Shower thought: A lot of the talking past each other that happens between vegan and non-vegan[1] EAs[2] might come from selection effects plus typical mind fallacy.[3]
Let’s say there are two types of people: type-A, for whom a vegan diet imposes little or no costs, and type-B, for whom a vegan diet imposes substantial costs (in things like health, productivity,[4] social life). My hunch is that most long-time vegans are type-A, while most type-B people who try going vegan bounce.
Now, to a type-A vegan who doesn’t realize type-B is a thing, those who claim that a vegan diet has costs are obviously lying. And to a type-B person who’s tried and failed to go vegan, vegans are obviously lying about how easy it is. (To put things crudely.)
I think an awareness from both sides of the vegan/non-vegan divide that the other type—B/A—exists, and that the other side is mostly made up of the other type, could go quite a long way toward circumventing frustrating or otherwise unproductive debates.
(I doubt this take is original to me, but I didn’t find it on this forum already with a quick search, so I figured I’d share.)
I expect the same argument to apply to vegetarians versus non-vegetarians, but for brevity I’ll just write “vegan” throughout. (I’m avoiding the veg*n shorthand just because I don’t find *’s aesthetically appealing in prose.)
I’ve specified “EAs” rather than just people in general because my argument works better if most non-vegans have actually tried to go vegan. My sense is that this is true for the EA population, but (very) not true for the general population.
My preferred definition of typical mind fallacy: The mistake of jumping to conclusions—often subconsciously—about other people’s experiences based on your own experiences. In other words, the mistake of assuming that other people are more like you than they really are. (Here’s the LessWrong Wiki’s definition.)
This doesn’t super resonate with my experience. I haven’t really seen anyone argue for “veganism is costly for everyone”. I feel like the debate has always been between “for some people veganism is very costly” and “veganism is very cheap for everyone (if they just try properly)”.
Like, it’s not like anyone is arguing that there should be no vegan food at EAG, or that all EAs should be carnivores. Maybe I am missing something here and there are places where people are talking past each other in the way you describe, but e.g. recent conversations with Elizabeth VN and others have been about trying to argue that being vegan is quite costly for some people (in terms of health in that case), not that it’s costly for all people, and many people seemed to disagree with that.
I agree with Will that differences in costs is a major driver of disagreement, but agree with Haybrka that it is not at all symmetric in public discussions. In public discussions I’ve only seen type B people accuse vegans of lying in regards to universal statements, not what they personally find it easy.
I’ll admit that this is less than total. Privately, I expect that some percent of type-As are wrong about how easy veganism is for them, and will develop problems at a later date. If I am talking 1:1 to a vegan experiencing chronic unexplained health issues, and all the obvious stuff has been ruled out, I will suggest nutritional interventions. I don’t see this as relevant to the public debate; there definitely are people for whom veganism is easy, I can’t guess who will turn out to be wrong about their personal difficulty, and establishing common knowledge of the variety is sufficient for public debate.
This seems pretty close to an universal claim, that high cognitive effort is not possible under veganism (or at least it’s an open question) for everyone. It’s not exactly saying that people don’t find it easy to be vegan, but that the people who are are deluded.
I think that post is better described as a question and personal anecdote, not a universal claim. That’s partially because the author does seem to be genuinely wondering, genuinely want data, and genuinely valuing animals; it would be easy for a similar post to look very disingenuous to me.
Meanwhile I count 2 comments dismissing anecdotes and personal experience, even when applied personally.
FWIW my personal experience doesn’t square with this. It was initially hard for me but after a transition period where I got accustomed to new foods, it got much easier. For most people—those who are medically able to do it—I think this would be the case.
Hmm, based on what you’ve said here—and I acknowledge that what you’ve said is a highly compressed version of your experience, thus I may well be failing to understand you (and I apologize in advance if I mischaracterize your experience)—I think I’m not quite seeing how this refutes my framing? I accept that my type-A/B framing rounds off a bunch of nuance, but to me, within that framing, it sounds like you’re type-A?
Like, I’m not sure how long the transition period was for you, and I expect different people’s transition periods will vary considerably, but my model, viewed through this lens, is that a type-A person will make it out of their transition period and be able to maintain a vegan diet thereafter at little to no cost. Whereas a type-B can spend weeks, months—even a year or more, like myself[1]—planning out and iterating on their vegan diet; making sure, through doing research, taking blood tests, and so on, that they’re avoiding the known pitfalls, and still never make it out of the transition period.[2][3]
I like this comment from Jason: “Nutritional research is hard, and we’d need a significantly stronger body of research (e.g., random assignment, very large samples) to say that a vegan diet is maximally healthful for everyone at an individual level (as opposed to healthier on the a [sic] population average).” (link)
Moreover, for me, the vegan experience actually got increasingly unpleasant with time, if anything, so I don’t think it’s the case that type-B’s will eventually asymptote onto becoming costlessly vegan if only they stick with it for long enough.
(Additionally, if asymptoting really does occur, but “long enough” means months or years, then I have sympathy for those who give up in the meantime.)
Sorry, I originally commented with a much more detailed account but decided I didn’t want so much personal info on the forum.
On my first attempt at vegetarianism I failed after about a week, and after that I decided to start with avoiding meat at home and at uni. The transition to being fully vegan took about 2.5 years. I was a picky eater so I had a lot of foods and ingredients to get used to. I also improved my cooking abilities a lot during this time.
Edit: it’s true that I’m now in a phase where it is almost costless for me to be vegan, and I’ve been in that state for years. My point is rather that I didn’t start off like that.
Figures on vegetarian/vegan recidivism indicate that a lot of people stop even after years of following that diet. ACE estimates that vegetarians stay vegetarian for about 5 years on average.
The Fauanalytics survey indicates quicker dropout: about a third drop out within 3 months, about half drop out within a year, and 84% drop out in total.
Thanks for the data! For other readers I’ll note the Faunalytics page you linked to contains more interesting information (e.g. a majority of lapsed vegns try it only for health reasons, while a majority of those who remain vegn do not).
The remainder of that distribution after the 1 year mark would also be interesting, as it might take over that to get accustomed to it.
This does suggest that a gradual transition might have higher success rates?
I agree with you that the degree of difficulty in going vegan is personal and quite variable. This is one of the reasons I have thought developing an easy way of offsetting through animal welfare donations for meat consumption could be a very effective program.
Shower thought: A lot of the talking past each other that happens between vegan and non-vegan[1] EAs[2] might come from selection effects plus typical mind fallacy.[3]
Let’s say there are two types of people: type-A, for whom a vegan diet imposes little or no costs, and type-B, for whom a vegan diet imposes substantial costs (in things like health, productivity,[4] social life). My hunch is that most long-time vegans are type-A, while most type-B people who try going vegan bounce.
Now, to a type-A vegan who doesn’t realize type-B is a thing, those who claim that a vegan diet has costs are obviously lying. And to a type-B person who’s tried and failed to go vegan, vegans are obviously lying about how easy it is. (To put things crudely.)
I think an awareness from both sides of the vegan/non-vegan divide that the other type—B/A—exists, and that the other side is mostly made up of the other type, could go quite a long way toward circumventing frustrating or otherwise unproductive debates.
(I doubt this take is original to me, but I didn’t find it on this forum already with a quick search, so I figured I’d share.)
I expect the same argument to apply to vegetarians versus non-vegetarians, but for brevity I’ll just write “vegan” throughout. (I’m avoiding the veg*n shorthand just because I don’t find *’s aesthetically appealing in prose.)
I’ve specified “EAs” rather than just people in general because my argument works better if most non-vegans have actually tried to go vegan. My sense is that this is true for the EA population, but (very) not true for the general population.
My preferred definition of typical mind fallacy: The mistake of jumping to conclusions—often subconsciously—about other people’s experiences based on your own experiences. In other words, the mistake of assuming that other people are more like you than they really are. (Here’s the LessWrong Wiki’s definition.)
I’ve previously written about my experience here.
This doesn’t super resonate with my experience. I haven’t really seen anyone argue for “veganism is costly for everyone”. I feel like the debate has always been between “for some people veganism is very costly” and “veganism is very cheap for everyone (if they just try properly)”.
Like, it’s not like anyone is arguing that there should be no vegan food at EAG, or that all EAs should be carnivores. Maybe I am missing something here and there are places where people are talking past each other in the way you describe, but e.g. recent conversations with Elizabeth VN and others have been about trying to argue that being vegan is quite costly for some people (in terms of health in that case), not that it’s costly for all people, and many people seemed to disagree with that.
I agree with Will that differences in costs is a major driver of disagreement, but agree with Haybrka that it is not at all symmetric in public discussions. In public discussions I’ve only seen type B people accuse vegans of lying in regards to universal statements, not what they personally find it easy.
I’ll admit that this is less than total. Privately, I expect that some percent of type-As are wrong about how easy veganism is for them, and will develop problems at a later date. If I am talking 1:1 to a vegan experiencing chronic unexplained health issues, and all the obvious stuff has been ruled out, I will suggest nutritional interventions. I don’t see this as relevant to the public debate; there definitely are people for whom veganism is easy, I can’t guess who will turn out to be wrong about their personal difficulty, and establishing common knowledge of the variety is sufficient for public debate.
This seems pretty close to an universal claim, that high cognitive effort is not possible under veganism (or at least it’s an open question) for everyone. It’s not exactly saying that people don’t find it easy to be vegan, but that the people who are are deluded.
I think that post is better described as a question and personal anecdote, not a universal claim. That’s partially because the author does seem to be genuinely wondering, genuinely want data, and genuinely valuing animals; it would be easy for a similar post to look very disingenuous to me.
Meanwhile I count 2 comments dismissing anecdotes and personal experience, even when applied personally.
Yeah, that’s fair. It is about performance, not effort, but does seem closer to a universal claim.
Thanks for your comments, both. I agree that the personal versus universal statements distinction is noteworthy (and missing from my take above).
Probably right, and also applies to “high-donating” vs “low-donating” EAs.
FWIW my personal experience doesn’t square with this. It was initially hard for me but after a transition period where I got accustomed to new foods, it got much easier. For most people—those who are medically able to do it—I think this would be the case.
Hmm, based on what you’ve said here—and I acknowledge that what you’ve said is a highly compressed version of your experience, thus I may well be failing to understand you (and I apologize in advance if I mischaracterize your experience)—I think I’m not quite seeing how this refutes my framing? I accept that my type-A/B framing rounds off a bunch of nuance, but to me, within that framing, it sounds like you’re type-A?
Like, I’m not sure how long the transition period was for you, and I expect different people’s transition periods will vary considerably, but my model, viewed through this lens, is that a type-A person will make it out of their transition period and be able to maintain a vegan diet thereafter at little to no cost. Whereas a type-B can spend weeks, months—even a year or more, like myself[1]—planning out and iterating on their vegan diet; making sure, through doing research, taking blood tests, and so on, that they’re avoiding the known pitfalls, and still never make it out of the transition period.[2][3]
I’ve written about my experience here.
I like this comment from Jason: “Nutritional research is hard, and we’d need a significantly stronger body of research (e.g., random assignment, very large samples) to say that a vegan diet is maximally healthful for everyone at an individual level (as opposed to healthier on the a [sic] population average).” (link)
Moreover, for me, the vegan experience actually got increasingly unpleasant with time, if anything, so I don’t think it’s the case that type-B’s will eventually asymptote onto becoming costlessly vegan if only they stick with it for long enough.
(Additionally, if asymptoting really does occur, but “long enough” means months or years, then I have sympathy for those who give up in the meantime.)
Sorry, I originally commented with a much more detailed account but decided I didn’t want so much personal info on the forum.
On my first attempt at vegetarianism I failed after about a week, and after that I decided to start with avoiding meat at home and at uni. The transition to being fully vegan took about 2.5 years. I was a picky eater so I had a lot of foods and ingredients to get used to. I also improved my cooking abilities a lot during this time.
Edit: it’s true that I’m now in a phase where it is almost costless for me to be vegan, and I’ve been in that state for years. My point is rather that I didn’t start off like that.
Figures on vegetarian/vegan recidivism indicate that a lot of people stop even after years of following that diet. ACE estimates that vegetarians stay vegetarian for about 5 years on average.
The Fauanalytics survey indicates quicker dropout: about a third drop out within 3 months, about half drop out within a year, and 84% drop out in total.
Thanks for the data! For other readers I’ll note the Faunalytics page you linked to contains more interesting information (e.g. a majority of lapsed vegns try it only for health reasons, while a majority of those who remain vegn do not).
The remainder of that distribution after the 1 year mark would also be interesting, as it might take over that to get accustomed to it.
This does suggest that a gradual transition might have higher success rates?
I agree with you that the degree of difficulty in going vegan is personal and quite variable. This is one of the reasons I have thought developing an easy way of offsetting through animal welfare donations for meat consumption could be a very effective program.