The openness of the EA movement to omnivores is a good point I had not considered before. Although this could probably be accomplished by not being in peoples face about it. I understand the reasoning that concludes that the strength of obligations to give to charity and for veganism are the same. However, I think there is one important distinction, we are causing harm. If we use the classic example of the child drowning in the pool. Not giving to charity is analogous to allowing the child to drown. Eating meat is analogous to drowning the child (or at least a chicken every couple of days). I think we should examine our actions through many ethical theory’s due to moral uncertainty. If we do so we can see that there tends to be an extra obligation not to do harm in many ethical theory’s. This means there is a distinction between not allowing someone to drown and drowning them. Thus I think there should be extra moral importance placed on first not doing the world any harm.
I started out in EA as an omnivore who cared primarily about global poverty/health. Over time, indirect exposure to more vegans/vegetarians and the good arguments in favor of helping animals. I became pescatarian in Jan 2018 and vegetarian about a year later. But if people had been in my face about it/made me feel unwelcome for being an omnivore at the beginning, it’s possible I wouldn’t have stuck around and gone veggie. It’s for this reason that I’m very careful about talking about the issue. It’s not that I don’t think we have a moral obligation to not consumer animal products, I’ve found that focusing on the “how” of going veg and only being candid about the moral considerations when pushed is most effective.
I think creating distinctions between directly causing harm vs allowing harm to be caused is likely to reduce a person’s effectiveness at doing good in the world. I think causing harm in an abstract way that doesn’t violate social norms is basically OK if it leads to something more good. For instance, if I advocate to a funder to cut funding to a less effective program and use that funding for a more effective program, I am causing harm to the recipients of the program that got cut. I think that’s fine and a good thing to do.
The openness of the EA movement to omnivores is a good point I had not considered before. Although this could probably be accomplished by not being in peoples face about it. I understand the reasoning that concludes that the strength of obligations to give to charity and for veganism are the same. However, I think there is one important distinction, we are causing harm. If we use the classic example of the child drowning in the pool. Not giving to charity is analogous to allowing the child to drown. Eating meat is analogous to drowning the child (or at least a chicken every couple of days). I think we should examine our actions through many ethical theory’s due to moral uncertainty. If we do so we can see that there tends to be an extra obligation not to do harm in many ethical theory’s. This means there is a distinction between not allowing someone to drown and drowning them. Thus I think there should be extra moral importance placed on first not doing the world any harm.
I started out in EA as an omnivore who cared primarily about global poverty/health. Over time, indirect exposure to more vegans/vegetarians and the good arguments in favor of helping animals. I became pescatarian in Jan 2018 and vegetarian about a year later. But if people had been in my face about it/made me feel unwelcome for being an omnivore at the beginning, it’s possible I wouldn’t have stuck around and gone veggie. It’s for this reason that I’m very careful about talking about the issue. It’s not that I don’t think we have a moral obligation to not consumer animal products, I’ve found that focusing on the “how” of going veg and only being candid about the moral considerations when pushed is most effective.
I think creating distinctions between directly causing harm vs allowing harm to be caused is likely to reduce a person’s effectiveness at doing good in the world. I think causing harm in an abstract way that doesn’t violate social norms is basically OK if it leads to something more good. For instance, if I advocate to a funder to cut funding to a less effective program and use that funding for a more effective program, I am causing harm to the recipients of the program that got cut. I think that’s fine and a good thing to do.