If vegetarianism was cheap it wouldn’t be an effective signal. To signal some underlying property, you have to undertake actions which would be very costly if you didn’t have that property.
This seems only true if you expect a decent share of our community members to be dishonest or not disvalue giving dishonest signals? Being vegetarian just to appear to care about animals, and not because you care about them nor because you’re trying to cooperate with those who do, seems like it would be costly to people’s consciences.
There are also indirect expected benefits to vegetarianism for nonhuman animals or other future moral patients with similarly limited agency: increasing the salience of their interests day-to-day and potentially reducing cognitive dissonance. So, it’s not just a signal that someone already cares about animals, it actually also makes them care more.
I’m not sure if I follow. I guess strict veganism would be a more effective signal then, since it would be more costly? But I see even less people in the EA/rationalist circles being vegan rather than vegetarian.
If vegetarianism was cheap it wouldn’t be an effective signal. To signal some underlying property, you have to undertake actions which would be very costly if you didn’t have that property.
This seems only true if you expect a decent share of our community members to be dishonest or not disvalue giving dishonest signals? Being vegetarian just to appear to care about animals, and not because you care about them nor because you’re trying to cooperate with those who do, seems like it would be costly to people’s consciences.
There are also indirect expected benefits to vegetarianism for nonhuman animals or other future moral patients with similarly limited agency: increasing the salience of their interests day-to-day and potentially reducing cognitive dissonance. So, it’s not just a signal that someone already cares about animals, it actually also makes them care more.
I’m not sure if I follow. I guess strict veganism would be a more effective signal then, since it would be more costly? But I see even less people in the EA/rationalist circles being vegan rather than vegetarian.