I’m struggling to understand your framing of the moral licensing argument. “Moral licensing” is widely considered to be self-deceiving weakness where people [unconsciously] convince themselves that as they’ve done something moral they can happily make other choices with complete indifference to their moral consequences rather than a pragmatic approach to optimising altruism. In that sense, the idea that that participating in some small way in a campaign against meat alleviates any concern about about possible moral implications of eating it is a pretty pure example of moral licensing, whereas it seems non-obvious that the additional impactful pro-animal activity you would only feel able to participate in if you ate meat first actually exists. Sure, you might donate to something you identify as impactful but there’s no guarantee you’re not deceiving yourself far more about the counterfactual that you’d have been unable to commit to if you hadn’t started eating meat. The last thing I’d consider from the starting point of worrying about my future capacity for self-deception is doing stuff I believe is bad in the hope it hacks my mindset into doing more good.
Some people hold sincere beliefs in animal welfare matters whilst eating meat they believe to be “cruelty free” is fine and if you’re one of them, or feel it’s impossible to avoid eating it or simply don’t think it’s an issue that’s different,[1] but “I might need to start doing things I think are bad again because I’m concerned that otherwise I might be less capable of doing things which are good” doesn’t feel like the right lesson to be learning from EA
I’m struggling to understand your framing of the moral licensing argument. “Moral licensing” is widely considered to be self-deceiving weakness where people [unconsciously] convince themselves that as they’ve done something moral they can happily make other choices with complete indifference to their moral consequences rather than a pragmatic approach to optimising altruism. In that sense, the idea that that participating in some small way in a campaign against meat alleviates any concern about about possible moral implications of eating it is a pretty pure example of moral licensing, whereas it seems non-obvious that the additional impactful pro-animal activity you would only feel able to participate in if you ate meat first actually exists. Sure, you might donate to something you identify as impactful but there’s no guarantee you’re not deceiving yourself far more about the counterfactual that you’d have been unable to commit to if you hadn’t started eating meat. The last thing I’d consider from the starting point of worrying about my future capacity for self-deception is doing stuff I believe is bad in the hope it hacks my mindset into doing more good.
Some people hold sincere beliefs in animal welfare matters whilst eating meat they believe to be “cruelty free” is fine and if you’re one of them, or feel it’s impossible to avoid eating it or simply don’t think it’s an issue that’s different,[1] but “I might need to start doing things I think are bad again because I’m concerned that otherwise I might be less capable of doing things which are good” doesn’t feel like the right lesson to be learning from EA
I am not qualified to tell people to never eat meat...