A marker of a severe case of dumbness? The naturality argument

[Terxpahseyton]

So today I talked to a bunch of new people, and somehow the topic of vegetarianism arose (note I am not a vegetarian).
And then it happened.
The naturality argument entered the room.
My first instinct: Horribly insult this person, perhaps the shock of it can shock him or her out of his or her severe case of "Being opinionated without being thoughtful doing any thinking"
But naturally, that is not a good way to connect to new people, but still, this instance kept me further occupied for the day and the sheer abundant dumbness of this argument is so striking that I can't help but think: If you use that argument, you expose a general pervasive dumbness which inhibits you.

Is that fair?

First, for the argument's sake, why it is so so dumb:

The argument of naturality with regards to vegetarianism states: Nature intended humans to eat meat. Hence - humans should eat meat.

Nature does not "intend" stuff. Nature is a big pointless senseless mess of crap just happening. In the case of "the" nature - plants and stuff - the sheer abundance of arbitrary elements as well some very lucky exterior conditions (position of the sun etcetera) merely lead to things which appear sensible because there are so many samples to work with and some just have to work out due to mere probability and then start to dominate the system, working out and all. That is how evolution works, anyway.
In the case of the human being, eating meat worked out way better than not eating meat, so humans are "intended" to eat meat.
So why does this mean that we should eat meat nowadays? It may be healthy to do so - but note that is is NOT the argument. Or, you know, you could just say so. No, the argument is a appeal to a higher authority. An authority which is inherently without ANY sense or purpose.
It only even manages to appear as it could make sense by portraying nature as a thinking being, by personalizing it. But that is of course just fantasy BS. If you strip the argument of that personalization - what is left?

"We should eat meat because an arbitrary system made it easy for humans to eat some meat. Am I right?"

Yea.....

So really... how can you be that dumb? I mean if you are 12 or something - I'll give you some slack. You are still in a stage of development where you are more like a parrot than a human.
But being an adult attending a challenging university degree?

As German chancellor Adenauer said: "God really messed up in an instance. Everything he gave limits, just dumbness he allowed to be infinite".

 

[Rashiminos]

People oft appeal to nature as an example of what works, as opposed to less-tested theories of how humans should behave. Our collective religious background structures this an appeal to authority (nature instead of God), so that person is merely resorting to a common programmed habit (reinforced by society and biology). This is more of the garden variety of dimness, aka common sense.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Most people eat meat because it tastes good, is available, and is what they grew up with. I think most people who don't eat meat don't do so because of specific health, political or cultural reasons. My wife doesn't eat meat because she is against factory farming of of animals. It is her protest.

 

[Kennigit]

sounds like the natural fight-or-flight response kicked in

 

[Agent327]

People oft appeal to nature as an example of what works, as opposed to less-tested theories of how humans should behave. Our collective religious background structures this an appeal to authority (nature instead of God), so that person is merely resorting to a common programmed habit (reinforced by society and biology). This is more of the garden variety of dimness, aka common sense.

Not really. The stress in common sense is on sense, not on common. Plenty of people lack common sense, so it's not that common in practice. But in theory it could be very common. If you catch my drift.

 

[aelf]

Spoiler :

So today I talked to a bunch of new people, and somehow the topic of vegetarianism arose (note I am not a vegetarian).
And then it happened.
The naturality argument entered the room.
My first instinct: Horribly insult this person, perhaps the shock of it can shock him or her out of his or her severe case of "Being opinionated without being thoughtful doing any thinking"
But naturally, that is not a good way to connect to new people, but still, this instance kept me further occupied for the day and the sheer abundant dumbness of this argument is so striking that I can't help but think: If you use that argument, you expose a general pervasive dumbness which inhibits you.

Is that fair?

First, for the argument's sake, why it is so so dumb:

The argument of naturality with regards to vegetarianism states: Nature intended humans to eat meat. Hence - humans should eat meat.

Nature does not "intend" stuff. Nature is a big pointless senseless mess of crap just happening. In the case of "the" nature - plants and stuff - the sheer abundance of arbitrary elements as well some very lucky exterior conditions (position of the sun etcetera) merely lead to things which appear sensible because there are so many samples to work with and some just have to work out due to mere probability and then start to dominate the system, working out and all. That is how evolution works, anyway.
In the case of the human being, eating meat worked out way better than not eating meat, so humans are "intended" to eat meat.
So why does this mean that we should eat meat nowadays? It may be healthy to do so - but note that is is NOT the argument. Or, you know, you could just say so. No, the argument is a appeal to a higher authority. An authority which is inherently without ANY sense or purpose.
It only even manages to appear as it could make sense by portraying nature as a thinking being, by personalizing it. But that is of course just fantasy BS. If you strip the argument of that personalization - what is left?

"We should eat meat because an arbitrary system made it easy for humans to eat some meat. Am I right?"

Yea.....

So really... how can you be that dumb? I mean if you are 12 or something - I'll give you some slack. You are still in a stage of development where you are more like a parrot than a human.
But being an adult attending a challenging university degree?

As German chancellor Adenauer said: "God really messed up in an instance. Everything he gave limits, just dumbness he allowed to be infinite".

One question: Do you believe in human nature?

 

[brennan]

It's no dumber than thinking that consumption of plant, fungus or in some cases piscine cells is fundamentally different or better than consuming animal cells. Especially the fish thing, never made any sense to me at all.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but different meats/plants contain different amount of vitamins and fats etc etc. Plus not to forget the way they were treated - preservatives, pesticides and so on?

 

[brennan]

B12 is deficient in strict vegan diets.

 

[Akka]

I find your knee-jerk reaction to a rather simple argument, and the amount of efforts you make to present it as dumb, to be MUCH dumber than the argument itself.

 

[Flying Pig]

As much as it doesn't really work for vegetarianism, I think it's worth bearing in mind that humans (and mostly-human things) survived for tens of thousands of years without really thinking about what they ate. I don't set much in store by fancy arguments about the dozens of 'super foods' we need to eat in order to stay healthy, because it's only within the last few decades that we've actually been able to have most of these exotic foods, to say nothing of being able to afford more than a simple diet ('our daily bread' isn't a metaphor). If nothing else, we know that the human machine works pretty well if it lives an active, outdoor life eating simple, fresh food, because that's the environment in which it evolved.

 

[cybrxkhan]

As someone who's been vegetarian since I was pretty much born, I've heard this argument all my life. What feels "natural," of course, varies from person to person. Some regions of the world meat will be consumed more often for various reasons (for instance, in the Arctic, there aren't exactly a lot of edible plants), in other regions meat is consumed less for various reasons (like vegetarianism being an important part of Indian culture and religions). To be frank, I've generally found most people trying to argue with me about vegetarianism (usually at their own initiative, and never my own) don't exactly always use any sort of reasonable logic. There are some that do, of course, but they tend to not be aggressive and treat me like I'm some deviant.

As much as it doesn't really work for vegetarianism, I think it's worth bearing in mind that humans (and mostly-human things) survived for tens of thousands of years without really thinking about what they ate. I don't set much in store by fancy arguments about the dozens of 'super foods' we need to eat in order to stay healthy, because it's only within the last few decades that we've actually been able to have most of these exotic foods, to say nothing of being able to afford more than a simple diet ('our daily bread' isn't a metaphor). If nothing else, we know that the human machine works pretty well if it lives an active, outdoor life eating simple, fresh food, because that's the environment in which it evolved.

This is a good point. I also want to add that historically a lot of peasantry and lower-class people during the pre-modern era ate semi-vegetarian diets anyways, because meat was rare and supposed to be for nobles (this counters the argument I've heard sometimes that eating mainly vegetables is a bourgeois, hipster luxury for upper-middle class Westerners). And while life certainly wasn't that great for these peasants, it wasn't because they couldn't get meat.

 

[bhavv]

Fish is the healthiest food.

We need a balanced diet, and veg does tend to lack B12 and high biological value proteins ( veg based proteins have fewer essential amino acids).

 

[Ice_Tyrant]

I don't think "Nature" intended on us digging up dead dinosaur and plant remains and using them go faster to get somewhere. So I don't really know how anybody could with a straight face say that we should only eat what nature intended us to eat.

Even if it did intend on us to be a certain way... I don't see why it matters. That's the argument used against gay marriages. "Well, god didn't intend for it." "It isn't natural" who cares.

 

[Tigranes]

Nature is a big pointless senseless mess of crap just happening.

What a dumb idea. "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." Even chaos in this world can be described by equations. There would be no natural science and no universities to breed such dumb ideas if things were senseless and messy without reason or order.

 

[gay_Aleks]

I don't know. We know that gravity is simultaneously the weakest force of all four, yet binds us down here on Earth. How does that make sense?

 

[Tigranes]

I don't know. We know that gravity is simultaneously the weakest force of all four, yet binds us down here on Earth. How does that make sense?

The W and Z bosons that make the weak force weigh in at 80 GeV and 91 GeV respectively. This is in comparison to the proton, which weighs .9 GeV. Imagine you really want to type that quote of yours and gravity gets replaced with weak force, so your finger will be, say, 100 times heavier... Life would be so senselessly hard for sensible beings.

 

[uppi]

As much as it doesn't really work for vegetarianism, I think it's worth bearing in mind that humans (and mostly-human things) survived for tens of thousands of years without really thinking about what they ate. I don't set much in store by fancy arguments about the dozens of 'super foods' we need to eat in order to stay healthy, because it's only within the last few decades that we've actually been able to have most of these exotic foods, to say nothing of being able to afford more than a simple diet ('our daily bread' isn't a metaphor). If nothing else, we know that the human machine works pretty well if it lives an active, outdoor life eating simple, fresh food, because that's the environment in which it evolved.

These people had a much lower life expectancy. One could argue that we need a balanced diet to live 80 years instead of 40 years. The effect is certainly not that big, but I would be surprised if today's diet does no contribute to the increased life expectancy.

What a dumb idea. "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." Even chaos in this world can be described by equations. There would be no natural science and no universities to breed such dumb ideas if things were senseless and messy without reason or order.

What good do these equations do, if you cannot solve them? And what is the reason for those equations, anyway? The more you understand in natural sciences the more questions arise.

The W and Z bosons that make the weak force weigh in at 80 GeV and 91 GeV respectively. This is in comparison to the proton, which weighs .9 GeV. Imagine you really want to type that quote of yours and gravity gets replaced with weak force, so your finger will be, say, 100 times heavier... Life would be so senselessly hard for sensible beings.

Err...how do you get from the mass of the interaction boson to the strength of the force? Especially, when it is not even clear whether such a thing exists for gravity? And how is the mass of the proton related to that? That statement makes no sense at all.

 

[Flying Pig]

These people had a much lower life expectancy. One could argue that we need a balanced diet to live 80 years instead of 40 years. The effect is certainly not that big, but I would be surprised if today's diet does no contribute to the increased life expectancy.

There's something in that, I think, but to me it's more a matter of not getting particularly excited if your diet isn't perfect or you eat food that's five minutes past its use-by date. Your body is fundamentally quite a robust thing, especially if you stay active.

 

[Cutlass]

These people had a much lower life expectancy. One could argue that we need a balanced diet to live 80 years instead of 40 years. The effect is certainly not that big, but I would be surprised if today's diet does no contribute to the increased life expectancy.

I don't think that tracks. Many people in the pre-modern era lived 80 years or so. The average life expectancy was lower because infant mortality was massive, and many people died of infections. Not because of diets.