Maybe I am naive but what is the cost thatās associated with not eating meat? Not having the taste of it? What motivates you to donate money to reduce animal suffering if you believe that your taste is more valuable than the life of the animal in the first place? Or are you at a point where you believe that animals matter enough to warrant some small amounts of donations but not to deprive you of their taste?
I mean, of course itās good to donate but I donāt see why this means that you should continue the practice that you want to offset if you can help it or am I missing something?
Similarly, if I offset pollution, I do not turn around and pollute more because that would defeat the purpose?!
I am not maximally EA and I assume you arenāt either. (In the sense that we arenāt spending every living second trying to generate impact). We both have some level of commitment towards altruism that we are willing to put in. I believe that spending effort to be vegan has a cost, if I spent that time making more money, I could do more for the world. Therefore yes, my taste is more important the life of the an animal.
I can ask you a similar question: Do you believe spending time on your hobby yesterday is more valuable than the life of the animals that you could have saved?
As for pollution, I can say that my commute is more important that the impact of my emissions because I can outweigh my suffering caused through donations.
I donāt agree with this sentiment. At least for me I really do not see any real cost associated with being vegan that would keep me from earning more or being a better person in any meaningful way.
For example, I am pretty sure I wouldnāt work more if I ate more meat, why would I? There really doesnāt seem to be a causal pathway here. Maybe if you really crave beef and you canāt help yourself thinking about this all the timeā¦ yeah, that could be distracting and reduce your performance but I am not sure that something like this occurs all that often. Never happened to me at least.
I would argue itās actually quite the opposite. Being vegan is normally quite a healthy lifestyle that has positive effects on health all around. Donāt underestimate the impact of having to live with the cognitive dissonance of being directly responsible for the unnecessary suffering of harmless animals.
But I guess there are different preferences and maybe you see things differently. I just wanted to flag that you are not really presenting knock down arguments here. To me it seems more like a self-justificatory move to somehow āabsolveā you from doing the right thing.
We are imperfect and we need to prioritize the most important actions to reduce suffering. We donāt have infinite energy. A lifetime of veganism is difficult. Making or saving $1000 is comparatively not.
Maybe I am naive but what is the cost thatās associated with not eating meat? Not having the taste of it? What motivates you to donate money to reduce animal suffering if you believe that your taste is more valuable than the life of the animal in the first place? Or are you at a point where you believe that animals matter enough to warrant some small amounts of donations but not to deprive you of their taste?
I mean, of course itās good to donate but I donāt see why this means that you should continue the practice that you want to offset if you can help it or am I missing something?
Similarly, if I offset pollution, I do not turn around and pollute more because that would defeat the purpose?!
I am not maximally EA and I assume you arenāt either. (In the sense that we arenāt spending every living second trying to generate impact). We both have some level of commitment towards altruism that we are willing to put in. I believe that spending effort to be vegan has a cost, if I spent that time making more money, I could do more for the world. Therefore yes, my taste is more important the life of the an animal.
I can ask you a similar question: Do you believe spending time on your hobby yesterday is more valuable than the life of the animals that you could have saved?
As for pollution, I can say that my commute is more important that the impact of my emissions because I can outweigh my suffering caused through donations.
I donāt agree with this sentiment. At least for me I really do not see any real cost associated with being vegan that would keep me from earning more or being a better person in any meaningful way.
For example, I am pretty sure I wouldnāt work more if I ate more meat, why would I? There really doesnāt seem to be a causal pathway here. Maybe if you really crave beef and you canāt help yourself thinking about this all the timeā¦ yeah, that could be distracting and reduce your performance but I am not sure that something like this occurs all that often. Never happened to me at least.
I would argue itās actually quite the opposite. Being vegan is normally quite a healthy lifestyle that has positive effects on health all around. Donāt underestimate the impact of having to live with the cognitive dissonance of being directly responsible for the unnecessary suffering of harmless animals.
But I guess there are different preferences and maybe you see things differently. I just wanted to flag that you are not really presenting knock down arguments here. To me it seems more like a self-justificatory move to somehow āabsolveā you from doing the right thing.
We are imperfect and we need to prioritize the most important actions to reduce suffering. We donāt have infinite energy. A lifetime of veganism is difficult. Making or saving $1000 is comparatively not.