I agree with the weakest statement that you make in this article, namely that vegetarianism is not a totally obvious conclusion from EA premises, and non-vegetarian EAs should not be shamed or moralized at.
That said, I think your imaginary vegetarian debate partner is making a pretty bad pro-vegetarian case. For instance:
You managed to list six considerations that weigh against vegetarianism in your sketched-out cost-effectiveness analysis, but none that weigh for it. This is surprising, since there are plenty such considerations! Here are examples of a few:
The cost-effectiveness estimate for The Humane League is likely non-robust and biased upwards (so when this bias is accounted for, it costs more to avert the same amount of harm through donation rather than through personal choices)
Even “cage-free eggs” are very unlikely to be suffering-free, since the farmer is optimizing for “ability to put the label ‘cage-free’ on the eggs” and not actually reducing the suffering of the chickens
Each consumed animal is responsible for some flow-through deaths on expectation, due to e.g. animal deaths while their feed is being harvested, which weighs against the conversion to human QALYs or cage-free egg subsidies
The inconvenience-cost-per-meal of vegetarianism falls dramatically as you get used to being vegetarianism
Even if logically inconvenience-from-donating and inconvenience-from-vegetarianism should be perfectly fungible, this is likely untrue/psychologically impractical in practice
Torture on factory farms may be worse than a painless death, so averting one factory-farmed year might save more than one QALY
“Vegetables harm animals too” is likely not actually a consideration that weighs against, because the farmed animals are fed vegetables as well (see above consideration).
You claim that eating cheaply and eating vegetarianism are in tension. This seems extremely unlikely to be true to me. Meat is expensive.
More broadly, the case that eating fewer animals causes fewer animals to be harmed is very robust and common-sense, whereas the case for instead offsetting the harm with increased donations seems rather fragile and uncertain.
Again, I agree with the suggestion that there are parameters someone could stick into your calculations for their personal estimates of the moral value of small animals, personal ability to funge different types of inconveniences, personal trust in multiplying-lots-of-numbers versus robust common-sense arguments, etc. But I think this parameter space is smaller than you’re giving it credit for.
You claim that eating cheaply and eating vegetarianism are in tension. This seems extremely unlikely to be true to me. Meat is expensive.
On this point, I hypothesize that a lot of people believe vegetarianism is expensive because they attempt to replace meat with faux-meat instead of replacing it with cheaper protein sources like legumes and nuts.
Not really, if you believe so you should cite studies showing that vegetarians are less happy than non-vegetarians on average. Your preferences adapt (hedonic treadmill, etc.). Furthermore, abundant research shows that vegetarians live several years longer than non-vegetarians and are healthier on average.
The broader point is that “not doing something bad” is a very robust way to prevent bad things from happening. So we should expect it to hold up better under further scrutiny. This seems like a good thing to keep in mind in general.
Overall I think we are on broadly the same page, but I think you are being somewhat unfair (roughly as unfair as Katja).
I do agree that Katja’s estimate sans-adjustment is more reasonable than after adding her six adjustments, modulo the omitted conversion factor between “A chicken living a year of life in a farm” ~ “a human being dead for a year.” And there is probably some (modest) adjustment in the other direction because of the high robustness of not doing bad things.
Both eating cheaply and eating vegetarian are in tension with eating pleasantly. It seems quite likely that these funge against each other. I think that was the point of bringing up eating cheaply. (I ate vegetarian for 6 months and it was definitely true for me. It would be true for a random restriction that cut out a significant fraction of possible foods, but I found it much worse than that even after considerable optimization.)
Common-sense arguments still need to take account of the magnitudes of things. We constantly do things with material negative effects, saying that something is bad requires some argument about how bad it is, which you can call “multiplying-lots-of-numbers” if you want. But the actual issue with common-sense vs. speculation isn’t entering at this stage, it’s coming at the stage where you compare to offsetting donations.
I agree that free range eggs are not that great a comparison. Actually comparing to chickens whose lives are worth living is much more complicated because of monitoring difficulties. My family has some involvement with humane farming, and I think I can make reasonable guesses. Assuming that the lives of chickens in nature are worth living, then I think you can probably buy your offset in a direct way (by subsidizing the difference in production prices) for around 1-2x the price of the underlying chicken (which is a few times more pessimistic than Katja’s estimate). For a Chipotle chicken burrito, I think this is something like 15-30% of the price of your meal. For animals other than chicken, this is way cheaper.
I think you are right to complain about many of Katja’s assumptions as too extreme. But the underlying argument is pretty conservative.
1) Eating chickens—especially under the assumption that there is no discount owing to their (quite) tiny brains—is worse than eating larger animals. A lot worse. “Cutting chicken” is much more cost-effective than vegetarianism, but they are being equated here.
2) On a spectrum from “Normal life for a human in developing world, nothing, life for a chicken on a factory farm,” Katja is putting “nothing” at the midpoint. This seems pretty conservative. I understand that living on a factory farm may be twice as bad as dying, and that human experiences may be comparable in importance to chicken experiences. But can we at least grant that this is a relatively extreme perspective? How many people do you think you would have to survey, before you found one who agreed?
3) If you look at the recent anti-meat-eating arguments that have been going around, Katja seems to be representing them reasonably charitably. E.g. see Rob Bensinger’s argument for “the intellectual case against meat is pretty airtight” and comments there, which explicitly make this argument. I agree with you that the weakest claim is the most robust, i.e. “One can defend eating meat” rather than “One should eat meat,” and that Katja’s post seems more reasonable in the context of the recent pro-veganism arguments. A more moderate middle ground would seem more reasonable than either camp.
I agree with the weakest statement that you make in this article, namely that vegetarianism is not a totally obvious conclusion from EA premises, and non-vegetarian EAs should not be shamed or moralized at.
Yes, that’s the most important thing to keep sight of and is true regardless of whether there are problems with the particular cost-effectiveness analysis here. EG I’m not sure that the evidence for vegan outreach leafleting being that cost-effective is that strong.
I agree with the weakest statement that you make in this article, namely that vegetarianism is not a totally obvious conclusion from EA premises, and non-vegetarian EAs should not be shamed or moralized at.
That said, I think your imaginary vegetarian debate partner is making a pretty bad pro-vegetarian case. For instance:
You managed to list six considerations that weigh against vegetarianism in your sketched-out cost-effectiveness analysis, but none that weigh for it. This is surprising, since there are plenty such considerations! Here are examples of a few:
The cost-effectiveness estimate for The Humane League is likely non-robust and biased upwards (so when this bias is accounted for, it costs more to avert the same amount of harm through donation rather than through personal choices)
Even “cage-free eggs” are very unlikely to be suffering-free, since the farmer is optimizing for “ability to put the label ‘cage-free’ on the eggs” and not actually reducing the suffering of the chickens
Each consumed animal is responsible for some flow-through deaths on expectation, due to e.g. animal deaths while their feed is being harvested, which weighs against the conversion to human QALYs or cage-free egg subsidies
The inconvenience-cost-per-meal of vegetarianism falls dramatically as you get used to being vegetarianism
Even if logically inconvenience-from-donating and inconvenience-from-vegetarianism should be perfectly fungible, this is likely untrue/psychologically impractical in practice
Torture on factory farms may be worse than a painless death, so averting one factory-farmed year might save more than one QALY
“Vegetables harm animals too” is likely not actually a consideration that weighs against, because the farmed animals are fed vegetables as well (see above consideration).
You claim that eating cheaply and eating vegetarianism are in tension. This seems extremely unlikely to be true to me. Meat is expensive.
More broadly, the case that eating fewer animals causes fewer animals to be harmed is very robust and common-sense, whereas the case for instead offsetting the harm with increased donations seems rather fragile and uncertain.
Again, I agree with the suggestion that there are parameters someone could stick into your calculations for their personal estimates of the moral value of small animals, personal ability to funge different types of inconveniences, personal trust in multiplying-lots-of-numbers versus robust common-sense arguments, etc. But I think this parameter space is smaller than you’re giving it credit for.
On this point, I hypothesize that a lot of people believe vegetarianism is expensive because they attempt to replace meat with faux-meat instead of replacing it with cheaper protein sources like legumes and nuts.
An excellent post by Jeff on the subject.
Short version: eating cheaply and eating vegetarian are in tension if you try to hold “enjoyment of food” constant.
Not really, if you believe so you should cite studies showing that vegetarians are less happy than non-vegetarians on average. Your preferences adapt (hedonic treadmill, etc.). Furthermore, abundant research shows that vegetarians live several years longer than non-vegetarians and are healthier on average.
The broader point is that “not doing something bad” is a very robust way to prevent bad things from happening. So we should expect it to hold up better under further scrutiny. This seems like a good thing to keep in mind in general.
Overall I think we are on broadly the same page, but I think you are being somewhat unfair (roughly as unfair as Katja).
I do agree that Katja’s estimate sans-adjustment is more reasonable than after adding her six adjustments, modulo the omitted conversion factor between “A chicken living a year of life in a farm” ~ “a human being dead for a year.” And there is probably some (modest) adjustment in the other direction because of the high robustness of not doing bad things.
Both eating cheaply and eating vegetarian are in tension with eating pleasantly. It seems quite likely that these funge against each other. I think that was the point of bringing up eating cheaply. (I ate vegetarian for 6 months and it was definitely true for me. It would be true for a random restriction that cut out a significant fraction of possible foods, but I found it much worse than that even after considerable optimization.)
Common-sense arguments still need to take account of the magnitudes of things. We constantly do things with material negative effects, saying that something is bad requires some argument about how bad it is, which you can call “multiplying-lots-of-numbers” if you want. But the actual issue with common-sense vs. speculation isn’t entering at this stage, it’s coming at the stage where you compare to offsetting donations.
I agree that free range eggs are not that great a comparison. Actually comparing to chickens whose lives are worth living is much more complicated because of monitoring difficulties. My family has some involvement with humane farming, and I think I can make reasonable guesses. Assuming that the lives of chickens in nature are worth living, then I think you can probably buy your offset in a direct way (by subsidizing the difference in production prices) for around 1-2x the price of the underlying chicken (which is a few times more pessimistic than Katja’s estimate). For a Chipotle chicken burrito, I think this is something like 15-30% of the price of your meal. For animals other than chicken, this is way cheaper.
I think you are right to complain about many of Katja’s assumptions as too extreme. But the underlying argument is pretty conservative.
1) Eating chickens—especially under the assumption that there is no discount owing to their (quite) tiny brains—is worse than eating larger animals. A lot worse. “Cutting chicken” is much more cost-effective than vegetarianism, but they are being equated here.
2) On a spectrum from “Normal life for a human in developing world, nothing, life for a chicken on a factory farm,” Katja is putting “nothing” at the midpoint. This seems pretty conservative. I understand that living on a factory farm may be twice as bad as dying, and that human experiences may be comparable in importance to chicken experiences. But can we at least grant that this is a relatively extreme perspective? How many people do you think you would have to survey, before you found one who agreed?
3) If you look at the recent anti-meat-eating arguments that have been going around, Katja seems to be representing them reasonably charitably. E.g. see Rob Bensinger’s argument for “the intellectual case against meat is pretty airtight” and comments there, which explicitly make this argument. I agree with you that the weakest claim is the most robust, i.e. “One can defend eating meat” rather than “One should eat meat,” and that Katja’s post seems more reasonable in the context of the recent pro-veganism arguments. A more moderate middle ground would seem more reasonable than either camp.
Yes, that’s the most important thing to keep sight of and is true regardless of whether there are problems with the particular cost-effectiveness analysis here. EG I’m not sure that the evidence for vegan outreach leafleting being that cost-effective is that strong.