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:
- What foods, if any, do you normally avoid for reasons other than pure culinary taste, cost, individual health concerns (allergies, diabetes, etc.) or ease of preparation? (Avoiding foods that are considered revolting or just non-food in your culture of origin, like balut or fried locusts, counts as "culinary taste".)
- What are your reasons for avoiding those foods?
- How strictly do you avoid them? For instance, will you eat them if you are served them while a guest at a meal, or if you are hungry and there is nothing else available? Do you check to see if they're in potentially questionable dishes at restaurants (and if so, do you trust what the server says?)
- If you have children or plan to have children, will you expect or encourage them to avoid the same foods?
- Do you try to convince your friends and family members to make dietary choices similar to yours? If so, have you ever succeeded?
- If you avoid a class of foods with valuable nutritive content (as opposed to Twinkies), what do you replace it with to get complete nutrition?
- What are your attitudes to people who are more restrictive in their diets than you are? Less restrictive?
- What is the timeline of your dietary restrictions? (Transitions, lapses, increases or decreases in restrictiveness, etc.)
- If you have not avoided these foods for your entire life, how much did you enjoy them when you ate them, and do you still sometimes want to eat them?
- Is there anything else about your choice of diet that might be relevant or interesting?
Would it be accurate to say that your primary concern is that there are negative externalities involved in meat production that are not reflected in the price of meat products? If the largest negative externality that concerns you is GHG emissions do you feel that your reasons for not eating meat would be eliminated if the negative externalities were priced in through some kind of energy tax or cap and trade system? Did you ever consider eating meat and purchasing carbon offsets to make up for the unpaid negative externality? It sounds like you don't miss meat much any more but you say that you used to enjoy it so presumably there would have been some additional price you would have been willing to pay in the form of a carbon offset or perhaps a charitable donation of some kind?
Question: Given current regulatory regimes, how effective is buying carbon offsets? My impression is "not particularly."
Furthermore, eating a more vegetarian diet does not compete with buying offsets. One could do both. In fact, because vegetarian food is often cheaper (and would be relatively cheaper still if wasteful agricultural subsidies were eliminated), eating more vegetarian leaves people more money for good causes.