Nobody is saying that fish are moral agents that can empathise with other beings. That doesn't man that they're not moral subjects; the ability to understand that one is causing harm is not a prerequisite for the ability to suffer oneself. I think everyone knows this intuitively, but it does feel good to have our less moral habits be justified by memes that we would otherwise find to be illogical.
You consider humans superior in intellect and ability compared to all other animals yet can't grasp the fact that some humans have chosen to use said superior intellect and ability to avoid killing other animals?
The difference is that the fish needs to eat the other fish. We don't need ANY animal products. So every killed animal suffered and lost their life for 10min of taste for us that we didn't need. Being vegan is so easy in 2023.
I’m not on either side of the argument, but would guess a good argument would be that fish need to eat other fish in order to survive as it’s their only source of food. We don’t. Provenly.
As far as value goes, I don't particularly value my own life or that of a fish. I do value the suffering of both while living though, as in I want to minimise that as much as possible.
I have never understood this logic. If a lion eats a zebra, there's nothing wrong with it, but when a human eats a cow, they're a horrible person. (also I know that not all vegans think like this)
I personally believe there's nothing inherently wrong with eating meat, and instead the problem is how we treat the animals we eat and that we eat way too much meat, taking it for granted.
The best argument against vegans is always the fact that plants also are living beings. Now if you are gonna create hierarchy of living beings to justify your food consumption, well...