fwiw Iâve felt confused about this post because it seemed like you were making such an unobjectionable claim that I didnât understand why you bothered to write the post, and therefore figured I had just not read it closely enough, but I think maybe you are just actually making an unobjectionable claim?
I know you tried to flag this at the beginning of your post, and itâs very possible that Iâm still misunderstanding things, but it would help me if you had a one sentence summary of your claim.
A one sentence summary is a really reasonable request thatâs difficult for me to fulfill because:
Reality is very complicated
Any simplifications I make that exaggerate the challenges of veganism will be viewed extremely uncharitably.
Which is how I got to an excruciatingly clause-filled 6000-word post in the first place.
Iâm going to try for one sentence, but Iâd also like to offer you a video call or in-person meeting, with or without a double crux mediator. The mediator I have in mind is even near-vegan, although I donât know if heâs available. [Ben West is not the only person Iâd do this with but itâs not an open invite either.]
My one-sentence summary:
Diet and health are complex multidimensional problems; if you remove a wide swath of your current tools you make the problem harder.[1] You can make it easier with education,[2] but thatâs not being done for young EA vegans and the subsequent malnutrition is hurting them. [3]
Thatâs two sentences with three footnotes, which I think is the best I can do.
To answer your implied question of âwhy was this post necessaryâ I wanted to direct you to this comment, but itâs a grandparent of your comment so probably youâve already seen it.
Most of the time. Sometimes itâs technically harder but people have enough slack in their life it doesnât matter. Sometimes the options were net harmful so removing them is helpful- which wouldnât be necessary for Homo economicus but seems fine to include as a benefit for real people.
But how much slack you can add varies a lot by person. For some itâs pretty easy to restore 95%+ of the slack, and for others no amount of education will render the problem solvable without large sacrifices in health.
E.g. I canât prove one personâs peripheral neuropathy was caused by a B12 deficiency, but it did stop progressing when he started supplements, and if heâd been told that from the beginning it could have saved him potentially lifelong pain.
Thanks! Thatâs a helpful summary. (And I donât disagree with those two sentences.)
It sucks that you put a bunch of work into helping vegans with nutrition and got epistemically uncooperative responses. I was appreciative of your work there.
It is funny[1] how long the post ended up & how much weâve all ended up debating in the comments, given that I am in 100% agreement with the two-sentence summary and all three footnotes.
I agree with your two sentences, but the first one is very ambiguous. You mention someone with a B12 deficiency. The way I see it, both vegans and omnivores remove sources of B12 from their diet: the vegan doesnât eat animal products that contain B12, the omnivore doesnât eat B12 supplements (or B12-enriched products that are suitable for vegans). Many omnivores even refuse to eat those vegan B12 supplements, just like vegans refuse to eat meat. Now you have someone who doesnât eat either of those B12 sources: no meat and no vegan supplement. You can call it a too restrictive, unhealthy vegan diet (because the diet doesnât contain meat), but you can equally call it a too restrictive, unhealthy omnivorous diet (because the diet doesnât contain vegan B12-sources). There is a kind of symmetry.
This feels very muddled to me. Could you rewrite it with your explicit cruxes/âassumptions/âbeliefs, and the logical chain between them and your conclusion?
I was pointing at a non-vegan bias in the way how you framed your argument: that a vegan diet is restrictive. But non-vegans also eat a restrictive diet, as they donât eat (and often refuse to eat) vegan foods. Vegans donât eat non-vegan sources of B12, and non-vegans donât eat vegan sources of B12.
Your bias is comparable to a native English speaker who has an English bias and claims that French is a difficult language because the French people donât use those simple words like âdoorâ and âtableâ. So when you want to speak French, you first have to learn new words. But the fact that the French language doesnât use the words that you use, doesnât make it a difficult language. For native French people, French is an easy language.
So the crux is: a vegan diet is not difficult, but changing diet is difficult. For vegans (who learned how to eat vegan), a vegan diet is easy, just like a non-vegan diet is easy for non-vegans (who learned how to eat non-vegan).
I donât think the claim that non-vegans donât eat vegan foods is well-supported. For instance, a cake made with eggs and butter still consists of mostly vegan foodstuffs; that a non-vegan may refuse to eat a vegan cake does not mean they are restricting specific foodstuffs from their diet. Likewise, non-vegans do not categorically refuse to eat vegan B12 supplements (I assume the B12 in a multivitamin is made in a lab?) even if they do not eat them as part of 100 percent vegan completed foods.
Most non-vegans donât take vegan B12 supplements. That means this vegan product is excluded from the non-veganâs diet. The reason why non-vegans exclude it (whether they donât like it, consider it as immoral...), is not important because reasons are not health related. Whether or not someone who doesnât take the B12 supplement categorically refuses to take it, has no impact on that personâs health.
a vegan diet is not difficult, but changing diet is difficult. For vegans (who learned how to eat vegan), a vegan diet is easy, just like a non-vegan diet is easy for non-vegans (who learned how to eat non-vegan)
Accepting this arguendo, it doesnât seem like an argument against education for vegan converts.
fwiw Iâve felt confused about this post because it seemed like you were making such an unobjectionable claim that I didnât understand why you bothered to write the post, and therefore figured I had just not read it closely enough, but I think maybe you are just actually making an unobjectionable claim?
I know you tried to flag this at the beginning of your post, and itâs very possible that Iâm still misunderstanding things, but it would help me if you had a one sentence summary of your claim.
A one sentence summary is a really reasonable request thatâs difficult for me to fulfill because:
Reality is very complicated
Any simplifications I make that exaggerate the challenges of veganism will be viewed extremely uncharitably.
Which is how I got to an excruciatingly clause-filled 6000-word post in the first place.
Iâm going to try for one sentence, but Iâd also like to offer you a video call or in-person meeting, with or without a double crux mediator. The mediator I have in mind is even near-vegan, although I donât know if heâs available. [Ben West is not the only person Iâd do this with but itâs not an open invite either.]
My one-sentence summary:
Diet and health are complex multidimensional problems; if you remove a wide swath of your current tools you make the problem harder.[1] You can make it easier with education,[2] but thatâs not being done for young EA vegans and the subsequent malnutrition is hurting them. [3]
Thatâs two sentences with three footnotes, which I think is the best I can do.
To answer your implied question of âwhy was this post necessaryâ I wanted to direct you to this comment, but itâs a grandparent of your comment so probably youâve already seen it.
Most of the time. Sometimes itâs technically harder but people have enough slack in their life it doesnât matter. Sometimes the options were net harmful so removing them is helpful- which wouldnât be necessary for Homo economicus but seems fine to include as a benefit for real people.
But how much slack you can add varies a lot by person. For some itâs pretty easy to restore 95%+ of the slack, and for others no amount of education will render the problem solvable without large sacrifices in health.
E.g. I canât prove one personâs peripheral neuropathy was caused by a B12 deficiency, but it did stop progressing when he started supplements, and if heâd been told that from the beginning it could have saved him potentially lifelong pain.
Thanks! Thatâs a helpful summary. (And I donât disagree with those two sentences.)
It sucks that you put a bunch of work into helping vegans with nutrition and got epistemically uncooperative responses. I was appreciative of your work there.
It is funny[1] how long the post ended up & how much weâve all ended up debating in the comments, given that I am in 100% agreement with the two-sentence summary and all three footnotes.
Not blaming you, of course. Just observing
I agree with your two sentences, but the first one is very ambiguous. You mention someone with a B12 deficiency. The way I see it, both vegans and omnivores remove sources of B12 from their diet: the vegan doesnât eat animal products that contain B12, the omnivore doesnât eat B12 supplements (or B12-enriched products that are suitable for vegans). Many omnivores even refuse to eat those vegan B12 supplements, just like vegans refuse to eat meat. Now you have someone who doesnât eat either of those B12 sources: no meat and no vegan supplement. You can call it a too restrictive, unhealthy vegan diet (because the diet doesnât contain meat), but you can equally call it a too restrictive, unhealthy omnivorous diet (because the diet doesnât contain vegan B12-sources). There is a kind of symmetry.
This feels very muddled to me. Could you rewrite it with your explicit cruxes/âassumptions/âbeliefs, and the logical chain between them and your conclusion?
I was pointing at a non-vegan bias in the way how you framed your argument: that a vegan diet is restrictive. But non-vegans also eat a restrictive diet, as they donât eat (and often refuse to eat) vegan foods. Vegans donât eat non-vegan sources of B12, and non-vegans donât eat vegan sources of B12.
Your bias is comparable to a native English speaker who has an English bias and claims that French is a difficult language because the French people donât use those simple words like âdoorâ and âtableâ. So when you want to speak French, you first have to learn new words. But the fact that the French language doesnât use the words that you use, doesnât make it a difficult language. For native French people, French is an easy language.
So the crux is: a vegan diet is not difficult, but changing diet is difficult. For vegans (who learned how to eat vegan), a vegan diet is easy, just like a non-vegan diet is easy for non-vegans (who learned how to eat non-vegan).
I donât think the claim that non-vegans donât eat vegan foods is well-supported. For instance, a cake made with eggs and butter still consists of mostly vegan foodstuffs; that a non-vegan may refuse to eat a vegan cake does not mean they are restricting specific foodstuffs from their diet. Likewise, non-vegans do not categorically refuse to eat vegan B12 supplements (I assume the B12 in a multivitamin is made in a lab?) even if they do not eat them as part of 100 percent vegan completed foods.
Most non-vegans donât take vegan B12 supplements. That means this vegan product is excluded from the non-veganâs diet. The reason why non-vegans exclude it (whether they donât like it, consider it as immoral...), is not important because reasons are not health related. Whether or not someone who doesnât take the B12 supplement categorically refuses to take it, has no impact on that personâs health.
Accepting this arguendo, it doesnât seem like an argument against education for vegan converts.