When AI Safety people are also vegetarians, vegans or reducetarian, I am pleasantly surprised, as this is one (of many possible) signals to me they’re “in it” to prevent harm, rather than because it is interesting.
I am skeptical that exhibiting one of the least cost-effective behaviors for the purpose of reducing suffering would be correlated much with being “in it to prevent harm”. Donating to animal charities, or being open to trade with other people about reducing animal suffering, or other things that are actually effective seem like much better indicator that people are actually in it to prevent harm.
My best guess is that most people who are vegetarians, vegans or reducetarians, and are actually interested in scope-sensitivity, are explicitly doing so for signaling and social coordination reasons (which to be clear, I think has a bunch going for it, but seems like the kind of contingent fact that makes it not that useful as a signal of “being in it to prevent harm”).
Have you actually just talked to people about their motives for reducing their animal product consumption, or read about them? Do you expect them to tell you it’s mostly for signaling or social coordination, or (knowingly or unknowingly) lie that it isn’t?
I’d guess only a minority of EAs go veg mostly for signaling or social coordinaton.
Other reasons I find more plausibly common, even among those who make bigger decisons in scope-sensitive ways:
Finding it cost-effective in an absolute sense, e.g. >20 chickens spared per year, at small personal cost (usually ignoring opportunity costs to help others more). (And then maybe falsely thinking you should go veg to do this, rather than just cut out certain animal products, or finding it easier to just go veg than navigate exceptions.)
Wanting to minimize the harm they personally cause to others, or to avoid participating in overall harmful practices, or deontological or virtue ethics reasons, separately from actively helping others or utilitarian-ish reasons.
Not finding not eating animal products very costly, or not being very sensitive to the costs. It may be easy or take from motivational “budgets” psychologically separate from work or donations.
Finding eating animal products psychologically or time costly, e.g. just feeling guilty and worrying about it, cognitive dissonance.
Seeing so many other EAs veg, and this making it seem very impactful to be veg for animals (whether or not it actually is).
As a way to live out their commitment daily that other animals matter and increase/maintain their concern for them (and/or other vulnerable moral patients easy to ignore).
To get other people around them interested in helping animals.
I’d guess most EAs who go veg or reducetarian do so for reasons like 1, 2, 3, 4 and/or 5. 1, 2, 3 and 4 are why I went vegan, around when I first got into EA. I also used to make arguments like 1, just comparing the harms to animals and your personal costs (after the drowning child thought experiment) when I was an EA organizer a few years ago.
I don’t think the opportunity costs of veg diets are on people’s minds much, so it seems likely that people are ignoring them, either for bad reasons or because they don’t seem important enough to them.
I’m still (bival)vegan, but mostly for reasons like 3, 6, just preferring not to eat animal products anymore, and maybe to meet (my perception of) others’ expectations of me.
I’m not even convinced veganism is better for animals anymore through its supply and demand effects, when you include the effects on wild animals (mostly wild arthropods and fish).
I have had >30 conversations with EA vegetarians and vegans about their reasoning here. The people who thought about it the most seem to usually settle on it for signaling reasons. Maybe this changed over the last few years in EA, but it seemed to be where most people I talked to where at when I had lots of conversations with them in 2018.
I agree that many people say (1), but when you dig into it it seems clear that people incur costs that would be better spent on donations, and so I don’t think it’s good reasoning. As far as I can tell most people who think about it carefully seem to stop thinking its a good reason to be vegan/vegetarian.
I do think the self-signaling and signaling effects are potentially substantial.
I also think (4) is probably the most common reason, and I do think probably captures something important, but it seems like a bad inference that “someone is in it to prevent harm” if (4) is their reason for being vegetarian or vegan.
when you dig into it it seems clear that people incur costs that would be better spent on donations, and so I don’t think it’s good reasoning.
I’ve thought a lot about this, because I’m serious about budgeting and try to spend as little money as possible to make more room for investments and donations. I also have a stressful job and don’t like to spend time cooking. I did not find it hard to switch to being vegan while keeping my food budget the same and maintaining a high-protein diet.
Pea protein is comparable in cost per gram protein to the cheapest animal products where I live, and it requires no cooking. Canned beans are a bit more expensive but still very cheap and also require no cooking. Grains, ramen and cereal are very cheap sources of calories. Plant milks are more expensive than cow’s milk, but still fit in my very low food budget. Necessary supplements like B12 are very cheap.
On a day-to-day basis, the only real cooking I do is things like pasta, which don’t take much time at all. I often go several weeks without doing any real cooking. I’d bet that I both spend substantially less money on food and substantially less time cooking than the vast majority of omnivores, while eating more protein.
As a vegan it’s also easy to avoid spending money in frivolous ways, like on expensive ready-to-eat snacks and e.g. DoorDash orders.
I haven’t had any health effects either, or any differences in how I feel day-to-day, after more than 1 year. Being vegan may have helped me maintain a lower weight after I dropped several pounds last year, but it’s hard to know the counterfactual.
I didn’t know coming in that being vegan would be easy; I decided to try it out for 1 month and then stuck with it when I “learned” how to do it. There’s definitely a learning curve, but I’d say that for some people who get the hang of it, reason (1) in Michael’s comment genuinely applies.
I don’t think one year is enough time to observe effects. Anecdotically, I think (but am not sure) that I started to have problems after three years of being a vegetarian.
I agree that many people say (1), but when you dig into it it seems clear that people incur costs that would be better spent on donations, and so I don’t think it’s good reasoning.
Do you mean financial costs, or all net costs together, including potentially through time, motivation, energy, cognition? I think it’s reasonably likely that for many people, there are ~no real net (opportunity) costs, or that it’s actually net good (but if net good in those ways, then that would probably be a better reason than 1). Putting my thoughts in a footnote, because they’re long and might miss what you have in mind.[1]
I also think (4) is probably the most common reason, and I do think probably captures something important, but it seems like a bad inference that “someone is in it to prevent harm” if (4) is their reason for being vegetarian or vegan.
Ya, that seems fair. If they had the option to just stop thinking and feeling bad about it and chose that over going veg, which is what my framing suggests they would do, then it seems the motivation is to feel better and get more time, not avoid harming animals through their diets. This would be like seeing someone in trouble, like a homeless person, and avoiding them to avoid thinking and feeling bad about them. This can be either selfish or instrumentally other-regarding, given opportunity costs.
If they thought (or felt!) the right response to the feelings is to just go veg and not to just stop thinking and feeling bad about it, then I would say they are in it to prevent harm, just guided by their feelings. And their feelings might not be very scope-sensitive, even if they make donation and career decisions in scope-sensitive ways. I think this is kind of what virtue ethics is about. Also potentially related: “Do the math, then burn the math and go with your gut”.
Financial/donations: It’s not clear to me that my diet is more expensive than if I were omnivorous. Some things I’ve substituted for animal products are cheaper and others are more expensive. I haven’t carefully worked through this, though. It’s also not clear that if it were more expensive, that I would donate more, because of how I decide how much to donate, which is based on my income and a vague sense of my costs of living, which probably won’t pick up differences due to diet (but maybe it does in expectation, and maybe it means donating less later, because I’ll have less money to donate later). If I budgeted more precisely, that would have time costs (which might not come out of work, anyway, though). And if I weren’t vegan, maybe I’d be less motivated to donate as much (although this is more like “self-signaling”, or altruism sharpens altruism).
Time: I doubt most veg*ns would work more hours (allowing more impactful work or more donations) if they weren’t managing or accommodating their veg*n diet. Time spent on the diet is small and probably doesn’t really come out of work hours. But this can depend on their particular circumstances. Maybe someone gets their blood tested more frequently because of their diet, and this specifically comes out of their work hours.
Time costs might also be incurred by others, like event or working space organizers (like you, as I think you’ve brought up before), and veg*ns may not appreciate this, or might (I’d guess correctly) think one more vegan makes ~no difference. Maybe it would be better if everyone agreed to eat whatever at events, and the animal products were offset by animal charity donations, or that time was just given back to organizers to work on other important things without any specific donation offset.
Effects on energy and cognition will vary by person. I think there are risks here people should make some effort to minimize (e.g. blood testing, supplements). That effort can come out of their time and donations, but that’s already accounted for above. There might be some remaining (expected) costs even after this. Or there could be net benefits, in case they end up with an overall healthier diet this way (and might not be motivated to do so except to go veg; it’s easier to avoid unhealthy foods you also object to morally).
Do you mean financial costs, or all net costs together, including potentially through time, motivation, energy, cognition?
I meant net costs all together, tough I agree that if you take into account motivation “net costs” becomes a kind of tricky concept, and many people can find it motivating, and that is important to think about, but also really doesn’t fit nicely into a harm-reducing framework.
Financial/donations: It’s not clear to me that my diet is more expensive than if I were omnivorous. Some things I’ve substituted for animal products are cheaper and others are more expensive.
I mean, being an onmivore would allow you to choose between more options. Generally having more options very rarely hurts you.
many people can find it motivating, and that is important to think about, but also really doesn’t fit nicely into a harm-reducing framework.
Ya, I guess the value towards harm reduction would be more indirect/instrumental in this case.
I mean, being an onmivore would allow you to choose between more options. Generally having more options very rarely hurts you.
I think this is true of idealized rational agents with fixed preferences, but I’m much less sure about actual people, who are motivated in ways they wouldn’t endorse upon reflection and who aren’t acting optimally impartially even if they think it would be better on reflection if they did.
By going veg, you eliminate or more easily resist the motivation to eat more expensive animal products that could have net impartial opportunity costs. Maybe skipping (expensive) meats hurts you in the moment (because you want meat), but it saves you money to donate to things you think matter more. You’d be less likely to correctly — by reflection on your impartial preferences — skip the meat and save the money if you weren’t veg.
And some people are not even really open to (cheaper) plant-based options like beans and tofu, and that goes away going veg. That was the case for me. My attitude before going veg would have been irrational from an impartial perspective, just considering the $ costs that could be donated instead.
Of course, some people will endorse being inherently partial to themselves upon reflection, so eating animal products might seem fine to them even at greater cost. But the people inclined to cut out animal products by comparing their personal costs to the harms to animals probably wouldn’t end up endorsing their selfish motivation to eat animal products over the harms to animals.
The other side is that a veg*n is more motivated to eat the more expensive plant-based substitutes and go to vegan restaurants, which (in my experience) tend to be more expensive.
I’m not inclined to judge how things will shake out based on idealized models of agents. I really don’t know either way, and it will depend on the person. Cheap veg diets seem cheaper than cheap omni diets, but if people are eating enough plant-based meats, their food costs would probably increase.
Here are prices in Canadian $/kg of protein, for the versions of foods that seemed cheapest per kg of protein from Walmart Canada and Amazon Canada.
And then extra supplements for veg EAs.
For restaurants, as long as you avoid expensive plant-based substitutes and vegan-specific restaurants, I think veg options are usually cheaper. Of course, a veg EA will be tempted by these sometimes, too!
To be clear, I don’t think it’s that important to minimize the cost of your diet. Things like rent, vehicle, travel, and how often you eat out (when it doesn’t help you do more work) are probably more important if you want to save money.
I have had >30 conversations with EA vegetarians and vegans about their reasoning here. The people who thought about it the most seem to usually settle on it for signaling reasons. Maybe this changed over the last few years in EA, but it seemed to be where most people I talked to where at when I had lots of conversations with them in 2018.
I guess this is a bit pedantic, but you originally wrote “My best guess is that most people who are vegetarians, vegans or reducetarians, and are actually interested in scope-sensitivity, are explicitly doing so for signaling and social coordination reasons”. I think veg EAs are generally “actually interested in scope-sensitivity”, whether or not they’re thinking about their diets correctly and in scope-sensitive ~utilitarian terms. “The people who thought about it the most” might not be representative, and more representative motivations might be better described as “in it to prevent harm”, even if the motivations turn out to be not utilitarian, not appropriately scope-sensitive or misguided.
I actually think it is a huge risk because when the shit hits the fan I want to know people are optimising for the right thing. It is like the old saying; “it is only a value if it costs you something”
Anyway, I’d like to think that orgs suss this out in the interview stage.
When AI Safety people are also vegetarians, vegans or reducetarian, I am pleasantly surprised, as this is one (of many possible) signals to me they’re “in it” to prevent harm, rather than because it is interesting.
I am skeptical that exhibiting one of the least cost-effective behaviors for the purpose of reducing suffering would be correlated much with being “in it to prevent harm”. Donating to animal charities, or being open to trade with other people about reducing animal suffering, or other things that are actually effective seem like much better indicator that people are actually in it to prevent harm.
My best guess is that most people who are vegetarians, vegans or reducetarians, and are actually interested in scope-sensitivity, are explicitly doing so for signaling and social coordination reasons (which to be clear, I think has a bunch going for it, but seems like the kind of contingent fact that makes it not that useful as a signal of “being in it to prevent harm”).
Have you actually just talked to people about their motives for reducing their animal product consumption, or read about them? Do you expect them to tell you it’s mostly for signaling or social coordination, or (knowingly or unknowingly) lie that it isn’t?
I’d guess only a minority of EAs go veg mostly for signaling or social coordinaton.
Other reasons I find more plausibly common, even among those who make bigger decisons in scope-sensitive ways:
Finding it cost-effective in an absolute sense, e.g. >20 chickens spared per year, at small personal cost (usually ignoring opportunity costs to help others more). (And then maybe falsely thinking you should go veg to do this, rather than just cut out certain animal products, or finding it easier to just go veg than navigate exceptions.)
Wanting to minimize the harm they personally cause to others, or to avoid participating in overall harmful practices, or deontological or virtue ethics reasons, separately from actively helping others or utilitarian-ish reasons.
Not finding not eating animal products very costly, or not being very sensitive to the costs. It may be easy or take from motivational “budgets” psychologically separate from work or donations.
Finding eating animal products psychologically or time costly, e.g. just feeling guilty and worrying about it, cognitive dissonance.
Seeing so many other EAs veg, and this making it seem very impactful to be veg for animals (whether or not it actually is).
As a way to live out their commitment daily that other animals matter and increase/maintain their concern for them (and/or other vulnerable moral patients easy to ignore).
To get other people around them interested in helping animals.
I’d guess most EAs who go veg or reducetarian do so for reasons like 1, 2, 3, 4 and/or 5. 1, 2, 3 and 4 are why I went vegan, around when I first got into EA. I also used to make arguments like 1, just comparing the harms to animals and your personal costs (after the drowning child thought experiment) when I was an EA organizer a few years ago.
I don’t think the opportunity costs of veg diets are on people’s minds much, so it seems likely that people are ignoring them, either for bad reasons or because they don’t seem important enough to them.
I’m still (bival)vegan, but mostly for reasons like 3, 6, just preferring not to eat animal products anymore, and maybe to meet (my perception of) others’ expectations of me.
I’m not even convinced veganism is better for animals anymore through its supply and demand effects, when you include the effects on wild animals (mostly wild arthropods and fish).
I have had >30 conversations with EA vegetarians and vegans about their reasoning here. The people who thought about it the most seem to usually settle on it for signaling reasons. Maybe this changed over the last few years in EA, but it seemed to be where most people I talked to where at when I had lots of conversations with them in 2018.
I agree that many people say (1), but when you dig into it it seems clear that people incur costs that would be better spent on donations, and so I don’t think it’s good reasoning. As far as I can tell most people who think about it carefully seem to stop thinking its a good reason to be vegan/vegetarian.
I do think the self-signaling and signaling effects are potentially substantial.
I also think (4) is probably the most common reason, and I do think probably captures something important, but it seems like a bad inference that “someone is in it to prevent harm” if (4) is their reason for being vegetarian or vegan.
I’ve thought a lot about this, because I’m serious about budgeting and try to spend as little money as possible to make more room for investments and donations. I also have a stressful job and don’t like to spend time cooking. I did not find it hard to switch to being vegan while keeping my food budget the same and maintaining a high-protein diet.
Pea protein is comparable in cost per gram protein to the cheapest animal products where I live, and it requires no cooking. Canned beans are a bit more expensive but still very cheap and also require no cooking. Grains, ramen and cereal are very cheap sources of calories. Plant milks are more expensive than cow’s milk, but still fit in my very low food budget. Necessary supplements like B12 are very cheap.
On a day-to-day basis, the only real cooking I do is things like pasta, which don’t take much time at all. I often go several weeks without doing any real cooking. I’d bet that I both spend substantially less money on food and substantially less time cooking than the vast majority of omnivores, while eating more protein.
As a vegan it’s also easy to avoid spending money in frivolous ways, like on expensive ready-to-eat snacks and e.g. DoorDash orders.
I haven’t had any health effects either, or any differences in how I feel day-to-day, after more than 1 year. Being vegan may have helped me maintain a lower weight after I dropped several pounds last year, but it’s hard to know the counterfactual.
I didn’t know coming in that being vegan would be easy; I decided to try it out for 1 month and then stuck with it when I “learned” how to do it. There’s definitely a learning curve, but I’d say that for some people who get the hang of it, reason (1) in Michael’s comment genuinely applies.
I don’t think one year is enough time to observe effects. Anecdotically, I think (but am not sure) that I started to have problems after three years of being a vegetarian.
What were your problems?
Do you mean financial costs, or all net costs together, including potentially through time, motivation, energy, cognition? I think it’s reasonably likely that for many people, there are ~no real net (opportunity) costs, or that it’s actually net good (but if net good in those ways, then that would probably be a better reason than 1). Putting my thoughts in a footnote, because they’re long and might miss what you have in mind.[1]
Ya, that seems fair. If they had the option to just stop thinking and feeling bad about it and chose that over going veg, which is what my framing suggests they would do, then it seems the motivation is to feel better and get more time, not avoid harming animals through their diets. This would be like seeing someone in trouble, like a homeless person, and avoiding them to avoid thinking and feeling bad about them. This can be either selfish or instrumentally other-regarding, given opportunity costs.
If they thought (or felt!) the right response to the feelings is to just go veg and not to just stop thinking and feeling bad about it, then I would say they are in it to prevent harm, just guided by their feelings. And their feelings might not be very scope-sensitive, even if they make donation and career decisions in scope-sensitive ways. I think this is kind of what virtue ethics is about. Also potentially related: “Do the math, then burn the math and go with your gut”.
Financial/donations: It’s not clear to me that my diet is more expensive than if I were omnivorous. Some things I’ve substituted for animal products are cheaper and others are more expensive. I haven’t carefully worked through this, though. It’s also not clear that if it were more expensive, that I would donate more, because of how I decide how much to donate, which is based on my income and a vague sense of my costs of living, which probably won’t pick up differences due to diet (but maybe it does in expectation, and maybe it means donating less later, because I’ll have less money to donate later). If I budgeted more precisely, that would have time costs (which might not come out of work, anyway, though). And if I weren’t vegan, maybe I’d be less motivated to donate as much (although this is more like “self-signaling”, or altruism sharpens altruism).
Time: I doubt most veg*ns would work more hours (allowing more impactful work or more donations) if they weren’t managing or accommodating their veg*n diet. Time spent on the diet is small and probably doesn’t really come out of work hours. But this can depend on their particular circumstances. Maybe someone gets their blood tested more frequently because of their diet, and this specifically comes out of their work hours.
Time costs might also be incurred by others, like event or working space organizers (like you, as I think you’ve brought up before), and veg*ns may not appreciate this, or might (I’d guess correctly) think one more vegan makes ~no difference. Maybe it would be better if everyone agreed to eat whatever at events, and the animal products were offset by animal charity donations, or that time was just given back to organizers to work on other important things without any specific donation offset.
Effects on energy and cognition will vary by person. I think there are risks here people should make some effort to minimize (e.g. blood testing, supplements). That effort can come out of their time and donations, but that’s already accounted for above. There might be some remaining (expected) costs even after this. Or there could be net benefits, in case they end up with an overall healthier diet this way (and might not be motivated to do so except to go veg; it’s easier to avoid unhealthy foods you also object to morally).
I meant net costs all together, tough I agree that if you take into account motivation “net costs” becomes a kind of tricky concept, and many people can find it motivating, and that is important to think about, but also really doesn’t fit nicely into a harm-reducing framework.
I mean, being an onmivore would allow you to choose between more options. Generally having more options very rarely hurts you.
Overall I like your comment.
Ya, I guess the value towards harm reduction would be more indirect/instrumental in this case.
I think this is true of idealized rational agents with fixed preferences, but I’m much less sure about actual people, who are motivated in ways they wouldn’t endorse upon reflection and who aren’t acting optimally impartially even if they think it would be better on reflection if they did.
By going veg, you eliminate or more easily resist the motivation to eat more expensive animal products that could have net impartial opportunity costs. Maybe skipping (expensive) meats hurts you in the moment (because you want meat), but it saves you money to donate to things you think matter more. You’d be less likely to correctly — by reflection on your impartial preferences — skip the meat and save the money if you weren’t veg.
And some people are not even really open to (cheaper) plant-based options like beans and tofu, and that goes away going veg. That was the case for me. My attitude before going veg would have been irrational from an impartial perspective, just considering the $ costs that could be donated instead.
Of course, some people will endorse being inherently partial to themselves upon reflection, so eating animal products might seem fine to them even at greater cost. But the people inclined to cut out animal products by comparing their personal costs to the harms to animals probably wouldn’t end up endorsing their selfish motivation to eat animal products over the harms to animals.
The other side is that a veg*n is more motivated to eat the more expensive plant-based substitutes and go to vegan restaurants, which (in my experience) tend to be more expensive.
I’m not inclined to judge how things will shake out based on idealized models of agents. I really don’t know either way, and it will depend on the person. Cheap veg diets seem cheaper than cheap omni diets, but if people are eating enough plant-based meats, their food costs would probably increase.
Here are prices in Canadian $/kg of protein, for the versions of foods that seemed cheapest per kg of protein from Walmart Canada and Amazon Canada.
And then extra supplements for veg EAs.
For restaurants, as long as you avoid expensive plant-based substitutes and vegan-specific restaurants, I think veg options are usually cheaper. Of course, a veg EA will be tempted by these sometimes, too!
To be clear, I don’t think it’s that important to minimize the cost of your diet. Things like rent, vehicle, travel, and how often you eat out (when it doesn’t help you do more work) are probably more important if you want to save money.
I guess this is a bit pedantic, but you originally wrote “My best guess is that most people who are vegetarians, vegans or reducetarians, and are actually interested in scope-sensitivity, are explicitly doing so for signaling and social coordination reasons”. I think veg EAs are generally “actually interested in scope-sensitivity”, whether or not they’re thinking about their diets correctly and in scope-sensitive ~utilitarian terms. “The people who thought about it the most” might not be representative, and more representative motivations might be better described as “in it to prevent harm”, even if the motivations turn out to be not utilitarian, not appropriately scope-sensitive or misguided.
Happy to hear this from someone working on AI Safety.
Do you think EA/EA orgs should do something about it?
(Crypto has a similar problem. There are people genuinely interested in it but many people (most?) are just into it for the money)
I actually think it is a huge risk because when the shit hits the fan I want to know people are optimising for the right thing. It is like the old saying; “it is only a value if it costs you something”
Anyway, I’d like to think that orgs suss this out in the interview stage.