I think it should be the new standard text in effective altruism fellowships and discussion groups to introduce issues surrounding eating meat.
I want to flag that I don’t think that a text on issues surround eating meat belongs in an introductory EA fellowship curriculum. While I liked Huemer’s Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism and am an ethical vegan myself, I don’t think going vegan is actually very relevant to the project of doing the most good possible.
I agree Huemer’s book is tangentially relevant to EA in the sense that if a person doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with how typical animal agriculture is conducted then I think they’re likely going to have a big blind spot preventing them from properly comprehending the scale of animal suffering that exists in the world, which could potentially prevent them from doing the most good if it turns out their comparative advantage is doing something to help animals.
But I know plenty of EAs who are aware factory farming is awful, yet find going vegetarian or vegan personally difficult and instead opt to be reducetarian or in some cases not change their diet at all. While I agree with Huemer that this is morally problematic, from an EA perspective I think it’s more or less fine in the sense that I think personal dietary change represents a very small impact compared to other things that EAs often do, meaning such people can still do a very large amount of good despite not changing their diet. So I fear that bludgeoning them over the head with a text arguing that they’re acting immorally would not be appropriate in the context of an EA curriculum meant to educate them on concepts related to doing the most good possible. Inclusion of the text would seem to suggest to newcomers that EAs believe that a person changing their diet is big part of doing as much good as they can, which I don’t think is true, and I don’t think most EAs think is true.
A more relevant text to include in an Intro to EA curriculum in my view would be one that focuses on describing the animal suffering that exists in the world or effective efforts to reduce the suffering, rather than one that focuses on how dietary change is morally necessary. Some suggestions in this vein:
I agree that not eating meat is a small part of one’s potential impact. However, we had fellows in our fellowship who thought eating meat was ok. It seems quite important to argue against this to improve their moral reasoning and get them to take arguments seriously.
I am not sure which curricula include Animal Liberation, but I would think any context in which that is appropriate, this is also.
I absolutely LOVE these dialogues; they’re my go-to introduction to why I think that animal welfare and veganism are so important. I especially like to have people read them one day at a time, discussing each day with them after they’ve read it. The dialogues are engaging and far more comprehensive for the size than anything else I know.
One criticism I have is that the dialogues don’t mention much the conditions in which animals on factory farms live. I find that one bottleneck is that people don’t always believe that factory farming is a big deal until they learn about the severity of suffering within the farms. I therefore plan to supplement reading the Dialogues with some other sources.
By the way, if you want a legal free copy of the book, a previous draft was published in Between the Species. You can find it here.
Huemer’s book is what convinced me to go vegan after being a vegetarian for a number of years. I like his approach of putting general normative frameworks to the side. My only complaint is that, by downplaying the probability of invertebrate sentience and the ability to help wild animals, he has made the ethical landscape appear less complex than it really is. I also appreciate his (largely unsuccessful) attempts to engage libertarians on this issue, who often focus arbitrarily on state coercion rather than all coercion.
I want to flag that I don’t think that a text on issues surround eating meat belongs in an introductory EA fellowship curriculum. While I liked Huemer’s Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism and am an ethical vegan myself, I don’t think going vegan is actually very relevant to the project of doing the most good possible.
I agree Huemer’s book is tangentially relevant to EA in the sense that if a person doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with how typical animal agriculture is conducted then I think they’re likely going to have a big blind spot preventing them from properly comprehending the scale of animal suffering that exists in the world, which could potentially prevent them from doing the most good if it turns out their comparative advantage is doing something to help animals.
But I know plenty of EAs who are aware factory farming is awful, yet find going vegetarian or vegan personally difficult and instead opt to be reducetarian or in some cases not change their diet at all. While I agree with Huemer that this is morally problematic, from an EA perspective I think it’s more or less fine in the sense that I think personal dietary change represents a very small impact compared to other things that EAs often do, meaning such people can still do a very large amount of good despite not changing their diet. So I fear that bludgeoning them over the head with a text arguing that they’re acting immorally would not be appropriate in the context of an EA curriculum meant to educate them on concepts related to doing the most good possible. Inclusion of the text would seem to suggest to newcomers that EAs believe that a person changing their diet is big part of doing as much good as they can, which I don’t think is true, and I don’t think most EAs think is true.
A more relevant text to include in an Intro to EA curriculum in my view would be one that focuses on describing the animal suffering that exists in the world or effective efforts to reduce the suffering, rather than one that focuses on how dietary change is morally necessary. Some suggestions in this vein:
The Importance of Wild-Animal Suffering by Brian Tomasik
Lewis Bollard’s two interviews on the 80,000 Hours podcast: Ending factory farming as soon as possible (2017) and Lewis Bollard on big wins against factory farming and how they happened (2021)
Thanks for the comment.
I agree that not eating meat is a small part of one’s potential impact. However, we had fellows in our fellowship who thought eating meat was ok. It seems quite important to argue against this to improve their moral reasoning and get them to take arguments seriously.
I am not sure which curricula include Animal Liberation, but I would think any context in which that is appropriate, this is also.
I absolutely LOVE these dialogues; they’re my go-to introduction to why I think that animal welfare and veganism are so important. I especially like to have people read them one day at a time, discussing each day with them after they’ve read it. The dialogues are engaging and far more comprehensive for the size than anything else I know.
One criticism I have is that the dialogues don’t mention much the conditions in which animals on factory farms live. I find that one bottleneck is that people don’t always believe that factory farming is a big deal until they learn about the severity of suffering within the farms. I therefore plan to supplement reading the Dialogues with some other sources.
By the way, if you want a legal free copy of the book, a previous draft was published in Between the Species. You can find it here.
Perhaps this should be added to the main post.
funny that you say this, given that his latest blog post was a fairly positive take on rule utilitarianism!
anyway, i haven’t read this book yet (would like to, though), but i second your recommendation of huemer’s blog, which is admirably straightforward.
Huemer’s book is what convinced me to go vegan after being a vegetarian for a number of years. I like his approach of putting general normative frameworks to the side. My only complaint is that, by downplaying the probability of invertebrate sentience and the ability to help wild animals, he has made the ethical landscape appear less complex than it really is. I also appreciate his (largely unsuccessful) attempts to engage libertarians on this issue, who often focus arbitrarily on state coercion rather than all coercion.