I find my instincts on this slide back and forth quite readily depending on what the context is, and in particular on how intrusive enforcing vegetarian options would need to be. Some example contexts:
I’m hosting an EA event where I live and providing food.
Here I’m reasonably inclined to only serve vegetarian options unless and until someone indicates that it’s a problem.
I’m organising a local EA event at a third-party location where both vegetarian and non-vegetarian options are available.
Now I’m more inclined to let people order what they want. It’s not going to possible to enforce otherwise without speaking to more-or-less every attendee individually, which is quite a high cost and sets off defensive reactions that we were trying to avoid in the first place.
A reasonable middle-ground is to go to vegetarian-only restaurants or pubs, but this cuts down the choice of location significantly and it can be hard to both do this and enforce this point from the OP:
“It’s also worth mentioning that some people have allergies or other medical conditions that could make certain dietary restrictions more difficult...So, as would still be the case with a non-vegetarian event, event organizers should take care to customize their fare so that all serious medical needs can be accommodated.”
(EA Global SF). An EA conference which is providing meals onsite, with other options in walking distance.
Now that we’re back to being able to ‘quietly’ enforce vegetarianism, I’m ok with it.
(EA Global Oxford). An EA conference providing only snacks, not meals. Randomly formed groups go to third-party locations afterwards.
You could try and enforce a norm of ‘if you’re eating with other Effective Altruists please only eat vegetarian here’. And again I’m mostly inclined to think that it’s not worth it.
In practice most EA events where I live (London) fall squarely into category 2.
A mostly-unrelated thought on the ‘symbolism’ concept. I think symbolism cuts both ways here. I don’t associate with a lot of altruistically-focused movements with whom I share goals because I think they focus too much on moral purity/moral grandstanding and too little on actually making a difference. Examples would be the green/environmentalist movement and the social justice movement. This is one of the few things within EA that strikes me the same way; it’s a low (direct) impact action whose main point is to signal things to others. Such actions tend not to look so impressive once their purpose is known.
In isolation I don’t consider this too concerning, but I wouldn’t like any significant proportion of community time to be spent on such things. A corollary is that we should spend that limited symbolism budget as efficiently as possible. Which probably feeds into why I’m much more in favour of this when the enforcement is easy.
I find my instincts on this slide back and forth quite readily depending on what the context is, and in particular on how intrusive enforcing vegetarian options would need to be. Some example contexts:
I’m hosting an EA event where I live and providing food. Here I’m reasonably inclined to only serve vegetarian options unless and until someone indicates that it’s a problem.
I’m organising a local EA event at a third-party location where both vegetarian and non-vegetarian options are available. Now I’m more inclined to let people order what they want. It’s not going to possible to enforce otherwise without speaking to more-or-less every attendee individually, which is quite a high cost and sets off defensive reactions that we were trying to avoid in the first place.
A reasonable middle-ground is to go to vegetarian-only restaurants or pubs, but this cuts down the choice of location significantly and it can be hard to both do this and enforce this point from the OP:
“It’s also worth mentioning that some people have allergies or other medical conditions that could make certain dietary restrictions more difficult...So, as would still be the case with a non-vegetarian event, event organizers should take care to customize their fare so that all serious medical needs can be accommodated.”
(EA Global SF). An EA conference which is providing meals onsite, with other options in walking distance. Now that we’re back to being able to ‘quietly’ enforce vegetarianism, I’m ok with it.
(EA Global Oxford). An EA conference providing only snacks, not meals. Randomly formed groups go to third-party locations afterwards. You could try and enforce a norm of ‘if you’re eating with other Effective Altruists please only eat vegetarian here’. And again I’m mostly inclined to think that it’s not worth it.
In practice most EA events where I live (London) fall squarely into category 2.
A mostly-unrelated thought on the ‘symbolism’ concept. I think symbolism cuts both ways here. I don’t associate with a lot of altruistically-focused movements with whom I share goals because I think they focus too much on moral purity/moral grandstanding and too little on actually making a difference. Examples would be the green/environmentalist movement and the social justice movement. This is one of the few things within EA that strikes me the same way; it’s a low (direct) impact action whose main point is to signal things to others. Such actions tend not to look so impressive once their purpose is known.
In isolation I don’t consider this too concerning, but I wouldn’t like any significant proportion of community time to be spent on such things. A corollary is that we should spend that limited symbolism budget as efficiently as possible. Which probably feeds into why I’m much more in favour of this when the enforcement is easy.