Could you provide some examples of people who have said that this is hypocritical? I’ve never seen anyone in the EA community say this, and if they did, they’d be wrong. There are plenty of non-vegan EAs who donate to animal welfare.
I haven’t engaged with this topic much with relations to EA, this was more in a vegan context several years ago so that I don’t have specific sources in mind off the top of my head. But it’s typically in the direction of “It’s like someone holding slaves while donating money against slavery”; or arguing that there is no such thing as merciful killing, so that just improving conditions is meaningless if we still hold them in cages and breed them just to eat/exploit them. Like kicking dogs for fun and then doing things to “kick less dogs” instead of stopping altogether, etc.
So it’s still stuck in my head as a hypocritical action from me, redirecting money from other causes to one I don’t even personally live up to. I can imagine seeing more nuanced takes in an EA context, hence I want to read up on this more.
Hey Christoph, I think it would be a real shame if you let not helping some amount of animals through diet change stop you from helping any animals at all—especially when you can actually help far more animals though donating than you can through diet change. Making being vegan the price of admission to being a part of the solution to factory farming is a sure fire way to ensure that we never solve this problem. Far more helpful is to allow everyone to do what they’re willing to do to solve it, regardless of their diet.
I don’t think the animals who would experience drastically less suffering because of your donations care whether you’re being hypocritical in the eyes of some. Those animals, and I, think that you and the world are far better off if you eat meat and donate to help animals than if you just eat meat ❤️
By the way, we’ve made a tool just for people like you, to figure out how much you’d need to donate to do as much good for animals as going vegan (https://www.farmkind.giving/compassion-calculator). If you want to do the same amount of net good as doing vegan, you can offset your meat consumption twofold
Very happy to talk this topic through with you some more if you’re interested as I’d hate to lose you as animal donor for this reason
As a non-vegan, I noticed myself becoming at least somewhat more aware of my dietary consumption choices after pulling the trigger on my first animal-welfare donation (and likely because of doing so). I don’t have a great explanation of why, but it might be worth seeing if you experience the same effect.
Could you provide some examples of people who have said that this is hypocritical? I’ve never seen anyone in the EA community say this, and if they did, they’d be wrong. There are plenty of non-vegan EAs who donate to animal welfare.
I haven’t engaged with this topic much with relations to EA, this was more in a vegan context several years ago so that I don’t have specific sources in mind off the top of my head. But it’s typically in the direction of “It’s like someone holding slaves while donating money against slavery”; or arguing that there is no such thing as merciful killing, so that just improving conditions is meaningless if we still hold them in cages and breed them just to eat/exploit them. Like kicking dogs for fun and then doing things to “kick less dogs” instead of stopping altogether, etc.
So it’s still stuck in my head as a hypocritical action from me, redirecting money from other causes to one I don’t even personally live up to. I can imagine seeing more nuanced takes in an EA context, hence I want to read up on this more.
Hey Christoph, I think it would be a real shame if you let not helping some amount of animals through diet change stop you from helping any animals at all—especially when you can actually help far more animals though donating than you can through diet change. Making being vegan the price of admission to being a part of the solution to factory farming is a sure fire way to ensure that we never solve this problem. Far more helpful is to allow everyone to do what they’re willing to do to solve it, regardless of their diet.
I don’t think the animals who would experience drastically less suffering because of your donations care whether you’re being hypocritical in the eyes of some. Those animals, and I, think that you and the world are far better off if you eat meat and donate to help animals than if you just eat meat ❤️
By the way, we’ve made a tool just for people like you, to figure out how much you’d need to donate to do as much good for animals as going vegan (https://www.farmkind.giving/compassion-calculator). If you want to do the same amount of net good as doing vegan, you can offset your meat consumption twofold
Very happy to talk this topic through with you some more if you’re interested as I’d hate to lose you as animal donor for this reason
As a non-vegan, I noticed myself becoming at least somewhat more aware of my dietary consumption choices after pulling the trigger on my first animal-welfare donation (and likely because of doing so). I don’t have a great explanation of why, but it might be worth seeing if you experience the same effect.