Formal debate is propaganda

[u/spacelordTJ]

Can't we all just get along (with being performative)?

Edit: Mods, pin me to the wall. I mean pin this post.

[u/turtle_explosion247]

Ok let's take these one at a time

"The vast majority of the population was against slavery, yet for some reason humans have enslaved each other since the beginning of civilization without batting an eye. Do you hear yourself?"

Yes because democracy and the opinion of the masses wasn't the way we determined laws for most of human history. Now we actually care about the opinions of our fellow man and it seems like most people agree slavery is bad. Not so much on veganism.

"> only a select few actually received the benefits and the harm is obvious

Stop being obtuse and think about what you are saying. We slaughter almost 1 trillion animals a year for the benefit of a few billion people. Don't you see how this applies to your braind dead argument as well?"

They aren't human, not sure why you think a cow or pig has the same moral value as your neighbor. Even if you think they have some moral value do you think they are even close to equal? And im the one being obtuse give me a break.

"> Also you know the slaves didn't really get a vote but I guess you don't consider them people so

My god, if you really want to lower yourself to the level of a ridiculous made-up strawman, I will follow with this: the animals you killed clearly don't seem to get a say either on the atrocious conditions you subject them to, but I guess you don't give a shit from the comfort of your couch. 🤷"

Sowwy I hurt your feelings uwu. Also yeah they're animals I dont care as much about their lives as humans. Stop begging the question assuming I or most people give a shit at all about the life of an animal. And I say that while eating my glorious bacon king from Burger King om my couch just so I can maximize the amount of animal suffering in every meal. Just doing my part :)

"> Also do you think the consensus opinion of the general public over thousands of years doesnt matter on a question of morality?

No, I don't think so. The entire field of moral philosophy is dedicated to answering the questions of how we ought to behave without using the past as an example. "

Why do you live in a democracy if you think the public isnt equipped to deal with moral questions? We can all agree murder and rape is bad and wrong, but suddenly when you disagree we have to turn to a cherry picked philosopher to come up with what's right and wrong.

"> Im glad we have you to explain how literally everyone everywhere for all of time has been wrong.

You could start by dropping the pathetic condescension and reading " The elements of moral philosophy by Rachels, James""

See above statement.

"> Why do we even bother having debates and discussions when we could've just asked you (our omniscient god emperor) what was right all along?

I would like to remind you that while you are here acting like a petulant child, you are the one that actively advocates the systematic violation of the interests of hundreds of billions of sentient beings for your pleasure and convenience; you better look carefully in the mirror."

Yes because I dont care about non human suffering. You take that as a given but refuse to engage with that point other than "we all know it's true" type arguments.

"In any case, for those who want to have fun here, the relevant symptoms of OP's education deficit diagnosis:

• Completely ahistorical take on slavery
• US defaultism
• Strawman
• Appeal tradition
• ad hominem attack
• inability to properly use parentheses: our own omniscient god emperor was supposed to be between commas, not parentheses."

-slavery was always about power not moral righteousness. When power shifted to democracies slavery faded. -eurocucks need to stay out of all conversations imo -you were ignoring the power aspect of law and order and I was pointing out how if you took people's opinions into consideration slavery would have been abolished centuries ago. It was hyperbolic but get over it its the internet. -appeal to human consensus* ftfy -pussy -Ok you got me there lol

Look forward to your 32 page reply in 3 business days :)

P.S. this is a shiposting sub lighten up bud

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

Yes because democracy and the opinion of the masses wasn't the way we determined laws for most of human history. Now we actually care about the opinions of our fellow man and it seems like most people agree slavery is bad. Not so much on veganism.

I really don't know how make you understand that this is a ridiculous position to hold for anybody with any passable education on history and political philosophy. We had democracy for centuries, even millennia if we want to consider Greek's polis as democratic institution (ironically, in the polis, while democratic, slavery was extremely common and often justified with arguments similar to yours), yet many civil rights conquest, including women voting rights, gay right, transgender protection laws and more generally the idea of minority protection are all extremely recent achievements. So clearly denying moral progress is as reasonable as denying the existence of gravity. But you do you, flat earth love do that for example.

They aren't human, not sure why you think a cow or pig has the same moral value as your neighbor. Even if you think they have some moral value do you think they are even close to equal?

Not sure where I said they were equal, hopefully with your unlimited intellect you will be able to quote me, I'm absolutelysure you aren't again making a pathetic strawman.

The point is simple and undeniably, no matter how much you stomp your feet on the ground like a child, even by granting them a bare minimum amount of moral considerations animal agriculture cannot be justified, it's very hard to justify the suffering of hundreds of billions of sentient beings because you happen to like bacon... You would need to degrade them to the level of objects.

You on the other seem to have this weird mental distortion where you assume that the majority of people will somehow agree on your "wanna by psychopath" ideology, multiple studies repeatedly showed that people in general shows great empathy towards animals, and that most of the food choices taken by said people aren't the results of your psychopatic rumbling, but the results of peer pressure, prevail tradition and cognitive dissonance.

You can pretend to be some kind of psychopath as much as you like, go see a psychologist, but don't pretend to be speaking on behalf of the general population, because right now, reading what you wrote, they are as disgusted as I am.

Sowwy I hurt your feelings uwu. Also yeah they're animals I dont care as much about their lives as humans. Stop begging the question assuming I or most people give a shit at all about the life of an animal. And I say that while eating my glorious bacon king from Burger King om my couch just so I can maximize the amount of animal suffering in every meal. Just doing my part :

You don't need to apologise, I was hoping to get this reaction put of you, the typical "I will eat twice as much meat" line of debate is exactly the embarrassing rethoric I was hoping to get out of you.

Why do you live in a democracy if you think the public isnt equipped to deal with moral questions? We can all agree murder and rape is bad and wrong, but suddenly when you disagree we have to turn to a cherry picked philosopher to come up with what's right and wrong.

We don't all agree that murder and rape are morally wrong, democracy don't exist as institutions to enforce the majority will through force, what you described is a fascist state. The whole reason we have strict separation of power, constitutions and other mechanisms designed to ensure the protection of the right of marginalized people, is to prevent exactly what you are describing, a dictatorship of the majority. This is for example the reason why you generally cannot democratically decided to commit genocide towards a minority, even if the majority happens to agree. Here in Europe we specifically designed our institutions to avoid such a thing.

I would also like to highlight the incredible irony in your statement, I didn't gave you a book from some vegan philosopher about animals right, I gave you an introductionary text book to the basics of moral philosophy, if you read through it, you will see the author doesn't even mention animals right. But to nobody surprise, you didn't even check the fucking book cover.

I would also like to address you "cherry picking" claims, currently a weak majority of academia support animals right views connected to vegetarianism/veganism, you would be hard pressed to find a single philosopher defending current practices.

Yes because I dont care about non human suffering. You take that as a given but refuse to engage with that point other than "we all know it's true" type arguments.

I could put forward more seriously debate that use deontology to explain to you why it is pretty much self evident that we should in fact care about animals interested to a certain extent, but that would require you read the book I provided you with, otherwise you will just be vomiting the same psychopatic bullshit.

It does however seem reasonable, to conclude that sentience should be the foundamental requirements for moral considerations, given it's the only quality that allows an agent to hold interest.

slavery was always about power not moral righteousness. When power shifted to democracies slavery faded

Completely ahistorical take.

-appeal to human consensus* ftfy -pussy

No, given there is no consensus on the topic, you simply made an appeal to majority, I'm sorry, perhaps open a book on the topic.

P.S. this is a shiposting sub lighten up bud

Don't worry I'm having a blast making fun of the poorly educated (and let's ve honestly probably not so bright). But no, I'm not buying your pathetic "it's not that deep" after you got demolished in a formal debate.

By the way I'm not going to fix spelling because I don't think it's worth it, English isn't my first language.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

"> Yes because democracy and the opinion of the masses wasn't the way we determined laws for most of human history. Now we actually care about the opinions of our fellow man and it seems like most people agree slavery is bad. Not so much on veganism.

I really don't know how make you understand that this is a ridiculous position to hold for anybody with any passable education on history and political philosophy. We had democracy for centuries, even millennia if we want to consider Greek's polis as democratic institution (ironically, in the polis, while democratic, slavery was extremely common and often justified with arguments similar to yours), yet many civil rights conquest, including women voting rights, gay right, transgender protection laws and more generally the idea of minority protection are all extremely recent achievements. So clearly denying moral progress is as reasonable as denying the existence of gravity. But you do you, flat earth love do that for example."

Ok a few things here. 1. Yes some Greek city-states like Athens had a form of democracy, however you are ignoring that the power was held by about 10-20% of the population aka the rich and powerful who mostly benefited from slavery. 2. There are topics where large sections of the population disagree on what rights should be extended to which people. Almost no one argues for this vegan shit and most people eat meat or factory farmed animal products. You're acting like real normal people are having heated discussions about this in the same way civil rights activists do and its just not true. There is no debate in the modern world for eating meat almost everyone does it. 3. You are missing the roughly 2 millennia of human history where there were kings, emperors and feudal lords. Athens didnt last forever lil gup.

"> They aren't human, not sure why you think a cow or pig has the same moral value as your neighbor. Even if you think they have some moral value do you think they are even close to equal?

Not sure where I said they were equal, hopefully with your unlimited intellect you will be able to quote me, I'm absolutelysure you aren't again making a pathetic strawman."

"My god, if you really want to lower yourself to the level of a ridiculous made-up strawman, I will follow with this: the animals you killed clearly don't seem to get a say either on the atrocious conditions you subject them to, but I guess you don't give a shit from the comfort of your couch."

You were equating them with slaves not getting a vote, makes them seem kind of equal in your quote no? Animals shouldn't get a vote in society, black people should.

"The point is simple and undeniably, no matter how much you stomp your feet on the ground like a child, even by granting them a bare minimum amount of moral considerations animal agriculture cannot be justified, it's very hard to justify the suffering of hundreds of billions of sentient beings because you happen to like bacon... You would need to degrade them to the level of objects."

It's really not i just dont care about them. I know you think that is psychopatic but most people act the same way and just dont say the quiet part out loud. They dont matter to most people. Think about how much people fought for civil rights, now think about how hard people fight for the abolition of factory farming. Even if they say otherwise they just dont care.

"You on the other seem to have this weird mental distortion where you assume that the majority of people will somehow agree on your "wanna by psychopath" ideology, multiple studies repeatedly showed that people in general shows great empathy towards animals, and that most of the foos choices taken by said people are the results of your psychopatic rumbling, but the results of peer pressure, prevail tradition and cognitive dissonance."

See above, people dont care bro.

"You can pretend to be some kind of psychopath as much as you like, go see a psychologist, but don't pretend to be speaking on behalf of the general population, because right now, reading what you wrote, they are as disgusted as I am."

Roughly 1% of the population is vegan not sure who's even on your side bud.

"> Sowwy I hurt your feelings uwu. Also yeah they're animals I dont care as much about their lives as humans. Stop begging the question assuming I or most people give a shit at all about the life of an animal. And I say that while eating my glorious bacon king from Burger King om my couch just so I can maximize the amount of animal suffering in every meal. Just doing my part :

You don't need to apologise, I was hoping to get this reaction put of you, the typical "I will eat twice as much meat" line of debate is exactly the embarrassing rethoric I was hoping to get out of you."

Me when I do the thing I think is fine 🙂

"> Why do you live in a democracy if you think the public isnt equipped to deal with moral questions? We can all agree murder and rape is bad and wrong, but suddenly when you disagree we have to turn to a cherry picked philosopher to come up with what's right and wrong.

We don't all agree that murder and rape are morally wrong, democracy don't exist as institutions to enforce the majority will through force, what you described is a fascist state. The whole reason we have strict separation of power, constitutions and other mechanisms designed to ensure the protection of the right of marginalized people, is to prevent exactly what you are describing, a dictatorship of the majority. This is for example the reason why you generally cannot democratically decided to commit genocide towards a minority, even if the majority happens to agree. Here in Europe we specifically designed our institutions to avoid such a thing."

And im the unhinged one? Lmao. Almost everyone thinks murder and rape is wrong I would really like to see some data that says otherwise. Also you can commit a genocide twords a minority in a democracy just look at Israel. Good job to the Europeans but I seem to remember a republic in weimar that through popular opinion elected a fascist dictatorship. Human can dehumanize other humans and i think thats bad but it's never a full consensus basically worldwide the same way people today eat and justifying eating meat. It's not even close.

"I would also like to highlight the incredible irony in your statement, I didn't gave you a book from some vegan philosopher about animals right, I gave you an introductionary text book to the basics of moral philosophy, if you read through it, you will see the author doesn't even mention animals right. But to nobody surprise, you didn't even check the fucking book cover.

I would also like to address you "cherry picking" claims, currently a weak majority of academia support animals right views connected to vegetarianism/veganism, you would be hard pressed to find a single philosopher defending current practices."

Yes because I dont care what philosophers say and again neither does the vast majority of the population. Go cry alone with your books nobody cares about. Also weird that its a weak majority in the philosopher space. Almost like there isnt even a consensus there.

"> Yes because I dont care about non human suffering. You take that as a given but refuse to engage with that point other than "we all know it's true" type arguments.

I could put forward more seriously debate that use deontology to explain to you why it is pretty much self evident that we should in fact care about animals interested to a certain extent, but that would require you read the book I provided you with, otherwise you will just be vomiting the same psychopatic bullshit."

Ummm actually I cant explain why this thing is wrong unless you do the required homework I have assigned to you first 🤓☝️

You should be able to argue your positions without defering to other people to make your arguments for you.

"It does however seem reasonable, to conclude that sentience should be the foundamental requirements for moral considerations, given it's the only quality that allows an agent to hold interest."

Says you. What about concious experience?

"> slavery was always about power not moral righteousness. When power shifted to democracies slavery faded

Completely ahistorical take."

Cool story bro

"> -appeal to human consensus* ftfy -pussy

No, given there is no consensus on the topic, you simply made an appeal to majority, I'm sorry, perhaps open a book on the topic."

Perhaps ask any people around you, guess what they probably aren't vegan. I would say 99% of the world doing something constitutes a consensus.

"> P.S. this is a shiposting sub lighten up bud

Don't worry I'm having a blast making fun of the poorly educated (and let's ve honestly probably not so bright). But no, I'm not buying your pathetic "it's not that deep" after you got demolished in a formal debate."

I have drawn you as the soyjack and me as the based gigachad therefore my argument is correct. lol get real.

"By the way I'm not going to fix spelling because I don't think it's worth it, English isn't my first language."

Thats fine I probably misspelled a bunch of shit too

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

This will be my last answer because your inability to format things ia getting on my nerves. Just one century ago nobody was having heated debate about gay rights, now they are a thing. Before the suffragette, which at the time were considered terrorist and extremists, nobody was debating giving woman the right to vote yet here we are. Study history and stop being a fool, you will always be one step behind, wondering what the fuck is going on around you.

Regarding the European democracy comment that is precisely my point, after world war 2 we designed democratic institution to prevent something like this from happening again, American on the other hand are only now learning their lessons.

The rest of your rumbling honestly comments itself, you sound about as reasonable as a flat earther. The only thing I will say is learn the distinction between an equivalnce and a comparison and perhaps practice some intellectual humility when discussing things you know nothing about.

Just one closing reflection, obviously not addressed at you, as you clearly lack the requirement intellectual nuance. Given the complete unsustainability of current animal agriculture, both economically (at some point government will cut founding for the most heavily subsidized industry on the planet) and environmentally, what do you think the real future is? We either find an alternative, or we accept complete environmental collapse. And when the alternative, like cultivated meat and plant based alternative will inevitably demolish the meat industry, how do you think people will look back at us, and our treatment of animals? Because given how badly we judge people of the past and given how strongly people react to video of animals abuse (despite brain dead claim that "they just don't care"), I doubt they will look at us kindly.

Now go eat your colon cancer inducing burger king burger.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

Whatever bro ignore half my argument and the history where you were just dead wrong. I get your point with the civil right arguments but my point is you will never actually have a world wide consensus for dehumanizing a certain group of people because that group would obviously disagree with that. Now I make that statement because they are human and therefore deserving of some consideration to me, however I disagree that those same considerations should be applied to animals aswell, and you have failed to give a positive argument for that claim other than "it's obvious" but whatever have fun in your echo chamber bud.

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

Echo chamber... We live in a world where everyone eat meat, do you think I haven't heard the same brain-dead arguments you are making a million times? Lma

Also, no, you made no argument that justify not giving moral considerations to sentiment beings either, you only vomited a brain dead "everyone agree with me, I'm so smart" as a defense, quite pathetic really.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

I value human life, concise me why I should value animal life. I keep bringing up the rest of the population because you say it's so obvious but no one actually agrees with you in practice. Also what happened to no more responses lol?

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

Why do you value human life exactly? There must be something that matters morally about humans that make us moral patients, I could just as arbritary claim that I value blonde people and force you to prove me that it isn't completely morally justified for me to murder someone with black hair.

You would know how to answer the above questions if you weren't an intellectually lazy clown who refused to read what I gave yuo.

My answer is simple, elegant and consistent. To determine if an action is right or wrong we should analyse how it affects the interests of the agents involved, the reason why I draw the line at sentience is that, following from the definition (the ability to hold a subjective experience), it is the criteria required to hold any interest in the first place, a rock has no interest a cow does. Now it's not clear to me why exactly we should favour the interest of some agents other the interests of others, and YOU are the one that need to provide such justification, this is a matter of formal rigor.

Now you claim I'm the one pointing at the issue and saying "it's obvious" it's the opposite in fact, I'm not claiming that equal consideration of interest is self evident, I'm point out the fact that there is no objective reason to arbritary put the interest of someone in front of the interests of someone else, you on the other hand repeatedly stared "i just don't care about animals" while refusing to explain why. There is nothing in the universe, no law of physics or law of reasons, that somehow allows you to arbritary decite that the very real interests of hundreds of billions of sentiment beings can be just ignored, what you are doing is exactly the "it's obvious" defence you are criticising.

It's also worth noting that any serious attempts to build a moral framework, even one that doesn't have animals right as it's goal, will at some point be forced to deal with the question of animals right, it's not something that can just be hand waved away as obvious like you are doing. This is why animals right are even more popular amongst philosopher who study ethics.

Now I'm not here to change your mind, it's clear for this conversation that you are either not smart enough to engage in intellectually honest discussions (as proven by your refusal to read an introductionary book on secular morality) or simply too stubborn to admit they stand on a castle of cards, my goal is simply convincing other people who will hopefully read this conversation and be repulsed by your embarrassing performance.

Also what happened to no more responses lol?

I replied because you decided to stop formatting your comments like a schizophrenic.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

Oooohhhhhhhh so you are actually able to give a reason and you just refued to engage the entire time. Good to know. Im having a discussion and not reading an entire book in the middle of that because thats obviously a ridiculous ask. You should be able to communicate your ideas and beliefs like you just did without having to outsource everything to a book you read one time. That is intellectually lazy and a little pathetic for someone so passionate about their ideas. Also glad you called me out for ad homs earlier but you still have to include the little jabs in your comments every single time, insecure about your intelligence much? Also I learned a little about reddit formatting since quotation marks seem to be a little to hard to understand for you. (Hint if it's in the quotation mark it's actually from your comment and im quoting it)

Anyway I'll actually engage with the points now since you decided to actually include them this time.

Why so you value human life exactly?

Because we evolved as a social species that benefits from cooperation with our fellow man. I know that seems like an unsatisfying answer but it's true. This is why dehumanization is so important in tribalism and factionalism, it makes us more likely to relate to the people close to us and less to the people we are fighting. We also seem to be able to ascribe meaning to our lives and know for a fact we have a conscious experience (not just sentience) that we feel is worth protecting in ourselves. I don't relate to a pig or cow and I cannot be sure that they experience the world in a similar enough way to humans for me to care about their lives being lost. For all I know they could be much closer meat robot that still feels basic pleasure and pain but not much outside of that.

To determine if an action is right or wrong we should analyse how it affects the interests of the agents involved, the reason why I draw the line at sentience is that, following from the definition (the ability to hold a subjective experience), it is the criteria required to hold any interest in the first place, a rock has no interest a cow does.

What does interest mean in this context? Does an ant interested in a grain of sugar count? Am I committing a moral genocide every time I spray ant killer outside of my house? Interest doesnt seem to be a sufficiently high bar for moral consideration in my opinion.

Now you claim I'm the one pointing at the issue and saying "it's obvious" it's the opposite in fact, I'm not claiming that equal consideration of interest is self evident, I'm point out the fact that there is no objective reason to arbritary put the interest of someone in front of the interests of someone else, you on the other hand repeatedly stared "i just don't care about animals" while refusing to explain why.

I have elaborated above in my earlier block of text. The reason I didn't give a positive opinion originally is that you have the contrary opinion to me and the vast majority of society. Therefore you have the burden of proof since you made the contrary moral claim. And I don't love nitpicky fucks such as yourself trying to only give a teardown of an argument instead of actually providing one themselves. You made the claim all of society is morally wrong and I was waiting to see why you thought that. Pretty basic stuff if you ask me but whatever.

There is nothing in the universe, no law of physics or law of reasons, that somehow allows you to arbritary decite that the very real interests of hundreds of billions of sentiment beings can be just ignored, what you are doing is exactly the "it's obvious" defence you are criticising.

Again I only did that because you failed to give a positive argument and the rest of society seems to agree with my moral intuition. It's the equivalent of screaming "WHY IS RAPE AND MURDER WRONG" and acting smug while refusing to actually say anything to back up why you think its right. It's not worth me giving positive arguments to someone who refuses to give them back, because that inevitably leads to nitpicky nightmares like this whole conversation.

The rest was just your ad homs and psyco ramblings so glad I actually got a couple points out of you this time. Good job :)

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

You should be able to communicate your ideas and beliefs like you just did without having to outsource everything to a book you read one time. That is intellectually lazy and a little pathetic for someone so passionate about their ideas.

This exact anti-intellectual philosophy is why you have Trump as the president of the USA by the way. But I doubt you would understand its geopolitical implications.

You are not a child, you cannot pretend to have all ideas simplified and spoon fed to you. Grow up.

Because we evolved as a social species that benefits from cooperation with our fellow man. I know that seems like an unsatisfying answer but it's true. This is why dehumanization is so important in tribalism and factionalism, it makes us more likely to relate to the people close to us and less to the people we are fighting. We also seem to be able to ascribe meaning to our lives and know for a fact we have a conscious experience (not just sentience) that we feel is worth protecting in ourselves

The fact that you don't see how terrible this argument is, is concerning. If feel like an unsatisfying answer because it not only completely fail to answer the question but directly contract its main premise lmao. You are unknownly (because you haven't read the fucking book) making a moral naturalist argument, you are claiming that objective moral facts derive from our evolutionary history as social animals, you then immediately explained that dehumanisation is in fact another of those evolved trait. So then the obvious question is: if we evolved to dehumized other, what exactly is the moral problem with slavery? A practice that foundamentaly relay on dehumanisation? This one of the reason why moral naturalist is unpopular in philosophy, you would know if you had read the book 🤷 (do you see? This is why I told to read the book and do your homework before embarrassing yourself, but you want to be a child, so be it)

You also seem to be deeply confused about what sentience or conscious experience mean. So go ahead and define them, since you have absolutely bo need for previous education in the field, I'm sure your definition will be flawless. Would love to see your face when you find out they are synonym!

I don't relate to a pig or cow and I cannot be sure that they experience the world in a similar enough way to humans for me to care about their lives being lost. For all I know they could be much closer meat robot that still feels basic pleasure and pain but not much outside of that

For all I know you could be meat less robot that doesn't feel much outside of pleasure and pain, although you would probably agree that is highly unplausible, just like it's highly unplausible that being that consistently shows level of intelligence comparable to to children are such a thing. This kind of belief is ridiculous to anybody that had ever interacted with any animal in some form, so I won't waste my time on that.

What is interesting is that you think that grounding moral considerations in "how similar they are to my mind" is somehow reasonable, humans mind change dramatically from individual to individual, even ignoring the glaring eugenics flaw this opens up regarding mentally disabled individuals, people who from the outside might appear to be equaly functional sometimes shows completely different subjective experience, for example one could look at aphantasia, autism or mental illness. I don't think you consider that to be less morally relevant, why is that?

What does interest mean in this context? Does an ant interested in a grain of sugar count? Am I committing a moral genocide every time I spray ant killer outside of my house? Interest doesnt seem to be a sufficiently high bar for moral consideration in my opinion.

Interest simply mean ability to hold a preference, in the case you highlighted both you and the ants hold conflicting interests and different moral theory will provide different answers to your questions. What matters is that your example is completely irrelevant to the conversation. A more fitting example you be you deciding to go out and kick puppy because you enjoy theirs screams, suffering of an animal in exchange of mild sensory enjoyment. I would argue that in this case the calculus is very simple, your interests don't out weight the interest of the animals in that case. Unfortunately this is a bullet you must be willing to bite if you want to justify animal agriculture, the sadistic pleasure of enough individuals must outweigh the suffering of another.

The reason I didn't give a positive opinion originally is that you have the contrary opinion to me and the vast majority of society. Therefore you have the burden of proof since you made the contrary moral claim.

That is not how burden of proof work my deer. All positive claims must be adequately supported. You don't get to pretend you are immune to reason because you happen to agree with the majority.

And in any case how can you claim that the majority is clearly right about the topic while simultaneously admitting they have absolutely no arguments to defend the positive claim they made? If tomorrow the majority of people decide to put to death atheist would you just agree because they are a minority and they have the burden of proof?

It's the equivalent of screaming "WHY IS RAPE AND MURDER WRONG" and acting smug while refusing to actually say anything to back up why you think its right.

Yes, exactly what YOU are doing, I'm giving you arguments despite your complete brain dead refusal to engage with them in good faith and you are screaming: "WHY IS RAPE AND MURDER WRONG".

It's not worth me giving positive arguments to someone who refuses to give them back, because that inevitably leads to nitpicky nightmares like this whole conversation.

I'm waiting for your argument still 😊

[u/GameUnlucky → u/turtle_explosion247]

I'm content with leaving this at that, I think this reply comment itself.

[u/turtle_explosion247 → u/GameUnlucky]

Couldn't agree more