You’ve said some charged things and asked that I take them as information (and I’m glad I did). I’m going to ask for the same trust now.
For many on the SAD, I think a vegan diet will improve health
This sentence, without specifying effects on axes besides health, seems very slippery to me. Lots of diets improve health relative to SAD. SAD strongly optimizes for taste, convenience, and cost, with health being at best a distant afterthought, so there are lots of improvements available if you change your priorities.
I think it’s locally valid to say “after skilling up, the median person can spend $N and $M hours/week to get P health improvements, with no change in taste, and that’s obviously worth it for benefit Q to animals”. Or the same sentence with your personal values, which are easier to calculate. But specifying P without gesturing at the order of magnitude of N and M is not very useful.
You’re absolutely correct on the details. Most people going SAD → vegan increase health, because they generally trade cost or convenience.[1]
Most people[2] wouldn’t pay $N or $M for P without Q, as most people who don’t value Q don’t make the trade. I would not expect any completely amoral Americans to be vegan. My veganism is an argument based on Q, not for the irrelevance of N/M or the magnitude of P. I would expect both N & M to decrease as percent vegans in the local population increase.
However, while vegan being > SAD on health (even without mentioning N/M) is not relevant to this discussion, correctly saying “hey a balanced vegan diet won’t make you waste away” is still shocking news to many people. Therefore noting that there is a P is very useful with many non-vegans. If any EA people think there is no N/M, I think this is possibly the only U.S. subculture where that’s true.[3]
Also, to take a step toward the meta: “good health” and “animal suffering” are [sometimes] sacred values, where time/$ aren’t. So for whom those are sacred values, this is noting that you can have both sacred values by trading against only non-sacred values. Hopefully this is irrelevant to EA/LW people, but it is extremely relevant in the “real world”.
In wealthy urban areas with higher % vegans, the trade-off is usually cost (eating out at vegan restaurants, etc.). In areas that are small with few vegans, the trade-off is convenience (I started cooking more; there is only one vegan restaurant near me that is too far & expensive to regularly visit).
Sorry for my clumsy wording & many footnotes. What I’m trying to say is that in the equation where you trade $N and $M for P and Q, I think people (outside maybe EA) systematically overcalculate N and M and undercalculate P, even before accounting for Q, since they think being vegan is harder than it actually is and leads to a negative P value, which is usually false.
I still don’t think they’d make the trade without Q, but in an effort to “counter-balance” Q people seem to (unconsciously?) distort N, M, and P.
My veganism is an argument based on Q, not for the irrelevance of N/M or the magnitude of P.
But this discussion is about N, M, and P. There have been many discussions of Q, I have already acknowledged Q>0, quantifying Q is outside of scope of the this post. Over on LW I deleted attempts to argue Q=0 because it was out of scope. When N, M, and P are quantified people can combine all the information to argue and make decisions, but getting all 4 pieces quantified is a necessary step.
I fully agree with all of the above. From the first message of this thread I noted that I agreed with the cruxes of the post. I agree that N, M, and P are important and we should gather & disseminate better information on them.
To my understanding, in futher posts we’ve been discussing how much the trade-offs matter, to what extent they’ve been suppressed, and whether some sub-fields have trade-offs at all (e.g. leather).
I don’t think it’s possible to have a discussion without any shadow of Q, because ultimately without Q there’s not even a discussion (beyond a 1-page of current research on one lifestyle choice among many). Your “why is this so hard to talk about” section is answered mostly with Q itself.
That being said, I should have worked harder to stay on topic. I apologize if my replies here have been unhelpful to this discussion.
At the very least, I am still thankful for your thoughtful responses, as I have found this thread both interesting and useful.
You’ve said some charged things and asked that I take them as information (and I’m glad I did). I’m going to ask for the same trust now.
This sentence, without specifying effects on axes besides health, seems very slippery to me. Lots of diets improve health relative to SAD. SAD strongly optimizes for taste, convenience, and cost, with health being at best a distant afterthought, so there are lots of improvements available if you change your priorities.
I think it’s locally valid to say “after skilling up, the median person can spend $N and $M hours/week to get P health improvements, with no change in taste, and that’s obviously worth it for benefit Q to animals”. Or the same sentence with your personal values, which are easier to calculate. But specifying P without gesturing at the order of magnitude of N and M is not very useful.
You’re absolutely correct on the details. Most people going SAD → vegan increase health, because they generally trade cost or convenience.[1]
Most people[2] wouldn’t pay $N or $M for P without Q, as most people who don’t value Q don’t make the trade. I would not expect any completely amoral Americans to be vegan. My veganism is an argument based on Q, not for the irrelevance of N/M or the magnitude of P. I would expect both N & M to decrease as percent vegans in the local population increase.
However, while vegan being > SAD on health (even without mentioning N/M) is not relevant to this discussion, correctly saying “hey a balanced vegan diet won’t make you waste away” is still shocking news to many people. Therefore noting that there is a P is very useful with many non-vegans. If any EA people think there is no N/M, I think this is possibly the only U.S. subculture where that’s true.[3]
Also, to take a step toward the meta: “good health” and “animal suffering” are [sometimes] sacred values, where time/$ aren’t. So for whom those are sacred values, this is noting that you can have both sacred values by trading against only non-sacred values. Hopefully this is irrelevant to EA/LW people, but it is extremely relevant in the “real world”.
In wealthy urban areas with higher % vegans, the trade-off is usually cost (eating out at vegan restaurants, etc.). In areas that are small with few vegans, the trade-off is convenience (I started cooking more; there is only one vegan restaurant near me that is too far & expensive to regularly visit).
In regular meat-heavy U.S. culture. YMMV in specific subcultures.
Sorry for my clumsy wording & many footnotes. What I’m trying to say is that in the equation where you trade $N and $M for P and Q, I think people (outside maybe EA) systematically overcalculate N and M and undercalculate P, even before accounting for Q, since they think being vegan is harder than it actually is and leads to a negative P value, which is usually false.
I still don’t think they’d make the trade without Q, but in an effort to “counter-balance” Q people seem to (unconsciously?) distort N, M, and P.
But this discussion is about N, M, and P. There have been many discussions of Q, I have already acknowledged Q>0, quantifying Q is outside of scope of the this post. Over on LW I deleted attempts to argue Q=0 because it was out of scope. When N, M, and P are quantified people can combine all the information to argue and make decisions, but getting all 4 pieces quantified is a necessary step.
I fully agree with all of the above. From the first message of this thread I noted that I agreed with the cruxes of the post. I agree that N, M, and P are important and we should gather & disseminate better information on them.
To my understanding, in futher posts we’ve been discussing how much the trade-offs matter, to what extent they’ve been suppressed, and whether some sub-fields have trade-offs at all (e.g. leather).
I don’t think it’s possible to have a discussion without any shadow of Q, because ultimately without Q there’s not even a discussion (beyond a 1-page of current research on one lifestyle choice among many). Your “why is this so hard to talk about” section is answered mostly with Q itself.
That being said, I should have worked harder to stay on topic. I apologize if my replies here have been unhelpful to this discussion.
At the very least, I am still thankful for your thoughtful responses, as I have found this thread both interesting and useful.