I just read Katja’s post on vegetarianism (recommended). I have also been convinced by arguments (from Beckstead and others) that resources can probably be better spent to influence the long-term future. Have you seen any convincing arguments that vegetarianism or veganism are competitively cost-effective ways of doing good?
Related thought 3: Katja’s points about trading inconveniences and displeasures are interesting. Is it good to have a norm that all goods and “currencies” that take part in one’s altruism budget and spending must be tradeable with one another? Is this psychologically realistic?
One reason for thinking that goods in the altruism budget should be tradeable is that in some sense my Altruism Budget is what I call the part of my life where I take the demandingness of ethics seriously. Is this how anyone else thinks about it?
Yes, I think about it in the same way, and think that demanding or difficult non-monetary decisions like vegetarianism should fall into your altruism budget, where you should consider the trade-off between them and, say, donating money.
The altruism budget idea is plausible. It works well when you’re literally talking about money. For example, it’s really psychologically difficult to face the decision of whether to redirect your funds to charity every time you buy a dinner or go to a movie. It’s much better to take out a fixed fraction of your budget each month and give it away. Then, you can make non-altruistic decisions with your ‘you’ money without feeling selfish. Then, if you want to change the fraction of your budget that you give away, you make that decision at the end of the month or year.
It seems reasonable that something like that should happen with time i.e. that effective altruists should retain a concept of “leisure”!
But maybe it works poorly when things aren’t obviously commodities. Like, I think there’s a place for virtue ethics—just being the kind of person you would want to see in the world. And I think lots of people who take a virtue-based approach could reasonably object that always thinking of good in terms of money could be self-defeating.
Also, some psychological studies apparently show that thinking about money decreases your generosity.
Related thought 2: as someone who’s already vegetarian, I think it would be more costly in terms of effort, bad feels, etc. to switch back than to stay veggie or slowly drift back over time.
Yes, I agree with this. It seems like it’s easier to stay vegetarian. It’s cheap, it feels good. It’s probably not very disadvantageous to health. Long live the status quo—for diet ethics, at least.
Related thought 1: I think some tension can be defused here by avoiding the framing “should EAs be vegetarian?”, since answering “no” makes it feel like “EAs should not be vegetarian”, when really it seems to me that it just implies that I can’t put any costs incurred in my Altruism Budget, the same as costs I incur by doing other mundane good things.
I think people have a tendency, though, to think that vegetarianism is more costly than it actually is, though. So I’m skeptical unless a person has actually tried to give up meat and faced some sort of problem. For example, I’m not vegan because of social pressure, but I am vegetarian.
At heart, even if you eat meat, there’s no reason I can fathom why you can’t simply try to eat less of it...
You may be right that people overestimate the cost. I’m not sure how to gather data about this.
Re: your second point (“there’s no reason I can fathom...”), how about this lens: view meat as a luxury purchase, like travel, movies, video games, music, etc. Instead of spending on these, you could donate this money, and I can imagine making a similar argument: “there’s no reason I can fathom why you can’t simply try to do less of that...”, but clearly we see foregoing luxuries as a cost of some kind, and don’t think that it’s reasonable to ask EAs to give up all their luxuries. When one does give up luxuries for altruistic reasons, I think it’s fine to try to give up the ones that are subjectively least costly to give up, and that will have the biggest impact.
Other costs: changing your possibly years-long menu for lunch and dinner; feeling hungry for a while if you don’t get it figured out quickly; having red meat cravings (much stronger for some people than others, e.g. not bad for me, but bad for Killian).
I don’t think what I’ve said is a case against vegetarianism; just trying to convey how I think of the costs.
ETA: there are other benefits (and other costs), this is just my subjective slice. An expert review, on which individuals can base their subjective cost breakdowns, would probably be helpful.
I just read Katja’s post on vegetarianism (recommended). I have also been convinced by arguments (from Beckstead and others) that resources can probably be better spent to influence the long-term future. Have you seen any convincing arguments that vegetarianism or veganism are competitively cost-effective ways of doing good?
Related thought 3: Katja’s points about trading inconveniences and displeasures are interesting. Is it good to have a norm that all goods and “currencies” that take part in one’s altruism budget and spending must be tradeable with one another? Is this psychologically realistic?
One reason for thinking that goods in the altruism budget should be tradeable is that in some sense my Altruism Budget is what I call the part of my life where I take the demandingness of ethics seriously. Is this how anyone else thinks about it?
Yes, I think about it in the same way, and think that demanding or difficult non-monetary decisions like vegetarianism should fall into your altruism budget, where you should consider the trade-off between them and, say, donating money.
The altruism budget idea is plausible. It works well when you’re literally talking about money. For example, it’s really psychologically difficult to face the decision of whether to redirect your funds to charity every time you buy a dinner or go to a movie. It’s much better to take out a fixed fraction of your budget each month and give it away. Then, you can make non-altruistic decisions with your ‘you’ money without feeling selfish. Then, if you want to change the fraction of your budget that you give away, you make that decision at the end of the month or year.
It seems reasonable that something like that should happen with time i.e. that effective altruists should retain a concept of “leisure”!
But maybe it works poorly when things aren’t obviously commodities. Like, I think there’s a place for virtue ethics—just being the kind of person you would want to see in the world. And I think lots of people who take a virtue-based approach could reasonably object that always thinking of good in terms of money could be self-defeating.
Also, some psychological studies apparently show that thinking about money decreases your generosity.
Related thought 2: as someone who’s already vegetarian, I think it would be more costly in terms of effort, bad feels, etc. to switch back than to stay veggie or slowly drift back over time.
Yes, I agree with this. It seems like it’s easier to stay vegetarian. It’s cheap, it feels good. It’s probably not very disadvantageous to health. Long live the status quo—for diet ethics, at least.
Related thought 1: I think some tension can be defused here by avoiding the framing “should EAs be vegetarian?”, since answering “no” makes it feel like “EAs should not be vegetarian”, when really it seems to me that it just implies that I can’t put any costs incurred in my Altruism Budget, the same as costs I incur by doing other mundane good things.
Yes, ‘are altruistic people obligated to become vegetarian?’ might be better
Yes, that was a good argument that EAs aren’t obligated to be vegetarian, even if reasonable people can disagree about the numbers.
I think people have a tendency, though, to think that vegetarianism is more costly than it actually is, though. So I’m skeptical unless a person has actually tried to give up meat and faced some sort of problem. For example, I’m not vegan because of social pressure, but I am vegetarian.
At heart, even if you eat meat, there’s no reason I can fathom why you can’t simply try to eat less of it...
You may be right that people overestimate the cost. I’m not sure how to gather data about this.
Re: your second point (“there’s no reason I can fathom...”), how about this lens: view meat as a luxury purchase, like travel, movies, video games, music, etc. Instead of spending on these, you could donate this money, and I can imagine making a similar argument: “there’s no reason I can fathom why you can’t simply try to do less of that...”, but clearly we see foregoing luxuries as a cost of some kind, and don’t think that it’s reasonable to ask EAs to give up all their luxuries. When one does give up luxuries for altruistic reasons, I think it’s fine to try to give up the ones that are subjectively least costly to give up, and that will have the biggest impact.
Other costs: changing your possibly years-long menu for lunch and dinner; feeling hungry for a while if you don’t get it figured out quickly; having red meat cravings (much stronger for some people than others, e.g. not bad for me, but bad for Killian).
I don’t think what I’ve said is a case against vegetarianism; just trying to convey how I think of the costs.
ETA: there are other benefits (and other costs), this is just my subjective slice. An expert review, on which individuals can base their subjective cost breakdowns, would probably be helpful.