Are you implying that we shouldn't maximise expected utility when we're faced with lots of events with dependent probabilities? This seems like an unusual stance.
I would limit this to cases where the dependency involves trusting an agent's judgment (or honesty). I am not very good at figuring such a thing out and in cases like this whether I trust the agent has a large impact on the final decision.
the mugger can name arbitrarily high numbers of people that they might torture, whereas you can figure out exactly how many non-human animals suffer and die as a result of your dietary choices
You can name an arbitrary figure for what the likelihood is that animals suffer, said arbitrary figure being tailored to be small yet large enough that multiplying it by the number of animals I eat leads to the conclusion that eating them is bad.
It's true that in this case you are arbitrarily picking the small figure rather than the large figure as in a typical Pascal's Mugging, but it still amounts to picking the right figure to get the right answer.
I would limit this to cases where the dependency involves trusting an agent's judgment (or honesty). I am not very good at figuring such a thing out and in cases like this whether I trust the agent has a large impact on the final decision.
But in this case, advocates for veganism are not being agents in the sense of implementing good/bad outcomes if you choose correctly/incorrectly, or personally gaining from you making one choice or another. Rather, we are just stating an argument and letting you judge how persuasive you think that argument is.
...You can
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/