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 from the fuzzy class are about values not about reality - to me divine prohibition against pork argument and animal suffering argument are wrong not by being highly unlikely, but wrong by coming from an incompatible value system.
I completely agree that this is a useful distinction.
Would "values-based" therefore be an accurate (and less ambiguous/pejorative) substitute for "ideologically-driven" in your original statement?
P.S. Would concern with GHGs, and/or other sustainability concerns fall into your "ideological" category? It doesn't seem to be based on incompatible values (at least not necessarily), but maybe I'm missing something.
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: