Can we taboo ideological? The word has a valid and specific meaning in some contexts, but it's too often used as a pejorative stand-in for "stuff-I-don't-agree-with-for-reasons-I-can't-be-bothered-to-explain".
I don't like concept bans unless we have better and more accurate replacement concepts and words. I think there's an useful distinction between hard reasons like health/taste/affordability/etc. and fuzzy "reasons" like divine prohibition/animal suffering/evils of modern agriculture/etc.
In the hard class disagreement is a matter of probabilities - I might believe there's a chance that you'd like some food if you tried, or we might assign different weights to different research, and so have different ideas what's healthy or not.
All disagreements fr...
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: