vollmer comments on Group Rationality Diary, August 1-15 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: therufs 01 August 2013 08:38PM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 02 August 2013 12:31:33AM *  8 points [-]

Updating towards many animals I eat being more similar to humans than I had previously thought, based mostly on this link from Why Eat Less Meat?. Still unsure what to do about it. Feeling guilty seems unproductive and so does rabid vegetarian advocacy.

Also, I conducted an informal poll on Facebook among my friends about how much they would have to be compensated for going vegetarian for a year, and I got answers generally hovering around $3,000 (I included instructions not to look at other people's answers first, although I don't know how well they were followed), although one respondent seriously answered $20,000. At the very least this reflects a general impression that vegetarianism is very inconvenient / unpleasant which could be the target of effective animal altruists. Although...

Comment author: vollmer 02 August 2013 03:56:39AM *  2 points [-]

Not sure that's a good way of asking. The pain of being veg seems to be inversely correlated with knowing reasons for going veg, and there's a lot of loss aversion. I got anecdotal evidence from quite a few people telling me that going and staying veg is actually much easier than they anticipated. (It's important to take the time to learn about health effects, look at meat alternatives and find veggie restaurants). Reversal test: Imagine you're vegetarian and earn $3000 more than you currently do. Would you pay $3000 a year ($8 a day) to eat meat again?

It's not only more ethical but also healthier to be veg.

It makes me happy to see you and others taking action due to Peter's post.

EDIT: Concerning the "although", I recommend to also read Brian's comment.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 02 August 2013 10:16:38PM 3 points [-]

I got anecdotal evidence from quite a few people telling me that going and staying veg is actually much easier than they anticipated.

I would expect this, but my point is that if non-vegetarians have inaccurate impressions about how hard it is to go vegetarian then that could be a useful misconception to clear up.

Comment author: vollmer 03 August 2013 05:45:42PM 1 point [-]

Agreed. Do you have an idea how to go about this?

Comment author: falenas108 02 August 2013 10:18:19PM 1 point [-]

You should read the results of the first study you posted more carefully:

Cohort studies of vegetarians have shown a moderate reduction in mortality from IHD but little difference in other major causes of death or all-cause mortality in comparison with health-conscious non-vegetarians from the same population.

The other links don't contradict this study, and only look at deaths from specific causes, and not general mortality.

Comment author: vollmer 03 August 2013 06:21:37PM *  2 points [-]

You should read the results of the first study you posted more carefully:

Good point, thanks. My statement is not exactly wrong, but I should have written "healthier than average diets".

The other links don't contradict this study and only look at deaths from specific causes, and not general mortality.

That's quite wrong, examples:

Key 1999:

Total mortality and longevity also differed according to vegetarian status in California Seventh-day Adventists. After adjusting for age and sex, Seventh-day Adventist vegetarians had a relative risk for total mortality of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.74, 0.87) compared with those who ate any meat products. Using a multivariate, multiple-decrement-lifetable approach (19), we showed that vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist women live 2.52 y longer than their nonvegetarian (meat ≥ 1 time/wk) counterparts (P < 0.001), and a similar comparison in men showed a 3.21-y difference in longevity (P < 0.001).

McEvoy 2011 (review):

Overall, vegetarians tend to be slimmer, appear to be in better health, with reduced risk of chronic diseases and greater longevity when compared with omnivores

In that analysis, no significant differences were observed for stroke mortality or overall mortality between vegetarians and non-vegetarians(12).

(...) but no significant differences were observed for overall mortality rates between vegetarians and omnivores in these cohorts. One possible explanation may be that overall mortality was low in the cohort populations compared with the general Western population.

I deliberately only quoted very conservative and reliable sources, and although the effects are not really large, they are statistically significant and positive.

Comment author: falenas108 05 August 2013 01:15:01PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I meant in regard to the "compared to health-conscious non vegetarians" part.

The fact that vegetarians tend to be more concerned about eating well is a huge factor that almost every "vegetarian diets are healthier!" study I've seen ignores. The first one you posted is the only one that tries to control for that, and they ended up with seeing no significant difference.

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