 What was that? What was that? I don't care how good he was. I was like, I didn't hear him. Scott on everyone. Welcome to another video. This video is going to be a bit different. It's me reacting and responding to a debate I had with a couple of guys on the streets the other night about veganism and it got a little bit heated. I got a little bit worked up. It really affected me in a way that I couldn't continue doing outreach for about 20 minutes. But as you can see, just the first sentence from this guy's mouth was he doesn't care about animals. He doesn't care how they're killed. So I probably shouldn't have engaged in a discussion with this guy, but he had another guy with him. I thought maybe I could get someone with him, so I continued anyway. But anyway, let's go through it together and we'll see how it turns out. Okay, so you don't care about animals at all? They're below us on the food chain. Okay. Just because they're edible doesn't mean it's morally right to eat them. Humans are edible. What about dogs? No, they're below us on the food chain. It's okay to treat dogs. Do you think that's okay? They're an animal. What's his problem? That was a bit... There was some crazy guy going off with one of the activists, which is why I stopped there. He seems a little bit angry. If you don't care about animals, there's no real point like asking you not to eat them or anything like that. We just ask people to try to look at it from their perspective. We don't want to see animals get hurt. Most normal, sane, rational people don't want to see animals get hurt. But I don't know, you probably have a different view on animal cruelty, yeah? Animal cruelty is probably a bad thing to do. Yeah. I look at it like... If an animal is being killed... Here we go. Schumann slaughter. How do you ethically kill somebody who wants to live? If they have an interest in living, then we take... Ethics and murder are two different opposing views. I'd like to see evidence that we need the nutrients that are in meat specifically. The name of vitamin or nutrient in meat that we can't get from plants. We've been vegan for three and a half years. Completely healthy, blood tests are five. She was so unhealthy. She was told by her doctor that she would die. See, you've got to be careful with these anecdotal claims, okay? People can say anything. I knew someone who knew someone who ate vegan diet and died. Shit. That's not something that I wanted to hear. Because that really upset me. So personally, yourself, if you didn't eat animals, you'd think you would die? I didn't think of that, no. It's just, however, some people too, you know, suffer the consequences from... I'd like to see evidence of someone dying from going vegan. I've never heard of someone dying from not eating meat, but... But even better... How about how many people die from eating meat? Let's just start with the 17.3 million people that die annually of heart disease. A doctor is a medical professional and most people standing here are not... Well, what about doctors like Dr. John McDougal, Dr. Neil Barnard, Dr. Codwell Esselstein, Dr. Greger? What about the American Dietetics Association, who say that a vegan diet and lifestyle is healthy for all stages of life? Are they medical professionals enough for you? What about Dr. Kim Williams, the American President of Cardiology? I'm Dr. Kim Allen-Williams, and I'm currently the President of the American College of Cardiology and Chief of Cardiology at Rush University in Chicago. I am a plant-based nutrition cardiologist. There are a handful of us and a growing number, as people recognize that there's enough data out there to suggest that heart disease is largely an epidemic that is due to food. Vegan! Is that medical professional enough for you, mate? No, we're animal rights people. We think it's wrong to eat an animal. A medical professional that's saying that, you know, I would ask that doctor what is in a meat that you can't get from a bean? I don't know. How does the animal get their food? Well, she might have not been eating enough. She might have had some pre-existing existence. That's just one... I've never seen any science to back that up. I've seen science to prove that. You know someone, but that's not really evidence, is it? Exactly, you can't prove it. Everyone here is vegan. There's 20 people standing behind me that are all vegan and healthy, so your one anecdotal claim doesn't really have much leverage now, does it? I'm allergic to quite a lot of vegetables, so I have to eat meat. My brother can't eat any citrus or like most excrete. He can't eat fruit. We can eat potatoes for us pastors. Potato, chips, fries, veganism contained. We've got meats, we've got milk. I'm still going to take the advice of a medical professional. What about all these medical professionals? I would question his... You know the doctors used to recommend cigarettes in the 50s. I know they did, which is crazy. What's that, good advice? That's terrible advice. Here's a question, how long nutrition training do doctors get, do you know? On average, students receive 23.9 contact hours of nutrition instruction during medical school. Only 40 schools required the minimum 25-hour recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, so that's not very much. Not very much at all. There are so many variables in that question. That answer cannot be... Well, it's not much. If you look into it, it's not much. They're trained in medicine. There are so many variables you cannot give to me that I cannot answer that question. So you think that that's a justification for putting animals in the gas chamber? Because that one person... No, I don't think that was justification at all. Putting animals in the gas chamber is just crazy. But that's what we do, so we can eat them. You can put animals in the gas chamber. Human beings do. You can put animals in the gas chamber. Human beings do so we can eat them. Human beings do, yes, but not all people do so. Anyone who eats bacon. Not all animals. By putting them in the gas chamber. What are the other ways we kill them? There's tons. There is literally endless methods of killing an animal, or a person, or anything. Can you name a few that we do animals? I can kill a tree in many different ways. Here we are. A tree? Yeah, air feelings. Plants fill paint. Tree has feelings. Plants have feelings. They are technically living creatures. So plants are living creatures. Let's just have a look at the meaning of creatures here. An animal or person? Okay, so here's we got another genius who's saying that a plant is an animal. Does it have a brain, a functioning nervous system? Yes, it does actually. It makes you feel a brain. Yes. Wow, trees have brains now, everyone. You cut a tree open, you can find a brain. They've actually proven that if you put two plants together so they don't grow up to full size, you kill one, the other will feel pain for it. It feels pain? Yes. So just because plants communicate intelligently does not mean they're sentient. Mobile phones can communicate intelligently when you send a text to each other. That doesn't mean that the phone is sentient. So are you sure it's not reacting to stimuli in the environment with intelligence? They've actually proven they actually feel for each other and communicate with each other. So they communicate intelligently, you mean? They've proven it. But there's a difference between sentience and intelligence. Do you know what the difference is? It's something that doesn't communicate intelligently as it's not worth anything. Well, why can phones communicate intelligently? I'm saying that trees aren't important to us because they don't communicate. I'm saying that trees don't have moral value because they don't suffer. They're not sentient. So why? They don't feel pain to cut down trees. They don't feel pain, they don't experience subjective reality. They're plants. Because when someone's brain dead in hospital, what do they call them? What do they call them? They can't see. They can't feel their brain dead. But yet they still... A vegetable. But yet they still can actually feel pain. No, they can't. No, no. A brain dead person is called a vegetable. So it's perfectly fine for us to cut down trees, is that what you're saying? Well, we can cut down a tree and it's not ethically wrong. Ethically wrong. Because trees don't have moral value. So a tree or a plant cannot be included in the moral community. They are inanimate objects. They are living, but they're not sentient. It's like giving moral value to a rock. Environment. Environment. And do you know if you care about trees? Okay. Air supply. Right point. Right point. So do you know why we have trees? It affects all those things. Okay. So we're cutting down the rainforest for what reasons? Do you know? Lots of... To grow soybeans. Do you know what for? No, no, no. What's the majority of it cut down for? Where it's cut down. The Amazon. The Amazon? I don't know what that is. Soybeans. You know who we feed the soybeans to? No. The cattle. We're cutting down the Amazon to grow soybeans to feed to livestock so you can eat. So if you care about plants and you care about the environment, then veganism's the go. Right. So by eating meat, we're killing more plants. Put down all our trees in places like this. Every tree in the world. We were done. Well, they're doing it in the Amazon. Right. Okay. We shouldn't eat meat. But they're cutting it down for soybeans. To grow soybeans, to feed to cattle. This isn't human soybean feed. This is for cattle. Yeah, but you said it was perfectly fine to cut down trees. I said it's not morally wrong for me to go up and cut down that tree. So we go down and cut down that tree. If I needed to build a hut for myself and cut down the tree, that's fine. So what about... All right. We could plant another one. The tree does not have an interest in... A tree or a plant does not have the same interest in living as a pig or a cow or a sentient being, a chicken. I don't know what to eat. Say I'm an uneducated person. I'm out in the wilderness. I don't know any plants. What's safety? What's not safety? I see an animal and I go, Okay. If I can kill that. I know I can kill that. Okay. I can eat it. That's fair enough. You're not in that survival situation in suburbia though, are you? No, I'm not. What if I would? But you're not. Your comparison now with the tree is crazy. You're saying that trees have moral value. You can go cut down that tree right now. Okay. I'm saying that it's okay. There's the same argument that you're making here. No, there's a difference between plants and animals. It's the exact same. Trees do not have moral value. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that trees don't have any value. Obviously they give us oxygen. But plants that we eat like carrots and broccoli and grains and wheat are a lot different to the oxygen giving plants in the Amazon that we're cutting down to grow soybeans. You know, this guy is saying that I'm saying trees don't have any value at all. No, I'm saying that they can't be given moral consideration because they aren't sentient. It affects everything in this world. The nature is a huge part of the plant. No shit. You care more about trees than you do about an animal that can experience pain. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if you were to cut down all the trees, like you said, it's going to be fine to do. That's a straw man. I didn't say it's perfectly fine to cut down all the trees on Earth. No, no, no. I didn't say that. I said if I needed to cut down a tree, it wouldn't be morally wrong. A tree. A tree. You're going to build an A tree if you care about the forest. So here we got lost. I'll let him take me on some merry-go-round about a tree and whether it's ethical to cut down all trees. No, I should have brought it back to the point, which is do you think it's justified to holocaust billions of animals for a sandwich and do you think the fact that plants can communicate intelligently is a justification for that? That's where I should have kept it, but I started... He got me aggravated and angry and he pulled me off on this tangent. If you care about the forest, right? I would like to see you cut down that tree right now, which is perfectly okay. So your argument is because trees feel pain, they suffer, they communicate with each other. You're saying that's your argument? That's why it's okay to stab billions of animals to death for a sandwich? I didn't say I was perfectly fine to stab billions of animals. That was your argument, that plants feel pain, yeah? Yes, they do. So if I walk up and kick a tree, it will try to avoid the pain? It can run away? Why would they...? Because it doesn't need to. It doesn't need to avoid pain. That's why they're in the ground. Okay, so this is where the camera cut out what I was about to say was that if an animal couldn't avoid pain, it would be perfectly fine to kill the animal. That's what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say is trees don't have pain avoidance mechanism. They might react to stimuli and have some defense response, but they don't have legs to avoid pain. They can't run away or swim away. They don't have a nervous system. Okay, that's what I was trying to say. This guy just wanted to take me on some merry-go-round moral gymnastics and about plants experiencing subjective reality, which just isn't true. I got really agitated by these two. I let it get the better of me a bit, and I shouldn't have just stuck on topic and kept bringing it back to the point, but it's always good to hone your debating skills with people like this, and I just thought I'd commentate through it. It really, really pissed me off a lot, and I had to take a break for about 20 minutes from doing outreach after this, but yeah, I mean, plants feel pain is probably one of the most frustrating arguments that you're going to come across, and the science just doesn't back it up. Scientific consensus is that plants are not sentient, and it's quite obvious that they aren't. Okay, so here's we've got another genius who's saying that a plant is an animal.