I used to work in finance. I am interested in effective altruism. Highest impact for minimum effort is good.
Brian Lui
Karma: 248
Effective Persuasion For AI Alignment Risk
Thanks so much for your response Rockwell, really appreciate it. The detailed inspection of the supporting evidence is really valuable for me, because it helps improve the quality of the thesis and so that we all have a more accurate understanding of the benefits and drawbacks. I’d also like to share my thoughts in more detail on some of the points you raised.
You appear to be comparing different animal menu items against each other, rather than sources of protein. Globally, looking at consumption by grams of protein, plants continue to comprise the largest category in people’s diets (Our World In Data). From your writeup, I don’t see evidence that bivalves are the most preferred protein source; I see some indication that bivalves are sometimes viewed as a luxury food.
I believe that plants comprise the largest category of protein because they are much cheaper than meat or seafood. They are an inferior good in an economic sense, compared with meat as a normal good, and seafood as a luxury good. As incomes rise, people consume a higher proportion of meat. (This is also why asking people to substitute plants for meat generates resistance)
For a less technical viewpoint, evidence comes from a poll of people’s food preferences of their most liked foods. Going through the list and excluding the items that don’t contain significant amounts of protein, it looks like almost all of the most liked foods are entirely meat, or mostly meat. There are one or two exceptions such as Bibimbap or Fajitas, which have only a small amount of meat. Generally, plant foods are not the favorite foods unless they are made into sweet desserts.
Is there a citation for this? And if this is correct, what animals are the primary alternative and what plant foods were presented as alternatives?
The claim you are making here is not backed by the linked source. The linked source shows that people are going vegetarian/vegan, but retention is the issue. What is the source behind the claim that people are receptive to substituting bivalves for other animals? And is there data on what portion of people would substitute e.g. chickens or cows for bivalves but not also substitute chickens or cows for one of many plant options?
It seems intuitively obvious to me that bivalves substitute for meat, since if you want to substitute for a normal good, you’d be willing to do so with a luxury good but not with an inferior good. But I don’t have a citation for that.
A blogpost about this says:
“A recent meta-analysis and systematic review reviewed the available research on this subject (both peer-reviewed and conducted by advocacy organizations to inform their decision-making). So what have we learned? Trying to convince people to eat less meat works—but with some very serious caveats.
Almost no one is turned off by being told about how bad eating meat is, and many people do decide they want to eat less meat. Some of those people actually eat less meat, while others don’t but rationalize that they ate less when filling out surveys. But it’s hard to stick to any major dietary change, and within a few weeks or months they’re off the wagon for good.
Ultimately, the solution is good meat substitutes that make it easy for people to become vegetarian.”
Plants are not a good meat substitute. Bivalves are a good meat substitute. If people think this is not completely obvious, and is something that needs additional evidence, I could pay for a Mechanical Turk survey. Maybe a question like “If you were to stop eating chicken/beef/pork, which would you prefer to substitute it with: vegetables or bivalves?”
The claim you are making here is not backed by the linked source and appears to be directly contradicted by the linked source. The linked study appears to be referencing diets with “novel” plant-based ingredients (e.g. vegan junk food) in contrast to diets that use “traditional” plant-based ingredients (e.g. “pulses, legumes and vegetables”) and the study directly states that “all diets with traditional plant-based substitutes met daily requirements for calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, iron and Vitamin B12 and were lower in saturated fat, sodium and sugar than the reference diet.”
I wrote that “Another potential substitute for meat is plant-based meat. Bivalves are far healthier than current plant-based meat alternatives, which have minimal health benefits”. The source refers to “novel plant-based ingredients”, which is their term for plant-based meat.
It’s possible that you thought I was comparing bivalves with traditional vegetarian/vegan diets? I’m not sure how to phrase it any clearer than what I wrote. If you have a suggestion for clearer phrasing to indicate that I am comparing bivalves to plant-based meat as potential substitutes for meat, and not to traditional vegetarian/vegan diets, that would be great.
I was initially upset because you accused me of quoting a source that directly contradicts my claim, but it looks like it was likely a misunderstanding. Please let me know if this is the case. Thank you!
I don’t feel as informed on this point, but I do think the human health risks associated with bivalve consumption were not given adequate consideration here, especially because some of the purported advantages pertain to survival scenarios. In addition to the heavy metal concerns, bivalves are also potentially one of the greatest sources of food poisoning, a concern that may be even more relevant in a catastrophe with increased environmental pollution and decreased access to both medical care and decontamination information. It seems unlikely that depuration will be carried out successfully in many of the places or times where failure will be the most harmful.
Definitely—food poisoning is quite common with bivalves when they are eaten raw. For example, in the Western cultural context, oysters are typically eaten raw soon after being shucked. Parasites can easily enter the body this way.
In developing countries, this is less common because bivalves are generally eaten cooked. So for developing country consumption, I am more concerned with heavy metals. Assuming that bivalves substitute for meat/seafood consumption, they would have slightly more than meat, and much less than most seafood. So it would be a negligible harm compared to the benefits.
Regarding bivalve suffering—I am personally not as interested in this point because I see it as a type of “nirvana fallacy”. For example, potential insect suffering is much more pertinent. There are 10 quintillion insects in the world, which is 8-9 orders of magnitude more than farmed bivalves. Insects also have an order of magnitude shorter lifespan than farmed bivalves. Insects are more sentient and experience more suffering than bivalves. They have a central nervous system and bivalves do not.
Any increase in bivalve suffering, multiplied by the very small chance that they suffer, multiplied by the small amount of suffering in the case they do suffer, means that it’s not a material consideration. The entire suffering could be ameliorated by humanely destroying less than 1 hectare of termite nests, like “carbon credits” but for suffering. This is just my opinion of course, and different people will have different ethical weights.
Cause Exploration Prizes submission: bivalve aquaculture
This is super useful information, thank you so much!
Thanks for these super helpful comments! I plan to incorporate some of the feedback into my draft, but I’m not sure of the etiquette on this forum—is it ok or not ok to edit the original post with additional information?
Also would like to share my thoughts on some of the comments:
genetic engineering of bivalves seems to be worth further research, since it seems pretty likely there are people already doing that? Great idea in any case.
the animal welfare part is definitely important, but it’s only one component of this proposal. I am not very well positioned to contribute to this area, but I’m eagerly reading all the comments to learn more.
“accelerating recovery from catastrophe” is a great point. Bivalve aquaculture provides robustness. So this could be interesting to Allfed/similar.
“protein lock-in” in developing countries is really attractive to me, because it means that demand for bivalves becomes strong and sustainable.
I thought the part about people liking the taste of bivalves was self-evident, but it appears that it’s not! At least in Asia, they are considered high prestige/luxury foods. I believe that’s the case in South America and many parts of Europe as well.
Thanks, I didn’t know most of this information!
Also, I see two claims:
Coral reefs all lost by 2050
Death of all marine life within this century, with one claim that this will occur by 2050
The first one sounds quite serious and potentially very serious. The second one sounds catastrophic?
I didn’t know the magnitude of the risk was this big. Is this a cause area that could benefit from more funding or research, too?