David is an activist & chief petitioner of the Yes On IP13 campaign (www.yesonip13.org & @yesonip13) which aims to outlaw the harming & killing of sentient animals in the US state of Oregon. That's without exceptions for animal agriculture, hunting, research or other forms of exploitation. Originally with a background in psychology & public health, David’s switch to activism began after bearing witness to pigs being killed in gas chambers.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:29 David's Intro
- Being new to activism
- IP13: Criminalising killing & breeding animals in the state of Oregon
- "We're asking for what we want"
- Linking the academic & the real world
04:03 What's Real?
- Culturally Jewish/Christian family branches
- Religion was just a label
- Having a Bar Mitzvah to "side with my mother... it made religion seem arbitrary to me"
- "They taught me how to read Hebrew but never taught me what I was saying"
- "It wasn't a worldview... it wasn't used to make sense of the world"
- "Sitcoms were more of a determinant of what's real"
- Meeting people who had done atheist & animal outreach
- "Free yourself from those harmful social norms!"
- UFOs, conspiracy theories & religion
- There's enough awesomeness in reality
- "I was angry when I learned that Santa wasn't real"
- Investigating Santa as a child w/a hidden camera
- Why do we lie to children about so many things?
- Homeopathy, "stop the steal", astrology, tea leaves...
- "Psychedelics made me more naturalistic & gave me the final push to go vegan as well"... connectedness
- Buddhism & Plum Village monks
- Talking to a flat earther
- The challenge of having enough, but not too much scepticism
- Epistemological & methodological naturalism
- "Pretend naturalism" (only considering evidence supporting what you already want to believe)
- What evidence would change your mind?
24:55 What (& Who) Matters?
- Intuitive ethics
- Vegetarian at 14 "I didn't want to eat animals"
- "'I'm not very much of an animal lover"
- "I thought that cows had to be milked" & eggs were "picked up like an easter egg hunt"
- Going vegan, then learning about dairy/eggs
- Watching Dominion then getting involved in activism
- "A baseline of avoiding violence"
- Compassion for victims vs. judging human actions...

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
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Thanks Graham.