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America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

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150 points pmags | 7 comments | 10 Apr 25 12:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.427s | source | bottom
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RajT88 ◴[10 Apr 25 13:12 UTC] No.43643433[source]▶
I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing.

They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject.

I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.

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wpietri ◴[10 Apr 25 13:33 UTC] No.43643605[source]▶
I think everybody has this sort of cognitive dissonance, albeit perhaps in different amounts; we just allocate it differently. And I think society is set up to help that. For example, I like animals and I eat meat. Would I kill a cow? No, but I'm happy to eat a burger. I've worked to get relatively comfortable with unresolved cognitive dissonance, so I can at least recognize my hypocrisy here. But I think it's way easier for people to refuse to think about it.

As with distributed systems, coherence is hard and expensive. Being rational about something, as opposed to just rationalizing, is long, slow work. We don't live in an age of patience. But perhaps one will come again, and until then we can at least try to be exceptions.

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croes ◴[10 Apr 25 13:37 UTC] No.43643647[source]▶
If you won’t kill a cow but like eating burger that’s not cognitive dissonance.
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1. wpietri ◴[10 Apr 25 13:48 UTC] No.43643745[source]▶
I find it frustrating when somebody replies as if they've only read one sentence in a paragraph.

I also said, "I like animals and I eat meat." I thought that was pretty clear, but if you'd like me to beat the point to death, the cognitive dissonance is between my fondness for animals, cows included, who I would never personally hurt and don't want to see killed, and my fondness for a good cheeseburger.

Could I come up with some contrived rationalization which somehow includes both? Sure, I have in the past, and many meat-eaters do. But ultimately I saw through my own bullshit here. Cows aren't essentially different than horses or dogs, but I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog. This doesn't make any logical or moral sense; it's just what I grew up with and am used to. When I think about it, I experience cognitive dissonance. For some that dissonance resolves into becoming vegetarians; for others they just refuse to think about it, or become dickish anti-vegetarians. I'm only different in that I have worked to get more comfortable with that sort of dissonance, as it's important to me to see things as clearly as I can.

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2. RajT88 ◴[10 Apr 25 14:13 UTC] No.43643987[source]▶
> I eat cow while I'd be horrified to eat horse or dog.

Horse is good, and while they are noble and majestic, so are cows (which are also cute to boot). I think the same of fish, and while less cuddly, I still feel a tiny bit conflicted about taking one's life just to eat when I do it.

Dogs are family for me. I'd probably be OK with wolf or coyote or similar.

I don't begrudge anyone how they want to align their morals with how and what they eat.

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3. wpietri ◴[10 Apr 25 14:23 UTC] No.43644097[source]▶
Sure. I don't begrudge them either. I'm just pointing out that feeling of conflict. I think how we respond to that is important. And bringing it back to the original post, I think his MAGA fisherman just getting mad or changing the topic is an example of a bad way to handle it.
4. everforward ◴[10 Apr 25 16:24 UTC] No.43645488[source]▶
In the instance of cow vs dog or horse, it’s only cognitively dissonant if you try to reduce it to a context-free universal truth.

With context, it’s simply “we should not eat animals we keep as pets”, where “we” needs to be contextualized to the person and culture. I keep dogs as pets, and therefore should not eat them. Other people don’t keep dogs as pets and are free to eat them.

More generally, we shouldn’t kill things we love. Pets are loved, and shouldn’t be killed for food. Farmed animals are a means to an end, not an object of affection.

Other contexts apply too, for the pedantic. Starvation is a context that would make eating pets okay, so on and so forth.

A lot of morality is contextual. If a good friend is going through a break up, I should care and be supportive. If a stranger like Taylor Swift is going through a break up, I have no moral obligation to care or be supportive (though it would be kind to do so anyways). Morality is contextualized by my relationship to that person.

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5. fragmede ◴[10 Apr 25 17:04 UTC] No.43645933[source]▶
> we shouldn’t kill things we love.

Why? I'm not advocating for killing humans but before the modern era it was common for people to own chicken which the kids would love as pets but you gotta eat, so the beloved chicken would get killed and eaten.

Sounds more like a modern luxury rather than a ground truth.

6. computably ◴[10 Apr 25 18:59 UTC] No.43647044[source]▶
You're missing GP's point. They are very clearly, explicitly stating that they do not feel emotionally comfortable, nor morally justified, with killing animals for food. It does not have to be a "context-free universal truth," it's the truth for them.
7. jemmyw ◴[10 Apr 25 20:22 UTC] No.43647701[source]▶
> Farmed animals are a means to an end, not an object of affection.

I've read a few accounts of farmers who didn't feel that way and talked about how sad they were sending the animals for slaughter, but they still did it.

There was a TV show ages ago where this guy decided to film one cow for it's life and then cook the meat. They showed the film and then he was just crying and the chef was starting to cook and be sympathetic.

Or something like https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683

I'm not a vegetation but I feel like I am really pushing something out of my mind to eat meat, so it is a cognitive dissonance.