Submitted by BernardJOrtcutt t3_y0fjnr in philosophy
TheLobsterCopter5000 t1_irrow6n wrote
I was told to post this here. The original title was "The problem with peanut consumption and making life safer for those with severe allergies"
This is something that I have been thinking about for some time, and I believe an argument can be made that we should stop consuming peanuts, primarily to make the world a safer place for those with peanut allergies. This might sound kind of silly to some people, but hear me out.
The reality is that when it comes to allergies severe enough to be deadly, peanuts are pretty clearly the most notorious example. While not the most common allergy overall, peanut allergies tend to be the most deadly of the common allergies, and life is considerably more dangerous for those who are allergic to peanuts. The blame for this inherent danger can be laid squarely on the rest of us, and our usage of peanuts in various forms of food. The fact is, by using peanuts in cooking, confectionaries etc., we are significantly increasing the likelihood of someone with a severe peanut allergy being unwittingly exposed to peanuts, and thus we are contributing significantly to the number of allergic reactions caused by peanuts, and the number of deaths that result from said allergic reactions.
My position is this: consumption of peanuts is not important enough to justify the risk we are subjecting those who are allergic to peanuts to. That is to say, enough people are severely allergic to peanuts to where we SHOULD make the fairly modest sacrifice of simply not consuming peanuts in order to accommodate for these people. We can make the world a much safer place for those with peanut allergies by doing this pretty simple thing, and the "harm" caused by not consuming peanuts is in reality negligible.
This position does raise some questions however. Consider a person who decides to open a restaurant. With regards to serving food that contains peanuts, they have 2 options. Option 1 is to serve dishes that contain peanuts, and option 2 is to not serve dishes that contain peanuts. Taking option 1 may make some customers a bit happier, but it will also considerably increase the chance of any given non-peanut dish being contaminated with peanuts, and thus considerably increases the chance of someone with a severe peanut allergy dying as a result of an allergic reaction to a dish that was supposed to be peanut free. This is a reality that cannot be avoided. This raises the question: is it moral to have these potentially deadly legumes in the kitchen, knowing that this can easily lead to someone's death, and if someone DOES die from an allergic reaction to peanuts, does the restaurant owner's decision to serve dishes that contain peanuts make them morally responsible for that person's death? To be honest, I find it difficult to declare that the restaurant owner is morally responsible in this case. I think the blame rests more on the general public, who create a demand for food containing peanuts. Where there is a demand, there will be a supply. This is a simple fact. I think we as consumers would need to be willing to make the sacrifice of not consuming peanuts in order to make peanut-free restaurants and food manufacturers a reality.
The main objection to this position would be a slippery slope argument. While peanuts allergies are the leading cause of allergy-related deaths, the truth is any allergy can be deadly, and there are so many potential allergens out there that it is impractical to make the world allergen-free. So where do we draw the line? I believe peanut allergies are severe and common enough to where we can draw the line at this point, but I freely admit that this is subjective. Another objection I could see is that while the benefit to an individual person from being able to consume peanuts is negligible, the combined benefit of everyone who is not allergic to peanuts being able to consume peanuts may not be. I obviously don't believe this is the case, but I can at least see this argument being made.
What are your thoughts on this?
just1monkey t1_iruy4im wrote
Man, peanut allergies. Allergies are like freakishly different from each other, right? Like peanuts you get worse from exposure while others you can actually “outgrow” through sufficient early exposure, I think (or maybe I’m just hoping that’s true). This lady Katherine Wu recently wrote an article about allergies mysteriously going away for the Atlantic (magazine not ocean) recently, including her own cat allergies going away.
I wonder if peanuts make peanut allergies worse, if there’s like an anti-peanut that could help make peanut allergies go away.
Some of my friends have had some really crazy allergies. One was technically allergic to himself!^1
^1 Technically to like some chemical that his body naturally produces in trace amounts, but regardless of technicalities, that’s gotta suck. :( Yet he’s like strangely like one of the most happy, positive and optimistic people I know, despite like always being realistic about likely disappointment from others and being into the deathest of death metal.
Edit typos and bad writing. Boo!
just1monkey t1_irv14xj wrote
Hi reddit philosophers!
I’ll admit upfront that I don’t really consider myself a philosopher and generally avoided the subject like the plague (other than an elective that I took that some friends had tricked me into thinking were easy credits, and like one philosophy club meeting I was hoodwinked into attending for the free Chinese food, which I regretted other than the Chinese food).
I also either didn’t read or don’t really remember reading Plato’s Republic (sorry if it was on the syllabus!) and I secretly suspect people are like taking old Plato’s words out of context, because I like that guy a lot, possibly because he reminds me of this colorful, funny-smelling clay substitute that I coveted as a child.
With that b.s. caveat out of the way, here’s my link to my link to my original showerthought.
So here’s Britannica’s summary of the philosopher-king concept, and here’s a briefer summary that someone else pointed me to, wherein Plato seems to be bemoaning the fact that the so-called “perfect” society can only exist if “kings become philosophers or philosophers are made kings.”
So my point is that you can just slot in (SET = everyone), having been societally educated and trained towards being “philosophers,” whatever that means, and make them mutual “kings” in terms of the decision-making function granted to philosopher-kings even in the supposedly ideal aristocracy model, which does admittedly do a pretty cool job of trying to create society-centric functions and slotting in people who are good at and inclined to perform those functions into those slots.
This philosopher-king idea also reminded me of this “wangdao” or “kingly way” concept of an enlightened and benevolent dictator that appears in Confucian Chinese philosophy, which ended up clashing with legalism for like a weirdly extended period about the fundamental nature of humans, I think mostly because it became a feud and they just wanted to fight.
Like it was pretty obvious to all involved that people could be BOTH:
- helped to be better, kinder and more excellent to each other (the real point of the kingly way proponents, in my view),
AND
- real fucking dicks sometimes, or maybe even a lot, depending on your point of view, but regardless you wanted a system that protected from that sort of behavior it (the real point of the Mohists, in my view).
Which suggests that instead of arguing about who’s incrementally more correct about human nature, we should really have been focusing on putting in place a system that both encourages people to be better and also prevents the system from abuse from bad actors (which is effectively what it ended up being irl anyway, just maybe not in like the best way it could have).
So yeah. False choice. Make everyone more excellent and give everyone a voice in any decision-making that affects them, then you can bypass the need for any kooky dictatorships (regardless of name).
Edit: Punctuation, links, etc.
Sea_Personality8559 t1_isfqh4y wrote
Mobility
Mobility is prettymuch the main factor in corruption.
Systems that are 'protected' from unwanted behavior decrease mobility in general.
So...
The difference of human nature is the determination of the safeties in place against corruption - prettymuch the only way is cultural identity and unified goals. Culture can only be 'fine-tuned' if there is a definite generality of human nature.
Same as unified goals - which may be even more difficult as the population in question increases - the uniformity of goals shatters or becomes so generalized it loses resemblance to its original meaning.
Examining the claims - we can reason that population of significant size having disparate goals - then would have different decision making for the different factors affecting them. Which - roundabout - is prettymuch the city v the country that we see in general.
Examining once more - aristocratic systems have historically made differences of governance over 'country' and 'city'. In mobility and 'say'. Staying within station etc.
Anyhow
Just saying.
Also, it would be cool if that system could somehow be created - but I really doubt it could given parameters.
The number one problem with the us system is its ease of influence due to cultural proliferation and ideation - schism seems a national pastime - currently leading to a somewhat unprecedented surge of political violence / domestic terrorism drawing overwhelming pushback in governmental interference via legislation in an attempt to mandate culture. Uh... point being, thinking of systems, solving these couple us problems would be fantastic and probably set the way for better systems - like philosopher king societies.
just1monkey t1_isfsf3q wrote
I think the mobility point makes sense, but what sort of mobility are we talking about here?
Is it limited to social mobility within a single unified system, or can there be like sideways or orthogonal movements to alternative societies where that particular behavior fits in better?
I think you could achieve the latter through functional boundary rules creating discrete interaction zones. The most rigid (but accordingly simple and very enforceable) rules should apply to these boundary and movement rules, to make sure people can’t be trapped. I’d even permit a voluntary interaction zone of 1.
Once within an interaction zone, the rules could be set by the people within that interaction zone. This allows for a broad range of people to just be who they are, with people who will accept them for who they are, without forcing the same poorly fitting straitjacket on everyone.
I agree somewhat tough to imagine readily implementing now, but if we can get to a point where we can build livable structures out in space, we have a lot of the latter to work with. We could consider and apply interaction zone concepts even now and start taking some baby steps in that direction, thanks to some geographical detachment, which we’ve seen works very well in many contexts during the COVID response.
EDIT: And in terms of the adrenalin junkies that get a kick out of participating in or watching bloodsport, can we point them in the direction of the as-yet unexplored dangers of like the nearest galaxy that isn’t where the people who want to stay safe all the time live? Like it doesn’t even have to be a galaxy away, as long as they’re occupied doing a thing they enjoy, channeled in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
Edits made.
[deleted] t1_isft1me wrote
[deleted]
Sea_Personality8559 t1_isc636p wrote
Alot of times people would rather destroy inconvenient things
Instead of improve them to a state of convenience.
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