I think that the point about veganism doesn’t follow from the rest of your piece, and could well be true depending on the object-level details. In the case of weak convergence, no point will maximise both X and Y, but a set of points may well contain the maxima of both X and Y—in fact, if the set of points consists of the upper-right end of the ‘ellipse’, it could be that no other point does much better than anything in the set on X or Y. Therefore, even if the best intervention for X isn’t the best intervention for Y, it will be the case that the set of great interventions for X is almost the same as the set of great interventions for Y if X and Y are weakly correlated. Tying this back to veganism, it could well be that the set of vegan diets contain the best diet for animal suffering, the best diet for environmental impact, the best diet for tastiness, etc, and that vegan diets are better than all other diets on these metrics. Although on the object-level it seems unlikely that minimising animal suffering is correlated with tastiness in diets, it seems plausible enough that it is correlated with environmental impact.
Thanks for this. I agree it doesn’t neatly follow from the principles earlier in the piece: if you measure diets monolithically, there are only a few, then it is not that surprising to have one keep coming top. Conversely, if measured as classes, as you say it becomes less surprising to find a particular (large) set of diets keep coming top.
However, I still think it is a bit surprising. I think on most reasonable measures vegan diets are a minority of the space of diets available—both in practice and in theory there are a lot more ways of having animal products and non-animal products than just the latter. So if this minority set keeps coming up top when looking at many disparate considerations, we should ask why. If it were just two, maybe that isn’t so bad, but X, Y, Z, W etc. becomes more and more surprising.
(I agree with your determinations on the object level issues. There’s a clear case for veganism being best for animal welfare, and that expectedly correlates with environmental impact, but less so health and taste. I wouldn’t be altogether surprised to find that a diet optimized purely for low environmental impact might include some animal products, much less surprised if one for optimized for health did, and pretty confident one for taste would.)
I think that the point about veganism doesn’t follow from the rest of your piece, and could well be true depending on the object-level details. In the case of weak convergence, no point will maximise both X and Y, but a set of points may well contain the maxima of both X and Y—in fact, if the set of points consists of the upper-right end of the ‘ellipse’, it could be that no other point does much better than anything in the set on X or Y. Therefore, even if the best intervention for X isn’t the best intervention for Y, it will be the case that the set of great interventions for X is almost the same as the set of great interventions for Y if X and Y are weakly correlated. Tying this back to veganism, it could well be that the set of vegan diets contain the best diet for animal suffering, the best diet for environmental impact, the best diet for tastiness, etc, and that vegan diets are better than all other diets on these metrics. Although on the object-level it seems unlikely that minimising animal suffering is correlated with tastiness in diets, it seems plausible enough that it is correlated with environmental impact.
Thanks for this. I agree it doesn’t neatly follow from the principles earlier in the piece: if you measure diets monolithically, there are only a few, then it is not that surprising to have one keep coming top. Conversely, if measured as classes, as you say it becomes less surprising to find a particular (large) set of diets keep coming top.
However, I still think it is a bit surprising. I think on most reasonable measures vegan diets are a minority of the space of diets available—both in practice and in theory there are a lot more ways of having animal products and non-animal products than just the latter. So if this minority set keeps coming up top when looking at many disparate considerations, we should ask why. If it were just two, maybe that isn’t so bad, but X, Y, Z, W etc. becomes more and more surprising.
(I agree with your determinations on the object level issues. There’s a clear case for veganism being best for animal welfare, and that expectedly correlates with environmental impact, but less so health and taste. I wouldn’t be altogether surprised to find that a diet optimized purely for low environmental impact might include some animal products, much less surprised if one for optimized for health did, and pretty confident one for taste would.)