I can sympathize with this perspective, but if you are actually on the fence regarding animal welfare concerns, it seems like it would be a shame if you ended up eating eggs because you didn’t want to give up milk! (e.g. if you actually caved because of cheese/butter).
If you haven’t tried just avoiding eggs, it seems worth at least trying.
If the only reason it’s psychologically harder is that “vegan” is a more familiar concept, then you will also be doing significant auxiliary good by giving more currency to lacto-vegetarianism. I expect more people would adopt this than would adopt veganism (if the two concepts had equal currency), and it seems basically equally morally good.
I don’t understand the “completely trivial difference” line. How do you think it compares to the quality of life lost by eating somewhat cheaper food? For me, the cheaper food is much more cost-effective, in terms of world-bettering per unit of foregone joy.
If you haven’t tried just avoiding eggs, it seems worth at least trying.
Yeah, that seems right!
I don’t understand the “completely trivial difference” line. How do you think it compares to the quality of life lost by eating somewhat cheaper food? For me, the cheaper food is much more cost-effective, in terms of world-bettering per unit of foregone joy.
I think this is probably just a personal thing—for me I think eating somewhat cheaper food would be worse in terms of enjoyment than cutting out dairy. The reason I say it’s a basically trivial difference is that, while I enjoy dairy products, I don’t think I enjoy them more than I enjoy various other foods—they’re just another thing that I enjoy. So given that I can basically replace all the non-vegan meals I would normally have with vegan meals that I like as much (which requires some planning, of course), then I don’t think there will be much, if any, difference in my enjoyment of food over time. I also think that even a very small difference in the pleasure I get from eating dairy vs vegan food would be trivial in terms of my happiness/enjoyment over my life as a whole, or even any day as a whole—I don’t think I’d ever look back on a day and think “Oh, my enjoyment of that day would have been so much greater if I’d eaten cheese.” I enjoy food, but it’s not that big a deal relative to a lot of other more important things.
I think this is probably just a personal thing—for me I think eating somewhat cheaper food would be worse in terms of enjoyment than cutting out dairy.
People’s mileage on these things clearly varies very much, leading to a lot of talking past one another.
I can sympathize with this perspective, but if you are actually on the fence regarding animal welfare concerns, it seems like it would be a shame if you ended up eating eggs because you didn’t want to give up milk! (e.g. if you actually caved because of cheese/butter).
If you haven’t tried just avoiding eggs, it seems worth at least trying.
If the only reason it’s psychologically harder is that “vegan” is a more familiar concept, then you will also be doing significant auxiliary good by giving more currency to lacto-vegetarianism. I expect more people would adopt this than would adopt veganism (if the two concepts had equal currency), and it seems basically equally morally good.
I don’t understand the “completely trivial difference” line. How do you think it compares to the quality of life lost by eating somewhat cheaper food? For me, the cheaper food is much more cost-effective, in terms of world-bettering per unit of foregone joy.
Yeah, that seems right!
I think this is probably just a personal thing—for me I think eating somewhat cheaper food would be worse in terms of enjoyment than cutting out dairy. The reason I say it’s a basically trivial difference is that, while I enjoy dairy products, I don’t think I enjoy them more than I enjoy various other foods—they’re just another thing that I enjoy. So given that I can basically replace all the non-vegan meals I would normally have with vegan meals that I like as much (which requires some planning, of course), then I don’t think there will be much, if any, difference in my enjoyment of food over time. I also think that even a very small difference in the pleasure I get from eating dairy vs vegan food would be trivial in terms of my happiness/enjoyment over my life as a whole, or even any day as a whole—I don’t think I’d ever look back on a day and think “Oh, my enjoyment of that day would have been so much greater if I’d eaten cheese.” I enjoy food, but it’s not that big a deal relative to a lot of other more important things.
People’s mileage on these things clearly varies very much, leading to a lot of talking past one another.