I think this critique is stronger as applied to other posts in which Vasco’s comment runs a more significant risk of derailing the original poster’s topic and intended discussion. Here, I think Vasco’s point can be understood as somewhat complementary to the original idea. If dairy is not that bad, then the possibility that anti-dairy advocacy could have undesirable downstream effects on other animals may be an additional reason for deprioritizing such advocacy. In contrast, I think posting a comment like this in (e.g.) a global-health thread runs an elevated risk of the “discussion . . . descending into a discussion about moral weights, or the effect of every single intervention on nematodes.”
I think this critique is stronger as applied to other posts in which Vasco’s comment runs a more significant risk of derailing the original poster’s topic and intended discussion. Here, I think Vasco’s point can be understood as somewhat complementary to the original idea. If dairy is not that bad, then the possibility that anti-dairy advocacy could have undesirable downstream effects on other animals may be an additional reason for deprioritizing such advocacy. In contrast, I think posting a comment like this in (e.g.) a global-health thread runs an elevated risk of the “discussion . . . descending into a discussion about moral weights, or the effect of every single intervention on nematodes.”