An argument against that doesn’t seem directly considered here: veganism might turn some high-potential people off without compensatory benefits, and very high base rates of non-veganism (~99% of western people are non-vegan IIRC) means this may matter even on relatively marginal effects.
Obviously many things can be mitigated significantly by being kind/accommodating (though at some level there’s a little remaining implied “you are doing bad”). But even accounting for that, a few things remain despite accommodating. E.g.
People feel can vaguely outgroupy because most core EAs in many groups are vegan, & most new people will feel slightly awkward about that, which affects likely comfort & future involvement in EA spaces
On the margin, promising people may not repeatedly come to events that would expose them to EA ideas because they don’t like the food (empirically this was a fairly common complaint at newbie events in my university). E.g. it may not be filling if you don’t like tofu variants, which a significant fraction of the population doesn’t
Probably more things. Diet & dinners are fairly central to people’s social lives, so I’d expect other effects too.
And to be clear, there are plausible compensatory benefits that you highlight. Though they’re not direct effects, so I wonder if they could be gotten in other ways without the possible downsides
This seems at least a bit different from going veg*n in “private” so to speak. If you stop eating meat and tell no-one not immediately impacted by this choice, why would that lead to scaring off people from EA?
Granted, you seem to be talking about a large portion of EAs being veg*n, a large enough portion that meat is not served at the events and a potential new-comer would feel like the only omnivore there. I think this cuts against EA organizations advocating for veg*nism and towards providing non-veg*n food at EA events, but not necessarily against one’s own personal consumption choices.
An argument against that doesn’t seem directly considered here: veganism might turn some high-potential people off without compensatory benefits, and very high base rates of non-veganism (~99% of western people are non-vegan IIRC) means this may matter even on relatively marginal effects.
Obviously many things can be mitigated significantly by being kind/accommodating (though at some level there’s a little remaining implied “you are doing bad”). But even accounting for that, a few things remain despite accommodating. E.g.
People feel can vaguely outgroupy because most core EAs in many groups are vegan, & most new people will feel slightly awkward about that, which affects likely comfort & future involvement in EA spaces
On the margin, promising people may not repeatedly come to events that would expose them to EA ideas because they don’t like the food (empirically this was a fairly common complaint at newbie events in my university). E.g. it may not be filling if you don’t like tofu variants, which a significant fraction of the population doesn’t
Probably more things. Diet & dinners are fairly central to people’s social lives, so I’d expect other effects too.
And to be clear, there are plausible compensatory benefits that you highlight. Though they’re not direct effects, so I wonder if they could be gotten in other ways without the possible downsides
This seems at least a bit different from going veg*n in “private” so to speak. If you stop eating meat and tell no-one not immediately impacted by this choice, why would that lead to scaring off people from EA?
Granted, you seem to be talking about a large portion of EAs being veg*n, a large enough portion that meat is not served at the events and a potential new-comer would feel like the only omnivore there. I think this cuts against EA organizations advocating for veg*nism and towards providing non-veg*n food at EA events, but not necessarily against one’s own personal consumption choices.