My main confusion with your argument is that I donât understand why donations donât also count as âpersonal ethicsâ or as âvisible ethical actionâ that could likewise âripple outwardâ and be replicated by others to good effect. (I also think the section on âequityâ fundamentally confuses what ethics should be about. I care about helping beneficiaries, not setting up an âequitable moral landscapeâ among agents, if the latter involves preventing the rich from pursuing easy moral wins because this would be âunfairâ to those who canât afford to donate.)
One more specific point I want to highlight:
...where harm is permissible as long as itâs âoffsetâ by a greater good
fwiw, my argument does not have this feature. I instead argue that:
(1) Purchasing meat isnât justified: the moral interests of farmed animals straightforwardly outweigh our interest in eating them. So buying a cheeseburger constitutes a moral and practical mistake. And yet:
(2) It would be an even greater moral and practical mistake to invest your efforts into correcting this minor mistake if you could instead get far greater moral payoffs by directing your efforts elsewhere (e.g. donations).
Out of interest, what is it you consider so effortful about becoming vegan that it would so substantially reduce the effort you could put towards other causes? Do you think it is knock-on effects of enjoying food less, effort required to learn to change your meals, effects from finding it harder socially, or something else?
The actual effort to change to a vegan diet isnât that high in my view, at least if you have access to a decent supermarket (having done it) - itâs just learning to make some different foods and remembering to buy some multivitamins once in a while (or at least B12). Once youâve done the learning, itâs not really an ongoing extra effort (like thereâs not really an ongoing effort in knowing how to cook omni food), and the benefits accrue over time.
I wonder if people overestimate the effect on enjoyment. First, if you find vegan alternatives that you enjoy, then you donât lose out a lot. Second, I think most EAs are probably familiar with hedonic adaptation, and how your happiness levels seem to be pretty resilient to lifestyle changes in the long-term (hence making donating money seem like less of a big deal) - so switching food also seems unlikely to really make you emotionally worse off. Third, we probably spend less than an hour per day with food in our mouthsâit doesnât seem like it should be that important to overall wellbeingâI recall Daniel Kahnemann making a point that we overestimate the impact of certain things because we imagine the effect when we are doing them but not the lack of effect during all the time we are not doing them.
Social is quite situation-dependent. But if itâs just that you have friends who take you to restaurants with no decent vegan option, it doesnât prevent being vegan in other meals. Shared meals with family who wonât accept vegan food would seem trickier, but again there are surely some meals where a person could normally be independent.
Editâor I guess worries about health could be another reason? Well, I donât know of good evidence that being vegan with a varied, not-heavily-processed diet whilst taking extras of certain vitamins has substantial negative effects (and if anything physical health seems to be better than with typical omni diets).
Mostly just changing old habits, plus some anticipated missing of distinctive desired tastes. Itâs not an unreasonable ask or anything, but Iâd much rather just donate more. (In general, I suspect thereâs insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes, which also shouldnât be âso effortfulâ, and we likely overestimate the personal value we get from marginal spending on ourselves.)
(In general, I suspect thereâs insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes
I think in general if we agree to a ballpark of â10% donations is enough to satisfice some goodness thresholdsâ, and also to âIt would be good for social pressure to exist for everyone to do at least threshold amount of goodâ, I think it raises various considerations.
10% makes sense to me as a schelling point (and I think the tables that scale by income bracket are also sensible).
But if the threshold amount of good would be âDonate 10%, aim for an impactful career, become veganâ (which is what I feel the social pressure inside EA is pointing towards), I think that is already a significant ask for many people.
I think it is also important to note that some people are more motivated by trying to maximize impact and offset harm, and some people more motivated by minimizing harm and satisficing for impact. (Of course a standard total utilitarian model would output that whatever maximizes your net impact is best, but human value systems arenât perfectly utilitarian.)
How do âdonate 10%, become vegan, aim for an impactfulâ, and âdonate 30%â, and âdonate 20%, aim for an impactful careerâ compare in effectiveness as norms? I think this is pretty hard to estimate.
What kind of social pressure are you pointing here? Is it more in the direction of âdonate 30%â or âdonate as much as you can and aim for an impactful career?â Or do you mean social pressure in the wider society, and not within the EA community?
(Fwiw I think people underestimate the value of effective marginal spending on themselves, when considering areas of spending where there is space for significant extra value (Like purchasing more free time.). People plausibly overestimate the value on some other things, especially if one doesnât do spending introspectiont.)
Itâs mostly not anything specific to going vegan. Just the general truism that effort used for one purpose could be used for something else instead. (Plus I sometimes donate extra precisely for the purpose of âoffsettingâ, which I wouldnât otherwise be motivated to do.)
I agree with 1, but I think the framing feels forced for point #2.
I donât think itâs obvious that these actions would be strongly in tension with each other. Donating to effective animal charities would correlate quite strongly with being vegan.
Homo economicus deciding what to eat for dinner or something lol.
I actually totally agree that donations are an important part of personal ethics! Also, I am all aboard for the social ripple effects theory of change for effective donation. Hell yes to both of those points. I might have missed it, but I donât know that OP really argues against those contentions? I guess they donât frame it like that though.
I donât understand the relevance of the correlation claim. People who care nothing for animals wonât do either. But that doesnât show that there arenât tradeoffs in how to use oneâs moral efforts on the margins. (Perhaps youâre thinking of each choice as a binary: âdonate someâ Y/âN + âgo veganâ Y/âN? But donating isnât binary. What matters is how much you donate, and my suggestion is that any significant effort spent towards adopting a vegan diet might be better spent on further increasing oneâs donations. It depends on the details, of course. If you find adopting veganism super easy, like near-zero effort required, then great! Not much opportunity cost, then. But others may find that it requires more effort, which could be better used elsewhere.)
Ya, idk, I am just saying that the tradeoff framing feels unnatural. Or, like, maybe thatâs one lens, but I donât actually generally think in terms of tradeoffs b/âw my moral efforts.
Like, I get tired of various things ofc, but itâs not usually just cleanly fungible b/âw different ethical actions I might plausibly take like that. To the extent it really does work this way for you or people you know on this particular tradeoff, then yep; I would say power to ya for the scope sensitivity.
I agree that the quantitative aspect of donation pushes towards even marginal internal tradeoffs here mattering and I donât think I was really thinking about it as necessarily binary.
My main confusion with your argument is that I donât understand why donations donât also count as âpersonal ethicsâ or as âvisible ethical actionâ that could likewise âripple outwardâ and be replicated by others to good effect. (I also think the section on âequityâ fundamentally confuses what ethics should be about. I care about helping beneficiaries, not setting up an âequitable moral landscapeâ among agents, if the latter involves preventing the rich from pursuing easy moral wins because this would be âunfairâ to those who canât afford to donate.)
One more specific point I want to highlight:
fwiw, my argument does not have this feature. I instead argue that:
Out of interest, what is it you consider so effortful about becoming vegan that it would so substantially reduce the effort you could put towards other causes? Do you think it is knock-on effects of enjoying food less, effort required to learn to change your meals, effects from finding it harder socially, or something else?
The actual effort to change to a vegan diet isnât that high in my view, at least if you have access to a decent supermarket (having done it) - itâs just learning to make some different foods and remembering to buy some multivitamins once in a while (or at least B12). Once youâve done the learning, itâs not really an ongoing extra effort (like thereâs not really an ongoing effort in knowing how to cook omni food), and the benefits accrue over time.
I wonder if people overestimate the effect on enjoyment. First, if you find vegan alternatives that you enjoy, then you donât lose out a lot. Second, I think most EAs are probably familiar with hedonic adaptation, and how your happiness levels seem to be pretty resilient to lifestyle changes in the long-term (hence making donating money seem like less of a big deal) - so switching food also seems unlikely to really make you emotionally worse off. Third, we probably spend less than an hour per day with food in our mouthsâit doesnât seem like it should be that important to overall wellbeingâI recall Daniel Kahnemann making a point that we overestimate the impact of certain things because we imagine the effect when we are doing them but not the lack of effect during all the time we are not doing them.
Social is quite situation-dependent. But if itâs just that you have friends who take you to restaurants with no decent vegan option, it doesnât prevent being vegan in other meals. Shared meals with family who wonât accept vegan food would seem trickier, but again there are surely some meals where a person could normally be independent.
Editâor I guess worries about health could be another reason? Well, I donât know of good evidence that being vegan with a varied, not-heavily-processed diet whilst taking extras of certain vitamins has substantial negative effects (and if anything physical health seems to be better than with typical omni diets).
Mostly just changing old habits, plus some anticipated missing of distinctive desired tastes. Itâs not an unreasonable ask or anything, but Iâd much rather just donate more. (In general, I suspect thereâs insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes, which also shouldnât be âso effortfulâ, and we likely overestimate the personal value we get from marginal spending on ourselves.)
I think in general if we agree to a ballpark of â10% donations is enough to satisfice some goodness thresholdsâ, and also to âIt would be good for social pressure to exist for everyone to do at least threshold amount of goodâ, I think it raises various considerations.
10% makes sense to me as a schelling point (and I think the tables that scale by income bracket are also sensible).
But if the threshold amount of good would be âDonate 10%, aim for an impactful career, become veganâ (which is what I feel the social pressure inside EA is pointing towards), I think that is already a significant ask for many people.
I think it is also important to note that some people are more motivated by trying to maximize impact and offset harm, and some people more motivated by minimizing harm and satisficing for impact. (Of course a standard total utilitarian model would output that whatever maximizes your net impact is best, but human value systems arenât perfectly utilitarian.)
How do âdonate 10%, become vegan, aim for an impactfulâ, and âdonate 30%â, and âdonate 20%, aim for an impactful careerâ compare in effectiveness as norms? I think this is pretty hard to estimate.
What kind of social pressure are you pointing here? Is it more in the direction of âdonate 30%â or âdonate as much as you can and aim for an impactful career?â Or do you mean social pressure in the wider society, and not within the EA community?
(Fwiw I think people underestimate the value of effective marginal spending on themselves, when considering areas of spending where there is space for significant extra value (Like purchasing more free time.). People plausibly overestimate the value on some other things, especially if one doesnât do spending introspectiont.)
What do you think it is about going vegan that would prevent you from donating more? Iâm still not sure of the causal link.
Itâs mostly not anything specific to going vegan. Just the general truism that effort used for one purpose could be used for something else instead. (Plus I sometimes donate extra precisely for the purpose of âoffsettingâ, which I wouldnât otherwise be motivated to do.)
I agree with 1, but I think the framing feels forced for point #2.
I donât think itâs obvious that these actions would be strongly in tension with each other. Donating to effective animal charities would correlate quite strongly with being vegan.
Homo economicus deciding what to eat for dinner or something lol.
I actually totally agree that donations are an important part of personal ethics! Also, I am all aboard for the social ripple effects theory of change for effective donation. Hell yes to both of those points. I might have missed it, but I donât know that OP really argues against those contentions? I guess they donât frame it like that though.
I donât understand the relevance of the correlation claim. People who care nothing for animals wonât do either. But that doesnât show that there arenât tradeoffs in how to use oneâs moral efforts on the margins. (Perhaps youâre thinking of each choice as a binary: âdonate someâ Y/âN + âgo veganâ Y/âN? But donating isnât binary. What matters is how much you donate, and my suggestion is that any significant effort spent towards adopting a vegan diet might be better spent on further increasing oneâs donations. It depends on the details, of course. If you find adopting veganism super easy, like near-zero effort required, then great! Not much opportunity cost, then. But others may find that it requires more effort, which could be better used elsewhere.)
Ya, idk, I am just saying that the tradeoff framing feels unnatural. Or, like, maybe thatâs one lens, but I donât actually generally think in terms of tradeoffs b/âw my moral efforts.
Like, I get tired of various things ofc, but itâs not usually just cleanly fungible b/âw different ethical actions I might plausibly take like that. To the extent it really does work this way for you or people you know on this particular tradeoff, then yep; I would say power to ya for the scope sensitivity.
I agree that the quantitative aspect of donation pushes towards even marginal internal tradeoffs here mattering and I donât think I was really thinking about it as necessarily binary.