Steemit INTERVIEW: @teamsteem talks starting on Steem, Communities, veganism,
This is my latest interview with Steem witness and all-around good guy @teamsteem aka Guillaume Cardinal
We discussed many interesting topics, including:
- Veganism and vegetarianism
- Steem communities
- How to get started on the Steem blockchain for new users
- What kinds of comments he rewards on his posts
- Much more...
For more on my upcoming interviews, check out my latest SteemVlog episode: https://steemit.com/steemit/@davidpakman/1x82ktav
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
Plants do not have a brain, nervous system, or anything else to suggest that they have the capacity to feel pain or suffer. If you stab a carrot, apple or grain of rice (for example) it will not react or attempt to avoid the knife in any way. I've not seen any reliable source of information to suggest that any plants commonly eaten by humans have sentience or can feel pain. If you have seen something that proves otherwise I would be interested to read it.
Even if such evidence exists, it is still not a valid argument against veganism anyway, because livestock actually consumes far more food than it produces. If you really cared about the "feelings" of plants it would still make sense to go vegan, since so many of them are grown just to become animal feed. Going plant based would equal less plants being consumed overall than with an omnivorous diet.
Just like our immune system reacting to a foreign substance isn't done consciously, plants having chemical reaction to stimuli doesn't equate to them being sentient.
Exactly, Siri and Alexa also react to external stimuli but nobody is suggesting they are sentient!
Like
"But before he could even get a match, the polygraph registered an intense reaction on the part of the Dracaena. To Backster, the implication was as indisputable as it was unbelievable. Not only had the plant demonstrated fear — it had also read his mind."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/2013/12/21/cleve-backster/
I'm skeptical that this will prove to be true, that plants experience pain in the same way animals do.
Having sentience doesn't mean their experience with pain is the same.
Like for example, and it'll sound kind of silly (talking about plant consciousness kind of asks for that :p), but plants seem complimentary to animal life. They give us shelter and energy. They could want to fuel us to whatever extent they have any sense of purpose or will. So it can make sense that they're sentient, but haven't evolved a negative association with pain, because being used as food or shelter is kind of their point or goal.
And it's a part of their survival too.. animals defecate their seeds and squirrels bury acorns etc etc.. people grow more trees.. being consumed is an aspect of how they make it whereas animals are always trying to avoid it and should have a hard wire against it.
At the end of the day they're completely different types of life, and so I don't know why people expect the science will show they have the same experience. (I think generally meat eaters just want this to be the case to weaken the vegan ethic or whatever.)
Like, MAYBE science will show this, but to me it would seem surprising more than what we should expect will happen.
Instincts can guide us correctly and often "know" things that we don't know consciously. And so when it feels like there's some sort of difference between a plant and an animal, it could be based on real underlying reasons that we just don't know consciously or scientifically. It doesn't have to be random noise or a bias sort of thing.
Cool interview!!
Thank you David! I had a lot of fun doing it! I hope people will appreciate.
Hey Teamsteem! Where from Canada are you from? I'm here too! :) Great interview, man!
My wife and I actually have been talking about going vegan and we've been asking a lot of people about it (including my cousin who is vegan - but she eats eggs and cheese still - so I don't know if she's 100% vegan or just vegetarian - still super new to it). We're talking about it for health reasons because we've run into some health issues lately. The thing I keep telling my friends are that I just love the taste of meat. I don't know if it's the taste of meat or just meat in general.
Anyhow, great interview again, man! Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I'm in Toronto right now :)
Thank you.
I'm glad you are considering veganism.
Something to consider about the taste of meat is that alcoholics and drug addict love their drugs too yet...
Thank you so much for being on!
@davidpakman The king of interviewers. Very good good questions as usual. I've been watching you on YouTube for years now and I'm glad I get to watch you on Dtube and Steem now instead!
that's awesome, thank you very much for your support!
hello @davidpakman,
I have been following you pretty much since I joined the community 2 months ago. You are a machine when it comes to post so much content and it is quite cool to see.
I would love to emulate you in regards to get such a good response and growth of your followers on this plant form. My aim would be to enable steem to physically plant trees. Offsetting out footprint and giving back with a simple upvote.
I have been working in international development (tourism and protected areas) for over 10 years. Long story short. I see steem as a radical new was of fund raising for worthy causes and projects. People simple click the upvote and voila! some funds raised at no cost.
Just over a month ago I planted one tree on behalf of Steemit. Just thought I could give something back and reduce our carbon foot print. Well I post about it and the feedback I got was amazing. I am now at my 6 post about it and I donate all the SBD to a local not for profit here in the village (northern peru). They give me tree saplings to plant and I plant.
I would like to increase my visibility for these posts, but even with well structured and detailed posts, at this stage may not bear fruit. What do you think? If you are interested please check out my posts on me planting trees for an upvote.
Thank you.
@intrepidsurfer
I'm so happy to hear about the tree planting. Every tree makes a difference. Thanks for sharing a great idea! I'm also interested in developments to the platform that enable raising money for non-profits and other causes on Steemit. Keep it going! P.S. Following you :)
Thanks for the interesting video. Got referred to this platform after one of my favorite essentially to switched here from YouTube which seems to be right when the German community growth on d.tube here spiked.
Wow yes I like it
que bien , me gusta éxito te sigo
great interview you did...
source
I know the whole argument, and I do very much appreciate the sentiment behind veganism, but just because humans in their limited ability to perceive the world around them, (The ability to see only a small part of the light spectrum would be one example.) are not aware of the reactions of plants does not imply that they don't have them. It simply means most humans cannot perceive them.
I hate factory farming and I don't like to kill anything. I feel we have dropped from a higher level into this reality. I feel we have previously existed in a realm in which we were able to sustain ourselves by taking in energy in some other way. Breatharianism, prana, absorbing light? Something like that.
Maybe veganism is a step back towards that. I don't know, but I do know from my own experience that most people are assuming, mistakenly so, that plants have no sentient consciousness. I can't explain it all but they have feelings. I raise organic pet chickens that I don't eat and have around 30 Roosters so I am not putting down the notion of not eating meat. But there are studies that have begun to crack the nut of plant consciousness. Bloodletting used to be 'accepted mainstream' science too... Lest we forget.
I just wanted to share that info in case anyone is interested in looking at it. I think it's a necessary discussion in awakening people to how we really interact with the world around us and the things we need to change. For us to live here we must kill things just like vampires unless we unravel the rest of the great mystery. Just my two cents to share. This was a great discussion. Thank you for this interview @davidpakman!
that worked well, LOL
Thanks