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 isn’t that high in my view, at least if you have access to a decent supermarket (having done it) - it’s just learning to make some different foods and remembering to buy some multivitamins once in a while (or at least B12). Once you’ve done the learning, it’s not really an ongoing extra effort (like there’s 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 don’t 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 mouths—it doesn’t seem like it should be that important to overall wellbeing—I 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 it’s just that you have friends who take you to restaurants with no decent vegan option, it doesn’t prevent being vegan in other meals. Shared meals with family who won’t accept vegan food would seem trickier, but again there are surely some meals where a person could normally be independent.
Edit—or I guess worries about health could be another reason? Well, I don’t 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. It’s not an unreasonable ask or anything, but I’d much rather just donate more. (In general, I suspect there’s insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes, which also shouldn’t be “so effortful”, and we likely overestimate the personal value we get from marginal spending on ourselves.)
(In general, I suspect there’s insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes
I think in general if we agree to a ballpark of “10% donations is enough to satisfice some goodness thresholds”, and also to “It would be good for social pressure to exist for everyone to do at least threshold amount of good”, 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 “Donate 10%, aim for an impactful career, become vegan” (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 aren’t perfectly utilitarian.)
How do “donate 10%, become vegan, aim for an impactful”, and “donate 30%”, and “donate 20%, aim for an impactful career” 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 “donate 30%” or “donate as much as you can and aim for an impactful career?” 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 doesn’t do spending introspectiont.)
It’s 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 “offsetting”, which I wouldn’t otherwise be motivated to do.)
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 isn’t that high in my view, at least if you have access to a decent supermarket (having done it) - it’s just learning to make some different foods and remembering to buy some multivitamins once in a while (or at least B12). Once you’ve done the learning, it’s not really an ongoing extra effort (like there’s 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 don’t 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 mouths—it doesn’t seem like it should be that important to overall wellbeing—I 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 it’s just that you have friends who take you to restaurants with no decent vegan option, it doesn’t prevent being vegan in other meals. Shared meals with family who won’t accept vegan food would seem trickier, but again there are surely some meals where a person could normally be independent.
Edit—or I guess worries about health could be another reason? Well, I don’t 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. It’s not an unreasonable ask or anything, but I’d much rather just donate more. (In general, I suspect there’s insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes, which also shouldn’t be “so effortful”, 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 “10% donations is enough to satisfice some goodness thresholds”, and also to “It would be good for social pressure to exist for everyone to do at least threshold amount of good”, 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 “Donate 10%, aim for an impactful career, become vegan” (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 aren’t perfectly utilitarian.)
How do “donate 10%, become vegan, aim for an impactful”, and “donate 30%”, and “donate 20%, aim for an impactful career” 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 “donate 30%” or “donate as much as you can and aim for an impactful career?” 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 doesn’t do spending introspectiont.)
What do you think it is about going vegan that would prevent you from donating more? I’m still not sure of the causal link.
It’s 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 “offsetting”, which I wouldn’t otherwise be motivated to do.)