ciphergoth comments on Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices - Less Wrong
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Judging others is about making predictions on their future actions in morally challenging situations. If they eat meat, it's a good predictor that they will eat meat in future, but it doesn't say much about whether they'll jump into the canal to save a drowning child.
That's true as far as it goes, but it seems to me that jumping into a canal to rescue a drowning child is as morally easy as it gets: your explicit beliefs are nicely lining up with your intuitions and emotions.
Eating ethically is much harder; it involves the ability to make some sacrifices without the benefit of strong emotional spurs. Vegetarianism/veganism, assuming it's based on essentially consequentialist reasoning (not all of it is), is basically a real-world application of "shut up & multiply," which I find admirable.