Most unspeakable thoughts today deal with isms and phobias: sexism, racism, agism, Islamophobia, homophobia.

There are others of course. For example, I am not a climate-change denier, but if I was I certainly wouldn't say so on HN!

I'm gay so I'll pick on my own group: HIV is ridiculously high amongst urban gay men. To me, it's obvious why this is the case. Evolutionarily, men have had no reason not to try and be as successful with as many partners as possible. Women, who may be saddled with a pregnancy and baby for years, had evolutionary pressure to be more choosy with sexual partners. This created fertile ground for HIV to spread amongst gay men.

Now, could a straight person say that without being ostracized from polite society? Probably not!

The question I would throw back to pg though is this: are we better or worse off for avoiding these topics entirely? The truth sometimes comes at a cost. Let's say that we found out that white people are less smart than East Asians. What good could come from knowing that? I don't know the answer...

I think future societies will be surprised by how much human suffering we permit in the name of being "tolerant". Religions are not all created equal, and no intellectually honest person will claim that Islam and Jainism are equally valid moral frameworks (this is why few people fret about Jainophobia). We know that Islam and its adherents are generous contributors to the surplus of misery in the world. People concerned about the quality of human life will recognize that we were right to be extremely suspicious of Islam.

(Note that I'm defining Islamophobia as "deep suspicion of Islam / thoughts informed by Islamic beliefs", especially when it comes to questions of morality and ethics.)

Speaking as an Arab person who is very critical of Islam, I think we should be careful to distinguish the two.

NOPE! You've been made to think that by the media. Time to bring out this vid again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnxnYEVp4U

The relevant part:

The meaning of “Islamophobia” is not at all like the meanings of those other terms. It is simply not easy to differentiate prejudice against Muslims from ordinary racism and xenophobia directed at Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, and other people who happen to be Muslim. Of course, there is no question that such bigotry exists, and it is as odious as Greenwald believes. But inventing a new term does not give us license to say that there is a new form of hatred in the world. How does the term “anti-Semitism” differ? Well, we have a 2000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, conceived as a distinct race of people, both by those who hate them and by Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is, therefore, a specific form of racism that, as everyone knows, has taken many terrible turns over the years (and is now especially prevalent among Muslims, for reasons that can be explicitly traced not merely to recent conflicts over land in the Middle East, but to the doctrine of Islam). “Sexism,” generally speaking, is a bias against women, not because of any doctrines they might espouse, but because they were born without a Y chromosome. The meanings of these terms are clear, and each names a form of hatred and exclusion directed at people, as people, not because of their behavior or beliefs, but because of the mere circumstances of their birth.

Islamophobia is something else entirely. It is, Greenwald tells us in his three points, an “irrational” and “disproportionate” and “unjustified” focus on Muslims. But the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam. There is no race of Muslims. They are not united by any physical traits or a diaspora. Unlike Judaism, Islam is a vast, missionary faith. The only thing that defines the class of All Muslims—and the only thing that could make this group the possible target of anyone’s “irrational” fear, “disproportionate” focus, or “unjustified” criticism—is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire.

And, unlike a person’s racial characteristics or gender, beliefs can be argued for, tested, criticized, and changed. In fact, wherever the norms of rational conversation are allowed to do their work, beliefs must earn respect. More important, beliefs are claims about reality and about how human beings should live within it—so they necessarily lead to behavior, and to values, laws, and public institutions that affect the lives of all people, whether they share these beliefs or not. Beliefs end marriages and start wars.

So “Islamophobia” must be—it really can only be—an irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified fear of certain people, regardless of their ethnicity or any other accidental trait, because of what they believe and to the degree to which they believe it. Thus the relevant question to ask is whether a special concern about people who are deeply committed to the actual doctrines of Islam, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, is irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified.

His arguments for arming himself smack of complete ignorance of the concept of the monopoly of physical violence[1], and without accounting for those theories (and their practical application in modern states), the whole argument is just vapid.

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewaltmonopol_des_Staates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Are you proposing that they should read minds? As far as I know that's not possible so this statement is preposterous, of course they are going to target by the headgear/skin-color, is the only way they can determine who is Islamic and who is not; being bad at it is a different matter.

How do you decide who owns the "right" beliefs? By that logic, who can we consider to be a Christian?

It's not NtS to point out that James "Scotty" Doohan wasn't Scottish (he was a Canadian of Irish descent.) Nor is it NtS to point out that certain people don't hold various relevant defining characteristics and therefore to claim that they don't count as being in a particular category. Of course, that exclusion is contextual -- it can apply to a particular use of a label without applying to all uses of it.

Note that I disagree with Sam Harris overall. His claim is that the only way Muslims can be reasonably said to exist is his definition; I would argue that one way Muslims can be said to exist is his definition. I would further argue that some people who use other definitions of Islam have irrational/unjustified/disproportionate fear, and can therefore be said to be Islamophobic.

on IQ - I'm not sure that's necessarily true, or at least, the differences are complex (one group has a slightly higher average, the other a higher standard deviation, which has implications at the right-end of the bell curve). but for day-to-day social impact, that's not nearly as important as wondering what society should with people in the bottom 50% of the IQ distribution, which is another topic we don't discuss.

I often wonder whether the political correctness furies directed at pg were a factor in him putting sam altman in charge.

for example - it was considered wildly controversial to say that not being able so speak english without a heavy accent might put you at a disadvantage in starting a company in an english speaking country. really?

also - yc is the most forward thinking vc on women's issues in the country, and yet they were still accused of gender bias etc. wildly unfair, you might say.

kind of hard for a thoughtful person to deal with all that chatter. you have to adopt a PR perspective, make general statements - no longer operating from a place of logic, just a desire not to offend.

my sense is that there are many foolish things progressive americans believe which future generations will laugh at. we already laugh publicly at conservatives, but we're supposed to take everything progressives say seriously.

here's a controversial closer - even if we equalized educational access to EECS, funding - women would be less likely to start companies than men, because men are hard-wired to take risks (hormonal profiles, probably other brain circuitry). tens of thousands of years of evolution can't easily be overcome, in even 100 years.

doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage women, or that they can't do it (they obviously can) but bemoaning the out-of-whack ratios constantly, and expecting parity to be around the corner, seems foolish IMHO.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Under every interpretation I can think of, it is incorrect. In the first place, people vary in their CD4 and CCR5 (&c.) receptors, so they also vary in their susceptibility to HIV infection given exposure. My understanding is that some alleles confer such resistance to infection that carriers are considered naturally immune. As ever in immunology, that's not the entire story, but it certainly enough to falsify the view that "everyone is equally likely to get HIV" _even given exposure_.

More importantly, people have different rates of exposure. Those rates depend on what sort of potential transmission events one faces, and the prevalence of infection among partners for potential transmission events. Both of those differ between groups of people.

Hence, not everyone is equally likely to get HIV. That implies nothing, of course, about what we ought to _do_ about that.

Are blood donations accepted from gay men now?

Women _on average_ may very well be better or worse than men in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean some of them won't be extraordinary.

We have to be careful about our biases so we don't miss out on the extraordinary ones.

It takes extra work to do this.

For example orchestras (traditionally very male dominated) tried to remove bias from their auditions by having the musicians play behind a curtain. The curtain increased the probability that a woman would advance from preliminary rounds by 50 percent(!).

Bemoaning may be tiresome, but it can also lead to changes that really do make a difference.

I wonder if YC applications are gender neutral (names removed)?

Very often times ideas which stir controversy do so because of a real or perceived agenda behind them. If I say, for example (as I have on HN and gotten flack for) that women tend to be more likely to think in ways which are socially more complex than men, I get flack because there is a fear that anything essentialist about gender (outside of, say, the abortion debate) is essentially a way of trying to imprison women in limiting gender roles. That isn't my intention naturally but I have to accept that this is the framework behind the controversy that saying something like that arises.

Similarly if I argue that the natural order is for people to retire with their children, this has huge impacts for modern ideas of sexuality and the choice of childlessness.

There are tons of attitudes that I think that I would be cautious (though perhaps I am too foolish to be reluctant) about discussing. But the key issue is the concern about the perceived agendas, and the perceived power structures that come with those.

Ideas themselves must exist in a context, and that context is defined in part by how they are used, not only by the person discussing them but also by others.

That could eliminate unconscious bias during the application screening process, but it would be hard to run face-to-face interviews without revealing the sex of the person doing the interviewing.

To give an example in the present day: imagine you believed a gender or race was literally subhuman, in the sense that you had every right to do whatever you wanted to the Thing. That is something that was a widespread belief in the past but is now simply unspeakable. Note that we're not talking about race and IQ, which is still "allowed" to be spoken of, in the sense that people can and do talk about it, even if other people vociferously disagree with the person. But also note the framing the race-and-IQ folk themselves use when talking about it: they bend over backwards to claim that they think race has no bearing on whether a person has rights or equal moral status. It's always framed as a purely scientific statement which, although perhaps having policy implications, says nothing about the moral status of the person designated as more likely to have a low IQ. Someone arguing otherwise wouldn't be denounced but altogether written out of rational discourse.

When PG talks about the unspeakable assumptions and fashions of an age, that's what I read him as talking about. In general, I mean, not about race in particular. It also goes to show that just because something is a widely shared assumption of an age doesn't mean it's wrong.[1]

[1] But isn't it interestingly meta that I can reference universally shared moral assumptions and use the fact that they are universally shared as rhetorical evidence that they're good and useful?

The reason why people often choose to condemn those who speak an unpopular truth is because the truth is a powerful and dangerous weapon, often used to fight progress. This is what is known as the naturalistic fallacy, or the is-ought fallacy: the fact that something is true does not mean that it is good, or that it cannot change if we try hard enough. A "lie" might be more valuable than the "truth", because a lie might be a bright hope for the future, while the truth is simply the status quo.

For some reason, even people that are usually curious and generally skeptical, sometimes stop questioning society when they find data demonstrating that some notion is "true". They don't take the extra step to ask why is it true, and can we change it? Or, should we change it?

That is why the "truth" in the social sciences might be a dangerous thing, because if people come to assign the same meaning to a true finding in physics or in anthropology, we have a problem. While we cannot change the laws of physics, we can certainly change the social order. And we have.

I don't think, then, that "truth" is all that important when it comes to ideology. What's important is picking values that you feel comfortable believing, and staying true to them.

related: http://nytimes.com/2014/03/15/health/in-rare-case-woman-with...

PG suggested this as well with his references to "racial insensitivity," etc. And he may be right that future generations may not worry too much about racial insensitivity. But that does not mean that trying to speak and write about race in a way that is sensitive to the problems that race presents is irrational or merely fashionable.

We live in a time of ongoing racial strife in America and around the world, and we come from times of even worse strife. Attempting to be racially sensitive is a rational response to the fact that, for centuries, we white western men have been extraordinarily racially insensitive.

Let's look at an example of statements about race that would fall on different sides of that line. If I were to say that black men earn, on average, less money than white men, most people would say I was speaking factually. If I were to say that black men are, on average, less intelligent than white men, most people would say I was being racially insensitive -- or worse. In fact, one striking thing about many taboo or insensitive things that one could say today, is that they are frequently used as moral apologies for other, factual statements. Anyone arguing that black people are usually less intelligent than white people is probably also going to argue that black people deserve to make less money than white people. If it is taboo to say that urban gay men are more likely to contract HIV (in a moment I'll argue that that is not the case), it would be because there could also be a whiff of a suggestion that therefore a gay man with HIV deserves to be sick.

Another striking thing about this variety of taboo statements today, as opposed to taboos of previous generations, is how frequently such taboo statements are factually inaccurate. In fact, calling "black men are less intelligent than white men" racially insensitive is possibly the most charitable thing one could say about that statement. When you see "racially insensitive" in print, that is usually because someone (a politician or celebrity) said something false and/or blatantly racist, but the publication felt it was too inflammatory to call it what it was -- false and racist.

Finally, as a rebuttal to your statement about HIV, if it's taboo, why does a doctor ask me if I have sex with men the first time I meet her? Why are gay men still not allowed to donate blood? Context is what matters here. As a matter of fact, HIV is more prevalent in the gay community than the straight one (or at least it was -- feel free to offer newer data that refutes this). It is also more prevalent among African Americans. Stating these facts is not taboo, but suggesting that these fact hold any moral weight, that any of these groups that has faced ancient discrimination actually deserves it, is rightfully subject to distaste and rebuke given our cultural history.

This is what pg wrote five years ago, referencing this essay:

Just as well I've avoided saying most of the "things you can't say," or 90% of the people who read that essay and think "hear, hear" would hate me instead.... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255492)

And as I said, I left out the things I really can't say.

The quote is often used a proof that Pauline Kael was clueless, but, IIRC, she began by saying "many of my liberal friends have told me ...," i.e., she wasn't truly perplexed by Nixon's victory. Instead, she was pointing out that there are downsides to being insular about politics.

The difference between you and the vast majority of the population is that you recognize there are dissenting viewpoints held by people you've never met.

It would be the end of society. I don't even know what we'd do; probably just live like wild animals in the forest only worrying about primal needs.

I love meat. I will not stop eating meat. Not only because I trust my personal "instincts" as tuned by millions of years of evolution to inform me to some degree what I need to consume to be effective far more than any conscious decision I might make, (e.g. that I think we're rather "young" in our understanding of how nutrition impacts the body), but because when confronted by that "animals have feelings and we are being cruel", my response is "yes, but that is nature."

Two qualifiers. Do I think we could be better? (more humane raising and slaughter) Abso-fucking-lutely. Do I think as technology grows, that we should move to more humane options? I would be more appalled if we didn't.

But will I ever "regret" choosing to eat meat, or fault those who do? Not a chance. I'm sure many people will disagree with the following, and I'd hope to hear a response rather than just get downvoted to oblivion, but so long as it is sustainable (which is a BIG qualifier that links heavily with my above statements about technological progress), we are at the top of the food chain, period. I am a predator, and I take pleasure in continuing to be one, to certain degrees.

Given that my justification is simply "this is a system that has worked for far longer than humanity has existed" mixed with "but I like it (so long as it does not become destructive to the point of disrupting said system that has existed successfully for so long)" I admit I feel that this is a weak argument. But I've both never found a really compelling counter, nor have I found any particular "holes" in mine. (Aside from the obvious "but it's not sustainable", to which I'd hand wave a bit and blame that more on an unfortunate side effect of market forces than on the choice to eat meat itself, which is also a bit of a reduction problem since the latter powers the former, and turtles all the way down, but I'd mostly respond with that I'd rather look for solutions than knee jerk responses, and personal consumption at this point is NOT going to impact "how things are", perhaps ignoring the wisdom of the whole "be the change you wish to see" etc... (but then, the change I want to see is simply better implementation, not vilification/removal of the "problem", so maybe not?)

Wow, this rambled. Sorry about that. This is just an issue that I have convoluted feelings on, as someone who tries to be conscious about both maintainable systems and loving to consume animals.

- we don't understand how nutrition affects the body. True, but there are societies that are vegetarian and have been for centuries. Apparently veggies are healthy!

- You are a predator? I don't know you but I'm willing to bet it's been a while since you hunted down, killed, and ate an animal in the wild.

- "The system has worked" - with that kind of reasoning you could justify anything from rape, manslaughter, ostracizing, etc. Being civilized means rising above unhealthy instincts.

I think you should probably just stick with "it tastes good". Can't argue with that.

As for being a predator, I have hunted, and it is a fact that most people who eat meat could hunt if in need. It's not rocket science. The fact that they don't hunt is caused by practical reasons. I don't knit my sweaters and that does not preclude me from wearing clothes.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism

Your post is ridiculous, and I say that as an American hunter with some knowledge of foraging and farming.

also, to answer in order: -Indeed, there are multiple approaches, and this is why I find it hard to select one vs. the other. If my body "craves" meat, there's usually a reason due to digestive peptides that the nutrition from the food I'm craving is something that'd be useful. I realize I could with time potentially reprogram this, but, the statement stands.

-You'd actually be wrong. I enjoy both bow hunting (which I had the opportunity to learn initially as a boy scout) and game shooting.

-If you notice, I qualify that with avoiding creating undue harm. I think it's quite a strawman to draw an equivalence between consuming animals that are killed in a humane fashion with e.g. rape especially. If you kept it to manslaughter, you'd have a stronger point, since I have a hard time arguing against anything outside of specific targeted uses of violence either. (please don't take this as bait; just that there have been wars in history I do not oppose.)

You crave meat for a variety of psychological and physiological reasons, but not necessarily because you're missing something that meat provides.

My argument for not eating meat is simple - why kill something for food if I don't have to?

I've been a vegetarian for 15 years or so, and would question your statement that finding non-meat protein alternatives is complicated.

It sounds like you're trying to make an argument that not eating meat could have long-term health hazards, in which case I'd argue that it's easier to prove that meat is bad for you than it is to prove not-eating it is.

Now, this is all anecdotal, I was just addressing that my body responded in a way that suggested that I did "require" the protein.

With regards to the more formal argument, I'd word it more that you put yourself more "at risk" for certain health hazards by cutting ANY core part of the diet out. It's certainly easy to prove meat is "bad" but most of the studies I had seen involved excessive consumption, which defaults back to the general statement of "all things in moderation". Do you have references that show the former (negative effects) without the latter? (ineffective dietary balance).

To summarize, I'd agree if we're only talking in extremes, that it's very easy to show that meat is bad. So I'd qualify all my previous statements with "a well balanced diet"

Mostly, unless you've developed some kind of novel purely-synthetic foodstock, you have to (well, you can probably get away with dismembering living things rather than killing them, in some cases.) To a certain extent, you have a choice about whether the "something" killed or dismembered is plant, animal, fungus, etc.

The environment for which your instincts have been tuned has very little to do with the one you are living in. Obesity makes it quite clear that people's instincts are misguiding them, and that our understanding of nutrition is less wrong than instincts.

(I am not advocating vegetarianism, just addressing this specific argument.)

This goes not only for meat, but for animal products in general (the dairy and egg industries cause just as much, if not more, suffering than the meat industry).

Eating meat can be morally justified if it's done in a humane way, I think. The problem is that unless you have your own small-scale farm, it's almost impossible to find animal products that aren't the result of suffering. I don't find it very likely that things will change unless we, as a society, move towards a (much) lower consumption of animal products.

[1] http://www.farmforward.com/farming-forward/factory-farming [2] http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes... [3] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report...

I generally am sympathetic with what you're saying, however, I'm mostly pescatarian due to the issues you completely overlook.

So, without getting into the arguments about whether or not humans ought to eat meat (for argument's sake, let's assume we were carnivores, and could not survive without eating mammalian flesh).

I cannot think of a moral framework, besides the laughable "other mammals are not conscious," that would justify the inhumane conditions our mammals we feed on are kept in. Solitary confinement, often not seeing the sun their entire lives, fed corn in buckets rather than they would feed on naturally. For what? So we save a dollar or two on each burger or pork chop we eat? When you really stop to think about it, it's abhorrent.

It may be natural to eat meat if you are a predator, but i see no reason why it's natural to torture. And i think that is what the future will look back on and be ashamed of.

We should strive in all things to cause as little undue harm as possible. (and trust me, I realize the potential conflict with this and advocating eating meat, which is why I try to apply lots of thought to the problem)

I don't expect people living in a world where criminals can be "cured" will condemn our use of prisons either, because we can't "cure" criminals yet!

Do you catch my drift? It makes no sense to condemn ancient peoples for not doing something they couldn't do.

Sure, but there are prisons and prisons: based on what I saw, I would very much prefer to be in a prison in Sweden than in the US or in France (to select rich countries where prison SHOULD be better).

I believe deterrence is important thus the prison status quo is fine. Try saying that at a party full of educated people. Everything thinks we can just teach people moralism and how to be good. In reality, you can't treat some/most and things like sociopathy are real.

I didn't say the things I can't say. I even said so. HN users would probably flag a comment containing what I didn't say.

This is most extreme in the case of engineering humans. Most people are horrified at the idea, worried about eugenics or a Gattica type future. But if you really examine what this will do, ie eliminate many forms of horrible genetic diseases or propensity to cancer, then I think you are going to see that this is something we really should do.

Prisons are a radically modern invention, maybe more so than any other government institution. It's just they and their logic are so pervasive we don't recognize them for what they are.

See: Foucault, Bentham.

Or are you wrapping ancient Egypt into your notion of radically modern.

(Ok, maybe ancient Egypt didn't have many cells with walls and bars for windows, but they sure had prisoners chained to things)

Before then "prisons" were more or less temporary affairs, usually just a makeshift holding chamber where people were kept before the actual punishment was meted out (death, torture, or mutilation). But the idea of a building where people are isolated and placed under permanent bodily control for months or years on end by the State (for the betterment of society, or fixing of the individual, or punishment, or whatever) is very much a product of the Enlightenment.

4. Criminalization of drug use and possession.

5. Private funding of politics.

> cure them

Why would a violent behavior necessarily be a disease? We are violent creatures, that's part of our nature. (Many other mammals are violent; some species of monkeys kill their own offspring for no apparent reason; lions kill the offspring of a lioness in order to mate with her, etc.)

We can choose as a society to try to eliminate all occurrences of violence, but it would be foolish to think we can change human nature (not with societal systems anyways; with eugenics maybe but that doesn't look very palatable).

Besides, a majority (or a great proportion) of the people currently behind bars in the US are charged with non-violent offenses; people are routinely imprisoned for crimes that make no other victim than themselves, and that's the greatest scandal of all.

There should be no crime when there is no other victim than the perpetrator; that should be part of the bill of rights of all nations (if we need nations, and constitutions, and "rights").

Sociopathy is permanent and uncurable. It's also common among people with a criminal record. Sifting those out from otherwise lost but psychonormal individuals is not trivial.

That's part of the intent (however misguided and misapplied) behind three strikes laws, the assumption is that repeat offenders are more representative of those that cannot be rehabilitated. Which isn't far from the truth, but we're not really rehabbing them at the moment.

Also common among CEOs and politicians. See? Being a sociopath doesn't automatically make you a murderer!

I believe most sociopaths don't commit major crimes (maybe they could but benefits are none or don't outweight consequences). There are some people who are sociopaths and can't control themself but they are a minority of a minority. Most crimes have a motive, don't they?

Too narrow a scope. Future societies will condemn us for not eliminating mortality faster.

I am however interested in your root cause - is it religion?

2. Eating meat is very natural. Even animals do it.

3. Nope. So completely and utterly wrong.

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to its day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

-- Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

I find that paragraph to be a perfect rebuttal to appeals to nature. Hat tip to ChronoDAS for bringing it to my attention: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ud/rationality_quotes_march_2010/1p...

First, we are animals. Second, "nature" isn't a good reason for anything. "You can't get an ought from an is." I still love meat, but I'm aware that animal treatment is certainly a moral issue that is not adequately addressed.

3. Any reason other than "my religion says so"?

Just like murder, rape, spreading disease, slavery...

To my knowledge, animals have little to no moral consciousness, so I don't think "Animals do it" can justify any moral opinion.

Why?

Gotta love advertising.

So since religion as a label will stay for much longer than the actual harmful religious beliefs, people tend to disregard religion as the problem in itself. The ones that harm based on religious beliefs are just considered "fanatics".

2. Animals, just like humans, die. There's no way around it. Even if the entire world decides not to eat a particular goat, that goat will die. And when an animal dies, it gets eaten - no exception. Either by microorganisms, or higher level organisms. The problem isn't why animals die, it's how animals live. Even if an animal is bred for food, it doesn't have to lead a miserable life, and it doesn't mean we should not respect that life on its own merit. So again, don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

3. I agree. But say, if an old animal wants to die, can I eat it?

Preserving an animal's life artificially until it's so old it dies from its age is what is actually unnatural (also see the original point 3). So the focus should not be on extending an animal's life length, but improving those animals' life quality.

And actually if you would replace "animal" with "human" in anything I say, it still applies. This is how you know I'm not discriminating against an animal's life. Which would be pure ignorance.

And meat is just so tasty!