I think if the change requires minimal/smaller sacrifice on part of the consumer it’s more likely to succeed. Also even if systemic/technological change can have much higher impact, I would not rule out diet change completely because I also came across this post which questions the PTC hypothesis for alternative proteins.
Aditya Nair
Karma: 158
What’s Your Counterfactual Impact on Animals?
Thanks Tristan.
Yup this post is written with many of my vegan friends in mind (as well as me from not that long ago). I’ve found “saving” lives matters most to them and a distant second is usually reducing suffering.
I intentionally left out reasons to be vegan because the average vegan influencer is basically sharing all of these points. Which makes it readily accessible. Although I do agree some of what you are saying.
For 1, I think this depends on the audience. If the audience are ethical vegetarians who don’t know about harms in dairy then this is indeed quite effective. Although for an average consumer, I’ve found (anecdotally from street outreach) that most of them find quitting dairy a much more unattainable goal than being vegetarian (which is quite disliked by many vegans).
For 2, I agree. I think most humans are motivated reasoners. They figure out ways to justify and confirm their existing beliefs as well as reasons for not changing. I also think getting people to consume delicious animal free food may accelerate progress towards respecting animals (for this same reason). Although it may not be fast enough if we advocate for abstinence as compared to just building better alternatives. I wrote about this in an earlier post.
My only hope with this article is that more people take the final impact on animals seriously.
Thanks for sharing, so many cities have local vegan potlucks regularly. Even making donating to effective charities an optional add on might be greatly beneficial! Will try this out.
Thanks for sharing Holly. I think it completely makes sense.
If consuming dairy helps someone stay vegetarian instead of giving up on reducing suffering completely then I see that as a huge win. What I’ve realized is that even vegans make moral trades but when we are fanatical about veganism we fail to recognize some of these trades.
(Copying my response from Hive with some edits)
Thanks again for sharing the Faunalytics post I wasn’t aware of it, it’s super cool!
I came across your EA forum post on that matter, I love that you aren’t afraid to think outside the box and while I do take wild animal suffering seriously, I question:
- how much can these tiny organisms suffer, if they even can?
- even if they felt the slightest of pain (let alone suffering), I think that focussing on these organisms may be a strategic blunder. Getting buy in for any of these ideas is nearly impossible IMO and might harm farm animals who we know with much higher certainty do suffer on factory farms.
For example there may be tardigrades living ON you!! can they suffer? (a creature with 100 neurons) or a similar one like tunicate also ~100 neurons, they can’t even move as adults! (they are used as a seafood alternative in many parts of the world)
Rethinking the Impact of Advocating Against Dairy
Thanks for the suggestion. I wasn’t quite sure how linkposts are supposed to work. Anyway I added the post here.
You maybe be right but I still disagree, mainly because focusing on personal abstinence of insect derived products is a very slippery slope. For example: If you were to agree with this you will need to rethink consumption of several insect pollinated plant based foods. Many of these require industrial scale trucking of bees think avocados, almonds etc (See Image Below). Avoiding these in my opinion are impractical for an average person.
Additionally I also think getting into this debate is a strategic mistake if we want to people take one step towards compassion. As put forth by THE Dr. Michael Greger 20 years ago here.