I think veganism doesn’t represent a very good tradeoff, and I think we should put our altruistic efforts elsewhere.
For the sake of this comment thread, let’s assume that veganism is a substantially worse tradeoff than other altruistic efforts.
Personally, I think that’s likely to be true. For people (like me) who place a high likelihood on the sentience of farmed animals, it’s worth considering how the costs and benefits of going vegan compare to the costs and benefits of donating to a nonprofit that is attempting to end animal farming through systematic/institutional change (meat alternatives, corporate campaigns, legislative campaigns, etc.). Seems like those nonprofits are probably a lot more efficient at doing good for animals than I am.
However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we shouldn’t both go vegan and donate to highly cost-effective charities. Let’s use this comment thread to discuss why that might be.
Another kind of reason to do both: There is epistemic value to going vegan.
It’s legitimately hard to understand the experiences and needs of individuals that are different from us. Most of the time, it’s even harder than it needs to be, because we approach them with unfounded prejudices.
Going vegan might be a psychologically necessary step to considering animals’ experiences and needs in at least a somewhat objective manner.
This is odd to me. I see how committing to be vegan can strengthen one’s belief in the importance of animal suffering. But my not-very-educated guess is that the effect is more akin to why buying iPhone/Android would strengthen your belief into the superiority of one to another. But I don’t see how would it help one to understand/consider animal experiences and needs.
I haven’t read the paper in depth but searched for relevant keywords and found:
Additionally, a sequence of five studies from Jonas Kunst and Sigrid Hohle demonstrates that processing meat, beheading a whole roasted pig, watching a meat advertisement without a live animal versus one with a live animal, describing meat production as “harvesting” versus “killing” or “slaughtering,” and describing meat as “beef/pork” rather than “cow/pig” all decreased empathy for the animal in question and, in several cases, significantly increased willingness to eat meat rather than an alternative vegetarian dish.33
Psychologists involved in these and several other studies believe that these phenomena 34 occur because people recognize an incongruity between eating animals and seeing them as beings with mental life and moral status, so they are motivated to resolve this cognitive dissonance by lowering their estimation of animal sentience and moral status. Since these affective attitudes influence the decisions we make, eating meat and embracing the idea of animals as food negatively influences our individual and social treatment of nonhuman animals.
The cited paper (33, 34) do not provide much evidence to support your claim among people who spend significant time reflecting on welfare of animals.
One kind of reason to do both: It’s not a true tradeoff.
It’s easy to spend a lot of money on top-of-the-line vegan cheeses and meats. But it’s also quite feasible to meet most people’s dietary requirements with vegan foods that cost just as much as, or even less than, animal-based foods. (Shout out to my boi rice-and-beans.)
In that case, we’re not trading off dollars for dollars. We’re trading off time, effort, and comfort for dollars.
At some point, if you spend enough time on something, it might cut into your earning potential. But many of us have jobs that only allow us to work a certain number of hours per week anyway, or minds that only allow us to be focused and productive for a certain number of hours per week. For these people, it’s possible to spend additional time and effort without cutting into earning potential.
So the question is not “Can I do more good than veganism with my money?” but rather “Can I do more good than veganism with my time?” Not a lot of other volunteer opportunities give you the chance to spare multiple individuals from torture every year, so I think it’s likely still a good use of time.
(Though this obviously intersects with the other question of “Just how morally valuable is it to spare animals from factory farming?”)
One kind of reason to do both: It’s not a true tradeoff.
This argument comes up a lot in the EA/veganism debate, and I think it’s a “minds very different from our own” situation. Some people don’t find eating vegan to be costly, or find it cheap enough to not notice. Some people find it prohibitively costly, or so costly that it’s not worth considering. What I would ask is that people who find veganism cheap acknowledge that their experience is not universal, and for some people it really is that hard.
This isn’t a moral argument. Sometimes the morally correct thing to do is costly. But it doesn’t help anything to pretend it’s cheap.
This isn’t a “minds very different from our own” claim, though. It’s an empirical claim about how expensive a vegan diet needs to be to be nutritious. Cam stated: “But it’s also quite feasible to meet most people’s dietary requirements with vegan foods that cost just as much as, or even less than, animal-based foods.” What exactly in that statement do you dispute?
ETA: Even though there is a risk in overstating the case that veganism is universally “cheap,” at present it seems that case is far understated. I think the value of Cam’s comment is in noting that veganism is at the very least cheaper than most people suspect before trying it.
I don’t think “costly” here just refers to money. I think Elizabeth is talking about all kinds of costs, from time and money to emotions and social connections.
If we’re using Jeff’s weighting, he could babysit a neighbor’s children for an hour once a decade, receive $5, and donate it to the Against Malaria Foundation, and that would be a better use of his time than all the time spent on veganism.
If you’re arguing “people should spend their leisure time doing good”, I think that’s a different argument—but I think Jeff could find better ways to do good during his leisure time than going vegan.
One argument against is that begin vegan adds weirdness points, which might make it harder for someone to do workplace activism or might slow one’s career in more conservative fields/countries.
For the sake of this comment thread, let’s assume that veganism is a substantially worse tradeoff than other altruistic efforts.
Personally, I think that’s likely to be true. For people (like me) who place a high likelihood on the sentience of farmed animals, it’s worth considering how the costs and benefits of going vegan compare to the costs and benefits of donating to a nonprofit that is attempting to end animal farming through systematic/institutional change (meat alternatives, corporate campaigns, legislative campaigns, etc.). Seems like those nonprofits are probably a lot more efficient at doing good for animals than I am.
However, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we shouldn’t both go vegan and donate to highly cost-effective charities. Let’s use this comment thread to discuss why that might be.
Another kind of reason to do both: There is epistemic value to going vegan.
It’s legitimately hard to understand the experiences and needs of individuals that are different from us. Most of the time, it’s even harder than it needs to be, because we approach them with unfounded prejudices.
Going vegan might be a psychologically necessary step to considering animals’ experiences and needs in at least a somewhat objective manner.
(I’m hoping to elaborate on this later, and apologies for the doc-dump, but the elegantly argued and eminently readable John & Sebo 2019 does a great job elaborating on this point: https://jeffsebodotnet.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/consequentialism-and-nonhuman-animals-penultimate.pdf .)
This is odd to me. I see how committing to be vegan can strengthen one’s belief in the importance of animal suffering. But my not-very-educated guess is that the effect is more akin to why buying iPhone/Android would strengthen your belief into the superiority of one to another. But I don’t see how would it help one to understand/consider animal experiences and needs.
I haven’t read the paper in depth but searched for relevant keywords and found:
The cited paper (33, 34) do not provide much evidence to support your claim among people who spend significant time reflecting on welfare of animals.
A few studies described here, too, for a short read.
One kind of reason to do both: It’s not a true tradeoff.
It’s easy to spend a lot of money on top-of-the-line vegan cheeses and meats. But it’s also quite feasible to meet most people’s dietary requirements with vegan foods that cost just as much as, or even less than, animal-based foods. (Shout out to my boi rice-and-beans.)
In that case, we’re not trading off dollars for dollars. We’re trading off time, effort, and comfort for dollars.
At some point, if you spend enough time on something, it might cut into your earning potential. But many of us have jobs that only allow us to work a certain number of hours per week anyway, or minds that only allow us to be focused and productive for a certain number of hours per week. For these people, it’s possible to spend additional time and effort without cutting into earning potential.
So the question is not “Can I do more good than veganism with my money?” but rather “Can I do more good than veganism with my time?” Not a lot of other volunteer opportunities give you the chance to spare multiple individuals from torture every year, so I think it’s likely still a good use of time.
(Though this obviously intersects with the other question of “Just how morally valuable is it to spare animals from factory farming?”)
This argument comes up a lot in the EA/veganism debate, and I think it’s a “minds very different from our own” situation. Some people don’t find eating vegan to be costly, or find it cheap enough to not notice. Some people find it prohibitively costly, or so costly that it’s not worth considering. What I would ask is that people who find veganism cheap acknowledge that their experience is not universal, and for some people it really is that hard.
This isn’t a moral argument. Sometimes the morally correct thing to do is costly. But it doesn’t help anything to pretend it’s cheap.
This isn’t a “minds very different from our own” claim, though. It’s an empirical claim about how expensive a vegan diet needs to be to be nutritious. Cam stated: “But it’s also quite feasible to meet most people’s dietary requirements with vegan foods that cost just as much as, or even less than, animal-based foods.” What exactly in that statement do you dispute?
ETA: Even though there is a risk in overstating the case that veganism is universally “cheap,” at present it seems that case is far understated. I think the value of Cam’s comment is in noting that veganism is at the very least cheaper than most people suspect before trying it.
I don’t think “costly” here just refers to money. I think Elizabeth is talking about all kinds of costs, from time and money to emotions and social connections.
If we’re using Jeff’s weighting, he could babysit a neighbor’s children for an hour once a decade, receive $5, and donate it to the Against Malaria Foundation, and that would be a better use of his time than all the time spent on veganism.
If you’re arguing “people should spend their leisure time doing good”, I think that’s a different argument—but I think Jeff could find better ways to do good during his leisure time than going vegan.
One argument against is that begin vegan adds weirdness points, which might make it harder for someone to do workplace activism or might slow one’s career in more conservative fields/countries.