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?
I evidently missed this post when it appeared. Nonetheless I'll put some thoughts on the record:
#7. Although AlexU expressed it a bit more rudely than I would have, I basically share his opinion. This is somewhat delicate, because, as you can see, I do move in circles where vegetarians are not uncommon. Nevertheless, I am allergic to sanctimony in all its forms, and vegetarianism does strike me as a form of sanctimony. In particular, even quietly practiced private vegetarianism seems more effective as a social signaling device than as a means of actually relieving any animal suffering. (Compare with personal conservation as a form of environmentalism: it simply doesn't make enough of a difference.)
My feelings on this are somewhat complex, to be sure. I'm certainly not unmoved by the plight of suffering animals, and I have to admit that contact with vegetarians probably brings this issue to a more prominent position in my consciousness than it would otherwise have occupied. (Though I still occasionally eat veal, I don't do so without a momentary twinge as I think of the horrid conditions of the veal calf.) But I can't help thinking that the efforts of my vegetarian friends would be better spent directly lobbying the meat industry to change its ways, or supporting the development of synthetic meat. This is not to say that some don't already do these things, of course. But these are in any case the things that really matter; personally abstaining from meat "on ethical grounds" is hardly more than a feel-good gesture.
As a side note, where do some people (including, apparently, the author of the post) get the idea that fish meat somehow isn't really meat? It's one thing for Christian churches to make such a mistake, seeing as how their traditions were established in times of utter zoological ignorance; but surely we here are capable of recognizing that the morally relevant category here is not the nature of an animal's habitat (terrestrial versus aquatic) but rather that of its nervous system (whether it is capable of "suffering" as we humans would understand it). On this score, fish, being vertebrates, would seem to fall into a similar classification to that of many land animals considered morally problematic.
Sanctimony is feigned or hypocritical righteousness or piety. Could you explain why this describes vegetarianism? Of course some individual vegetarians are sanctimonious, but you seem to be generalizing to the practice of vegetarianism.
You suggest "lobbying the meat industry to change its ways, or supporting the development of synthetic meat." Could you tell me more specifically how to do that? I might try it. Regardless, I don't see how that makes it a worse idea to reduce my meat consumption.