Not all EAs are on board with AI risk, but it would be rude for this EA hotel to commit to funding general AI research on the side. Whether all EAs are on board with effective animal advocacy isn’t the key point when deciding whether the hotel’s provided meals are vegan.
An EA who doesn’t care about veganism will be mildly put off if the hotel doesn’t serve meat. But an EA who believes that veganism is important would be very strongly put off if the hotel served meat. The relative difference in how disturbed the latter person would be is presumably at least 5 times as strong as the minor inconvenience that the former person would feel. This means that even if only 20% of EAs are vegan, the expected value from keeping meals vegan would beat out the convenience factor of including meat for nonvegans.
I’m getting tired of the ‘veganism is only a minor inconvenience’ point being made:
V*ganism shows very high ‘recidivism’ rates in the general population. Most people who try to stop eating meat/animal products usually end up returning to eat these things before long.
The general public health literature on behaviour/lifestyle change seldom says these things are easy/straightforward to effect.
When this point is made by EAAs, there is almost always lots of EAs who they say, ‘No, actually, I found going v*gan really hard’, or, ‘I tried it but I struggled so much I felt I had to switch back’.
(The selection effect that could explain why ‘ongoing v*gans’ found the change only a minor convenience is left as an exercise to the reader).
I don’t know many times we need to rehearse this such that people stop saying ‘V*ganism is a minor inconvenience’. But I do know it has happened enough times that other people in previous discussions have also wondered how many times this needs to be rehearsed such that people stop saying this.
Of course, even if it is a major inconvenience (FWIW, I’m a vegetarian, and I’d find the relatively small ‘step further’ to be exclusively vegan a major inconvenience), this could still be outweighed by other factors across the scales (there’s discussion to be had ‘relative aversion’, some second-order stuff about appropriate cooperative norms, etc. etc.). Yet discussions of the cost-benefit proceed better if the costs are not wrongly dismissed.
I would say, in many cases, we could consider veganism to be a major inconvenience.
For example
when the whole family is eating meat and one has to live with them.
when one cannot really choose in school or work because of cafeteria offer
when one doesn’t have a belief animal suffering should be avoided
when one has low tendency to stand up against colleagues/friends/family/society pressure
when one doesn’t know how to cook (or doesn’t have time) and there are not good enough vegan services in place of living
But when you change the context to Hotel for effective altruists where one can just eat what is given, is supported to eat what’s given by everyone around we could call it only a “minor inconvenience”. And in a case, the food will be really good it could be called “great opportunity” for non-vegan EA to experience vegan living without even trying.
V*ganism shows very high ‘recidivism’ rates in the general population. Most people who try to stop eating meat/animal products usually end up returning to eat these things before long.
FWIW, based on Faunalytics surveys, the recidivism rate seems to be about 50% for vegans motivated by animal protection specifically:
I would be wary of equivocating different forms of ‘inconvenience’. There are at least three being alluded to here:
1) Fighting the akrasia of craving animal products
2) The hassle of finding vegan premade food (else of having to prepare meals for yourself)
3) Reduced productivity gains from missing certain nutrients (else of having to carefully supplement constantly)
Of these, the first basically irrelevant in the hotel—you can remove it as a factor by just not giving people the easy option to ingest them. The second is completely irrelevant, since it’s serving or supplying 90% of the food people will be eating.
So that only leaves three, which is much talked about, but so far as I know, little studied, so this ‘inconvenience’ could even have the wrong sign: the only study on the subject I found from a very quick search showed increased productivity from veganism for health reasons; also on certain models of willpower that treat it as analogous to a muscle, it could turn out that depriving yourself (even by default, from the absence of offered foods) you improve your willpower and thus become more productive.
I’ve spoken to a number of people who eat meat/animal products for the third reason, but so far as I know they rarely seem to have reviewed any data on the question, and almost never to have actually done any controlled experiments on themselves. Honestly I suspect many of them are using the first two to justify a suspicion of the third (for eg, I know several EAs who eat meat with productivity justifications, but form whom it’s usually *processed* meat in the context of other dubious dietary choices, so they demonstrably aren’t optimising their diet for maximal productivity).
Also, if the third does turn out to be a real factor, it seems very unlikely that more than a tiny bit of meat every few days would be necessary to fix the problem for most people, and going to the shops to buy that for themselves seems unlikely to cause them any serious inconvenience.
The inconvenience I had in mind is not in your list, and comprises things in the area of, “Prefer to keep the diet I’m already accustomed to”, “Prefer omnivorous diets on taste etc. grounds to vegan ones”, and so on. I was thinking of an EA who is omnivorous and feels little/no compunction about eating meat (either because they aren’t ‘on board’ with the moral motivation for animal causes in general, or doesn’t find the arguments for veganism persuasive in particular). I think switching to a vegan diet isn’t best described as a minor inconvenience for people like these.
But to be clear, this doesn’t entail any moral obligation whatsoever on the hotel to serve meat—it’s not like they are forcing omnivorous guests to be vegan, but just not cooking them free (non-vegan) food. If a vegan offers me to stay at their house a) for free, b) offers vegan food for free too, c) welcomes me to, if I’m not a fan of vegan food, get my own food to cook at their house whenever I like—which seems basically the counterfactual scenario if I wasn’t staying with them in the first place, and d) explains all of this before I come, they’ve been supererogatory in accommodating me, and it would be absurd for me to say they’ve fallen short in not serving me free omnivorous food which they morally object to.
Yet insofar as ‘free food’ is a selling point of the hotel, ‘free vegan food’ may not be so enticing to omnivorous guests. Obviously the offer is still generous by itself, leave alone combined with free accommodation, but one could imagine it making a difference on the margin to omnivores (especially if they are cost-sensitive).
Thus there’s a trade-off in between these people and vegans who would be put off if the hotel served meat itself (even if vegan options were also provided). It’s plausible to me the best option to pick here (leave alone any other considerations) is the more ‘vegan-friendly’ policy. But this isn’t because the trade-off is in fact illusory because the ‘vegan-friendly’ policy is has minimal/minor costs to omnivores after all.
[Empirically though, this doesn’t seem to amount to all that much given (I understand) the hotel hasn’t been struggling for guests.]
Plus there’s reason to believe that of the non-vegans/vegetarians, a substantial subset probably still agrees to some extent that it’s generally a good idea, and simply doesn’t commit to the diet due to lack of motivation, or practicality in their situation, and thus would still welcome or at least be open to vegan food being provided in the hotel. So I guess even if 80% of EAs consider themselves to be omnivores, we can’t assume that the whole 80% would personally perceive this policy of the hotel as negative.
Not all EAs are on board with AI risk, but it would be rude for this EA hotel to commit to funding general AI research on the side. Whether all EAs are on board with effective animal advocacy isn’t the key point when deciding whether the hotel’s provided meals are vegan.
An EA who doesn’t care about veganism will be mildly put off if the hotel doesn’t serve meat. But an EA who believes that veganism is important would be very strongly put off if the hotel served meat. The relative difference in how disturbed the latter person would be is presumably at least 5 times as strong as the minor inconvenience that the former person would feel. This means that even if only 20% of EAs are vegan, the expected value from keeping meals vegan would beat out the convenience factor of including meat for nonvegans.
I’m getting tired of the ‘veganism is only a minor inconvenience’ point being made:
V*ganism shows very high ‘recidivism’ rates in the general population. Most people who try to stop eating meat/animal products usually end up returning to eat these things before long.
The general public health literature on behaviour/lifestyle change seldom says these things are easy/straightforward to effect.
When this point is made by EAAs, there is almost always lots of EAs who they say, ‘No, actually, I found going v*gan really hard’, or, ‘I tried it but I struggled so much I felt I had to switch back’.
(The selection effect that could explain why ‘ongoing v*gans’ found the change only a minor convenience is left as an exercise to the reader).
I don’t know many times we need to rehearse this such that people stop saying ‘V*ganism is a minor inconvenience’. But I do know it has happened enough times that other people in previous discussions have also wondered how many times this needs to be rehearsed such that people stop saying this.
Of course, even if it is a major inconvenience (FWIW, I’m a vegetarian, and I’d find the relatively small ‘step further’ to be exclusively vegan a major inconvenience), this could still be outweighed by other factors across the scales (there’s discussion to be had ‘relative aversion’, some second-order stuff about appropriate cooperative norms, etc. etc.). Yet discussions of the cost-benefit proceed better if the costs are not wrongly dismissed.
I would say, in many cases, we could consider veganism to be a major inconvenience.
For example
when the whole family is eating meat and one has to live with them.
when one cannot really choose in school or work because of cafeteria offer
when one doesn’t have a belief animal suffering should be avoided
when one has low tendency to stand up against colleagues/friends/family/society pressure
when one doesn’t know how to cook (or doesn’t have time) and there are not good enough vegan services in place of living
But when you change the context to Hotel for effective altruists where one can just eat what is given, is supported to eat what’s given by everyone around we could call it only a “minor inconvenience”. And in a case, the food will be really good it could be called “great opportunity” for non-vegan EA to experience vegan living without even trying.
FWIW, based on Faunalytics surveys, the recidivism rate seems to be about 50% for vegans motivated by animal protection specifically:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/EffectiveAnimalAdvocacy/permalink/906516599519212/
I would be wary of equivocating different forms of ‘inconvenience’. There are at least three being alluded to here:
1) Fighting the akrasia of craving animal products
2) The hassle of finding vegan premade food (else of having to prepare meals for yourself)
3) Reduced productivity gains from missing certain nutrients (else of having to carefully supplement constantly)
Of these, the first basically irrelevant in the hotel—you can remove it as a factor by just not giving people the easy option to ingest them. The second is completely irrelevant, since it’s serving or supplying 90% of the food people will be eating.
So that only leaves three, which is much talked about, but so far as I know, little studied, so this ‘inconvenience’ could even have the wrong sign: the only study on the subject I found from a very quick search showed increased productivity from veganism for health reasons; also on certain models of willpower that treat it as analogous to a muscle, it could turn out that depriving yourself (even by default, from the absence of offered foods) you improve your willpower and thus become more productive.
I’ve spoken to a number of people who eat meat/animal products for the third reason, but so far as I know they rarely seem to have reviewed any data on the question, and almost never to have actually done any controlled experiments on themselves. Honestly I suspect many of them are using the first two to justify a suspicion of the third (for eg, I know several EAs who eat meat with productivity justifications, but form whom it’s usually *processed* meat in the context of other dubious dietary choices, so they demonstrably aren’t optimising their diet for maximal productivity).
Also, if the third does turn out to be a real factor, it seems very unlikely that more than a tiny bit of meat every few days would be necessary to fix the problem for most people, and going to the shops to buy that for themselves seems unlikely to cause them any serious inconvenience.
The inconvenience I had in mind is not in your list, and comprises things in the area of, “Prefer to keep the diet I’m already accustomed to”, “Prefer omnivorous diets on taste etc. grounds to vegan ones”, and so on. I was thinking of an EA who is omnivorous and feels little/no compunction about eating meat (either because they aren’t ‘on board’ with the moral motivation for animal causes in general, or doesn’t find the arguments for veganism persuasive in particular). I think switching to a vegan diet isn’t best described as a minor inconvenience for people like these.
But to be clear, this doesn’t entail any moral obligation whatsoever on the hotel to serve meat—it’s not like they are forcing omnivorous guests to be vegan, but just not cooking them free (non-vegan) food. If a vegan offers me to stay at their house a) for free, b) offers vegan food for free too, c) welcomes me to, if I’m not a fan of vegan food, get my own food to cook at their house whenever I like—which seems basically the counterfactual scenario if I wasn’t staying with them in the first place, and d) explains all of this before I come, they’ve been supererogatory in accommodating me, and it would be absurd for me to say they’ve fallen short in not serving me free omnivorous food which they morally object to.
Yet insofar as ‘free food’ is a selling point of the hotel, ‘free vegan food’ may not be so enticing to omnivorous guests. Obviously the offer is still generous by itself, leave alone combined with free accommodation, but one could imagine it making a difference on the margin to omnivores (especially if they are cost-sensitive).
Thus there’s a trade-off in between these people and vegans who would be put off if the hotel served meat itself (even if vegan options were also provided). It’s plausible to me the best option to pick here (leave alone any other considerations) is the more ‘vegan-friendly’ policy. But this isn’t because the trade-off is in fact illusory because the ‘vegan-friendly’ policy is has minimal/minor costs to omnivores after all.
[Empirically though, this doesn’t seem to amount to all that much given (I understand) the hotel hasn’t been struggling for guests.]
Plus there’s reason to believe that of the non-vegans/vegetarians, a substantial subset probably still agrees to some extent that it’s generally a good idea, and simply doesn’t commit to the diet due to lack of motivation, or practicality in their situation, and thus would still welcome or at least be open to vegan food being provided in the hotel. So I guess even if 80% of EAs consider themselves to be omnivores, we can’t assume that the whole 80% would personally perceive this policy of the hotel as negative.
Indeed, I think I’m not the only one to whom the nudge towards eating more fully vegan would seem a highly welcome side-effect of a stay in the hotel.