On Lesswrong there's no real objection against reviving old posts, which I think is a good thing.
Your second point surprises me. As a rational vegan, the animal suffering is the direct reason I don't eat meat or eggs, via Alicorn's expected animal suffering hypothesis:
You will save an expected number of animals equal to the number of animals you don't eat that you would otherwise have eaten.
You seem to disagree about that, and after writing and deleting a full post, I think I understood where our differences came from, and wrote the new reply above.
[I would like to] obtain answers to specific questions about vegetarians' decision procedures; that's what I'm still interested in learning about, vs. defending my own.
Those two things are related, in the sense that if your own conflicts with a vegetarian's procedure, then one of them is wrong and both should be argued.
Nevertheless, I respect tapping out, and would like to thank you for the discussion so far. Feel free to reply anyway if you change your mind!
I have noticed that among philosophers, vegetarianism of one form or another is quite common. In fact, I became a vegetarian (technically a pescetarian) myself partly out of respect for an undergraduate philosophy professor. I am interested in finding out if there is a similar disproportion in the Less Wrong community.
I didn't request that this go into Yvain's survey because I want more information than just what animal products you do or don't eat; I'd also like to see nuances of the reasons behind your diet. There are a lot more shades than carnivore/vegetarian/vegan - if you want to be a vegetarian but are allergic to soy and gluten, that's a compelling reason to diversify protein sources, for instance. I'd also like to hear about if you avoid any plant foods (if you think they're farmed in a way that's environmentally destructive or that hurts people or if you have warm fuzzy feelings for plants, maybe). Here are some questions that come to mind: