deliberately choosing to be nasty so as to gain some small amount of fungible resource which can be spent on effective charity
I’m sympathetic to this idea, but I’m not sure when to apply it. For example, if someone comes to my door asking for money for a charity I think is inefficient, am I “deliberately choosing to be nasty” in the way you describe?
The proposed effect is psychological, so presumably the distinction should be psychological—that one shouldn’t do things one feels are nasty?
I don’t think most people really alief that eating meat is nasty; at least, I didn’t until I became vegetarian and internalized those feelings over the course of about a month. Does whether a person aliefs that eating meat is nasty matter to this effect?
Good questions! I guess there are times when our feeling of nastiness can be exploited, and in those cases we have to bypass it. If you always give money to people at the door, they could just turn up the next day asking for more—it may or may not be a “nice feeling” strategy but it wouldn’t be a successful one.
I think that someone’s aliefs about eating meat are relevant to the cognitive dissonance concept. In the case where somebody eats meat and doesn’t alief that eating meat is nasty, I can imagine three subcases:
Person doesn’t care about nonhuman animals or is unaware of cruelty issue
Compartmentalization
Eating meat is actually the EA thing to do, and all the for/against arguments have been internalized
In the case where somebody eats meat and does alief that eating meat is nasty, I can imagine:
I’m sympathetic to this idea, but I’m not sure when to apply it. For example, if someone comes to my door asking for money for a charity I think is inefficient, am I “deliberately choosing to be nasty” in the way you describe?
The proposed effect is psychological, so presumably the distinction should be psychological—that one shouldn’t do things one feels are nasty?
I don’t think most people really alief that eating meat is nasty; at least, I didn’t until I became vegetarian and internalized those feelings over the course of about a month. Does whether a person aliefs that eating meat is nasty matter to this effect?
Good questions! I guess there are times when our feeling of nastiness can be exploited, and in those cases we have to bypass it. If you always give money to people at the door, they could just turn up the next day asking for more—it may or may not be a “nice feeling” strategy but it wouldn’t be a successful one.
I think that someone’s aliefs about eating meat are relevant to the cognitive dissonance concept. In the case where somebody eats meat and doesn’t alief that eating meat is nasty, I can imagine three subcases:
Person doesn’t care about nonhuman animals or is unaware of cruelty issue
Compartmentalization
Eating meat is actually the EA thing to do, and all the for/against arguments have been internalized
In the case where somebody eats meat and does alief that eating meat is nasty, I can imagine:
Cognitive dissonance
Compartmentalization