I'm currently unconvinced either way on this matter. However, enough arguments have been raised that I think this is worth the time of every reader to think a good deal about.
http://nothingismere.com/2014/11/12/inhuman-altruism-inferential-gap-or-motivational-gap/
In the comments of his post, RobBB claimed that by going vegetarian, you'll cause 1500 fewer animals to be killed than otherwise. Regardless of the exact number, it strikes me that this is a highly tendentious way of putting the issue. It would surely be more accurate to say that by going vegetarian, you will caused 1500 fewer animals to be born than otherwise.
It is wrong to call a utilitarian argument for vegetarianism "air-tight" when it doesn't even consider this point.
I don't see why you get downvoted.
I am strongly convinced by arguments for vegetarianism.
I mean, I still eat meat but that's just because of my moral decrepitude.
It is likely easier than you think to cut out meat and other animal products from your diet. When I went vegan, it basically involved changing from one set of tasty dishes to another, and I don't think I lost out much from a taste perspective (that being said, I did this at the same time as moving from catered university accommodation, so possibly YMMV). Here is a website which purports to give you all the knowledge you need to make the transition. This is something that you can start doing today, and I urge you to do so.
All the work is done in the premises - which is a bad sign rhetorically, but at least a good sign deductively. If I thought cows were close enough to us that there was a 20% chance that hurting a cow was just as bad as hurting a human, I would definitely not want to eat cows.
Unfortunately for cows, I think there is an approximately 0% chance that hurting cows is (according to my values) just as bad as hurting humans. It's still bad - but its badness is some quite smaller number that is a function of my upbringing, cows' cognitive differences from me, and t...
I think RobbBB does not understand a typical omnivore's (me!) point of view. He also makes irrational conclusions about the ways to reduce the amount of suffering of (potentially somewhat sentient) animals.
Yes, cattle suffer, so do chickens, to a lesser degree. They likely do not suffer in the same way people do. Certainly eggs are not likely to suffer at all. Actually, even different people suffer differently, the blanket moral prohibition against cannibalism is just an obvious Schelling point.
So it would be preferable to not create, raise, slaughter and...
Certainly eggs are not likely to suffer at all.
It's typically the chickens laying the eggs that people are concerned about. And maybe to a lesser extent the male chickens of the chicken breed used for egg production. (Maybe you're already clear on that, but I have spoken to people who were confused by veganism's prohibition on eating animal products in addition to animals.)
They likely do not suffer in the same way people do.
It doesn't seem safe to assume that their suffering is subjectively less bad than our suffering. Maybe it's worse - maybe the experience of pain and fear is worse when you can only feel it and can't think about it. Either way, I don't see why you'd err on the side of 'It's an uncertain thing so lets keep doing what we're doing and diminish the potential harms when we can' rather than 'It's not that unlikely that we're torturing these things, we should stop in all ways that don't cost us much.'
But yes, creating vat-grown meat and/or pain-free animals should be a priority.
LW folk generally are proponents of Vat-Meat.
On one hand, I agree with you that it's probably not that effective to specifically court the LW demographic. That said, EA-Animal-Rights people are usually in favor of vat-grown meat (there are companies working on it. To my knowledge they are not seeking donations (although Modern Meadow is hiring, if you happen to have relevant skills)
"expose existing cattle/chicken abuse in farms and slaughterhouses" is a mainstay vegan tactic. Robbie's article was prompted by Brienne's article which was specifically arguing against videos that did that (especially if they use additional emotional manipulation tactics)
My reason for vegetarianism is, at its core, a very simple one. I'm horrified of violence, almost by default. And I tend to be extremely empathetic. I'm emotionally motivated to treat animals with kindness before I am intellectually motivated. The discrepancy in lw might depend on personality differences. Or sometimes you can get very bogged down in the intellectual minutia trying to sort everything out, and end up reaching a plateau or inaction (i.e, the default).
First, I am not a big fan of having the top-level posts consist of nothing but a link.
Second, the article takes "the intellectual case against meat-eating is pretty air-tight" as its premise. That premise is not even wrong as it confuses values and logic (aka rationality).
Full disclosure: I am a carnivore.
I'm assuming that the LessWrongers interested in 'should I be a vegan?' are at least somewhat inclined toward effective altruism, uilitarianism, compassion, or what-have-you. I'm not claiming a purely selfish agent should be a vegan. I'm also not saying that the case is purely intellectual (in the sense of having nothing to do with our preferences or emotions); I'm just saying that the intellectual component is correctly reasoned. You can evaluate it as a hypothetical imperative without asking whether the antecedent holds.
Aside from painting "LessWrong types" in really broad, unflattering strokes, I thought the author made several good points. Note though that I am a ~15 year vegetarian (and sometime vegan) myself and I definitely identify with his argument, so there's the opportunity for subjective validation to creep in. I also find many perference-utlitarian viewpoints persuasive, though I wouldn't yet identify as one.
I think the 20% thing and the 1-in-20 thing were just hypothetical, so we shouldn't get too hung up on them; I think his case is just as strong w...
I wonder how RobbBB, and other vegans, feel about lions on the Serengeti. When they kill gazelles, is that morally wrong? Obviously, they aren't going to be dissuaded by your blog posts, but in a utilitarian framework, I would think that suffering caused by lions' carnivorous tastes is just as "bad" as that caused by humans. Should we put all carnivores in zoos and feed them meat substitutes? Or should lions be free to hunt, regardless of the suffering it may cause the gazelle, because that's their nature?
This article heavily implies that every LessWronger is a preference utilitarian, and values the wellbeing, happiness, and non-suffering of ever sentient (i.e. non-p-zombie) being. Neither of that is fully true for me, and as this ad-hoc survey - https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10152860272949228 - seems to suggest, I may not be alone in that. Namely, I'm actually pretty much OK with animal suffering. I generally don't empathize all that much, but there a lot of even completely selfish reasons to be nice to humans, whereas it's not really the case f...
I'm going to comment on the general issue, not on the specific link.
I'm a carnivore, so what I'm going to write is my best approximation at purging my reasoning of cached thoughts and motivated cognition.
I'm not convinced that present-day vegetarianism is not just group signalling.
Of course you wouldn't want aware beings to suffer pointlessly. But from there to vegetarianism there's a long road:
This article heavily implies that every LessWronger is a preference utilitarian, and values the wellbeing, happiness, and non-suffering of ever sentient (i.e. non-p-zombie) being. Neither of that is fully true for me, and as this ad-hoc survey - https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10152860272949228 - seems to suggest, I may not be alone in that. Namely, I'm actually pretty much OK with animal suffering. I generally don't empathize all that much, but there a lot of even completely selfish reasons to be nice to humans, whereas it's not really the case for animals. As for non-human intelligent beings - I'll figure that once I meet them, or the probability of such encounter gets somewhat realistic; currently there's too much ambiguity about them.
I was mainly talking about LessWrongers who care about others (for not-purely-selfish reasons). This is a much milder demand than preference utilitarianism. I'm surprised to hear you don't care about others' well-being -- not even on a system 2 level, setting aside whether you feel swept up in a passionate urge to prevent suffering.
Let me see if I can better understand your position by asking a few questions. Assuming no selfish benefits accrued to you, would you sacrifice a small amount of your own happiness to prevent the torture of an atom-by-atom replica of you?