Let’s keep the standards of conversation up, please. It’s straight-up false to say that Katja completely ignored this. She says:
There are many common reasons you might not be willing to eat meat, given these calculations, e.g.:
You think convincing enough others to be vegetarians is the most cost-effective way to make the world better, and being a vegetarian is a great way to have heaps of conversations about vegetarianism, which you believe makes people feel better about vegetarians overall, to the extent that they are frequently compelled to become vegetarians.
‘For signaling’ is another common explanation I have heard, which I think is meant to be similar to the above, though I’m not actually sure of the details.
She is setting the issue largely aside. I agree with your implied point that this means that the conclusion is not quite supported by the argument. The conclusion that is supported is that being vegetarian for the sake of the animal suffering averted from lower meat consumption doesn’t look very effective.
This seems a useful point to understand. If our aim is communication impact, it’s not obvious that simply cutting out meat consumption is the most effective way to do that (I could perhaps be convinced but right now I’d guess not). We might have more effective actions available at the group level and/or the individual consumption level. For instance, perhaps eating meat but only when you are assured that it comes from a high-quality life lets you have more pointed conversations than veg*nism (which people know how to pigeon-hole).
Let’s keep the standards of conversation up, please. It’s straight-up false to say that Katja completely ignored this. She says:
She is setting the issue largely aside. I agree with your implied point that this means that the conclusion is not quite supported by the argument. The conclusion that is supported is that being vegetarian for the sake of the animal suffering averted from lower meat consumption doesn’t look very effective.
This seems a useful point to understand. If our aim is communication impact, it’s not obvious that simply cutting out meat consumption is the most effective way to do that (I could perhaps be convinced but right now I’d guess not). We might have more effective actions available at the group level and/or the individual consumption level. For instance, perhaps eating meat but only when you are assured that it comes from a high-quality life lets you have more pointed conversations than veg*nism (which people know how to pigeon-hole).