Regarding the best tradeoff argument and veganism: It is difficult for me to think of any activities one could do that, in the very small amount of time it takes to become at least a somewhat faithful vegetarian, would do more good. If a 25 year-old becomes a vegetarian (let’s start with vegetarianism), he or she will likely save around 2,500 animals over the next fifty years. That is very substantial. If we were talking about a time commitment of several hours per week for fifty years, I might be more open to the idea there are better alternatives. However, for the vast majority of people, it requires far less time than that. In reality, we might be talking about a couple hours per week initially, but that commitment quickly gets close to zero. So, while I agree that becoming at least a vegetarian isn’t necessarily the most ideal use of one’s time, the reality for most people is that acquiring such a habit (I like that characterization) is hard to beat in terms of the good we can do per hour of time.
Regarding Goldsmith and the act/omission distinction: I am also inclined to think that I would bring Goldsmith into existence, and I’m not even sure it would take an order of magnitude difference between he and Smith to persuade me. I’m entirely open to the idea that we need to distinguish between moral assessments we make about people and moral assessments we make about actions. In the case of Smith, I have a strong sentiment that he is a terrible person. I don’t feel the same about Jones, but it’s possible that may be due to the fact that Jones’ behavior isn’t as far from “normal” behavior as Smith’s. Perhaps I should be skeptical of my intuitions in this case. I certainly agree that, if we are creating the world, we have no good reason to pick Smith over Jones, but we do have good reason to pick Goldsmith over both of them.
I do have some lingering reservations, and this may be more appropriate for another thread, but I’m hesitant because Jones’ actions aren’t that different from our everyday actions. Almost all of us—even committed EAs—spend $3500 on things that aren’t essential to our survival or even our flourishing, particularly if we look at our spending habits over time. I have intuitive difficulty in picturing this frivolous spending as equivalent to a trolley problem with a child on one track and several sporting events, dinners out and maybe a bike on the other. I have even greater difficulty imagining such spending as being equally immoral as shooting a child in the head.
(I am confused as to why I got voted down. I am new to EA, however, so it is possible that I may have unknowingly stepped on some toes or violated some norms of this forum.)
I have three thoughts:
1) I think people often undervalue the benefit of a generally vegan or vegetarian diet when they raise the “best tradeoff” argument. The financial costs are of being a vegan or vegetarian are relatively small, if there are any, so there is no financial opportunity cost. It is not as though we are giving up the chance to financially support a highly effective organization by choosing beans over meat. The psychological “cost,” as other posters have pointed out, almost certainly diminishes over time. Further, and more importantly, I’m not sure we can evaluate psychological cost in the same way that we evaluate financial cost. It is not as though I am giving up the ability to make some other sacrifice because I am sacrificing meat. I’m not sure it works that way. Finally, while there is a small time commitment, it doesn’t seem substantial enough to warrant an argument that we could have done something in that time that would have a greater impact. However, particularly with regards to vegetarianism, the good accomplished can be very significant. Depending on one’s meat of choice, it isn’t outrageous to think that a vegetarian could easily save the lives of 50-75 animals every year. The good represented by that will depend on what types of animals, certainly, but it seems impossible to me that more good could be accomplished in the extra hour per week that someone spends on meal planning or reading up on the vegetarian lifestyle.
For an additional comment on something relevant to the “best tradeoff” argument, see my third comment below.
2) I don’t believe we have a moral commitment, or even that it is morally preferable, to bring more organisms into existence, even assuming a pleasant quality of life. The argument that factory farming is not ideal but is preferable to those animals not existing at all doesn’t seem to hold water for me. For one, that line of reasoning isn’t consistent with many other moral intuitions we have. For example, if a poor, homeless teenage girl approached us on the street and asked if we thought she should become pregnant soon, we would almost certainly advise her not to—after all, her situation precludes her from giving the baby a quality life. Yet, if we were to hold to the principle that “some life is better than no life, regardless of quality,” we should tell the girl to not only get pregnant, but hope for twins (ignoring considerations about how having children would affect the girl herself—let’s say she deeply wants children soon). So, while I agree that we should seek some form of maximizing utility (or happiness or flourishing, etc.) in the world while minimizing suffering, I don’t believe that entails maximizing total happiness by increasing populations.
3) While I’m generally sympathetic to utilitarianism, I still have difficulty with the act/omission distinction. It is very easy to concoct examples that are very intuitively problematic. For example, let’s imagine that Smith enjoys drowning young children, and it is his habit to wake up on Sundays, drive to a local park, and pick his victim. After he drowns his victim, however, he drives home and donates $3,500 to the Against Malaria Foundation, which is the estimated cost of saving one life (I may have the exact figure wrong). Is the weight of Smith’s donation equal to the weight of his drowning a child? My intuition is to strongly say no. If you’re inclined to say yes, let me pose the question differently: If Jones, Smith’s neighbor, chose to throw $3,500 in the trash just for the fun of it, would his actions be equally immoral as Smith’s drowning a child? I can’t imagine that anyone would say yes to that. So, while it may be tempting to treat something like eating meat in the same vein as we treat the opportunity to give to effective charities, I am not convinced that the “best tradeoff” argument can apply to cases where we are proactively behaving immorally. Your sensitivity to this critique will probably depend on your views on act/omission distinction.