to make it if I'm slightly misrepresenting exact positions forgive me for I'm just giving you my idea of what this position was it was that animals don't deserve a right to life actually because we take away that right to life when we eat crops or something like this and that was like a interesting position because because by that logic obviously human beings die in incidental deaths in civilization through transport we participate in transport I drive to get around now I'm knowingly participating in an industry that causes into incidental human deaths and construction building buildings and things like that cause into incidental human deaths incidental human deaths and I'm not talking accidental I'm talking as a result of a certain industry incidental human deaths occur on plant farms to tractor accidents combine harvest their accidents people dying in in peculiar incidents on farms happen to human beings imagine if I was like well incidents incidental deaths happen to human beings in civilization for many different industries therefore human beings do not deserve rights basic rights to their own life that is biological extension what he's suggesting he doesn't believe that from what what from what I gathered he didn't believe that animals deaths could happen in a certain context for crop production incidental animal deaths and in a different context could be having their rights violated for say mass breeding them exploiting them enslaving them and killing them for needless reasons like food I guess he never really categorized these deaths differently he kind of lumped them all in he didn't say oh if animals die in crops well they're not really rights violations a lot of them are incidental like there might be animals in the way of some type of tractor which happens on roads too when we drive cars and sometimes accidents happens in cars as well like crops are interesting because there's different reasons to protect crops and crops are the only reason we have civilization anyway if we didn't have crops we'll be back in the in the dark ages before there was agriculture kind of thing we'll be like there will be the population will be a lot less um you know we need crops obviously and funnily enough crop production animal agriculture is dependent upon crop production you couldn't have factory farming and animal agriculture as we do today without plant agriculture so interestingly enough like you know a lot of plants are cultivated to feed to the animals anyway but saving that plant agriculture uh there are deaths that that occur in plant agriculture and and and often it's to protect crops the crops are being protected from insects and animals and so therefore there's like some competing rights happening here like do we allow animals and insects to just plow through human crops or do we do we say wait a second you're right the the animals rights aren't technically being violated in these categories because we have to protect uh human food production and uh when we grab a bunch of mother pigs and we impregnate them we take piglets uh from the mothers and we fatten those piglets up to put in a gas chamber we can categorize those deaths as animal rights violations there's an obvious moral distinction between the deaths that happen incidental deaths that happen in industry like in transport and on the roads um in construction or animals having their rights robbed from them enslaved and murdered now that was something that that that really got flagged up in my mind now another thing was that that i'm going to say now because i think it's important to say is that a lot of vegans and and vegan activists and this is not just to i'm not going to you know belittle or i'm just i'm just trying to create this discussion here that a lot of vegans and activists get caught up on the suffering and i have been a culprit here too so i don't think i'm like excluded from this the suffering is so bad and the cruelty is so bad that we often like advocate for veganism using the suffering of the animals as the primary reason because the suffering is so you know like it's so acute it's happening to them directly it's right oh my god we need to stop this first and i know that if i was suffering i'd want that to be stopped first but that's not the primary or that's not the fundamental reason animals deserve rights well obviously they deserve rights because they can suffer full pain and pleasure and things like this but there's an individual in there that that deserves rights whether they're suffering or not um you can still violate their rights without suffering being involved so that is the fundamental thing here but what we see is a lot of vegans and vegan activists and influencers focusing only on suffering and using phrases like we need to reduce suffering and um you know i've been you know like i said i've been a culprit here too i focus on suffering and abuse and torture and things like this or this is bad because of the torture and suffering i think it needs to be in the conversation but it shouldn't be the overarching reason the reason is because when you have welfare focused vegans that the reason they're different to rights focused vegans is that welfare focused vegans kind of agree in principle with the welfare movement in the in the meat industry so they're not too dissimilar at all so the welfare focused vegans might say something like we need to reduce cruelty and suffering and mutilations and this is bad because it causes the animal suffering the meat industry will say the same thing we need to increase welfare we need to stop these animals from suffering they're sentient we recognize them as sentient and therefore we should respect animals and and not do these things that cause them pain and suffering and you know basically free range and you know less in mutilations and torture and things like this but at the end of the day if they're not being caused this suffering it's okay to use them and kill them to eat them basically now now the vegan and the welfareist might might not necessarily believe that that's where their their their rhetoric is taking the situation but if you remove suffering from the scenario is it okay to to essentially violate an animal's right to their own existence in order to eat them so the problem here what that I saw with a cosmic skeptic and a lot of people who follow cosmic skeptic and and actually look up to cosmic skeptic is that they get they often um welfare focused vegans now I've had discussions with a lot of welfare focused vegans and we disagree we disagree that suffering is the issue now suffering tells us that there's an individual in there that it can experience that suffering and that's what who I'm concerned with the individual now if you put it in the context of human rights right and the reason sorry I'm I'm jumping all over the place here but the reason I know cosmic skeptic believes that suffering is what matters in terms of ethics and it's almost like almost like in a negative utilitarian sense and the reason I say this is because that I think he believes and again correct me if I'm wrong believes that the only reason murder is wrong is because of the people who suffer because of that murder the individual who's being murdered provided there was no suffering and but I'll say you shot me in the back of the head I got murdered I didn't even know I was murdered the only reason that murder would matter morally is if family members were upset or if it caused some type of extrinsic suffering because of it and the beings who were connected to this human were suffering because of it so suffering only matters not the individual that was murdered now a rights-based approach will say well this human being has inherent value that inherent value is based off of their sentence there's a subject of a life there and when you kill their sentence you're essentially violating their right their moral right to exist based on their inherent value and I believe that human rights are actually based on inherent value it's like well human human beings no matter your race or sexuality or your handicap all human beings deserve fundamental rights and for the same reason animals who share this property with human beings which is sentience also also have inherent value therefore they deserve basic fundamental rights and when I'm talking rights I'm not talking about positive rights or you know the right to employment or the right to vote or these other rights I'm we're talking about negative rights like rights to not be harmed to not be enslaved to not be to not have their preference to live robbed from them those are the kind of rights we're talking about now whether or not the animal suffers or whether or not the human suffers is beside the point that their rights are being violated their negative right to live is being violated so when we get stuck in this welfare rhetoric of we need to reduce suffering for animals we we need to focus on the cruelty aspect of the industry which is an important aspect and should not be ignored don't get me wrong but that is not the fundamental if animals had legal rights so there's a difference between moral rights which which I believe animals are born with inherent moral rights because they are sentient conscious beings just like human beings have moral rights but legal rights are those applied in law and if animals had the legal right not to be considered property then they would be protected from any human inflicted legal kind of cruelty or exploitation and killing for our own means um they would have to do it illegally because they would have a legal right protecting them from that the reason I'm talking about all of this stuff uh concerning cosmic skeptic is I feel that um what tends to happen if we have this welfare approach and we only care about suffering is that we forget about the individual and start caring about suffering in an abstract way well we care about the individual when they're suffering but we don't care about the individual when they're murdered like why not like why not that if you ask the individual when they're alive whether that or not they have a preference to live they would say yes and in whatever language they could if they were a different species I'm sure they were you can show you could you could detect that they didn't want to die in some way they'll have a preference to live their life um once they're once they exist we have that obligation to them if we're just focused on suffering the idea is that if they don't suffer then we can kill them if they don't know anything about it and then we can just eat their bodies and then basically you can have a humane mass killing of animals humane mass killing of animals provided every welfare problem was addressed the animals were were being birthed and living happy lives and they were happy animals and therefore we could put them all in some humane laughing gas they would never wake up and and there we go we've got a humane mass killing an animal rights position would would call that insane and if you swap the animals out for humans a human rights position would call that insane as well but an animal welfare position a human i don't i wouldn't even call that human welfare but for some reason in the animal welfare context if the animals don't suffer then it's okay to kill the happy animals provided there's no no no suffering extrinsic suffering because of it so it's in for me that's an insane position and i'm an animal rights-based uh vegan and i didn't get the vibe like that from alex alex is opposed to factory farming which if you're opposed to factory farming you have to agree that it's because animals are individuals who whose rights need to be respected but if you're just concerned with suffering that suffering is connected to the individual anyway if you don't want to mean a factory farm you shouldn't want them to be decapitated for some needless reason but um so i think as activists and as vegans really and i'm a culprit here because i'm an an animal rights influencer i'm a vegan influencer we need to be more focused on animal rights um and basically as biological extension of basic fundamental human rights and be clear on that position and and be clear on how we're categorizing animal rights as well because it can be tricky when you think of like deaths that happen incidental deaths that happen in civilization it's hard to get you wrap your head around that's not a animal that's actually not a rights violation because this happens in the human context too and that we're not technically violating those human humans rights if there's incidental deaths even though accidental deaths on the roads are bad incidental deaths due to construction are bad and we should minimize them of course they're not technically uh for the most part uh human rights violations that just tend to happen as a result of civilization so when you talk about crops this is a similar thing and um it's hard to kind of wrap your head around that you think all death is the same all killing is the same no matter the context which just is not true so i think um we need to like be more focused on rights as a movement because we need we want animals to have rights um that's what animal rights are basically giving extending rights to non-human animals therefore protecting them um the like by extension giving them legal rights to not be considered property to not be able to be considered slaves under the law and uh basically that would liberate them and then that would people would have to illegally enslave and kill them at that point let's go through cosmic skeptics uh post here um so the reason i prefaced his post with all of that is because i'd seen also i remember cosmic skeptic he had a discussion with micahla peterson it was supposed to be a debate and i felt that uh cosmic skeptic took apologies into a new to a new higher there to a new extreme he was really bending over and accepting her arguments on on health on the need to consume animals and he's really operating outside of his expertise there and i felt like he did um for lack of a better word cucked to a lot of her arguments to eat animals and a lot of it was about this suffering and welfare of the animal you know if the suffering is minimized and he did like to um kind of change the word the definition of veganism to include the reduction of suffering um and not exploitation in order to kind of suit his position that if an animal does not suffer it's okay to kill them in hunting or some scenario where animals are happy it's okay to kill them if they don't know they're about to die things like this um and kind of he would say that would be consistent with veganism now there's a massive issue here with the vegan definition and i think the definition that needs to be addressed because it's not really a rights-based definition for example it doesn't matter if they're the animals are if they are animals it matters if they are sentient and if the being is sentient and it doesn't have to be human or animal it could be a sentient artificial intelligence or it could be a sentient alien it's basically what we care about is sentience and the subject of a life that's what we care about so there are parts of the the definition like as far as possible and practicable when alex reached out to me and was like oh what is practicable in france and i'm just like what do you mean like he's basically operating off of the the vegan definition which is good for for uh for some reasons like if some people just like you know vegan don't eat animal products kind of thing it's kind of a safeguard but then uh the definition does have issues with it and um a lot of people have discussed this uh lifting vegan logic's been one of them this have been uh been some other people who've spoken about this as well um it does have issues it's not rights focus where it should be so let's go through cosmic skeptics uh post here prefaced with all of that has that been that's been a long time so maybe i've got to cut this down or if anyone if you're interested in this we can just keep going um so basically it says uh hi everyone recently i've noticed people wondering why i've been so inactive and wondering why i've not uploaded any veganism related content for quite some time i've been reevaluating my ethical position on eating animals which is something people have also noticed but what you will not know is that i've also been struggling privately to maintain a healthy plant-based diet so what what what came first the chicken or the egg uh for lack of a bit for lack of a what came first you started struggling and then you started going you know i really am struggling here like to just maintain a plant based diet which is not hard at all um especially with the resources cosmic skeptic has like and the knowledge and he's incredibly smart kid well he's no kid is he he's an he's an incredibly smart person and much more educated he's much more educated than i am in terms of like reading books and being uh going to school and things like this how could you be struggling to maintain a healthy plant-based diet it's one of the it's one of the easiest parts of being vegan um and for someone who knows so many people in the movement i just think it's bizarre so what came first you started struggling then you started reevaluating whether eating animals was okay because before you seemed pretty adamant that eating animals was a bad thing to do mostly maybe in the context of factory farming as i said he already had a shaky foundation not an animal rights foundation i wanted to let you know this because i've for some time been consuming animal products again primarily but not exclusively seafood and experimenting with her best to integrate them into my life you know uh i guarantee you he's been eating steak i could almost guarantee i don't know for a fact so i could almost guarantee you he's just been eating steak lamb maybe and he calls him seafood here sea animals mate sea animals mr skeptic um seafood you've just objectified them again to make it easier for you like obviously many many many sea animals are sentient beings right there are also many sea animals that are not sentient right that we have no reason to believe are sentient like oysters for example there's a nerve ganglia in there not connected to a brain why not if you really must i don't think you must if you really must why don't you eat an oyster i don't know what she's been consuming all animal products what dairy eggs um steak you've been hanging out with caela peterson you know really really cocking to her arguments maybe maybe steak from a from a cow you're going to be deeply deeply uh surprised that what you might think is ethical treatment in the uk is not and if you're falling for this free range propaganda and stuff like that then i don't know what to tell you mate but you know i don't know how you believe this is justified and uh i personally if i'm ever struggling to maintain a healthy plant based diet it's because i'm not eating healthy and it's because i'm eating too much junk food and hyper processed food um like uh beyond burgers and things things like that but when i move to eating fruits greens uh whole grains i feel better don't i because it's not hard to get those foods in the supermarket and i don't know how that would be a struggle i'm uh interested in philosophy and enjoy sharing personal information about myself but i can obviously see why this particular update is both necessary and relevant it's not my intention to go into too much detail here as i think that will require more space and perhaps a video but rather let to let you know with more details to follow later well alex look mate your your video when you make it i i mean it's a brave thing to do but when you make your video please don't do what other people have done and throw the animals under the bus right because you've got a lot of influence and uh you know i'm glad some of you're following here i've been like just calling you out because you could do this in two ways you know veganism just it's a bad ethical position eating animals is not unethical because they don't actually matter morally and you know i i think we ought to to buy free range slaughtered animals or something like this which really would you know you would have a lot more blood on your hands or just say like you know what i'm confused i i don't know how to eat healthy i've never been properly taught how to how to use a chronometer app and how to supplement my diet and i don't get outside much or something like this and i really am confused myself you know you could do it that way unless you really believe in principle you've reevaluated eating animals to the point where in principle you think it's an ethical thing to do then then uh i wonder how he justifies that without sounding like a bit of a you know a bit of a bad person um my opposition to factory farming remains unchanged why do you care about factory farming who why do you care about factory farming if you're eating animals why do you care do you think animals matter morally and should be factory farmed but they should be farmed under the under what context should they be uh should they be murdered if you have an animal rights position you should think that it'd be unjustified to violate their rights outside of a factory farm context and what do you mean uh if your opposition to factory farming remains unchanged what fish are you eating are they factory farmed fish wild fish and why why does a wild fish suffer less than a factory farmed fish and if you care so much about suffering why do you think it's okay to cause suffering to a wild fish in the scenario of dragging them out of the ocean by their face and uh you know like why do you why do you care about that if you care so much about suffering as do my views so basically my opposition to factory farming remains unchanged well i hope that you still support campaigns to help destroy factory farming because that's most of the animals in the world so you're against it most of farming in the world not just the support of factory farming you have to stop viewing animals as products because that's what led to factory farming viewing animals as food is why we have a demand for animal products and why we are meeting that demand with factory farming so factory farming exists because of people seeing animals as food and you at the start of this are reevaluating my ethical position on eating animals well that is a problem so how could you oppose factory farms but also perpetuate the idea that animals are food which is what caused the demand for factory farms because everyone believes animals are food so basically my opposition to my opposition to factory farming remains unchanged as do my views regarding the need to view non-human animals as morally worthy beings whose interests ethically matter well then if you think animals interests ethically matter do you think that interests are being respected when you are reevaluating whether it's ethical to eat them or not obviously they're your interests and they're not the non-human animals interests i'm going to do a little swapsi in the mind here but let's keep going um you obviously don't think animal interests matter because if you are too flaky to even um and i'm trying to be nice here but to be honest um i don't i don't see what the problem is being healthy on a plant-based diet you know the data is completely against alex here and we've had so many people get i don't know what he was eating and stuff like that i don't know if he had a food diary and i don't know if he knew how to plan a diet correctly but i don't know what he did um but usually it's something that you're doing wrong yourself however i'm no no longer convinced of the appropriateness of an individual focused boycott in responding to these problems i am increasingly doubtful of the practical practicability of maintaining a healthy plant-based diet in the long term again for reasons i hope to go into more details later so he's used the word practicability which is uh possible and practicable in the in the vegan definition so therefore he's exploiting the practicability in the vegan definition to have an exit and because he can't maintain a healthy plant-based diet in the long term okay but but animals interests ethically matter so let me ask you this alex uh is it okay to eat non is it okay to eat human animals if you are doubtful of the practicability of maintaining a healthy plant-based diet and provided animals weren't there let's just say it's humans and a healthy plant and a and a suboptimal plant-based diet is it okay to decapitate humans if they don't suffer if they're in some free range scenario um in order to to get these uh to get whatever health property you think you're missing from meat and dairy i would like to know what health property he thinks he's missing and that can't be substituted in a plant-based diet that would be an interesting discussion as well and why he can't get that from non-sentient animals like oysters anyway um uh if he was really like if he really had some dire need to eat animal products which i don't i don't believe why wouldn't you boycott something that is a moral crime against animals why aren't you convinced what has brought you off of the position of supply and demand and and if you're not if you're not uh convinced of that that individual focused boycott doesn't let's say you think individual focused boycotts do nothing right why do you think that you're not making a massive post like this and possibly persuading other people to to go back to eating animals isn't going to cause a massive negative i could probably say that your your video on this might cause a massive negative impact for for non-human animals um more than you just individually eating a whatever you're eating animal uh some some some fish bodies or some uh i don't know i think you're eating steak but in your own life if you do that right you're going to be causing uh less less rights violations to the animals as uh um then you would if you make a massive video persuading other people to eat animals and going oh you can't be healthy and this and that when we know scientifically that is false i don't know why you haven't reached out to someone who knows a lot about planning plant-based diets you know who comes to mind Dr. Arby that guy he knows what he's talking about why not why not contact Dr. Arby or the Nutrivor or uh you know or uh Dr. Garth Davis or someone like this someone who knows about planning a healthy plant-based diet seems you've been conversing more with carnivore community than you have with with people who who know how to plan a plant-based diet and and and it's easy to get gas lit by this by this me eating crowd yeah i just think he can do a lot of harm here Alex and Alex i know you're a smart but sometimes you're not the smartest person in the room there's sometimes people that i'm not and don't don't take those insult coming from me i don't know i'm not the smartest person in the room all the time too which is why i often i often consult others who know what they're talking about in the field of plant-based health and uh you know i just think i don't know how you're going to reconcile the fact that animals are morally worthy beings whose interests ethically matter with eating them i don't know how you can reconcile that you know uh and i don't know why you think it's justified now and i i don't know how you believe that supply and demand no longer works i don't know what i think you're just looking for out after out after out after out because from from my point of view it felt like an inconvenience to you to look around when you were traveling to find uh vegan options it seemed like an inconvenience and then you know if you're steering towards too much junk food yeah it might be hard when you're in in europe or france or something like that but if you're steering towards more whole foods fruits and vegetables and legumes and canned legumes and and whole grain bread and things like that then it's easy one supports health outcomes the other one ultra processed vegan food does not support good health outcomes and if you're concerned with a healthy plant-based diet why are you smashing into vegan burgers all the time you should be smashing in more whole foods which are easier to get when you're traveling and so that's just why what makes me think that it's more about a convenience thing and that um you're being just a bit flaky and and there was a bit of shaky ground on your position on animal rights because uh let me tell you this the welfare movement the welfareist meat eating movement which are like uh you know the the people who were involved with the meat industry would agree with alex on a lot of his points like yes animals shouldn't suffer that doesn't mean they shouldn't be killed though and use their bodies used in a massive mass collective murder of these beings who have been bred for food so it's okay if they're if you know they're happily they're nuzzling around on a farm if we take them to be bulk gunned when they're not looking boom a lot of the meat industry will agree with you and uh you know i think that that's a huge moral crime it's an animal rights violation direct animal rights violation that um that was that will show it just says a lot about society that we can do this to animals eat their bodies you wouldn't eat humans you definitely i mean i could maybe he would i don't know if he thinks the only reason that murder is wrong is because of the suffering it causes family members then maybe he he you could create a hypothetical where the humans didn't suffer you you killed them for their bodies and let's just say he started saying well why should humans have rights because there are incidental human you wouldn't drive cars if you thought humans deserved rights because there are incidental deaths in uh in transport and construction and even humans die on plant farms so if they don't suffer what's the problem with me having like some happy human beings in my backyard all right and walking up behind them make sure we separate them of course because we wouldn't want any suffering bang shoot them in the back of the head and eat them what's the problem with that what's the problem with that i mean you know that humans die and incidental deaths in crop fields you know and and also i've been having some health problems and i need to eat meat too i wonder if you put humans in place of animals whether he would whether he would uh be okay with that i doubt it i don't know i mean have to wait and see what his uh video shirt says at the very least even if i'm way off base and totally mistaken in my assessments i do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if i have been unable to keep that diet myself it's not a diet it's a position on animal rights that extends to your diet we don't even know what diet you are consuming alex what were you consuming what diet were you consuming vegan burgers brah were you consuming a healthy whole foods plant based diet that was well balanced and supplemented whilst getting sunshine exercise and eating enough calories like i don't know what you are eating and i probably wouldn't recommend your diet to others either because it sounds like it might have been a lot very heavily processed or something like this i don't know um i don't know what you were doing no one knows what you were doing you didn't reach out to anyone say hey man like you instead of reaching out to me say hey man like i can't find our vegan products in france you know why not say hey man like overdo you know anyone that knows how to plan a plant based diet in a healthy way i'm feeling a little bit off and maybe he did maybe that's private to him maybe he just made his own mind up for me if i'm not feeling right i prefer to ask others um because i know that um that animal rights is what i want to see for non-human animals not for my own selfish desires i want to see uh animals rights respected and um i think this is one of the greatest moral crimes of human history and i want to see it ended and i think all that all of that stuff that alex said i think maybe he felt it in his heart at the time but it seemed to be just lip service because uh if you said all these things about animals right how can you go back to to eating them so a lot sometimes people's positions change he thought they're morally worthy beings maybe at one point or was it just the show i don't know i honestly don't know i could never yeah you'll never see me doing this to those animals being part of what happens to them you know it's so bad it's worse than than alex has seen in the video once you go into these places yourself and you feel it and you know that these animals there's someone inside there an individual who matters um i just uh i see it as a as a moral crime to to violate their right to exist once they exist and to bring them into existence for the sole purpose of violating their right to exist so we can eat their bodies when it's completely needless and all the science suggests that uh apart from what alex seems to seems to believe at the very least even if i'm way off base and totally mistaken my assessments i do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if i have been unable to keep up that diet myself well they shouldn't be doing it for you anyway alex you know bro like they should be doing it for the non-human animals and to not want to see animals rights violated and um even if i am making a mistake in other words i want it to be known that i have made it uh okay i'm not sure what he means by that yeah you probably have been mistaken in your assessments but i mean i just don't know what kind of person you are whether you think animals matter morally they have inherent value which you set up here and whether that it's okay to eat them um yeah and whether you how hard you've tried what kind of diet you ate and whether it was your mistake that you're now taking out on the animals and beginning to eat them again and or getting lost in some you're being persuaded by someone in the background oh man uh some conspiratorial conspiratorial crap that's not based on any objective research obviously plant focused diets um and fully fully plant based diets have a lot of great data behind them we know he's very good at reading and and comprehending data and um maybe he's not but i mean i would just suggest reading the data and seeing what you're doing wrong i imagine that the responses to this will vary and i understand that why this might come as a huge disappointment some of my followers i'm truly sorry for having so rigorously and at times perhaps too unforgivingly advocating for a behavior change that i myself have not been able to maintain it would be very embarrassing for him but i don't think he was off base that's what i mean like it's i mean i just don't know what he's been doing wrong and you know i've met alex i met him camp out i think he's a good guy um he's a nice guy is a nice guy to me um he had me on his channel he's been a gentleman things like this um and uh you know i quite like him i just see some there's a point where you go like like oh my god like what are you doing dude like what are you doing you know i don't want him to become defensive and start being all anti-vegan either because i just think like oh it's going to be a battle like it's going to be a huge public spat here because we like what he does can have a serious effect on animals um but i hopefully people like are smart enough to not like fall for this i've been vegan nearly 10 years i know it's an anecdote but i feel crap as a vegan i feel amazing as a vegan it just depends on what i'm doing in my life um and how i'm how i'm living my lifestyle and what kind of diet i'm eating how much sunshine i'm getting whether i'm staying up and walking around in farms all night or uh whether i'm stressed and haven't left the computer for days because i also when i went vegan i became a full-time activist so i started you know so there are issues there that come up with just constantly focusing and drinking coffee and staying up and not eating you know so there are problems that arise from from public uh from social media and and uh stress and a lot of fighting this battle as well the way i feel is dictated by what i do in my day-to-day life what i'm eating how much i'm eating and how much of that is healthy whole foods diet am i supplementing is there sunshine in the country that i'm staying in if not do i supplement vitamin d things like this like it's always something i'm doing that makes me feel a bit rough and then once i get enough sleep and once i start eating more fruit and once i'm feeling you know i start feeling amazing green juice boom start feeling amazing and it's funny that a like it was never the vegan diet it was always the way that i was applying um this plant-based diet you know and the science is very clear it is high whole foods plant-based it is not and it's varied plant-based whole foods it's uh it's not um a vegan diet it is a whole plant food focused diet that is healthy um so let's keep going um i've changed my mind of behaviors publicly on a great many things before but this is crazy dude this is like um this is like yeah like we shouldn't eat animals they matter morally we should eat animals we ought to eat animals but they matter morally this is a huge contradiction mate like this is like saying uh i don't know like put it in the human context like i don't know what your position on human ethics is though so but like put it in the human context it's like it's wrong to eat humans and they matter morally and have inherent value it's okay to eat humans they matter morally and have inherent value and i think they shouldn't be factory farmed and yadda yadda i don't know man i don't know so this feels like difficult to address by large margin they want to speak out look look uh until i i didn't want to speak out about it until i was sure i couldn't make it practically work or i haven't i don't know who you reached out to mate like some of you will not care some may understand some will be angry and some others upset i saw it coming i was i was sort of coming alex like the way it was speaking about like animals not deserving a right to life and things like that why wouldn't you be why would you think it's wrong to eat them and thinking that crop deaths are equatable to rights violations when you know when most of the farmland like it's 77 percent of farmland on earth is being used to either graze animals or grow crop feed for animals right so any any any plant um related farm related protection trapping of mice um cultivating of crops and harvesting any type of farm related harm on top of the exploitation and killing of the trillions of animals happens on the vast majority of farmland that's been used for animal agriculture so all of those issues are magnified but it just depends on how you categorize them as well obviously there's a big difference between chuck and a pig in a gas chamber and exposing some animals in a field who have gone on in there on their own behalf and then being taken by predators or something like this like that is not a rights violation um that is called a an accident or an incident um protecting crops from animals eating all the crops is not a rights violation so this is quite embarrassing and humbling moment I also understand and accept that there'll be some I told you so is why are you more embarrassed that there are people there will be meat eaters going I told you I told you then you are like just a little bit like feeling a little bit weird that you're now consuming animals who you believe have moral inherent value whatever the case please know that this experience has inspired a deep self reflection that I will be duly careful in future regarding the forthrightness of my convictions animals matter morally it's okay to eat them I'm reevaluating whether my stance on eating animals but they matter morally and shouldn't be factory farmed it's a huge contradiction mate like I would be I mean you must be very committed to this so because you're being duly careful regarding the forthrightness of your convictions so you must be very convicted that it's uh it's actually okay or justified to eat the bodies of animals who are murdered I'm especially sorry to those who are now vegan activists on on account of my content why would you be sorry that you've created people who care about animals on a fighting for their rights why would why would you be sorry okay no that's what he's not saying what he's saying is okay I don't want to miss I don't want to straw man Alex here because I might have a few times misrepresented Alex if I have a sorry about that I'm more sorry to the animals that you're eating there I'm especially sorry to those who are now vegan activists on account of my content okay so he's apologizing he's inspired to be animal activist or vegan activist term vegan activist is a bit weird but maybe animal activists and I hope that they know I will still effort with you to bring about the end of factory farming okay so there's that if Alex wants to help bring an end to factory farming that's something I could support which is good I don't want him to be anti animal in every context I still think there's a fundamental problem with him thinking that it's okay to eat animals and violate their rights but the end of factory farming I don't know if Alex knows that maybe he does know that the end of factory farming means the end of commercialized animal exploitation really for the most part it really does because by that time if you end factory farming the demand will be so low that we'll be able to fight for animal rights a lot easier so basically him helping us to end factory farming is a massive will still be a massive help to the end goal which is animals not to be to have a fundamental rights to not be enslaved and killed for our own ends to them and to everyone else I appreciate your viewership and engagement always as well with feedback as well as your feedback and criticisms and he's got a lot four and a half thousand views uh four and a half thousand comments sorry if you have the right to force a pig into a gas chamber then you better be damn sure I have the right to force you into a conversation about your justification for doing so extraordinary harm and mistreatment requires extraordinary justification Alex O'Connor I mean I've shared a lot of Alex's stuff before I really liked it the way that he poetically talked about what was happening to animals and defended animals and uh it's a it's a real shame actually but again the shaky ground he was on from the beginning just focusing on suffering and welfare and not having a rights position um I think you know and also been chatting away to like kind of was who like you need to eat animals for health and things like this and not having like fundamentals on like his understanding of like human health data Alex might make a video soon I would implore Alex to be careful with his wording um he can do whatever he wants it's his life really but I just say that if you if your video does uh put animals in jeopardy um then obviously we're going to defend the animals it's not about you it's not about me it's about the animals I'm defending and uh I would implore others to defend the animals too if someone like Alex wants to come out against animals um wants to promote the idea of eating them wants to promote the idea that you know the science is wrong that you can be healthy on a plant-based diet which might lead to people to believe that eating animals is then morally justified in some way like decapitating causing rights violations of billions of beings and when we when we talk about billions of beings we are talking about billions because I don't think Alex understands that by saying that um it's okay to eat animals or it's justified to eat animals because I've got a some type of health problem that I haven't disclosed and I've never talked about and never asked for help about I don't know if he's asked for help but by him saying that there's a justification to eat animals what he's essentially saying is hey eight billion people if he cares about world change which I do I care about world change hey eight billion people you need to eat animals so guess what we need factory farms and he's opposed to factory farms but him promoting the idea that I'm re-evaluating whether eating animals is uh you know what was his exact words re-evaluating my ethical position on eating animal animals what you're what you're essentially saying is hey hey the world um I'm struggling privately to maintain a healthy plant-based diet so therefore you can't uh or maybe you should consider whether you can either um I'm doubtful of the practicability of maintaining a healthy plant-based diet in the long term um he's going to get into those reasons but him saying that right he's essentially saying to people you can't be healthy eating uh not eating animals therefore you know I think I'm going to re-evaluate my position on eating animals therefore everyone in the world should eat animals I believe that everyone should eat animals therefore we need factory farming to meet that demand don't we don't we so you're saying you oppose to factory farming but you're promoting the idea to eat animals and in order to meet that demand we need to factory farm animals you we need to what do you think we're gonna what do you think there's enough land for some grass fed like situation with cows can mass slaughter them and there's no suffering or like you need to factory farm animals in order for human beings to have animal products you have to like I don't know how he's going to meet that demand like is it okay to drag fish out the ocean if they're not factory farmed if they're wild you know what is what is his position on that I don't know but essentially his rhetoric is completely contradicting of the the world he wants to see an opposite a world without factory farming so yeah there's no real consistency here I wonder what sea animals he's been eating are they sentient ones or non-sentient mollusks or something I mean that would be interesting to know but he's been experimenting how to integrate animal products back into his life I mean I don't know which animal products and I could only imagine it's going to start with sea animals and probably somewhere go go go somewhere near steak I don't know just because he seems pretty confused so anyway that's my video it's look it's long it's 51 minutes right now you're vegan for animal rights otherwise I don't know why you would else you would be vegan