 Everybody, today we are debate, wanna let you know if it's your first time here at a modern day debate, we are a channel, a non-partisan channel that hosts debates on science, politics, and religion, while trying to be as neutral as possible. We also wanna let you know, we really do want you to feel welcome, no matter what walk of life you are from, whether you be vegan, Christian, atheist, Democrat, Republican, you name it, we really do hope you feel welcome. And also a reminder, we will have, for the first time in a while, a good old flat earth debate that you will see pictured on the bottom right of your screen, that will be tomorrow night. So if you'd like a reminder of some of the future debates, feel free to hit that subscribe button and that little notification bell. And with that, very excited to introduce our guests. I think this is, oh, I just realized I've got your pictures flipped, so I'm sure the live chat's giving me heck for that, but don't worry, got it switched in three, two, one. So, very excited folks, this is gonna be a lot of fun as we have a really interesting debate and I have linked both of the speakers down in the description, folks. So that way, if you are listening and you're like, I like that, I wanna hear more, you can hear more by clicking on those links that I put down there for you. And with that, wanna let you know that the format is gonna be pretty easy going. So what we're going to do is have a five to 10, roughly five to 10 minute opening statement from each speaker followed by open discussion for about 50 to 60 minutes and then Q and A for about 25, 30 minutes. So, if you have a question, feel free to fire it into the old live chat. And if you tag me with at moderated debate, it makes it easier for me to make sure I get every single question in that Q and A list. Super Chat is also an option, in which case you can make a comment toward one of the speakers and they, of course, would get a chance to respond to that objection and it'll also push your objection or question to the top of the list for the Q and A. So with that, very excited, Richard volunteered to go first, we appreciate it, it's gonna be a lot of fun. And Richard, thrilled to have you back. If I had not mentioned, folks, I put both of the links for our guests down in the description. So feel free to check those out. And Richard, glad to have you. Thanks so much for being here. The floor is all yours. Obviously, Morley's superior position. If you stick to a vegan lifestyle, you end up causing less exploitation, suffering and death of animals. I think most people would agree that we should have sympathy towards animals. It's not good to cause their suffering. I think most people, at least on some level, would agree that it's wrong to kill any animal unnecessarily. So I would just ask you, why is it okay to slit animals' throats open? I would also mention that I see veganism as a logical extension of human rights. And I think most people would agree that we should be logically consistent with our principles and apply our principles fairly and consistently. So I don't see any way of justifying killing animals for food without somehow taking away human rights. So I would also pose a challenge to you. Name the trait that is lacking in animals that if also lacking in a human being would justify killing and eating a human being. You bet. Thanks for that. Short and sweet. And we will kick it over to Kaz for his opening. Okay, thank you, Richard, for agreeing to this debate. Thank you, James, for having me and everybody for tuning in. I do have a prepared statement I was gonna read. I don't know if I feel that I need to do that now because the question posted me. Let me go ahead and just read it, okay? I'll start after my introduction. You guys know that I am Kaz and I am here representing Factionalism, the Factionalist Network and the party that I have founded. I host my own show called Contensions and my goal is to build a community based on my belief that facts exists. And as I understand it, veganism is not just a diet but a philosophy which places animals on equal footing with humans that recognizes their sentience, especially our mammalian cousins. Its adherents empathize with animals and seek to eliminate animal suffering and exploitation by promoting cultural change. Let me make my caveats and concessions up front. In line with my moral framework, I applaud veganism. It is indeed a superior technology of community. While many man-made communities increase inclusivity up to all humans, veganism takes us a step further and brings animals into the fold. And I do believe this to be a positive step toward perpetual survival, though not the final step. Whether it be aliens from a distant worlds or far-flung futures or alternate dimensions, whether it be the emergence of high sentience from our fellow earthlings or a speciation event of our human descendants, eventually humans will not be the only intelligent life on the planet. And any morality that does not designed to process this eventuality with acceptance will have to be replaced, which is why most, if not all, moralities today are inferior to veganism. One argument that is brought up by vegans that cannot be dismissed out of hand is the fact that energy transfer from up the food chain is totally inefficient when the consumption of animals is brought into the mix. Eating animals indeed wastes energy. It is a middleman for our calories and from a purely conservative utilitarian viewpoint, it cannot be defended. Finally, the health benefits are real. And while there may be downsides, it is difficult to imagine that they amount to enough to invalidate the findings of the scientific studies which actually show improvements in health by changing to a plant-based diet. So let me just go ahead and get into my main points of contention with veganism. It is important to allow for some degree of disutility in order to actually maximize utility. For example, engaging in entertainment and frills does not produce advancement towards any goal. When engaged in production, one might argue that it's a waste of time. However, a more comprehensive look at the situation reveals its necessity. For without respite, the mind grows lethargic. Production drops dramatically and the net efficiency is diminished. By participating in entertainment and taking respite, one recharges their mind's resiliency and allows for even greater potential for production. To the point, just because something has more efficiency does not mean it is the path of greatest utility. While health is indeed important and should be promoted, liberty is necessary for innovation, which is necessary to overcome the barriers to survival that lay before us. Therefore, liberty as a principle must be addressed in balance with utility. And indeed, there are gaps in the utility, which I'll talk like to address real quick. There is what I've learned is the choline crisis that we have evolved to eat meat as part of our diets and our bodies require certain nutrients which are not found in abundance in plant sources. Non-animal source of choline, which is the highest content is the shiitake mushrooms, 58 milligrams per serving, which is 11% of your recommended daily value, meaning you need to eat at least nine servings of mushrooms, potatoes, wheat or kidney beans, just to make up for what you would have gotten out of three eggs or about two servings of beef. Supplemental, supplementation requires artificial or processed nutrients. Whether cause for concern or not, people have the right to choose not to consume artificial or processed nutrition. And then I wanna address our moral responsibility to the animals that we have co-opted. These animals have entered into an unspoken pact with humanity, perhaps not of their own free will, but their free will is not established as even a factor. And as a matter of fact, ours is up for debate as well. They receive protection from the elements by our barns, pens and coops. They receive food without having to compete for it with other creatures, without having to live in fear of predators, protection for an assured percentage of their young. They receive what is essentially a guaranteed one way ticket to the future. They have hitched their evolutionary wagons to ours as we march forward through time. For thousands of years, they have used us as their means of survival. They are ill equipped to survive in the wild at this point, ending our husbandry guarantees their extinction. I have heard it proposed that we may set up sanctuaries for them, but this is untenable. We then put ourselves in a situation where we have to take on all responsibility for them but receive nothing in return. And this lack of reciprocity will invariably lead to neglect of said duties and eventually still result in the extinction of these creatures. We have invasive species management, goats, hogs, deer, many animals are invasive species. They are unfettered reproduction and insatiable appetites, devastated ecosystems. If not farmed, they will still need to be slaughtered. That puts us in a position of murderers. How cruel to relegate our barnyard pals to the dog eat dog toil of the suffering of the wild and then starve and then still have to kill them. But their bodies will go to, but their bodies will go to waste or feed the bugs or increase their numbers overall. If we must kill, better to kill and eat than just kill, if you agree. Oh, I'll skip that. Yeah, I think I'll skip that one too. We have evidence which suggests that plants think, feel, and count and communicate. There is evidence that they utilize fungal fibers like an internet. They cry at frequencies imperceptible to animals. These creatures live for thousands and thousands of years growing into colonies as large as nations. It is our animal bias, our metabolic rate, our molecular clocks which prejudice us against empathizing with their experience. They are our evolutionary cousins too. And their lives are valuable too. There is no justification for placing the suffering of animals arbitrarily above the suffering of plants. It is open speciesism. We are choosing to empathize with creatures based on their similarity to ourselves. And if we accept this spectral paradigm of worthiness by what logic do we now draw the line of animals? If this, I find this aspect of the philosophy to be a little bit incoherent. If we cannot justify some line, how do we survive? And then how do we serve our utility to the life forms that benefit from our existence? This puts us in a self-destructive logical spiral. We paralyze ourselves and cannot justify any consumption whatsoever. Indeed, there are some that take this stance but my moral framework is based on the common fact of all life, seeking survival perpetually. I think that we do need to alter our practices dramatically. Animals used by humans must allow these animals, we must allow these animals to use us as well. We must provide for them a lifestyle of comfort and peace. They must be free of all suffering and given the opportunity to advance and determine their own fate. I am in favor of requiring the meat to be restricted to animals who have reached a species specific age indicating that they lived a full life, that they be euthanized painlessly and only then consumed. We must end our consumption of veal and young animals entirely. We could transition to a post animal commodity system where meat can only be obtained by husbandry or hunting, thus ending corporate capitalist practices. And I just wanna address the question that you had asked me at the beginning and then I'll go ahead and be done with my opening. You wanted me to name the trait, right? Yeah, I'd like you to. Each animal is a member of a species community and that community has a certain utility to our goals of survival. Members of the human race have a utility that is to that goal as well. Regardless of their specific situation and abilities because there are members of our species that will benefit. Excuse me one second. Because they are members of our species that which benefits them helps them to thrive teaches us to help each other thrive. If you could find a totally kin-less human with no intellectual capacity and a violent murderous tendency it is still immoral to murder and eat that person because his utility to our goal is not served. His example serves as an opportunity for all scientific disciplines to uncover facts about how they are and why they are the way they are which will provide us with invaluable insight into the mechanisms which resulted in that situation. This benefits all of us, especially those that especially those of our future selves who will one day have a family member in a similar situation. This is what I call fourth dimensional thinking and there I yield my time. Thank you very much. We'll jump right into the open convo. Floor is yours guys. Okay, so I listed off some of the arguments you made. So let's just go through them one by one. So you mentioned dis-utility. So there are activities that we have that don't necessarily have any sort of positive utility but they give us some sort of mental break some sort of enjoyment that allows us to be more productive like watching movies playing video games, that sort of thing. Okay, so why does slitting open an animal and then eating like cutting it open into pieces and eating its flesh? How does that fall into that category? Like couldn't you say that I could get that same sort of positive utility out of murdering a person if I was like a sadistic psychopath? The killing has to be in line with the eating for nutritional value. And I agree that the slitting of the throat, the pain and any suffering and tailing that is immoral and should never be done. And I would even agree that we perhaps should not kill animals until they've reached a certain age where it is more moral to kill them. But I don't find the thing is they're not people. And because they are not people they have a different utility to us. Same with bacteria. It's if you say that it's not okay to mess with the genetics of an animal then why is it okay to mess with the genetics of a bacteria to make the vitamin B12 that we need to supplement when we can't get enough of it for meat eating? Okay, Wade you're jumping from like you're combining all sorts of different topics. So I'm just asking a very simple question. Like you're talking about disutility and I don't know if that's a proper term because I do think there is a utility in just personal enjoyment. You don't necessarily have to build something that will better the human race. Like I think just having some leisure time to enjoy yourself, there is utility to that. But how does violently murdering another creature when you don't have to? How would that possibly fit into that category of, I'm just doing it for enjoyment. Like it lets me unwind. Like couldn't I also use that same excuse to murder a human being? Like, okay, I'm a sadistic psychopath. And yeah, I just saw some girl down the street and thought it'd be fun to like rip her guts open. And eat her course. There are other principles that conflict with that. That's my point. Other principles conflict with that. The fact that you create an environment where people around you have to now fear for their lives, have to fear for being eaten and whatnot. That just decreases the probability of our entire survival in general. Okay, well, cool. I can find conflicts with this idea that we should kill any animals for leisure like at conflicts with other principles you mentioned. You mentioned health. It seems that you for the most part agree that veganism has health benefits. On average, they tend to have lower risk of disease and live longer. So I could say, all right, well, if we instead of killing and eating animals, we switched to eating, I don't know, beyond burgers or something, that would give us the same sort of, you know, mouth pleasure, you know, that sort of leisure activity while not being as bad for our health. I could also mention what over 2 million people die per year due to zoonotic diseases. So things like pandemic infections, like influenza, coronavirus, Ebola, things like that, those are transferred from animals to humans. And in many of those circumstances, that's due to the food system. So we keep animals in these tight confined sheds. They're in close contact with one another. And in many cases, they're actually in close contact with other animals, which is how influenza started in the first place. Influenza originated from aquatic birds or semi-aquatic birds, so basically geese, and the influenza virus would spread through the water. A goose would poop in the water, another goose would come by, and then it would infect that animal through water transfer. Well, what ended up happening was people ended up domesticating geese and they put these geese next to chickens. So now that the virus doesn't have an easy transmission pathway through water, now it has to transmit through air. And the best way to do that is to infect your lungs. So now we have this deadly virus that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, and there's more strains of influenza popping up due to us breeding these animals. So, okay, you wanna have Popeye's chicken because you think it's, I don't know, some sort of leisure activity helps you unwind, makes you more proud. I would be against Popeye's chicken. I would be totally for the shutting down of all fast food. It has anything to do with meat, sure. Okay, well, anyway. Let me be specific. I don't want the husbandry that we have today at all whatsoever. All the practices from the ground up can be totally just trashed if you ask me. Just throw it all away. Okay, well, regardless. You wanna talk about the actual act of eating the meat. That is what I'm trying to defend here because we are animals. And like you said, if animal rights are human rights or animal rights, is that what you said? Okay, I said it's a logical extension of human rights. Right, right. So that means that animal rights are human rights as well. We are animals. We have the same rights as other animals. And if you can, can you name a trait of a lion? Can you name the trait of the lion that allows you to tell the lion not to eat meat? Okay, well, that name a trait, well, I'm not telling a lion that it can't eat meat. Aren't you? No. Okay, so like again, you're kind of, this goes one way. Animal rights are a logical extension of human rights. I don't see why, you actually mentioned this. Well, wait, you actually mentioned this and this is a bit of an issue that I should have brought up. In your statement, in your opening statement, you said, vegans believe that animals are on the same level of humans. I don't believe that. I don't think they should have the same rights. I don't even know. I wouldn't even say they're as valuable or worthy or whatever word you wanna call it. I think we should have different rights, but I think some of these rights, like the right to live, should be granted to animals. But I'm not gonna hold animals to the same moral standards and I'm not gonna give animals the same exact rights as human beings, at least not all of them. But- Would you say that I have the right to sell my right arm for food? Yeah, sure, if you wanted to. Okay. Okay, anyway, okay, anyway, I still see it an issue with this idea of disutility benefit that was the concept you created because, okay, even if that is the case, I don't see how that wouldn't end up contradicting some of your other values, like God in flight, like with nutrition, with public health, just this principle that you even have to brutally murder an animal regardless of how we tackle animal husbandry. Why do we need to do that for some sort of personal pleasure? I mean, again- We don't do it for pleasure, we do it for food and we do it because we've already made a pact with their ancestors. Well, no, no, no, you mentioned disutility. So you're using that disutility concept, like just personal pleasure as an argument to murder an animal. So you're saying just because you personally get pleasure from something, that makes it okay to commit murder? No, the disutility is specifically there to take our minds off the idea that we have to be utilitarian in every sense, that we have to maximize the absolute efficiency because that is a great argument that I've heard made by vegans, that if we don't maximize utility, that global warming will take over the world and we'll all be dead and blah, blah, blah. And I'm totally against, you know, I, what am I trying to say? I believe that climate change is real just so anybody doesn't get confused. Okay, so why don't you, okay, so what you're saying is disutility. You're arguing that we shouldn't try to absolutely maximize utility to the greatest possible extent because that would end up creating more harm than good. Yes, that myopic view of utility to the maximum possible level is... Okay, well, that's not what I'm arguing. So I don't see how that's even relevant or why you'd bring that up. Like all I'm saying is, well, sure. Like, okay, well, why do we have to murder animals when I think it's pretty clear that it creates overall a more negative utility than positive? The way that we do it now, sure. But it made plenty of opportunities for us as well. Well, what do you mean the way we do it now? The way that we farm animals in, like you were talking about with the closed quarters, the virus spreading, the cruelty, slitting of the throats, et cetera. It's just- Okay, well, you have to slit the throats open regardless of how the hell you raise them just because they're out in an open field and get to enjoy life. You still have to slit their throat open. Do you? I don't know that. Yeah, well, how do you make meat? I'm not a butcher. Okay, well, you have to slit their, like, how does raising an animal inside a tiny confined space versus raising it out in a field? How does that change the way you kill them? Do they have to be, when you're saying slit their throats, you mean at any point, but do they have to be conscious for this? Okay, no, you realize even the stunning practices aren't even humane. Why is that? Okay, well, humane stunning, there's three ways of humane stunning that I know of that like that we hear in the U.S. anyway and in Canada, there's humane, you have to stun an animal before you kill it and as far as I know, there's just three ways. You can use captive bolt gun, which basically fires a pin into their head and it has like a ball on the end and that doesn't actually kill it. It's supposed to stun it so it's not conscious that doesn't always work, especially with larger animals like cows. Sometimes it doesn't go in all the way. Sometimes their adrenaline is too high and it just puts a hole in their head. Quite often that happens. There's also electricity. So if you've ever talked to anyone who has been electrified to death, it is horrifically painful. There was actually a guy who was on the electric chair three times. It was a black guy who was wrongfully committed of a crime. It was like during like the cops just accused him of this because they were racist. He was put on the electric chair three times and the two times he was on the chair, he said it hurt like hell. They were just unsuccessful executions. So electrocuting these animals to the point where they're just stunned, they're like incapacitated, horrifically painful and there's gassing. So they gas them with CO2, basically they suffocate to death and there's actually research on how painful this is for pigs. And there's a slaughterhouse right by me where they use gas chambers to stun these animals. As far as I know CO2 as a death is pretty painless for humans. Horrifically painful. So... I'll have to see that. It'll be good to see. Okay, sure. Okay, well, there's actually a video on YouTube of these gas chambers for pigs. So what they did, they set up an experiment. They put the pig in the CO2 gas chamber, slowly suffocated, became incapacitated to the point where it was unconscious. So then they tried to see if the pig could remember the incident. It would not return to that room where it was gassed, even when it was starved for three days. They wouldn't feed it any food for three days. They put the food in that area where it was gassed would not return there for three whole days because it remembered how horrifically painful it was. And until it was actually starving and thought that it would die, it decided to return to that chamber. So, no, all of these methods are horrifically painful. And I'd say like the best case scenario, probably the least painful one is the captive bolt gun, but again, very frequently fails. That's very unfortunate. And I can't defend that. Why would you do it? I wouldn't do that, for sure. Okay, well, dude, well, dude, even if like- If that's the way it has to be, then sure, fuck it all. If you have to cause pain and suffering like that, then sure, you're absolutely right. If there's any other way to do it, then that's what we need to do. Okay, well, dude, let's say there was some way to do it where it was absolutely painless. Well, why the hell would you do it? Would you say the Holocaust wasn't so bad because Hitler found some sort of weird, unique way to kill people en masse that was completely painless? Would you- I thought we weren't gonna equivocate people with animals. Okay, well, I'm not equivocating. I'm just, I'm using an analogy to point out that does it really matter even how they die? Would you think Hitler was a better person was? Well, no, listen, would you think Hitler, would you think better of Hitler if he had come up with some sort of method to kill the Jews that was completely and utterly painless? Marginally, maybe. Really? Marginally, I mean, maybe the slightest bit. I mean, it's like the difference between a guy who murders 20 people versus 10. You think a little bit worse to the guy who murdered 20 people. Okay, so not a big difference then. Not a big difference, no. Well, then you'd agree that it's horrible regardless. I agree that there's a lot of horror going on, totally. Okay, well, you said there's a very minor difference between killing something like when a lot of suffering is involved versus- But that's with people. Now we have to go back to the animals and now I don't feel that way anymore. Okay, well, why is it different in the animal context? Because they don't feel and think the way we do. Okay, why do they have to feel and think the way we do? You recognize that they're sentient, right? And they can feel pain, suffering, they want to live. Sure, and then that's what, they're sentient, sure, to some degree, but there has to be a line somewhere. To some degree, what do you mean by that? And it's going to be arbitrary no matter what. If you draw the line of animals, then that's still arbitrary. So why do we draw there? Well, because they're sentient and I wouldn't say that's- How do you know that Pando isn't sentient? A what? Pando, the colony of trees that's in I think New Zealand or something, somebody can link it. It's 10,000, 100,000 years old or something like that. It's the biggest single organism on the planet. How do you know that that isn't sentient? Because it doesn't have a brain or nervous system. So how do you know that brains and nervous systems are required for sentience? Okay, do you have any evidence that brains and nervous systems are not required for sentience? Do you even know what sentience is? I have evidence that neurological function is mimicked by plants. Okay, but do you understand what sentience is? I understand that sentience is an emergent property of a network. Okay, do you know what sentience is? Yeah, I just said it. An emergent property of a network. No, sentience is the ability to feel. It's the ability to have a subjective experience. Then plants have that. No, where's the evidence? I have a bibliography that I've sent to James. Wait, wait, wait. There are several links that you can check out. Is the internet itself sentient? Eventually, it will be for sure. Okay, look, from what we understand of sentience, you have to have some sort of central... We don't understand sentience. No, okay, from what we understand of sentience right now, you have to have some sort of central area that processes information that gives you the ability to actually have a subjective experience. Where is the evidence that plants have that ability to have a subjective experience? Just because information... If you check out the links, you will see. Just because you have... They can count, they can feel, they cry. They literally cry. Okay, is my... Okay, so my computer just gave me a virus alert. Is my computer crying? No. Okay, why? Because your computer is just one node. It's like, is a neuron crying? No, a neuron can't cry. But a neuron is part of a brain. Okay, wait, how are you drawing this? Okay, for one thing, I don't understand how you're comparing a computer to a neuron, but somehow... It's one node of the network. Okay, so if one computer communicated to another computer that there's a virus on this other computer, is that the computer crying? That is the network signaling negative feedback. An analogy is breaking down, but sure, to a certain degree. Okay, but how does this translate to your idea that just because there's information being transferred, that means sentience? I'm not prepared to quote the papers and the scientists themselves. Okay, why don't you show us the papers where it suggests that plants are sentient? I'm telling you that there is clear evidence that plants have a subjective experience. Okay, show me one single paper that actually makes the statement that this is evidence that plants have sentience. All right, we'll table that for the next time where I'll send it to you or something like that. I would like to see the paper, you know, I don't even remember anymore. It's okay, let's go on. Okay, so, okay, let's just try to finish this dis-utility idea. If you can agree that it is horrible to kill an animal in any way. No, I don't agree to that. There are some ways to kill an animal. I don't agree that it's horrible to kill a person. Okay, wait, you don't agree that it's horrible to kill a person in certain ways? No, we do have to kill people sometimes. It happens. Sure, okay, I'm assuming you're talking about things like mercy killing. Well, there's physician assisted suicide. Yeah, mercy killing. There's war and all these other things. Okay, mercy killing self-defense. We're talking about you wanting Tita Burger. Survival situations. That's not a survival situation. Sure, it's not. Okay, so then why would you bring that up? I'm saying that in certain contexts, it is okay to kill any people. Okay, well, let's put this into context. Let's put this into context. You are looking for dinner, you're going to the grocery store, you're choosing a bunch of products that you wanna have for dinner. You could either choose a pack of meat burgers or you could choose a pack of beyond burgers. So what makes it morally acceptable to choose to buy the pack of meat burgers where you're supporting an animal, you're supporting a business that kills animals for no reason since you already have this plant-based option. And let's just assume. The animals are going to be killed for even worse reasons if you don't. What do you mean for even worse reasons if you don't? There's the unnecessary suffering of the wild. There is the inability of these animals to survive without husbandry. Okay, cool. So let's say we had a crystal ball and I could show you that in two years, you're gonna die a horrible, horrible death in a fire and you're gonna suffer for, I don't know, an hour where you get horribly burned and somebody is gonna try to save you, but eventually you lost so much skin you just die slowly. Would it be okay for me to murder you if you don't want to be murdered? Yeah. No. Okay, so how was it ethical for you to murder the cow? Just because it could theoretically die a horrible, worse death in the future? That's the deal that we've made. We're guaranteeing it a lifestyle. Now, if you tell me that you're gonna kill me a year from now, half way through, and between now and then, you're gonna pay for everything that I need and take care of all my debt and take care of my family when I die, then I might definitely take that. Okay, so slavery acceptable too? That's what slave owners promise their slaves. I have to think about that for a second. Okay, you realize- Hold on, let me think about what you're saying. Let me think about what you're saying. I don't want to lie and I don't want to give a dishonest answer. Okay, well, let me just talk. While you're thinking, I can just talk. Let me recite it out loud first. So you're saying that this is analogous to a slave situation because the animal doesn't want to be- Okay, so the argument you're making is that you're doing in favor because you're taking care of all of its basic needs, perhaps giving it a better life than it otherwise would have and preventing it from dying a worse death than it otherwise would like in the wild, let's say. So that would justify slavery. During the slave trade, the British first initiated the slave trade, what they argued was these people from Africa, they are constantly, very frequently engaged in things like tribal warfare. The technology that they had available to them was pretty low. They were basically living a very tribal lifestyle and they struggled to get things like food, resources, water, things like that. So capturing them, enslaving them, giving them the benefits of modern technology, food, shelter, water, all of their basic needs and getting them away from things like tribal warfare, they were doing them a favor. So are you saying in that sort of situation it's okay for humans to enslave other human beings because of this principle that, oh, I'm doing it a favor because I'm improving some aspects of their lifestyle? No, the human beings being a member of our own species require a different consideration. They require that we consider that their benefits are our own. We have to treat them as ourselves because they have the same makeup, the same template. Whatever applies to them can apply to us and give us a leg up. Okay, well, why is that? Why is it beneficial to help your fellow man? Yeah, if you're talking about some people who live in a separate country in Africa, like what do you mean? When you benefit your fellow man, it benefits you. Well, it's not like it's not a fellow man. What do you mean? How does that? Just because you don't recognize it to be a fennel man does not mean it is. Okay, well, look, I'm a rich British dude and there's these people in Africa that are like 100 miles away. Yeah, they mistook these people as animals. They were wrong. Okay, well, wait, how does me benefiting black, how does benefiting black people benefit me if I'm some rich British dude? You know, how many people got, well, look how many people got rich slavery? Can you imagine how much better this world would be right now if those rich British dudes had thought, damn, if we had helped these black people instead of enslaved them, our children might be able to live without being called cracker and whatnot. That is a really fucking bizarre example. Look, there are plenty of people who benefited off of slavery like what the hell are you talking about? They benefit in the short term. Sure, they may gain a lot of money. They may make themselves a great fortune, but they still have children that have to go forward through time and then have to live in the world that they were created by their parents. And that is how you've hurt yourself. Your goal is to make a better world for your children. Okay, so you're saying social consequence is what makes it morally wrong to commit slavery. Yes, ultimate social. Okay, well, that's only if there ever happens to be. Okay, well, no, that's only if there ever happens to be a social consequence. So let's just say there were, there would be no social consequence, that would be okay to commit slavery. You're saying if we lived in a universe where nobody ever thinks that slavery is wrong in all of human history, is slavery okay? There was over a 300 year period where for the most part, majority of people thought slavery was okay. So for those people, slavery was okay because vast majority of people didn't have any issue with it and had no social consequence. For those 300 years, everybody alive thought it was okay except for the abolitionist. So then it was okay, right? But you're, no, because people did think it was not okay. It was told to me. Very few people. Enough. And there was no social consequence. If there's one person saying- Okay, so then it's wrong for you to eat meat because there's, then it's wrong for you to eat meat because I disagree with you. What are you talking about? Hmm. I'm gonna back myself into a corner here. Well, I'll think about that, man. I mean, like I said, I applaud veganism for a lot of things and I'll think about that and maybe I'll have a backup, another answer for you. Because honestly, you do have a great system and I can't, it's very, let me just tell everybody, like it was very difficult to even put together this diatribe I have because veganism, it addresses a lot of issues with our society. I do think though, that it is a little bit myopic. I think that you're not really taking a good look at the fourth dimensional context of where these animals really stand. And I think that you're kind of digging your heels in because you're on that side, you're on a team now and you're not allowing yourself to really entertain the possibility that maybe there's an aspect of this that also needs to be addressed. Okay, well- And that aspect I think is their ultimate survival. If there's any chance that these animals go extinct because we stopped eating them, then that is wrong. Okay, so let's say there was an alien species that was farming human beings and we were being treated the exact same way as these animals. We were being forcibly bred, name all the abuses that go on in the animal agriculture industry. Then when we're killed, we're either electrocuted until we're made unconscious. There's like a bolt gun shot into our head or we're suffocated to death and then our throats are slit open. And this process goes on indefinitely. Would you want the human race to live that sort of life? No, no, definitely not. Okay, cool. So this is- This is, let me tell you what I think. When one member of any species is able to petition for rights, then that automatically should be bestowed upon all members of that species. Petition for rights. Yes, if a cat can walk up to you and say, I don't want to be treated like a pet, then you immediately should release all cats from bondage, pethood, whatever. Okay, what do you mean by that? What would a creature have to do to petition not to be treated in a particular way? Say the words. Say the words. Okay, so language is required. Yes. So like actual language? Okay, so somebody who's mentally disabled or there are actually feral children who are unable to speak and can never speak because they're never spoken to as children. Is it okay to enslave them because they can't say, I don't want to be enslaved? It would be, except for the fact that your duty is to maximize the utility of our species. And that requires you learning what happened to these children and trying to make them better so that you know how to do it the next time. Okay, well, they can't protest. They can't speak. It doesn't matter. They are still members of our community. Okay, why are they automatically members of our community? Because they came from human beings, our lineage, our joined lineage. Okay, so let's just say hypothetically, you found a feral child who couldn't speak and you were trying to raise it, trying to better it and studying it. And then it had some sort of health problem. You ran a bunch of health tests. Turns out it's not actually a human being. It has some sort of weird chromosome that's alien. Would it be okay to enslave it then? Well, I think you already have, but no. Okay, well then, what do you mean? Again, it's because of the possible utility. This is a unique one-of-a-kind creature and you want to turn it into a slave or a food. That's just, imagine if you found an alien that was a plant, an alien plant, would you make a tofu burger out of it? I don't see how that's a moral issue. If you, if a meteorite falls in your front yard tomorrow and there's a plant growing on it, are you going to eat it? No, just because I have a fascination with studying it, but I don't see how that's a moral issue. You don't think that it would be immoral for you to rob the rest of us of the information in that plant's DNA? No. Well, I disagree. Why is that even a moral issue? Like there's positive utility that could be gotten from studying the plant, but that doesn't make it immoral to just eat the plant. Okay, let me ask you this. If you cured all cancers in your basement tonight, would it be immoral for you to never tell anybody about it? No, I wouldn't say that's immoral. I would just say that it doesn't generate positive utility, it's neutral. So your theory of morality doesn't require proactive action. Okay, so should you be forced to study cancer because there's some sort of positive utility that could be brought from you finding a cure for cancer? I mean, hypothetically, maybe if you studied cancer, you'd find a cure. Should you be morally responsible for killing, like I don't know how many millions or billions of people because you didn't bother looking for a cure for cancer? I think that it is part of the disutility idea of having the liberty to choose what you wanna do. But I do think that encouraging people in mass to become scientifically minded, to study diseases and whatnot, that would be beneficial to all of us. Okay, well, this is a totally different concept. Like on one hand, you're arguing that you should be compelled to do something good and you're saying by not doing so, you're doing something bad, whereas I'm arguing it's neutral. Not compelled, you're compelled by your own moral framework. Whatever you believe is good and bad, that's what compels you. If I tell you what I think is good for you to do, that doesn't compel you to do anything, right? You're not gonna care what I say unless I say something that's gonna strike a nerve to you, right? I can't even, we trailed off a little bit. Where were we, what were we talking about again? James, what's up? No, it was species extinction. That was something we were talking about. Was that the argument you were making at the beginning that we have to do? Yeah, my argument is that if we, if there is a chance that these animals go extinct because we're not eating them, then it's immoral not to eat them. So it's a moral good to murder things just so that the species can continue existing. If the only other option is extinction, yes. Okay, and you'd be against aliens just doing the same sort of system to human beings. You'd prefer extinction over that. It's obvious that that wouldn't be the only option for us. Okay, well, no, let's say in a hypothetical you can either choose to have the human race be extincted, I don't know if that's a word. Or you could have the aliens just perpetually murdering us in a never-ending Holocaust, which would you prefer? Okay, let's say that I have a crystal ball that tells me in five years, 100% sure humanity is going extinct completely, but we can take slavery from these aliens. I'm gonna take the slavery. Okay, no, you're changing the hypothetical. So I'm asking you, if we were in a similar situation as these animals and we were under the system of a perpetual never-ending Holocaust, like these animals are, would you take that over extinction? Yes. Okay, I think that's a little insane. Why would you even bother? Like what's, like what is the benefit of keeping this? Because the potential of us to still go on and one day overcome that situation is still there. Okay, well, let's suppose you never, well, let's say you never would, especially in the case of these animals, apparently the only way that they could ever break out of the bonds of like slavery is to learn language, which obviously isn't going to fricking happen. Why not? Because we are selectively breeding these animals. How the hell would they ever learn language? Parrots can speak. Okay, no, they don't. They can't learn language. Language is a specific thing. They can learn words. So when gorillas sign language, that's not language? That's not language. They can learn words. They can't speak sentences. They can understand what certain things are. They can apply words. Yep, and this is being extensively studied in feral children who have not learned language. They can understand words. I can't remember the girl, but she was discovered in some shitty house. I think she was like 13 or something when they found her. Her parents like so badly abused her that they never spoke to her. She never learned how to speak. They could never teach her language. What they could do is teach her words. And she could make word associations. Like she could know what water is. She can understand what food is. And if she was hungry, she could say food or burger or something like that. But language is something else. It is not just words. I'm very confused then. What are we calling language? What is your definition? Let me actually look up a concise definition of language. Because I feel like the ability to communicate information is language. Method of human communication either spoken or written consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way. So that's the difference. It has a structure to it. You're able to communicate across ideas, concepts that aren't just single words. All animals have an ability to communicate like dogs bark. You wouldn't consider that a language. So language is a very specific thing where there's a structure to what you're saying. Well, I think if we use that definition, then, well, so let's say that I grant you that. Where are we then? I'm granting you that animals don't have a language. What are we saying here? I'm saying animals, at least most animals that we know of don't have language. I think it's being debated right now whether or not a certain whales and I think squid might actually have a very primitive language, but most animals like chickens, cows, pigs, they don't have language. They can make word associations like you can train a pig to know what come or stay or sit is. Is there any population of humans that never, I mean, we're talking about one person human being, right? Is there a population of humans that don't have language? Of any kind? I don't know about a population, but there are single people who have never been taught languages, children. Again, they can make word associations, they can understand what words are, but they can't actually speak like a language. They can't, they don't have these communication skills where words are aligned in a functional way. Well, they still have the similar set of chromosomes to us and that gives them this place of human, which means they have a utility of showing us a human experience as an example. And human experience examples are beneficial to us no matter what. So we cannot allow, I don't agree that killing any human is moral. Okay, so you're saying, so now it's not language that makes it an issue, it's chromosomes. No, for the animals, it's language. For humans, it's the, not the chromosomes, just the fact that they're similar enough to us that their experience can translate to us. When an animal crosses that threshold, when their experience can be of benefit to us in the long term, then they are no longer just animals, they are people. Okay, do you think if you were to skin a dog alive and skin a human alive, that their experiences would be all that different? No. Okay, what about if you were to sell a dog? But who skins any animals alive? Funny people, it happens all the fucking time. Like, for industry- This is sick. I've actually seen some animals get skinned alive. There was riding, regency, meat packers. It's a slaughterhouse in Toronto. They were recently shut down for health violations and some of the cows that they killed, they would actually slice their throats open but they would still be conscious and they'd start cutting their skin off while they're still- I want nothing to do with defending that. Okay, cool. Okay, so I'm still having an issue with this idea that we should prevent animals from going extinct because it's better to perpetually murder them in a never-ending Holocaust? Yes. Okay, and you would be in favour of doing that for human beings too? I would be in favour of doing that for human beings given the situation in which extinction is guaranteed. Okay. You know what? If you're willing to bite the bullet on that, like, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. So you're basically saying that as long as Hitler were committing a humane Holocaust where the Jews would feel absolutely no pain and that would be the only way to keep the Jewish race alive. Only we're applying this to human beings. You'd be in favour of that? It's literally a Holocaust. It just never ends. Yeah, I get it. So you'd be in favour of a never-ending Holocaust for human beings if it meant they would never go extinct? Well, not only if it meant it, but also if it was guaranteed the other way. I mean, there's a little nuance there, but yes. What do you mean guaranteed the other way? I mean, animals that have a chance to make their own way to find perpetual survival of their own, once they have that potential, they're no longer animals, they're people. You're saying wild animals are people? No, I'm saying if a sentient of our sentience, right? A level of our sentience, our intelligence, if that kind of creature arises in the wild or in the domesticated area, then those animals cannot be treated as animals anymore. They have to be treated like people. Okay, I think this is a good segue into another name-the-trade discussion. What about human beings who are mentally disabled and have the same intellectual capacity of a cow or a chicken or a pig? Their experience and the improvement of their experience improves the experience of the rest of us. How is that so? If it's like the rising tide, the tide raises all boats, you've heard that before? No. No, but whatever is good, whatever improves the experience of any human being can be applied to other human beings, whether now or in the future. If you slaughter these people because they have a disability now, then you're cutting off your chance to learn how to prevent disability or how to make disability better for the people who don't want their bit better. I'm sorry, what? That's not true at all. In fact, slaughtering these people and using them for medical research could actually make it so you can find a cure easier. Easier, but then at what cost? You've now created a social situation that causes unrest. Okay, well now you're using a social situation. Okay, well, let's assume that there was no social issue and we're living in Nazi Germany where it was considered morally acceptable. Well, no, I'm not assuming that. I'm giving you a hypothetical and we're testing these moral ideas you have. So let's say we're living in Nazi Germany. But this happened in real life and we can look at the real result of it. Let's say we're living in Nazi Germany and nobody had any issue with using some sort of mentally disabled person for medical research and killing them. Would that make it okay to kill a mentally disabled person for medical research? If we lived in a universe where nobody is ever going to have a problem with it, then fine. Okay. Okay, well, wait. Now, okay, so now you're saying if even one person protests, it's wrong? No, I am saying that now, in this time, we now recognize how dangerous that has been, how devastating that was to our course. And now we still have to pay the price for it. Pay what price? The disunity. What do you mean disunity? The fact that human beings are incapable of coming together and finding real solutions because of all the animosity for the past. I don't understand how murdering somebody who has Down syndrome and conducting some sort of medical experiment on them to figure out a way to prevent that disease would somehow cause like some sort of social issue or disunity in the future? In the same way that the United States government and it's conducting of human experiments on soldiers, on the Tuskegee airmen, for example, all those things cause disunity now. Now we can't trust our government and now you have people who absolutely hate the government. We have a civil war brewing because of all these old sins. Okay, you're using a different sort of example. How would murdering a mentally disabled person cause some sort of disunity in the future? When you murder any kind of human being, you are creating a situation in which other human beings feel threatened. Okay, and let's assume we were living in a society where that wasn't the case. Why would you say that? That would make it okay? Okay, well, as a hypothetical, I'm trying to discover your moral principles so let's say a hypothetical. Let's say there's a hypothetical where we were considering murdering a mentally disabled person, either because we wanted to eat them or for medical research or for whatever purpose we can apply whatever positive utility to murdering a mentally disabled person. And let's say no one had a problem with it. Would it be okay? Yeah. It would be. Yeah. Okay, how many people would have to disagree with it for it to be a problem? I don't know. Okay, this is a little strange. We're talking about a hypothetical universe that could never exist. I don't know how to be in it. It absolutely could exist. I don't know how to dive into this universe. It absolutely could exist. Have you ever heard of a- People that really exist in a real world are not gonna stand for that. Nobody's gonna be okay with you murdering people with mental disabilities. Have you ever heard of Spartans? Yeah. Yeah, they would murder children who were weak, sickly, slow, and they'd literally just throw them down a pit. And now we regard them as savages. No, not really. I think most people actually, if you ask them, they think they're kind of highly- Do you think that one day is possible for plants to be proven sentient in any possible future? Well, wait a second. Let's go, let's retrace. I don't understand how that matters whether or not we consider them savages today. The issue is that you believe- That's the whole point, man. That's my moral. That's the whole point of the thing. It's causing the eventuality of our species to be in a negative light. It's creating a situation in which we may go extinct in the future. That's why it's bad. How could we possibly go extinct in the future if we murder members of our species who can't even breed? I'm sorry, what was that? How could we possibly go extinct in the future if we murder members of our own species who can't even breed? They're unviable. Like these mentally disabled people- Like I said, we are creating a situation where humans cannot trust humans. Okay. We're destroying the community. Not necessarily. If any action that destroys the community, the community of humanity will put us on the path to extinction. Okay, anything that destroys a community will put us on the path to extinction. So if somebody were to have a gay relationship in Saudi Arabia, and that creates distrust in the community there, that makes it homosexuality immoral. No, that's not the community of humans. What did you want to say? Oh, I was just being sure that we could hear the rest of what you were saying that you can gains, but we can, it sounds like you were done. So go ahead, sorry, Kaz. Well. Okay. Well, let's say all humans, I'm sure at one point, a vast majority of human society thought homosexuality was bad. Okay, so homosexuality, how were they wrong? It created issues within their community. There are plenty of epigenetic theories for why homosexuality improves our situation and helps us genetically to survive. That doesn't matter. You mentioned- I'm not gonna quote them. You mentioned distrust within the community is a problem. So if something creates distrust- In a fourth dimensional context. In a fourth dimensional context. Yes, you're thinking so narrowly, man. Okay, well, so wait, why? Okay, so let's go through this hypothetical. You're saying they were wrong because there's some sort of genetic reason why homosexuality is a good thing. Yes, and the fact that now we realize that homosexuality does not hurt us in any kind of way. And that helps us as a people to come together. How does homosexuality help people come together? I'm not speaking it correctly. It's not that homosexuality helps people come together. It's the fact that now that we recognize that we cannot discriminate against each other for these superficial aspects of our personality, that brings us together. That allows us to embrace all of us, all of each other. That helps us to embrace each other equally. When we embrace each other, when we help each other and cooperate, that is superior to competition. Not necessarily. Creating discrimination causes enemies. Well, there's a reason we discriminate. There's a very practical evolutionary reason why we discriminate. Yeah, and they're valid in the situations in which they first arose, but now we have evolved past that. No, not really. Look, there are totally valid reasons and useful reasons to discriminate. You see the sort of discriminatory behavior when we see pandemic diseases. You might be able to call some people xenophobic when they don't wanna allow immigration during a pandemic disease. But that sort of discrimination is helpful. So, and look, I'm sure a lot of people can recognize certain people who come from certain places are far more likely to have a set of behaviors and beliefs that are not congruent with your own or even generally harmful. So, no, discrimination is a totally useful thing. Yes, totally. But now that we have the cognitive ability to actually dissect those discriminatory practices, we can see the parts of it that are actually useful. It is not helpful to discriminate against people because they're from China, but it is perfectly understandable why you'd wanna discriminate against a wet market, right? Okay. And if that is very prevalent in a certain area, you might say a country that has wet markets we don't wanna have trade with in international travel. That's not racist. That's not nationalist even. That's just protection. That's just reasonable. Okay. And what is the practical use of discriminating against animals in this sort of way where you should be able to murder a cow for a burger? The practical use of murdering a cow for... You're saying, okay, so you're saying, like you're saying discrimination is useful in certain circumstances. What's the use of discriminating against animals in this sort of way? The use of discriminating against animals in this sort of way is that we have guaranteed them a ticket to the future. That's not beneficial for us. Yes, it is because, okay, so this is where you have to get even more deep into it. The fact is every single species on this planet makes unique proteins and all of them could have potential uses. We don't know what lineages... What proteins... No, not all of them do. Not all of them do. No, of course, but you don't know what uses any specific species could have in the future to you. So it is unwise to allow any of them to go extinct if you can help it. Okay, this is probably the most ridiculous argument you've made yet. So you're saying that there's a practical, well, wait, you're saying there's a practical utility to ensuring that these animals don't go extinct because they make unique proteins that we could use in the future. What proteins? What do you mean? You don't know about finding cures for different diseases and different plants and animals? What do you mean? Most of our diseases come from animals in the first place. Okay, but that doesn't mean that we don't ever find any kind of useful information in them. I'm not gonna... Like what, give me an example. I will find some for you. I will find some. Okay, well, give me an example. Okay, for instance, like the venom of a spider being used as a cure for, I don't know, fucking... Okay, well, spiders aren't domesticated animals. Sure, but they are animals. They're not domesticated animals. So wait a minute, so now we have a line between domesticated and undem domesticated animals? You're saying that we have to keep farming animals to prevent them from going extinct. That was your argument. We don't know what benefit, we don't know what benefits cows may pose for us in the future. So we should keep infinitely holocausting them? We should keep them alive. Yeah, infinitely holocausting them, infinitely murdering them because you think eventually they'll have some sort of unique property, possibly in the future, that will allow some sort of medical breakthrough. You're telling me cows are the solution to some sort of amazing medical breakthrough that might be... Are you telling me that that's impossible? Yes, that is ridiculous. What the hell could cows do? And I guess mine is an opinion too. I don't know. Maybe one day the first cow that becomes sentient cures all the other diseases. Who knows? Okay, well, let's say we should get rid of human rights and allow for us to murder any humans we want and vivisect them because that might someday allow us to come up with some sort of amazing medical breakthrough. So should we get rid of human? Okay, what do you mean you don't see how? So now you're using a double standard? I don't know what you're saying here. You're saying that killing people can be beneficial? Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean... It absolutely could for medical research. It absolutely could for medical research. Look, there are things that we can't do. Sure, but then once you've killed the subject, you can't do anything else with them. Well, guess what? There's more people. There's always more people. We keep breeding. So what do you mean? People will die anyways. You can use dead bodies. You don't have to kill them until you get them out. No, you need to expand on live human beings if you're gonna do things like studies on the brain or studies on cancer. Yeah, you need living subjects. You need living subjects. Yes, and it's a massive benefit to medical research to be able to experiment on human subjects. So I could argue that we should allow like inhumane experimentation on human subjects because eventually it could potentially lead to a medical breakthrough that we wouldn't have otherwise discovered and the amount of positive utility that generates would be greater than the amount of negative utility to come to that sort of discovery. So is that out of the realms of possibility? Should we do it? Just because it could potentially happen in the future? No, you've totally disregarded the principle of liberty. Okay, so can you name the trait why humans deserve liberty and animals don't? Because they can ask for it. Because they can ask for it. Okay, mentally disabled people can't ask for it. But people can ask for it on the behalf of them. Okay, I can ask for it on the behalf of animals, so. Well, you have a right to ask for it. And we maybe should grant a lot of it. You just contradicted yourself. Maybe we should grant a lot of those rights, but they have other utilities and other... Do you not see that you just contradicted yourself? I see that you're trying to separate the principles and try to take them in the back. You just said that if someone can speak on the behalf of someone else for their liberty, that means they should be granted liberty. So I speak for liberty for animals. I think we covered this earlier. That when... Just wanna be sure that we're the rest from Richard and then I promise we'll come right back to you, Cass. In case you had a... If you were still going, Richard. Yeah, sure. So you claimed that if you can... If the person or subject cannot speak for its own liberty, if someone else can speak for its liberty, therefore it deserves liberty. Oh, okay. I speak for the... Why does it have to be a member of its species? We covered that earlier. No, we didn't. Okay, explain why it has to be a member of its species. Why are you even separating things that species? Like I could say it has to be a member of its own race or it has to be a member of its own gender. Why are you suppressing things at genus? I didn't. Yeah, you're saying that it's okay to murder and make plants suffer, but it's not okay to do that. Do you know what a genus is? You realize that we have a different genus than other animals? Maybe I'm at Phylum. Maybe I'm at Phylum. Or maybe I'm at Kingdom. I'm not sure. Go ahead. Well, because plants aren't sentient, you haven't provided any evidence that plants are sentient. I have the link in the description. You can look at it. We're okay. In the description of this stream? I had not updated it yet, so sorry about that. I do have your personal links, but let me put your bibliography. You can scroll down. There are these presentations from all these scientists showing all of these different sentient animals. Does any, okay, wait, wait, wait, is the conclusion of any of this research? Do any of the authors state this is evidence of sentience in plants? This is either presentation. Okay, so no, no, look dude, just because plants can communicate, just because they send off pheromones or they can transfer information that's not evidence of sentience. In your opinion, but you are drawing this. Sentience is something that's very specific. I don't care if you say, oh, it's in your opinion. No, if there's no evidence in support of something, you can't just say that's in your opinion. You don't have any evidence for your claims. Where's the evidence that plants are sentient? Just look at the video. Show me a paper. Show me, no, show me one paper. The papers are in the description of all those videos. Show me one, okay, no, just link it. Can you link text in this type of program? I do not link things in live freaking debates, man. Nobody does that. Yeah, I do. What do you mean? I have debates on research. On your channel when you have control. I have debates where I share research all the time. No, just try this. Dude, just show me one single paper where the authors concluded this is evidence of sentience in plants. Give me a second, I will try. Well, I'm not gonna like, no. Give me the name of one. Find the paper. I will find you a paper and that's all I'm gonna do. Okay, just give me the name of one. Let's see, I'm gonna put that bibliography in the chat and then I'm on a different laptop. So what I can do though, I can send it to Richard on Twitter. And... Sure, do that. One remind you folks, we are very excited. I forgot to mention this at the start of the stream. We are on podcast now. We are making the move. So this will be in addition to YouTube. This debate itself will also be a podcast that you can listen to and it will be a really fun one to listen to. We've got a lot of positive feedback. The chats have been enjoying this. Thank you guys and we've got a lot of great questions. So, yes, folks. So here's a paper, ecologist Suzanne Sinard. Just name the paper. Exploring how and why trees talk to each other. What journal was that published in? Yale Environment 360. Yale School of Environment. Okay, for one thing, this isn't a... Okay, sure. Okay, do you understand what a peer reviewed journal is? This is a blog. Okay, do you want me to do research and find out? I can write a paper for this if you want. This woman is speaking in a blog and talking to each other is different than sentience. Computers talk to each other. Do you understand that communication doesn't imply sentience? So what does? Well, being able to feel. So it's not something that you can... How do you know something to feel or communicate? Look, it's not something that can be deductively proven, but you can make certain inferences. So it's not something that can be deductively proven. Again, sentience is the ability to feel. It's very difficult. So what are we talking about then? Okay, look, sentience is the ability to feel. If you don't have any evidence that plants feel, if you only have evidence that plants communicate, then you don't have evidence Okay, hold on. Give me a second. Let me find the paper about them crying. Hold on. This is, okay, I'm guessing this is just a clickbait article. I need to find it. I need to find that for you. I'm guessing this is just a clickbait article and not a peer-reviewed medical journal. And they use those words, plants can cry. I watch these scientists talk. That's all I did. It's an attractive title. There's no evidence that plants have sentience. Sentience is a very specific thing. It has nothing to do with communication. It is entirely possible that you may be correct. I listened to these scientists talk and that is the conclusion that I drew from that. That's all I can say. This might be a decent time to go into the Q&A. If you guys have last thoughts, you can definitely have time for those. Otherwise, we can transition in pretty quick for that question and answer session. No, let's just go ahead and go Q&A. I'm going to do this. Okay, so wait a minute. Before we go any further, I want to know exactly, you want to see evidence of the plants having a subjective feeling. Is that correct? Yeah, I want some sort of evidence that they can have a subjective experience. Okay, and I just want to be super clear because when I find it, I don't want any goal post-moving. Tell me anything else that you need to tell me about that before I go looking. Because I will find that and I will send it to you. I'll send it to you on Twitter. Okay, well, the easiest evidence that a being has the ability to have a subjective experience is that they tell you. Obviously, most creatures can't communicate on that level, but being able to respond to noxious stimuli, being able to have some sort of, being able to have some sort of problem-solving or reasoning ability, that's a very obvious one. And having some sort of- You will tell how many times a bug lands on you being able to tell if it's a bug that's in your mouth, as opposed to just a window- That's, so, that's evident, so that could possibly be evidence, but again, just because that happens, that doesn't mean that's the case that it's sentient. So I'd say the best evidence of sentience that you could possibly have is reasoning capability. So being able to do some sort of problem-solving So when a Venus flytrap needs exactly a certain number of steps taken on its mouth before it will close, we don't count that or do you think that that's possibly a reasoning type characteristic? No, because you can actually explain what's going on. I can't remember, I'm not a botanist or whatever, but there's a reason why a Venus flytrap can detect whether or not it's a fly or if it's, I don't know, some piece of debris. It's just because, I can't even remember the explanation, but it's not that it's reasoning. It's not that it's reasoning, it's that it has some sort of built-in, it has some sort of built-in molecular response. It's not that it reasons, oh, there's a fly there. I can tell that because there's a certain amount of steps or it feels a certain way. It needs a certain number of action potentials to be sent down before it actually can close. Yeah, sort of like how a computer can tell whether or not something's a Bluetooth signal or a Wi-Fi signal, something like that. Just because it can detect a certain device or a certain thing that doesn't mean it's actually feeling and having a conscious experience. Have you ever tried Googling plants crying? Yeah, I have actually responded to a few of those sorts of articles on my channel. And you just totally don't know. So they're clickbait articles. They're not published, I don't know about the videos. They're clickbait art. I don't care about videos, dude. I care about actual scientific governance. So these are all clickbait articles. They're clickbait videos. They're worded in a way that's just attractive and eye-catching. There's nothing that suggests that plants actually have a conscious experience. What they're talking about is plants having some sort of ability to communicate. And that's important for agricultural reasons. We might be able to prevent. We might be able to prevent the spread of certain diseases that could kill crops or something like that. It's not any kind of evidence that these plants are conscious and feel and should deserve any kind of rights. I just don't see how you can separate the two so cleanly like that. Okay, so again, do you think your computer is conscious because it can communicate with other devices or other computers? I think that computers or any node of sufficient complexity can have consciousness arise. Yeah, I don't know that because nobody knows what consciousness is. But that's just my hypothesis. Okay, just because something's complex that doesn't mean it can actually feel. No, it has to have a network. It has to have a way to exchange signals. Okay, well, my computer's on a network. It's called the internet. It can exchange signals with different computers. Like what do you mean? Just because I'm downloading a torrent? So because I'm downloading a torrent? Can you deny that it's possible? Yeah, it's completely impossible for consciousness to arise in that sort of way. Look, again, you're conflating two different things. Communication is different than consciousness. Consciousness is a subjective experience whereas communication is just sharing information. You don't need to have consciousness to share information. We're pretty much near that time. I can give you, since we had Richard start, if you wanna have the last word to that, Kaz, we can give you that as long as it's not like a speech, not like a short speech or anything, but just like a last word. I just wanna ask you one more question. Sure. I just wanna ask one more question. Just if, I'm pretty sure that one of these videos is of a plant remembering a noxious stimuli and then altering its behavior in the future. Will that, if I can get you the paper behind that, will you make any concession there? No, because again, that doesn't just, okay, so I know there's a few plants that can do that. You're gonna have to actually provide evidence of consciousness, not just that. It changes its reaction based on something that happened before. That's not really any kind of direct evidence. I just really think that that's just human bias. You know what, dude? We can have a debate about this, a really detailed long debate about this on my channel and you can bring whatever research you want and you can message me on Twitter or whatever. That sounds great, man. I really appreciate it and you know, I totally acknowledge that I could be totally wrong about this because like I said at the beginning, you guys, you're on your shit when it comes to morals in a way that nobody else really is. So I do applaud you for that. Okay. Sweet story. Yeah and yeah, I would just invite you onto your debate, whatever we can have a detailed discussion on. Sentience in the plant kingdom and we can also have a longer debate about ethics as well if you're interested. Yeah, I'd really like to talk about the basis, the basis of your morality and what all of your principles are so I can get a comprehensive look at it. Okay, sure. Okay, sweet. Thanks so much, gentlemen. It's been a true pleasure, really appreciate it. And also, yes, that would be exciting. We would love to tweet or put the word out if that debate happened. So feel free to let us know guys. We always try to promote it no matter where the debate happens. So with that, we'll jump into these questions. Thanks for your question first from Steven. Thanks for your super sticker. Are those catching on? Okay, Crafty Kila, thanks for your question statement says, veganism doesn't stop cruelty to animals. It helps close small family farms. The only people buying that land are intensive, quote, farms, unquote, which equal more cruelty. So I think this is a challenge for you, Richard, if you want to respond to you, of course. Go ahead. Yeah, sure. So I understand this argument. This is sort of misinformation that was popularized by an animal scientist, agricultural scientist named Archer Davis. He put out a few really bad papers where he made a bunch of miscalculations and he calculated that if you raise like a farm, if you have a farm or cows eat grass that causes fewer animal deaths than if you were to grow like wheat. Well, he made a bunch of miscalculations and the biggest miscalculation he made was he didn't factor in land use and productivity of the farm. You can grow far more food on a smaller unit of land if you're using plant agriculture. And that ends up killing fewer animals just because you can feed so much more people on a smaller piece of land. On top of that, he made a bunch of miscalculations on how many animals, like how many small field animals like mice are killed during harvest. So no, that's totally false. Fewer animals are killed and are harmed to grow plants. Can I ask Vegan Gains one more question real quick? Short and pithy, just because we have a lot of questions. Vegan Gains, do you still support abortion? Are you still pro-life? Oh yeah, I support abortions. Are you against egg consumption? Yeah, and it's not because, so eggs are unfertilized. It's not for that reason. It's because of exploitation. All of the hens are exploited. So it doesn't have anything to do with you like smushing their eggs. It's because of exploitation. So if we were to not be exploiting them, if they were like free range, only the excess blah, blah, blah, you'd be okay with that egg consumption. You'd have to be talking about a situation where they're wild, we're not breeding them and you just happen upon some eggs that are unfertilized and loose that aren't being tended to. Okay, I think that's reasonable enough. Thank you. Gotcha, and thanks for your, Superintendent Bartos Diagos says, Kaz for president, you have a fan out there. Kaz, very nice. And thanks for your question. This one comes in from Tioga, or a statement says, plants select for animals eating their fruit though. Yeah, us, go ahead. That's kind of weirdly worded. I think what he's saying is that there's a symbiotic sort of relationship where plants will, like there's a co-evolution going on where plants will create sweeter, more colorful fruits that attract mammals in an attempt to spread more seeds. So it's beneficial for some of these plant eating animals to have like, to seek out these plants and these plants benefit from these animals eating them because they spread their seeds. So I think that's what they're trying to say. I don't know how that relates to the debate though. Gotcha, and thanks for your question. This one comes in from Stupid Horror Energy strikes again. She says, the question should be, do plants have any capacity to suffer? I would say no, since they're not conscious, you need consciousness to be able to suffer. Well, that's gonna be the topic of the next debate. That's what we need to discuss. Gotcha, and Ryan Gordon, thanks for your question, said, tell me what untamed animals do for you if not provide food. You'd prefer taking their habitat away and turn it all into cropland? Okay, so this is a pretty interesting question. Okay, so this is a pretty ridiculous idea. I'd recommend that person read the UN's latest climate report. If you turn to chapter five, page 76, they outline how switching to a 100% plant-based food system where no animal agriculture is used would actually free up land. So again, I mentioned earlier that if you farm plants, it's much more land efficient. You don't have to use as much land to grow the same amount of food. So if we were to get rid of animal agriculture, we would be able to use much less land for agriculture, which would actually free up a lot of land to use to regrow forests. And they calculate that by 2050, if we switched to a 100% plant-based food system, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one third. So I'd recommend you just read the UN's latest climate report. Gotcha, all right, thanks. And also, thanks so much for your question from Germania, says, if CAS is against animal cruelty, why do you still eat meat from animals that were abused and treated cruel, Lee? Isn't that cognitive dissonance? It's not cognitive dissonance if I'm not aware of it. If I am aware of it, I'm sorry. I am aware of it. I am cognizant of it, and I am seriously considering it all the time. And I'm weighing the situation in real time. And hopefully I'll come to some kind of conclusion soon. But I just have to be honest and say, you know, like he was just, like beginning games was just saying about that UN study. I've looked into that too. And I really can't see any failure in the logic. I hope that maybe somebody else will. But like I said at the beginning of my opening, the efficiency argument is the best one they have. And it's irrefutable as far as I can tell. Gotcha. Thanks for your question. This one coming in from sickvibe1 says, for cats, if aliens couldn't understand our language, would it be moral for them to kill us? We can interpret animal behaviors as them not wanting to die. If the aliens couldn't understand our language, then they wouldn't be intelligent. And then we would be us eating them. Gotcha. And Ryan, thanks for your question said, what if the frogs are turning gay? Nice, Alex Jones meme there. Raven zero, thanks for your question says, wow, I can see why they call him the psycho vegan. Richard, oh, listen, we, I was just talking to somebody the other day, Richard, a huge fan of yours. And no joke, I'm dead serious. He's, I go to the plasma center here and he works there and we were just talking about your, you have just the right personality for YouTube because it's, but yeah. So next thing's for your question, Lori, Nicola thinks they said, I'd be super into vegan gains as cause. If he wasn't so insane about it, I'm intrigued. You have a critic out there, vegan gains. Do you have a, if you want, you respond otherwise? Yeah, I mean, I could be the worst person on earth and I don't even try to act like I don't try to pretend as if I'm a good person. I don't consider myself a good person. I think I'm just doing at least the minimum amount that I think should be required of me, which is going vegan, not killing and eating animals. But yeah, regardless of my character, I mean, you should just listen to my arguments. You can block out all my personality issues and just listen to my arguments. And I think my arguments are pretty sound. Gotcha. Thanks for being a good sport, Richard, I'm taking these. Ryan, thanks for your question statement said, Adolf was a vegetarian. Oh, I feel like I shouldn't have said that word. Was a vegetarian an animal rights activist? He ate eggs to get protein, but hated doing it. That's actually not true. One of his, one of the people who made his food, like chefs or food preparers and food tasters, he ate meat regularly. The whole him being vegetarian, it was a, it was part of his political campaign. Gandhi was a popular political figure at the time. And he used that sort of popularity that Gandhi had where Gandhi would abstain from sex. He was vegetarian. He tried to follow that idea. And he claimed he was vegetarian. All he really did was reduce his meat consumption because apparently it gave him really bad gas. And he also claimed that he abstained from sex. And this was just to promote this idea that he's a really good, serious, reliable sort of person. And he tried to compare himself to Gandhi. That is super interesting. I did not know that. Okay. Thanks for your question. This one comes in from Lori McColl. Oh, we got that one. Taliesin Oberlander says, vegan gains is misrepresenting the Holocaust for his argument. The Holocaust goal was extermination. Co-modification is completely different. Okay. I don't think that's a misrepresentation just because the Nazis wanted to cause extinction. I don't think it's wrong to make a comparison between the animal agriculture industry and the Holocaust when essentially the same moral wrongs are being committed. And there are actually some Jewish Holocaust survivors who became animal activists and they compare the Holocaust to animal agriculture. And I know quite a few Jewish animal rights activists whose friends and family were actually in the Holocaust and they make the same comparisons. So I think the meaningful comparison is that these animals are being mistreated. They're being forced into these enclosed spaces. They're being abused and they're being murdered. The extermination aspect of it isn't important. And I think you could argue it's worse because it's ongoing. It will never end unless we do something about it. I definitely would agree that the situation that we put these animals in is very reminiscent. And the suffering that we are creating by our practices is on par. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. Frustrated Atheist says, just want to know if I can still eat baby sandwiches. Thanks for that. Might use this as an opportunity for a serious question because we asked the vegan, their YouTube channel called Those Annoying Vegans, they're self-titled, really charming couple. And I'm curious vegan gains because we asked them the same question. Do you have any favorite recipes for those of us who are kind of moving into the vegan lifestyle or diet? Do you have any recipes that you'd recommend like a sandwich alternatives or anything like that? I'm not a cook. I'm not great at recipes. I could just recommend a few cookbooks. I think Thug Kitchen Cookbook is a really good one. AventGuard Vegan has a really good cookbook. I think those are some really good cookbooks for good recipes to follow that are more for taste, not necessarily for health. But yeah, I'd recommend those. I'd check out AventGuard Vegan and Thug Kitchen. They have a few cookbooks. Thanks so much. And Stupid Horror Energy strikes again. She says, what about all the loss of biodiversity exterminated when making land available to ruminants for meat production? Did you want to take that one or I'll take it? So yeah, a lot of people don't consider this. Like again, Archer Davis has created a lot of these like bad ideas where people think that, oh, if the cow is just eating grass, it's good for the environment, it's natural, but it actually significantly impacts biodiversity. For one thing, you have to clear out a lot of land to make room for grays and cattle. Cattle also prefer to eat particular types of grass and that actually affects bio diversity just because of the type of grass that they're eating. So that actually gets rid of a lot of different smaller animals, a lot of different insects and larger mammals that compete for the same space like deer. Okay, thanks so much. And Gurmania says, is it okay to beat a cow to death? If not, why eat beef? Maybe this is a challenge to CAS or to people who eat beef more broadly. We'll let you speak for it. Is it okay? No, I don't think it's okay to beat a cow to death. I think that's, like I tried to make clear in my arguments, creating more suffering is not a good thing, but it's the distinction, the fact that they have a different utility, that's the reason they are capable, that it's okay to eat them, but it doesn't make it okay to be cruel. Cruelty as a practice is never helpful to our species for our survival in the first place. Even if you're committing it against another species? Any cruelty as in a vacuum, you just take the concept of cruelty and you practice that in any capacity. You're reducing our potential for survival. Okay, do you think it's cruel to kill an animal that wants to live? Sure. Okay, so why aren't you vegan? How do you know that they want to live? Okay, I'm pretty sure if they knew what a gun was and I pointed at them, they'd run. Like I mean, they run away from predators, correct? Well, then how do you know that plants don't want to live? Because they're not sentient and they just sit there regardless of what happens. They just sit there, sure, but we don't know that they're not sentient. We can't even begin to understand their experience. We can't even begin to understand their experience. That's completely tangential to the idea that it's cruel to kill an animal. You're using a very limited and pathetic model. That's completely tangential. Okay, let's assume that plants are sentient. That doesn't make it okay to kill animals. But it doesn't, where do you draw the line? I don't understand. If you can't empathize with a creature then it's okay to kill it. That's what you're saying. That's tangential to the issue. How does that make it okay to kill an animal? Your argument is that if you can't empathize with the creature, it's okay to eat it. What I want to do is I want to give Richard a chance to respond to what you had just said, Kaz. And then after that, Kaz, I'll give you a chance to respond to this original question and we'll have to move to the next one. Yeah, what I'm saying is if you recognize any form of cruelty as wrong and you recognize it as wrong to take away the life of a being that wants to live then I don't see how you could say, like I don't see how you could keep eating meat. Sounds contradictory to me. I don't see how you can continue to live. Or Kaz, I want to get returning back to this question that they said, if it's not okay to beat a cow to death then why eat beef? So we'll give you one chance and then we got to move forward, short and pithy. It is okay to eat beef. It is not okay to beat them to death. Gotcha. And stupid whore energy strikes again. She says bacteria can exchange signals. It's called quorum sensing. I think this is regarding whether or not there can be communication. And she's saying like even bacteria can communicate. If you want to respond, Kaz, you can otherwise. Did you want to respond? No, that's my point that I'm trying to make. Okay, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, communication doesn't imply consciousness. Again, consciousness is a very specific thing. It's the ability to have a subjective experience. So lame in terms, it's the ability to feel. Something doesn't necessarily have to feel something to be able to communicate. Your computer is a great example of this just because your computer can communicate with other devices, other computers. That doesn't mean it can feel. So you're conflating two different things. You're conflating communication with sentience. Hold on, can I say something to that? Sure. A computer cannot communicate. A computer is a tool of communication. Like my tongue does not communicate. I use my tongue to communicate. No, your computer can communicate. It can communicate with different devices. It can communicate with other computers. So no, I can't. Ultimately, any communication that a computer does requires a human being to initiate it, even if it's back in the program. No, no, no, that's not true. You can develop an AI and you can program an AI to do certain things and actually communicate. So are we saying that AIs are not sentient? No, AIs are not sentient. No, AIs are not sentient. Google has created an AI. No, there's a certain. So there's a debate going on right now about what causes sentience in the artificial intelligence community. And right now, a lot of the debate is centered around whether or not there needs to be a certain type of matter in these sorts of machines for sentience to exist. But no, just because something can communicate that doesn't mean it's actually conscious. So what you just said, OK, well listen, what you just said is just completely false. Google has created an AI. You can actually Google it right now and go to the type of program. You can try to have a communication with this artificial speech AI. So that doesn't mean it's actually conscious. If one day you have a robot that says, I don't. I hate to do this, Kaz, but just we have to keep because we have a number of questions yet. We can debate this later, dude. So don't worry about it. Yeah, and by the way, folks, a shortcut, instead of keeping, I mean, we'll still tweet it out in Facebook post their debate. But if you subscribe to their channels, then you'll probably hear about it even more directly. So their links are in the description, friendly reminder. And Andrew T says, tell Richard and Jasmine I said hi. Next, one last one. Where is it? We've got another one like that. Or no, this is coming at you hard, Kaz. Adam Elbilia says, Kaz, is it that hard to admit that it's indeed immoral, but sadly, you don't care enough about it? I'm saying it as a carnivore myself. I don't know if I wasn't clear, but the way that we kill animals is immoral. But I think even vegan gains admitted that certain instances of eating meat are not immoral. So I mean, we have arbitrary lines that we're drawing between us, but I don't think that the situation is so clear that I must admit anything. Next, thanks for your question. From Gurmania asks, even if plants were sentient, we would still be morally justified to eat them because it's out of necessity, whereas we humans don't have to eat meat. Yes, we don't have to eat plants. Well, you do. Like, OK, so there's a case to die. You can choose to die. OK, well, look, assuming that we have an interest in living, then we are going to have to make that sort of moral choice. And if we're going to even give you that that plants are sentient, I mean, I could very easily argue that plants aren't as sentient as animals. I could very easily argue that the amount of suffering caused by eating plants is far less than eating meat. And if you care about plant lives, the majority of our plant agriculture actually gets used to feed the animals you eat. So you'd actually end up causing more plant deaths by eating meat. So in either case, the whole plants are sentient thing, it doesn't actually help the whole carnus argument that it's OK to eat meat. Gotcha. And thanks for your question. This one's coming from Earl of Sandwich says, pet owning animal eaters, can I kill and eat your pet? I'll pay you for it. Come on. Gotcha. And thanks. Oh, wait, let's see, do we have... That might be it. Let me just double check just to be sure I didn't miss any. And so, want to say, folks, really appreciate it. This is always fun. These guys are a pleasure to have on. And let's see, Donnie Darko, thanks for your super chat and mere care. Thanks for yours. Didn't see anything written, but really appreciate the support and fill the logician. Thanks for your questions at Rich. How do you feel when you see babies in strollers? Well, I have certain urges. I just try to avoid them though. They kind of, I have a phobia of children. I think it's called pedophobia, where they actually make me really anxious and nervous and I have a weird irrational fear of children. So I just try to avoid them. Gotcha. Are you gonna have children one day? No, I got a vasectomy, so. Gotcha. And Mayor Kader, thanks for your question that just flew in, said statements, said plants react and don't respond, thus not sentient, right? Also, painless killing in human context is wrong because of desire to live. Is it? Yeah. Okay, so he meant, so this is gonna be something that we're gonna have to debate, but I think he is making at least like some fair point with a plant sentience thing. It's kind of ridiculous to think that all plants would be sentient just because you can find a few. There are plants that don't communicate, don't respond to stimuli. I think the majority of the ones we eat, they're not comparable to things like Venus fly traps. And what is it? Yeah, a big aspect of why it's wrong to kill is because the animal or being you're killing doesn't want to be killed. That's one big reason why we think it's wrong to kill people. So, and that's why we think it's okay to mercy kill. People who want to be, want to die because they're in horrible pain. Animals for the most part aren't in that situation, at least not the ones we eat. So I think that's one of the big reasons why it's wrong. Gotcha, and King Carb also says hi, Richard. A lot of fans are there. So we really appreciate these guys. It's been a true pleasure, folks. Want to say thanks for all your questions. And oh wait, no, we do, if you guys forgive me, we're once again, Francesca King was like, she was asking a lot of questions. So I want to ask at least one, is asked what would be the least economically devastating way to transition from animal farming? So right now, a lot of like animal farming is really beneficial for the economy. A lot of people make good money off of animal farming. There are certain big cash crops right now. Palm oil is a big one. There are obviously environmental issues with palm oil, but I just say with the transition to a plant-based diet, chances are there's going to be a big surge in demands for mock meats. And what's probably going to become the big cash crops are going to be things like soybeans, different types of peas that they use for the pea protein and some of these meat substitutes. So I think that would probably be like a pathway anyway to offset that economic issue. And one thing I do want to mention too, I mean animal farming is a huge economic issue as we've seen with the coronavirus. It's lost how many trillions of dollars to the worldwide economy. So avoiding close contact with animals and by any means, including in agriculture, in the long term would be economically beneficial. Gotcha, thank you very much. And with that, thanks so much to these guys. They're linked in the description as I mentioned folks. And with that, I want to say thanks folks. We will be back tomorrow with a debate on good old flat earth. So that should be fun. And so with that, keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable. And one last thanks and goodbye to Vegan Gains and CAS. Appreciate you guys being here. Thank you, James. Thank you Vegan Gains. Absolutely. That take care folks, have a great rest of your night. Okay, are we on? We are off.