It seems kinda wild if this is the dominating factor. The number of meals provided through the year to a veg*n by other people is so, so much smaller than the number of meals that the veg*n provides for themselves. Both the veg*n and the large event organizers get “economies of scale”.
(There’s a different frame where costs on others should be more highly weighted than costs on oneself. I mostly don’t buy this frame when we’re talking about cost-benefit analysis of whether to be veg*n in the first place, for someone who is trying to use their time and money to do good in the world.)
(The tradeoff could still not be worth it, but then I think it would be even more not worth it considering just the cost to the veg*n themselves.)
Note: I personally avoid increasing search costs but that’s just because it seems like an easy win on the margin. (Though it doesn’t apply to meat, because as a lifelong vegetarian I basically don’t parse meat as food, and after having tried it once, I would rather skip the meal than have a meat-based meal.)
It seems kinda wild if this is the dominating factor. The number of meals provided through the year to a veg*n by other people is so, so much smaller than the number of meals that the veg*n provides for themselves. Both the veg*n and the large event organizers get “economies of scale”.
Huh, I am surprised you say this. I have long provided daily lunches for my employees, and also provide lunches and dinners for anyone in the Lightcone Offices, so my current guess is that for a good chunk of the professional Berkeley community, ~half of meals are provided by other people. I do think most of those meals are easier and less one-off, which does decrease the cost, and enables more economies of scale, but they are still quite difficult to get right.
I do also think personal search costs are quite high for being vegan, and overall agree that it seems like they should be higher than the cost for event organizers. However, I do feel like given that we are already reasoning in a more deontological framework, I do think it makes a big difference on whether you are imposing a cost on other people, especially if we are implicitly enforcing a norm that you should eat vegan in EA contexts (which we are currently doing at EA events).
Indeed, I know of many people who have told me that they don’t like attending EA events because they expect the food there to not meet their needs, because they aren’t vegan, and this seems pretty bad to me from a community-building perspective (I myself have also started bringing snacks and soylent-backups-bottles to EA events, because EA events consistently enough have failed to adequately provide food to me, and left me hungry, that I gave up). So there is also an additional cost that I wouldn’t quite describe as a search cost, which comes from the additional (frequent) request to only serve vegan or vegetarian food, which makes finding food for people who aren’t used to eating vegan/vegetarian much harder.
I do overall want to say that the rise of impossible-burgers has made this problem a bunch easier, and is one of the reasons why I am pretty excited about meat-alternatives. It does indeed feel that I can now kind of get an OK vegetarian meal that is acceptable to almost everyone by just replacing 30% of the food with impossible-meat patties, which tend to have enough protein and fit the expected flavor profile of non-vegetarians much better.
I have long provided daily lunches for my employees, and also provide lunches and dinners for anyone in the Lightcone Offices, so my current guess is that for a good chunk of the professional Berkeley community, ~half of meals are provided by other people.
Lunches on weekdays is 5 meals a week out of 21 meals total (3 meals per day * 7 days per week), so it’s still not half (though “so, so much smaller” is inaccurate for that setting). Still, many people don’t get daily lunches, or get daily lunches from non-EA sources / large companies where you have ~zero impact on food choices at the margin.
Lunches and dinners at Lightcone / Constellation seems like a relatively unusual setup but I agree there you might want to take “increased search costs for others” as a relevant consideration.
I do feel like given that we are already reasoning in a more deontological framework
I wasn’t doing that, and the OP only does that in one of their seven arguments. That being said, if I imagine what a deontologist would say about the matter, I mostly imagine them saying that there’s no rule about whether it’s good or bad to impose search costs on your employers. But I could easily be wrong about that; I’m not great at simulating deontology.
especially if we are implicitly enforcing a norm that you should eat vegan in EA contexts (which we are currently doing at EA events).
I was thinking about whether one should personally become a veg*n (which I thought was the main thrust of the OP), rather than this sort of community-wide norm. Most of the rest of your comment seems to be about the community-wide norm; I agree that norm seems complicated (for the reasons you mention). I was mostly just responding to the “increased search costs” point.
It seems kinda wild if this is the dominating factor. The number of meals provided through the year to a veg*n by other people is so, so much smaller than the number of meals that the veg*n provides for themselves. Both the veg*n and the large event organizers get “economies of scale”.
(There’s a different frame where costs on others should be more highly weighted than costs on oneself. I mostly don’t buy this frame when we’re talking about cost-benefit analysis of whether to be veg*n in the first place, for someone who is trying to use their time and money to do good in the world.)
(The tradeoff could still not be worth it, but then I think it would be even more not worth it considering just the cost to the veg*n themselves.)
Note: I personally avoid increasing search costs but that’s just because it seems like an easy win on the margin. (Though it doesn’t apply to meat, because as a lifelong vegetarian I basically don’t parse meat as food, and after having tried it once, I would rather skip the meal than have a meat-based meal.)
Huh, I am surprised you say this. I have long provided daily lunches for my employees, and also provide lunches and dinners for anyone in the Lightcone Offices, so my current guess is that for a good chunk of the professional Berkeley community, ~half of meals are provided by other people. I do think most of those meals are easier and less one-off, which does decrease the cost, and enables more economies of scale, but they are still quite difficult to get right.
I do also think personal search costs are quite high for being vegan, and overall agree that it seems like they should be higher than the cost for event organizers. However, I do feel like given that we are already reasoning in a more deontological framework, I do think it makes a big difference on whether you are imposing a cost on other people, especially if we are implicitly enforcing a norm that you should eat vegan in EA contexts (which we are currently doing at EA events).
Indeed, I know of many people who have told me that they don’t like attending EA events because they expect the food there to not meet their needs, because they aren’t vegan, and this seems pretty bad to me from a community-building perspective (I myself have also started bringing snacks and soylent-backups-bottles to EA events, because EA events consistently enough have failed to adequately provide food to me, and left me hungry, that I gave up). So there is also an additional cost that I wouldn’t quite describe as a search cost, which comes from the additional (frequent) request to only serve vegan or vegetarian food, which makes finding food for people who aren’t used to eating vegan/vegetarian much harder.
I do overall want to say that the rise of impossible-burgers has made this problem a bunch easier, and is one of the reasons why I am pretty excited about meat-alternatives. It does indeed feel that I can now kind of get an OK vegetarian meal that is acceptable to almost everyone by just replacing 30% of the food with impossible-meat patties, which tend to have enough protein and fit the expected flavor profile of non-vegetarians much better.
Lunches on weekdays is 5 meals a week out of 21 meals total (3 meals per day * 7 days per week), so it’s still not half (though “so, so much smaller” is inaccurate for that setting). Still, many people don’t get daily lunches, or get daily lunches from non-EA sources / large companies where you have ~zero impact on food choices at the margin.
Lunches and dinners at Lightcone / Constellation seems like a relatively unusual setup but I agree there you might want to take “increased search costs for others” as a relevant consideration.
I wasn’t doing that, and the OP only does that in one of their seven arguments. That being said, if I imagine what a deontologist would say about the matter, I mostly imagine them saying that there’s no rule about whether it’s good or bad to impose search costs on your employers. But I could easily be wrong about that; I’m not great at simulating deontology.
I was thinking about whether one should personally become a veg*n (which I thought was the main thrust of the OP), rather than this sort of community-wide norm. Most of the rest of your comment seems to be about the community-wide norm; I agree that norm seems complicated (for the reasons you mention). I was mostly just responding to the “increased search costs” point.