Why Eat Less Meat?

48 Post author: peter_hurford 23 July 2013 09:30PM

Previously, I wrote on LessWrong about the preliminary evidence in favor of using leaflets to promote veganism as a way of cost-effectively reducing suffering.  In response, there was a large discussion with 530+ comments.   In this discussion, I found that a lot of people wanted me to write about why I think nonhuman animals deserve our concern anyway.

Therefore, I wrote this essay with an attempt to defend the view that if one cares about suffering, one should also care about nonhuman animals, since (1) they are capable of suffering, (2) they do suffer quite a lot, and (3) we can prevent their suffering.   I hope that we can have a sober, non mind-killing discussion about this topic, since it’s possibly quite important.

 

Introduction

For the past two years, the only place I ate meat was at home with my family.  As of October 2012, I've finally stopped eating meat altogether and can't see a reason why I would want to go back to eating meat.  This kind of attitude toward eating is commonly classified as "vegetarianism" where one refrains from eating the flesh of all animals, including fish, but still will consume animal products like eggs and milk (though I try to avoid egg as best I can).

Why might I want to do this?  And why might I see it as a serious issue?  It's because I'm very concerned about the reality of suffering done to our "food animals" in the process of making them into meat, because I see vegetarianism as a way to reduce this suffering by stopping the harmful process, and because vegetarianism has not been hard at all for me to accomplish.

 

Animals Can Suffer

Back in the 1600s, Réné Descartes thought nonhuman animals were soulless automatons that could respond to their environment and react to stimuli, but could not feel anything — humans were the only species that were truly conscious. Descartes hit on an important point — since feelings are completely internal to the animal doing the feeling, it is impossible to demonstrate that anyone is truly conscious.

However, when it comes to humans, we don’t let that stop us from assuming other people feel pain. When we jab a person with a needle, no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they look like, they share a rather universal reaction of what we consider to be evidence of pain. We also extend this to our pets — we make great strides to avoid harming kittens, puppies, or other companion animals, and no one would want to kick a puppy or light a kitten on fire just because their consciousness cannot be directly observed. That’s why we even go as far as having laws against animal cruelty.

The animals we eat are no different. Pigs, chickens, cows, and fish all have incredibly analogous responses to stimuli that we would normally agree cause pain to humans and pets.  Jab a pig with a needle, kick a chicken, or light a cow on fire, and they will react aversively like any cat, dog, horse, or human.

 

The Science

But we don't need to rely on just our intuition -- instead, we can look at the science.  Animal scientists Temple Grandin and Mark Deesing conclude that "[o]ur review of the literature on frontal cortex development enables us to conclude that all mammals, including rats, have a sufficiently developed prefrontal cortex to suffer from pain".  An interview of seven different scientists concludes that animals can suffer.

Dr. Jane Goodall, famous for having studied animals, writes in her introduction to The Inner World of Farm Animals that "farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined…they are individuals in their own right."  Farm Sanctuary, an animal welfare organization, has a good overview documenting this research on animal emotion.

Lastly, among much other evidence, in the "Cambridge Declaration On Consciousness", prominent international group of cognitive  neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists states:

Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.  Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also  possess these neurological substrates.

 

Factory Farming Causes Considerable Suffering

However, the fact that animals can suffer is just one piece of the picture; we next have to establish that animals do suffer as a result of people eating meat.  Honestly, this is easier shown than told -- there's an extremely harrowing and shocking 11-minute video about the cruelty available.  Watching that video is perhaps the easiest way to see the suffering of nonhuman animals first hand in these "factory farms".

In making the case clear, Vegan Outreach writes "Many people believe that animals raised for food must be treated well because sick or dead animals would be of no use to agribusiness. This is not true."

They then go on to document, with sources, how virtually all birds raised for food are from factory farms where "resulting ammonia levels [from densely populated sheds and accumulated waste] commonly cause painful burns to the birds' skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts" and how hens "become immobilized and die of asphyxiation or dehydration", having been "[p]acked in cages (usually less than half a square foot of floor space per bird)".  In fact, 137 million chickens suffer to death each year before they can even make it to slaughter -- more than the number of animals killed for fur, in shelters and in laboratories combined!

Farm Sanctuary also provides an excellent overview of the cruelty of factory farming, writing "Animals on factory farms are regarded as commodities to be exploited for profit. They undergo painful mutilations and are bred to grow unnaturally fast and large for the purpose of maximizing meat, egg, and milk production for the food industry."

It seems clear that factory farming practices are truly deplorable, and certainly are not worth the benefit of eating a slightly tastier meal.  In "An Animal's Place", Michael Pollan writes:

To visit a modern CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) is to enter a world that, for all its technological sophistication, is still designed according to Cartesian principles: animals are machines incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this any more, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert your eyes on the part of everyone else.

 

Vegetarianism Can Make a Difference

Many people see the staggering amount of suffering in factory farms, and if they don't aim to dismiss it outright will say that there's no way they can make a difference by changing their eating habits.  However, this is certainly not the case!

 

How Many Would Be Saved?

Drawing from the 2010 Livestock Slaughter Animal Summary and the Poultry Slaughter Animal Summary, 9.1 billion land animals are either grown in the US or imported (94% of which are chickens!), 1.6 billion are exported, and 631 million die before anyone can eat them, leaving 8.1 billion land animals for US consumption each year.

A naïve average would divide this total among the population of the US, which is 311 million, assigning 26 land animals for each person's annual consumption.  Thus, by being vegetarian, you are saving 26 land animals a year you would have otherwise eaten.  And this doesn't even count fish, which could be quite high given how many fish need to be grown just to be fed to bigger fish!

Yet, this is not quite true.  It's important to note that supply and demand aren't perfectly linear.  If you reduce your demand for meat, the suppliers will react by lowering the price of meat a little bit, making it so more people can buy it.  Since chickens dominate the meat market, we'll adjust by the supply elasticity of chickens, which is 0.22 and the demand elasticity of chickens, which is -0.52, and calculate the change in supply, which is 0.3.  Taking this multiplier, it's more accurate to say you're saving 7.8 land animals a year or more.  Though, there are a lot of complex considerations in calculating elasticity, so we should take this figure to have some uncertainty.

 

Collective Action

One might critique this response by responding that since meat is often bought in bulk, reducing meat consumption won't affect the amount of meat bought, and thus the suffering will still be the same, except with meat gone to waste.  However, this ignores the effect of many different vegetarians acting together.

Imagine that you're supermarket buys cases of 200 chicken wings.  It would thus take 200 people together to agree to buy 1 less wing in order for the supermarket to buy less wings.  However, you have no idea if you're vegetarian #1 or vegetarian #56 or vegetarian #200, making the tipping point for 200 less wings to be bought.  You thus can estimate that by buying one less wing you have a 1 in 200 chance of reducing 200 wings, which is equivalent to reducing the supply by one wing.  So the effect basically cancels out.  See here or here for more.

Every time you buy factory farmed meat, you are creating demand for that product, essentially saying "Thank you, I liked what you are doing and want to encourage you to do it more".  By eating less meat, we can stop our support of this industry.

 

Vegetarianism Is Easier Than You Think

So nonhuman animals can suffer and do suffer in factory farms, and we can help stop this suffering by eating less meat.  I know people who get this far, but then stop and say that, as much as they would like to, there's no way they could be a vegetarian because they like meat too much!  However, such a joy for meat shouldn't count much compared to the massive suffering each animal undergoes just to be farmed -- imagine if someone wouldn't stop eating your pet just because they like eating your pet so much!

This is less than a problem than you might think, because being a vegetarian is really easy.  Most people only think about what they would have to give up and how good it tastes, and don't think about what tasty things they could eat instead that have no meat in them.  When I first decided to be a vegetarian, I simply switched from tasty hamburgers to tasty veggieburgers and there was no problem at all.

 

A Challenge

To those who say that vegetarianism is too hard, I’d like to simply challenge you to just try it for a few days. Feel free to give up afterward if you find it too hard. But I imagine that you should do just fine, find great replacements, and be able to save animals from suffering in the process.

If reducing suffering is one of your goals, there’s no reason why you must either be a die-hard meat eater or a die-hard vegetarian. Instead, feel free to explore some middle ground. You could be a vegetarian on weekdays but eat meat on weekends, or just try Meatless Mondays, or simply try to eat less meat. You could try to eat bigger animals like cows instead of fish or chicken, thus getting the same amount of meat with significantly less suffering.

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(This was also cross-posted on my blog.)

Comments (513)

Comment author: erratim 06 January 2015 05:08:58PM 0 points [-]

It's important to note that supply and demand aren't perfectly linear. If you reduce your demand for meat, the suppliers will react by lowering the price of meat a little bit, making it so more people can buy it. Since chickens dominate the meat market, we'll adjust by the supply elasticity of chickens, which is 0.22 and the demand elasticity of chickens, which is -0.52, and calculate the change in supply, which is 0.3. Taking this multiplier, it's more accurate to say you're saving 7.8 land animals a year or more. Though, there are a lot of complex considerations in calculating elasticity, so we should take this figure to have some uncertainty.

I think the calculations would be simpler and more accurate to assume that long term supply is in fact flat, so that eating one fewer animal causes ~one fewer to be produced in the long term. A more complete argument here.

If true, this would strengthen your overall point and make people even more empowered to reduce suffering!

Comment author: blacktrance 06 January 2014 03:46:43PM 2 points [-]

I care about animal suffering in the same sense I care about dust specks not getting into my eye - if I'd be otherwise indifferent, I'd rather not have it, but it's very easily outweighed, in this case by the taste of animals. To the extent that factory farming causes meat to be cheaper, I welcome it. Why should I be a vegetarian?

Comment author: peter_hurford 06 January 2014 04:45:56PM 1 point [-]

I wrote that "if one cares about suffering, one should also care about nonhuman animals, since (1) they are capable of suffering, (2) they do suffer quite a lot, and (3) we can prevent their suffering."

Presumably you either disagree with one of my three empirical claims (which means we can have a good discussion) or you don't care about suffering generally (perhaps you only care about human or sapient suffering alone) and there's not much we can discuss. I, or someone else, could attempt to throw some thought experiments at you, I suppose, but I don't expect they'll do much.

Comment author: blacktrance 07 January 2014 12:36:08AM *  1 point [-]

if one cares about suffering, one should also care about nonhuman animals

This assumes that if I care about suffering, my utility function places some negative weight on suffering much in the same way it places a positive weight on me eating food I like, but this need not be the case. If I care about suffering, it means I want less of it, but it doesn't mean that I'm willing to give up much to reduce the amount. Ceteris paribus, I want less suffering in the world, but that doesn't mean I care enough about it to not eat delicious hamburgers, or even to pay more for a burger. I care about not getting dust specks in my eye too, but if I got one dust speck in my eye per month, and I could get rid of it by never eating burgers, I'd keep eating burgers. It doesn't mean that I don't care, though.

Comment author: peter_hurford 07 January 2014 01:34:33AM *  1 point [-]

That's technically true, yeah. It means you don't care very much (or care very very much about eating burgers)...

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 12 January 2014 05:02:37AM 0 points [-]

Or it means that the formalism of a utility function does not fully describe your preferences.

That is, asking "how much do you care about X", and getting some real number as the answer to that question for any value of X, will not describe the preferences and choices of the agent in question. (This is one way to interpret my previously offered "chickens vs. grandmother" conundrum.)

A more apt formalism might be some sort of multi-tier system, perhaps. I haven't settled on an answer, myself.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 September 2013 04:40:30PM *  0 points [-]

I really don't get it. Why should I care about any suffering at all, in the first place? upd: Life is absurd and everybody dies, y'know?

Comment author: peter_hurford 04 September 2013 06:25:50PM 0 points [-]

I don't think there's any argument I could give you to make you care. Though, I would suggest that you actually already do care at least about some suffering. And maybe you care about being consistent, and therefore are open to certain thought experiments? I'm not sure. I'm a moral anti-realist, or at least a moral externalist about moral motivation.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2013 12:45:30AM -1 points [-]

Yes, I do care naturally. But if I don't find any reason to, I'm going to try to suppress it as much as I can.

Comment author: peter_hurford 05 September 2013 02:22:11AM *  1 point [-]

That seems strange. Why then bother do anything at all?

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2013 12:02:10PM 0 points [-]

I don't know. The thing that sounds most plausible to me is because I like it and I certainly don't like to think about sufferings of other creatures.

Comment author: Marcy_Azraelle 01 August 2013 08:45:53AM 0 points [-]

I tried it in my youth but due to being a picky eater and not really planning it well, the doctor told my parents to give me more meat after I became anemic.

I'm interested in starting it up again in the future, when I learn a bit more about cooking and everything.

The weird thing is that I already ignore almost all meats most of the time (I pretty much eat only fish) so I don't know how going the extra mile and cutting them out completely could have much of an effect...

Comment author: MTGandP 01 August 2013 02:59:53PM 0 points [-]

There are lots of resources on the Internet about veg health. Vegan Health is an informative website that's run by nutritionists who specialize in vegan diets. Here is their article on iron.

Comment author: Drayin 01 August 2013 02:19:53PM 0 points [-]

When I first went Veg I became anemic, now I take an iron pill daily and that seems to fix the problem completely, I also eat a cereal which is high in iron (additionally any sort of vegan meat substitute often is fortified with iron).

Comment author: peter_hurford 01 August 2013 01:23:40PM 4 points [-]

I'm passing along advice I heard from a friend. I cannot vouch for it's accuracy or my friend's expertise. Follow at your own risk:

If anaemia is the main stumbling block, all the major vegan protein sources are also high in iron: lentils, chickpeas, beans. Avoid spinach, since there seems to be a good chance it hinders absorption. Do, however, get vast amounts of Vitamin C, which facilitates absorption: eat an orange a day, squeeze fresh lemon juice into as many dishes as possible, and eat plenty of broccoli, which has respectable vitamin C and iron content.

Comment author: Mestroyer 01 August 2013 11:11:35AM 0 points [-]

Fish are smaller than most of the alternative animals. The oft-neglected individual to meat ratio is more than a reasonable ratio between subjective probabilities that the animal in question is sentient.

There's also this.

Comment author: shminux 29 July 2013 09:10:35PM 0 points [-]

Not sure if this has been linked before. Some quotes:

A week tomorrow, at an exclusive west London venue, the most expensive beefburger in history will be nervously cooked and served before an invited audience. Costing somewhere in the region of £250,000, the 5oz burger will be composed of synthetic meat, grown in a laboratory from the stem cells of a slaughtered cow.

One assessment, published in 2011 by scientists from Oxford University, estimated that cultured meat uses far less energy than most other forms, apart from chicken, and some 45 per cent less energy than beef, the most environmentally destructive meat.

They also found that synthetic meat needs 99 per cent less land than livestock, between 82 and 96 per cent less water, and produces between 78 and 95 per cent less greenhouse gas. In terms of relative environmental damage, there was no contest.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which runs a scheme offering a prize of $1m (£660,000) for the first person or organisation to produce artificial chicken meat, said that cultured meat would be ethically acceptable if it meant less slaughtering.

"We do support lab-grown meat if it means fewer animals are eaten. Anything that reduces the suffering of animals would be welcome," said Ben Williamson, a Peta spokesman.

Comment author: TabAtkins 27 July 2013 03:42:32PM 0 points [-]

As a mostly-vegetarian person myself, I find this article's primary moral point very unconvincing.

Yes, factory farms are terrible, and we should make them illegal. But not all meat is raised on factory farms. Chickens and cattle who are raised ethically (which can still produce decent yields, though obviously less than factory farms) have lower levels of stress hormones than comparable wild animals. We can't measure happiness directly in these low-light animals, but stress hormones are a very good analogue for an enjoyable life, and we know that high levels are directly linked to poorer health outcomes (and thus likely suffering).

It's simply not that hard to raise food animals in a way that makes them better off than wild animals, and so unless you're strongly in the "reform nature" transhumanist strain, ethical animal farming is at least somewhat of a positive over not farming at all.

(I'm personally vegetarian by ecological reasons, and abstain from eating some animals due to moral compunction against eating things likely to be sentient.)

Comment author: MugaSofer 29 July 2013 07:00:14AM 0 points [-]

Well, there's even more debate over the criteria for "this entity's death is sad" than "this entity's suffering is sad". Since, as other posters have noted, the massively overwhelming majority of meat is factory-farmed, this point still seems pretty important while being much easier to show.

Comment author: Jabberslythe 28 July 2013 07:42:49PM 0 points [-]

Chickens and cattle who are raised ethically (which can still produce decent yields, though obviously less than factory farms) have lower levels of stress hormones than comparable wild animals.

Do you happen to have a source for this? Not that I particularly doubt this, but it would be useful information.

Comment author: peter_hurford 27 July 2013 06:25:02PM 2 points [-]

But not all meat is raised on factory farms.

This is correct. But the vast, vast majority of meat the typical consumer is likely to run into is raised on factory farms, so it's essentially true to equate meat with factory farmed meat.

Comment author: MTGandP 27 July 2013 05:32:50PM *  3 points [-]

It's simply not that hard to raise food animals in a way that makes them better off than wild animals

And yet it's extraordinarily difficult to actually find meat from animals that were raised truly humanely. See this comment.

Also, I think the standard one should apply is whether an animal has a good life, not whether it as a life better than it would if it were in the wild. If you have a life that is very not worth living, it would better to not exist than to move up to having a life that is only moderately not worth living.

Ninjaedit: Actually, I think I misunderstood your point about farm animals having lives better than wild animals. Are you saying that it's worth it to have non-factory-farmed farm animals when their lives are better than those of comparable wild animals, because they displace the existence of those wild animals?

Comment author: Jiro 26 July 2013 06:52:15PM 1 point [-]

To those who say that vegetarianism is too hard, I’d like to simply challenge you to just try it for a few days.

People who say that vegetarianism is too hard generally don't mean that being too hard is the only reason they won't do it.

Comment author: MugaSofer 29 July 2013 07:03:03AM 2 points [-]

Well, I can't see the true meaning in their hearts or whatever, but I have definitely had people admit that vegetarianism is morally obligatory, only to claim they are completely incapable of doing anything about this because it just tastes so good. (I was raised vegetarian, so I of course simply don't know what I'm missing.)

Comment author: peter_hurford 26 July 2013 08:41:43PM 2 points [-]

I have seen people pretty startled by the ease of vegetarianism once they take it on as a challenge, however.

Comment author: DxE 26 July 2013 06:57:13PM 0 points [-]

Agreed. The proper translation of "too hard" is usually "I don't care."

Comment author: ygert 26 July 2013 10:48:53PM 8 points [-]

That is to say, "the difficulty is higher than the amount I care."

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 26 July 2013 06:49:00PM 3 points [-]

By the way, for everyone who's interested in convincing people that animals suffer and that animal suffering is morally relevant, I recommend reading (and quoting to people) Stanislaw Lem's short story "The Seventh Sally, or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good". I found it to be possibly the most emotionally and logically salient argument for the "suffering matters, no matter what sort" position I've ever read. Here's the most relevant passage (Klapaucius's reply to Trurl arguing that his creations are mere simulacra, and so are not capable of real suffering):

"Come now, don't pretend not to understand what I'm saying, I know you're not that stupid! A phonograph record won't run errands for you, won't beg for mercy or fall on its knees! You say there's no way of knowing whether Excelcius's subjects groan, when beaten, purely because of the electrons hopping about inside—like wheels grinding out the mimicry of a voice—or whether they really groan, that is, because they honestly experience the pain? A pretty distinction, this! No, Trurl, a sufferer is not one who hands you his suffering, that you may touch it, weigh it, bite it like a coin; a sufferer is one who behaves like a sufferer! Prove to me here and now, once and for all, that they do not feel, that they do not think, that they do not in any way exist as being conscious of their enclosure between the two abysses of oblivion—the abyss before birth and the abyss that follows death—prove this to me, Trurl, and I'll leave you be! Prove that you only imitated suffering, and did not create it!"

"You know perfectly well that's impossible," answered Trurl quietly, "Even before I took my instruments in hand, when the box was still empty, I had to anticipate the possibility of precisely such a proof—in order to rule it out. ...

The entire story is well worth a read for anyone interested in this debate.

Comment author: Moss_Piglet 04 September 2013 05:27:37PM 0 points [-]

I think part of the problem here is that there is still an unsupported assumption, a pretty big one, at the core of the argument which it seems like people aren't seriously addressing. Why is it exactly we should be going around trying to prevent suffering in the first place?

Obviously most of us already care about suffering, at least under certain circumstances, because of the human drive of empathy. And if you or the OP were to say "I am upset by the suffering of these animals because I empathize with them, and as such here is a solution I would endorse..." then that would be fine; I can't see any flaw in that argument at all. Of course it's not terribly convincing, which is a bit of an issue of efficiency if you want to get other people on board with your plan, but waving the flag of morality seems like a Dark Side sort of solution; it puts a pretty big target on someone's back when they have to essentially swear team allegiance before they're allowed to engage with the argument critically. An ethical argument is not exempt from having to have a solid foundation; assumptions should be acknowledged and named where reasonably possible if the objective is to present a strong argument.

This is especially problematic because this argument implicitly calls for restrictions on the behavior of people who don't agree with it's assumptions. People using very similar arguments have already severely restricted access to lab animals for medical / biological experimentation, so it's hardly unreasonable to see that these sorts of arguments have potential real-world political traction. If someone is trying to control my behavior, I certainly expect an explanation better than 'the alternative would upset me'!

I get that, in the long-run, empaths win and the sphere of things-we-care-about keeps expanding. But since this is a blog about rationality, maybe we could at least naming empathy as the motivator for these sorts of posts rather than dressing it all up in morality?

Comment author: Moss_Piglet 04 September 2013 05:28:34PM 1 point [-]

I misread the comment above mine; please ignore comment this as it is off-topic.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 September 2013 04:30:54PM 0 points [-]

Still, this doesn't answer, why should I care?

Comment author: aelephant 26 July 2013 11:47:41AM 4 points [-]

If dogs & cats were raised specifically to be eaten & not involved socially in our lives as if they were members of the family, I don't think I'd care about them any more than I care about chickens or cows.

This article seems to assume that I oppose all suffering everywhere, which I'm not sure is true. Getting caught stealing causes suffering to the thief and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I care about chickens & cows significantly less than I care about thieves because thieves are at least human.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 September 2013 04:35:03PM 0 points [-]

are at least human

How does this make you care?

Comment author: aelephant 04 September 2013 11:31:38PM 4 points [-]

To me morality is an agreement that people can come to with one another. Since animals can't come to agreements with one another, what happens between animals is amoral. It isn't immoral when a bird kills a worm or a cat kills a rat and it doesn't make me feel bad either. Humans could make agreements between themselves about how they want to treat other animals, but humans can't make agreements with other animals. For this reason, I consider all interactions with animals to be outside the realm of morality, although there are certain behaviors that disgust me & that are probably indicative of mental illness & a sign that someone is probably a danger to others (eg torturing kittens).

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2013 01:01:30AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the answer, I think I formulated my original question incorrectly: why do you care about human suffering?

Comment author: aelephant 06 September 2013 12:11:20AM 2 points [-]

Don't know. I imagine any answer I could produce would be a rationalization.

Comment author: Salemicus 04 September 2013 11:40:36PM 2 points [-]

What about the way we treat others with whom we can't come to agreements? Is that a matter of morality? For example, consider young children. I suspect most people regard cruelty to a young child as a particular moral horror, precisely because the child cannot argue back or defend itself. Indeed, I would argue that our moral obligations are strongest to groups such as children.

Comment author: aelephant 06 September 2013 12:10:06AM 2 points [-]

To be completely honest, I agree with you but find it hard to come up for a good argument for why that should be. One way I've thought about it in the past is that the parents or caretakers of a child are sort of like stewards of a property that will be inherited one day. If I'm going to inherit a mansion from my grandfather on my 18th birthday, my parents can't arbitrarily decide to burn it down when I'm 17 & 364 days old. Harming children (physically or emotionally) is damaging the person they will be when they are an adult in a similar way.

Comment author: Solitaire 06 January 2014 12:49:43PM 0 points [-]

What about a mentally disabled person, or other groups of humans who will never be capable of consciously entering into a 'moral agreement' with society? Should they also be considered 'outside the realm of morality'? What makes them different from an animal, other than anthropocentricism?

Comment author: aelephant 10 January 2014 02:44:52AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I consider them outside the realm of morality. If a mentally disabled person committed murder, for example, he or she could not be held morally liable for their actions -- instead the parent or guardian has the moral & legal responsibility for making sure that he or she doesn't steal, kill, etc.

Comment author: Mestroyer 10 January 2014 03:44:27AM -1 points [-]

So are you saying it should only be considered "wrong" to torture mentally disabled people because of agreements made between non-mentally-disabled people, and if non-mentally-disabled people made a different agreement, then it would be okay?

Say the only beings in existence are you and a mentally disabled person. Are you bound by any morality in how you treat them?

Comment author: Jiro 06 September 2013 10:18:00PM -1 points [-]

By this reasoning, if the child is 5 years old but the world is going to be hit by an asteroid tomorrow, unavoidably killing everyone, it would be okay to be cruel to the child.

To save the original idea, I'd suggest modifying it to distinguish between having impaired ability to come to agreements and not having the ability to come to agreements. Children are generally in the former category, at least if they can speak and reason. This extends to more than just children; you shouldn't take advantage of someone who's stupid, but you can "take advantage" of the fact that a stick of broccoli doesn't understand what it means to be eaten and can't run away anyway.

Comment author: aelephant 06 September 2013 11:05:56PM 0 points [-]

Right. Like I said, I find it hard to come up with a good argument. I don't like arguments that extend things into the future, because everything has to get all probabilistic. Is it possible to prove that any particular child is going to grow into an adult? Nope.

Comment author: Watercressed 07 September 2013 02:17:01AM *  0 points [-]

But if we're 99.9% confident that a child is going to die (say, they have a very terminal disease), is being cruel to the child 99.99% less bad?

Comment author: wedrifid 07 September 2013 08:36:14AM *  1 point [-]

But if we're 99.9% confident that a child is going to die (say, they have a very terminal disease), is being cruel to the child 99.99% less bad?

No.

(If this is making some clever rhetorical point then perhaps consider a quotation? Right now it is just a rather easy question.)

Comment author: Jabberslythe 26 July 2013 11:22:22PM -2 points [-]

If you found that you cared much more about your present self than your future self, you might reflect on that and decide that because those two things are broadly similar you would want to change your mind about this case. Even if those selves are not counted as such by your sentiments right now.

This article is trying to get you to undertake similar reflections about pets and humans vs. other animals.

Comment author: MTGandP 26 July 2013 04:11:32PM 2 points [-]

Why don't you care about non-humans? If other animals suffer in roughly the same way as humans, why should it matter at all what species they belong to?

Getting caught stealing causes suffering to the thief and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

In this case I think that's justified because catching a thief leads to less suffering overall than failing to catch the thief.

Comment author: Vaniver 26 July 2013 05:58:20PM 5 points [-]

In this case I think that's justified because catching a thief leads to less suffering overall than failing to catch the thief.

Not everyone has harm (avoidance) as their primary moral value; many people would voluntarily accept harm to have more purity, autonomy, or economic efficiency, to give three examples.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 July 2013 09:46:14AM 0 points [-]

many people would voluntarily accept harm to have more ... economic efficiency

That's usually the result of confusion.

Comment author: Vaniver 27 July 2013 02:26:00PM 2 points [-]

That's usually the result of confusion.

That story strikes me as accepting harm to have more economic activity. I was thinking more of trading off physical or emotional health for wealth-generating abilities or opportunities, or institutions which don't invest in care and thus come off as soulless.

Comment author: aelephant 27 July 2013 01:36:38AM 4 points [-]

If a moral theory accepted and acted upon by all moral people led to an average decrease in suffering, I'd take that as a sign that it was doing something right. For example, if no one initiated violence against anyone else (except in self defense), I have a hard time imagining how that could create more net suffering though it certainly would create more suffering for the subset of the population who previously used violence to get what they wanted.

Comment author: Jabberslythe 26 July 2013 07:42:27PM 0 points [-]

I don't think that very many people would except extreme harm to have these things, though. I used to think that I valued some non-experiential things very strongly, but I don't think that I was taking seriously how strong my preference not to be tortured is. And for most people I don't think there are peak levels of those three things that could outweigh torture.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 26 July 2013 06:36:55PM 2 points [-]

While I definitely value autonomy (and, to a lesser extent, some sorts of purity), and would trade away some pleasure or happiness to get those things, a theory of harm could include autonomy, purity, etc., by counting lack of satisfaction of preferences for those things as harm.

Comment author: Vaniver 26 July 2013 08:22:22PM 4 points [-]

I mean harm as one of the moral foundations. It seems like a five-factor model of morality fits human intuitions better than contorting everything into feeding into one morality and calling it 'harm' or 'weal' or something else.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2013 12:18:14PM 2 points [-]

Indeed, few westerners appear to be that bothered that it is customary to eat dog meat in China.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 25 July 2013 03:32:09AM 3 points [-]

Starting from the perspective that the best way to cause a behavior change is to convince System 1 of something rather than System 2, one strategy for convincing people that they should care about animal suffering is to provide more opportunities for them to interact with non-pet animals in a substantial way (so not at a zoo). I have essentially no direct experience with animals other than cats, dogs, and the like.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 25 July 2013 05:11:26AM *  4 points [-]

Well, in the days when most people farmed their own meat, they had much less compunction about killing their livestock.

Comment author: MTGandP 25 July 2013 10:01:59PM 5 points [-]

At the same time, they treated their animals a lot better than factory farms do.

Comment author: imaginaryphiend 25 July 2013 03:22:36AM *  14 points [-]

My interesting perspective is that I raise Scottish Highland cattle and keep my own back yard chicken coop and also enjoy the company of my family pets. I am also finding my self more and more sympathetic to the sentiments and reasoning of the vegan position when it comes to food politics.

My animals feel and interact socially. They have personal, unique characters - Yes, even the chickens. They display emotions, trust, empathize, grieve... They are fellow beings deserving of our care and compassion[.]

My 2000 lb bull likes to nuzzle and enjoys being brushed. If any of the bovines in my care see me with a pail they anticipate a treat of grains and will come at a run. They will come when called and some even know their names. They enjoy nice grass fed open pastures and woods and clean water and shelter and even protection from predators so that i am quite confident that they have a better quality of life than the wild deer in the neighborhood.

My dogs, similarly have a better life than the wild koyotes. The chickens have it pretty good too in their nursing home (coop) for aged chickens not providing their eggs part of the bargain any more - another story.

But... The kind of farming i am doing is not commercially viable. I look around at many of the other farmers i know and i see that the only ones who are succeeding commercially are the ones growing bigger and engaging in the more economically rewarding (short to medium term, personal business economics horizons) practices of industrial farming.

The genersl comsuming public wants their cake (conveniently packaged, cheap, sugar coated, fat saturated and ready for them in air conditioned mega food boutiques) and want to eat it too. They want variety in and out of season from wherever it can be sourced and they'll buy it at the best price offered regardless of the back story of how it got there.

The food industry/industrial complex is business. It doesn't have a conscience. It has a bottom line. It tries to assist in creating to some extent the demands of the general comsumer, but mostly it just responds to consumer demand in ways that will best make it $$$$.

I've discovered in trying to farm ethically that if i'm not subsidizing my farm operation with outside income, and in effect therefore subsidizing my customers, then i can't afford to farm. Even selling directly to my customers i cannot compete on price with the supermarkets. That's telling. Industrial, factory farming is the response to the demands of the general consumer, the indifferent and little caring or hardly consciencous general consumer.

I would like to be able to say that the great masses of people can have what they want and be assured that animals will be treated ethically and humanely and with dignity and caring treatment, but i think the reality is that as long as people can maintain their ignorance about how things work they will continue to consume without conscience - and the producers will do whatever it takes to survive and thrive in the very competitive and demanding business that is farming.

Maybe population pressures will drive us to better practices and vegetarian or vegan values will win out. I don't know, but i suspect that our generally omnivorous population will likely not change their ways as long as they can maintain their protective mix of ignorance, denial and indifference.

'If' the consumer can be offered tastier, more convenient, cheaper alternatives... But, of course, anyone trying to come up with those alternative would have to compete openly with the powers that be, the established systems we have in place that many have vested interests in. Tuff to fight with the momentum of the way things are when many are fighting to maintain things the way they and some are even fighting for their notions of how things used to be in 'the good old days'.

If you eat eggs or dairy or beef, lamb, chicken, pork etc and you don't know the personal particulars of the animals or animal products you are consuming, then you likely are contributing to the inhumane exploitation of animals in our factory farming industrial complex food supply system ---

I have no simple solutions or grand ideas of how to change things. I'm just another voice in the conversation, with, hopefully, a perspective helpful to the ongoing narrative.

i

Comment author: Ishaan 06 January 2014 01:48:41PM *  -1 points [-]

So, you are in the position of interacting with commonly eaten animals on a daily basis, you care about the animals enough to name them, and you're philosophically inclined...which means I have a question for you:

Having known these animals and having developed a relationship with them, and knowing that they have lived a better life than they would have in the wild, would you feel intellectually and emotionally comfortable killing and personally eating any of them for meat? What about selling them for slaughter? Have you ever done so?

(if your answer change depending on species, please specify)

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 25 July 2013 03:28:48AM 1 point [-]

Please break this up into paragraphs.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:10:38AM *  0 points [-]

Ignoring economic/environmental cost, how many chickens would you create and breed into factory-farming suffering, in exchange for one additional QALY? That is, you wouldn't make the trade unless it took fewer than this number of farmed chickens.

(answers may be very small (less than 1) if you value avoiding chicken suffering more than healthy human life-years) or even negative if you'd give up human lives to create more suffering chickens.

(If you think factory-farmed chickens have lives worth creating, please don't answer the poll, as your answer of infinity will throw off the average - you can vote "yes" or "indifferent" to the poll below this instead; this poll is mostly for people who answer "no" to it)

(I don't claim that chickens can actually be traded for human QALY - I still haven't gotten the ritual exactly working yet).

Submitting...

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 26 July 2013 05:06:16AM 0 points [-]

Median answer - of 100 factory chickens (so 150 chicken-suffering-years) : 1 human QALY - impresses me.

Quite a few people take animal suffering pretty seriously. It must feel odd to have society's rules so far removed from that - like serious abortion-is-murder believers.

Comment author: Vaniver 26 July 2013 08:45:39PM 1 point [-]

Like Hedonic_Treader points out, I think you have the longevity wrong, which may make the question somewhat difficult to answer. If 8 chicken lifespans represents one year, then saying "I think factory farming one chicken balances out one human life" represents an answer of 8, not an answer of 1.

I don't think that has a huge impact on the analysis, though, because the breakdown at present looks like this (and I would expect that, at most, this would impact the Less than 1 group):

Less than 1: There are 2 0.4s and a 0.5. Low: Two 2s and a 20. Medium: 2 100s and a 1600. High: 2 millions, one 10 trillion, and one quadrillion.

About half think that chicken lives and human lives are roughly comparable; about a quarter think human lives are more valuable; about a quarter think human lives are much more valuable (of the 13 who have responded to this poll, which is much less than the number which responded to the other poll).

Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2013 05:40:15AM 0 points [-]

100 factory chickens (so 150 chicken-suffering-years)

How does 100 factory chickens add up to 150 chicken-suffering-years? Did you mean months?

Comment author: RomeoStevens 26 July 2013 06:07:22AM 0 points [-]

they live 1.5 years each?

Comment author: Desrtopa 26 July 2013 06:16:06AM 1 point [-]

Chickens factory farmed for meat don't live anywhere near that long. 1.5 months per chicken destined for broiler meat is about the right figure.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 27 July 2013 04:27:45AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I took 1.5yr from another comment, which which I guess might be for egg layers or the natural lifespan. I really should have specified lifespan in the poll.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 26 July 2013 08:20:50AM 0 points [-]

they go from baby to full grown that fast? I had no idea.

Comment author: Ruairi 26 July 2013 12:08:42PM *  1 point [-]

They are often given substances to make them grow fast and big, this often leads to problems like their legs breaking.

Comment author: Jabberslythe 27 July 2013 12:05:56AM 0 points [-]

They are also bred to mature faster and this can lead to similar problems I think. Manipulating the lighting to affect their circadian rhythm also helps make them mature faster.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 July 2013 04:26:06AM 0 points [-]

One additional QALY for whom? A human stranger? A human friend? Me?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 26 July 2013 04:57:14AM *  3 points [-]

I was thinking of the average human. So 1 part you, 20 parts friend, 10 parts family, 50 parts colleague, 6 billion parts stranger. Of course it shouldn't matter, since I said economic constraints don't apply. Assume everyone gets a QALY and 6 billion times your answer in chickens are farmed.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 25 July 2013 02:34:28AM 1 point [-]

Are we assuming an average lifespan for a factory farmed chicken? That would be about 1.5 months. And do you perhaps mean numbers 0<x<1 rather than negative numbers?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:36:47AM 0 points [-]

No, I meant that someone who answers -0.001 would prefer removing 1000 human QALY in order to prevent the creation of a single factory farmed chicken. Though I wouldn't expect any such answers. It's a question about a trade.

Comment author: MTGandP 25 July 2013 03:01:33AM 2 points [-]

But shouldn't such a person answer 0.001, not -0.001?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 03:34:11AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I realized this as I as making a sandwich and came back to say so :) I'll leave my mistake unedited as a warning to others. -.0001 means what I said but with "prevent the creation" being "create". The sign changes the sign of one of the items in the exchange.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 25 July 2013 02:32:47AM *  3 points [-]

Your poll does not seem to accept ∞, "infinity", or any variant thereof. (Note: my answer is not motivated by thinking that the chickens have lives worth creating.)

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:35:14AM 1 point [-]

Yeah, if your answer would be infinity, just answer "yes" to the other poll. I noticed this too :)

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 25 July 2013 02:44:51AM 2 points [-]

But wait; my answer to the other poll is not "yes". I mean... what? Either I am confused or you are.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 26 July 2013 04:59:14AM 1 point [-]

Ok - I didn't see your "Note" at first. I'm not sure what you mean. Presumably your answer would be indifferent or yes, though. Otherwise, could you explain?

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 26 July 2013 05:37:06AM 2 points [-]

It's simple: I am willing to create as many factory-farmed chickens as you like for a QALY. A million? Sure. 3^^^3? Sure. I just don't care about the chickens; they are not a factor in the calculation; I am getting a free QALY. So my answer to the first question is "infinity".

My answer to the second question is "indifferent", although depending on how you construe "suffering", it could also be "No".

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 27 July 2013 04:32:07AM 0 points [-]

I have genuine uncertainty as to the nature of farmed chicken suffering - enough that I'd say it's bad to create your average meat-farmed chicken - otherwise I'd be right there with you at 10^20 or something similarly ridiculous.

The suggestion to genetically engineer suffering-knockout chicken seems a good one (though I'd have some residual uncertainty even then).

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 27 July 2013 04:48:23AM 1 point [-]

Sure, fair enough, I was just saying that the polls don't have any way for me to represent my position.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:16:15AM *  1 point [-]

Do you think factory-farmed-chicken-lives are worth living? That is, if you could create infinitely many of them at no material cost would you do so? Please don't consider the economic value of chickens; suppose this marginal chicken has no practical use whatsoever. Further, it's not an option to create them and then transport them to chicken-rescue pleasure-domes.

Submitting...

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:17:53AM *  0 points [-]

Sorry about the grammatical ambiguity. "No" means you'd rather the chicken never existed, not that you'd rather the universe never existed. I just mean roughly that you prefer the chicken not exist.

Comment author: lavalamp 25 July 2013 12:58:21AM 1 point [-]

This appears to be an argument for buying ethically raised meats instead of factory farmed meats, not an argument for never eating meat.

Comment author: MTGandP 25 July 2013 03:04:54AM 2 points [-]

Here is a comment that addresses this point.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 24 July 2013 08:12:30PM *  5 points [-]

Thank you for writing this. For future reference, I am much more convinced by arguments that animals suffer in a way that is similar to how humans suffer (e.g. in a way that, if I saw it, would activate the same neurons in my head that activate when I see a human suffer) than by arguments that animals suffer in some more abstract sense, and I expect that I'm not alone in this preference.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 September 2013 03:58:32PM 0 points [-]

Why does it matter / why do you care about human suffering?

Comment author: DanielLC 26 July 2013 03:59:19AM 2 points [-]

If you were unable to feel a specific unpleasant emotion, would you care about other people feeling it?

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 09:19:37PM 5 points [-]

I'm not clear as to what would count as evidence toward satisfying your preference. Do you need fMRI scans of animals? Those probably exist.

Nonhuman animals react in very analogous ways to analogous painful stimuli.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 24 July 2013 09:21:19PM 1 point [-]

Something like that would help. I would also say "videos of animals suffering," but I anticipate already reacting negatively to those in a way that is similar to how I would react negatively to videos of humans suffering, so that's probably unnecessary.

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 10:11:41PM 6 points [-]
Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 25 July 2013 03:28:14AM 1 point [-]

Thanks!

Comment author: Grant 24 July 2013 08:06:40PM *  1 point [-]

Idea: if you're very interested in promoting veganism or vegitarianism, help make it taste better, or invest in or donate to those who are helping make it taste better. As my other much-downvoted comment showed, I am very skeptical that appeals to altruism will have nearly as much of an affect as appeals to self-interest, especially outside of this community. I believe most people eat meat because it just tastes better than their alternatives.

Grown crops are far more efficient to produce than livestock, so there are plenty of other good reasons to transition away from the use of livestock in agriculture. If steak were made to "grow on trees", why pay all that extra for the real thing? If you lower the cost of vegetarianism by improving taste, more people will adopt it. If they don't adopt it they'll still be more likely to forgo meats for vegetarian dishes if those dishes taste better.

In the case of low-quality meats (e.g. McDonalds) the taste bar isn't even set very high.

When I first decided to be a vegetarian, I simply switched from tasty hamburgers to tasty veggieburgers and there was no problem at all.

I think your sample size might have lead you astray here. My personal experience is exactly the opposite. That said, I looked for studies of meat vs. faux meat taste and didn't find anything. I wonder if a love of meat over alternatives is innate or is learned, and if there exist vegetarian recipes which really do taste as good as the real thing.

Comment author: Solitaire 06 January 2014 01:53:23PM 0 points [-]

When I envision a hypothetical future in which humans don't consume meat, I don't imagine everyone getting their protein from some kind of tank-grown super-tasty 'I Can't Believe It's Not McDonalds!' meat substitute . The meat-heavy diet of Western societies has no basis in evolutionary terms and I don't see why we should seek to perpetuate this relatively modern obsession and dietary imbalance. Contrary to what many meat eaters think, a vegan diet can be incredibly varied and tasty once you get used to cooking using a wider variety of herbs, spices and ingredients which aren't currently mainstream in Western cuisine. I personally find things like smoked tofu, coconut oil and milk and nuts like pistachios and cashews to be every bit as tasty as any meat product. The consumption of large quantities of red meat and animal-derived fats is cultural, not essential, and in terms of nuitrition not even especially desirable. The massive over-consumption of bovine dairy products is particularly nonsensical when more efficient, more nutritional alternatives exist.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 26 July 2013 11:34:11AM 2 points [-]

I believe most people eat meat because it just tastes better than their alternatives.

Data point: I do.

In the case of low-quality meats (e.g. McDonalds) the taste bar isn't even set very high.

This is probably low-status, but I do prefer the taste of meat even in the junk foods to most of the alternatives. In my experience, most of the alternatives are significantly improved by adding some meat to them.

I wonder if ... there exist vegetarian recipes which really do taste as good as the real thing.

Most likely, no. Otherwise we would already see them sold everywhere. Unless they were invented yesterday, or are extra expensive, or something like that.

Comment author: Ruairi 25 July 2013 09:24:50AM 1 point [-]

Perhaps, but some preliminary findings show that online ads may be very effective (Peter posted about this on LW recently). Hopefully more research into effective outreach will be done in the future.

Comment author: Nornagest 24 July 2013 11:10:38PM *  3 points [-]

I think your sample size might have lead you astray here. My personal experience is exactly the opposite. That said, I looked for studies of meat vs. faux meat taste and didn't find anything.

Well, as a meat-eater I've got to admit that meat substitutes have come a long way in the last few years. A couple days ago I ended up eating vegan burgers which would have passed muster as mediocre cow, and vegetarian sausage tends to be fairly acceptable as well. I can't say the same for anything made from chunks too big to stir-fry, though, and I've never eaten any vegetarian products passing as rare meat, which I tend to prefer.

Comment author: Xodarap 24 July 2013 10:46:07PM 4 points [-]

My personal experience is exactly the opposite

It varies a lot by brand. The food columnist for the New York Times couldn't tell that Beyond Meat wasn't chicken, for example.

Comment author: Grant 24 July 2013 11:09:49PM 2 points [-]

Good article, thanks. The author does say the taste was quite different from chicken, you just can't tell when its in a burrito as the chicken is mostly used for texture. The producer's website is here.

Another idea, with potentially better returns than the above: invest in faux-meat producers. There appear to be plenty of them.

Comment author: Xodarap 25 July 2013 12:29:38AM *  2 points [-]

I agree that this is potentially a high-impact avenue. New harvest is a charity which sponsors meat substitutes, both plant based and tissue engineered, if you are interested.

Comment author: Ruairi 25 July 2013 09:22:42AM 2 points [-]

You seem to be missing a link? Perhaps he meant to link to the group "new harvest".

Comment author: Xodarap 26 July 2013 12:37:06AM 1 point [-]

Thanks ruari. I had forgotten the http, which apparently makes the link invisible.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 July 2013 05:42:47PM 9 points [-]

Thus, by being vegetarian, you are saving 26 land animals a year

I don't quite understand in which meaning is the word "save" used here.

It seems to me that an equivalent statement would be "After a short period of adjustment, you being a vegetarian would result in 26 land animals not existing any more (as in, not being born)".

In the ultimate case of everyone becoming a full vegetarian, domestic animals raised for meat would become endangered species in danger of extinction. I don't think it counts as "saving".

Comment author: MugaSofer 29 July 2013 07:26:14AM -1 points [-]

Well, "not existing anymore" sounds more like they existed and you got rid of them (i.e. mercy killing) rather than prevented them being created.

I am honestly unsure if it's worth retaining intended-for-factory-farming breeds; I would imagine, in any case, that tame "farm animals" would remain extant in zoos, though.

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 09:16:49PM 3 points [-]

"Save" as in "saved" from a life of suffering.

Comment author: Swimmer963 24 July 2013 08:20:29PM *  10 points [-]

I agree with you on the technicality-it's a weird use of the word "save". Philosophically I agree with the original poster. As an individual who can suffer, I would prefer to not exist (edit: not have existed in the first place) than to live my life in a factory farm.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 July 2013 08:45:37PM -1 points [-]

As an individual who can suffer, I would prefer to not exist than to live my life in a factory farm.

Are you willing to make that choice for others?

If you see a creature living in a factory farm and have an opportunity to save it from the rest of its existence, will you kill it?

Comment author: DanielLC 26 July 2013 04:03:51AM 2 points [-]

Are you willing to make that choice for others?

As opposed to what? I can't not make a choice. I can either buy meat, and choose for them to live a painful existence, or not buy meat, and choose for them not to. It's not as if I can offer them the opportunity to go back in time and kill their own grandfathers and make the choice for themselves.

Comment author: Lumifer 26 July 2013 04:10:22AM *  -1 points [-]

A simple example of making a choice for others is making meat consumption illegal.

However this particular question was based on the Swimmer's question before editing which I understood as preferring suicide to living in a factory farm. If so, making a choice for other implies killing the other (animal) so that it does not continue to suffer on the farm.

Comment author: DanielLC 26 July 2013 05:31:12AM 2 points [-]

I'm fine with euthanasia. I don't think failing to eat meat causes it, though.

Comment author: Swimmer963 24 July 2013 08:54:05PM 5 points [-]

will you kill it?

Whoa. I didn't say that if I was living in factory farm, I would prefer to be killed. I might, and I might seek suicide, but that's a hard choice, because the will-to-live-above-all-else exists and is quite strong (for good evolutionary reasons). Also, approaching death is scary = suffering. So no, I wouldn't make that choice for another person, if I couldn't communicate with them and ask. If I could ask them, I'm not sure.

(This is a situation I've imagined myself in, i.e. if I have a patient someday who is able to convince me that they have made a rational decision that they want to commit assisted suicide. I can't model myself well enough to know what I'd do in that situation either.)

An individual that doesn't exist in the first place, i.e. because of better birth control or because fewer animals are farmed for food, doesn't exist to have to make a choice; at least that's how I see it. I could conceive of people thinking they're philosophically the same situation, but I strongly think that they aren't.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 July 2013 09:06:46PM *  -1 points [-]

I didn't say that if I was living in factory farm, I would prefer to be killed.

To quote you to you, "I would prefer to not exist than to live my life in a factory farm."

That's a pretty unambiguous statement. Maybe you want to modify it?

EDIT: Ah, I see you modified it. But that's not really a choice: the past is fixed. It's only an expression of a wish that the past were different. And, of course, it it were realized there would be no you to make the choice...

Comment author: Nisan 26 July 2013 02:45:20AM 3 points [-]

An agent can have a preference to never have existed, operationalized as a tendency to act in such a way that agents that act that way are less likely to come into existence; e.g., if agent A creates agent B because A believes B will do X, and if B does not want to have existed, then B could refrain from doing X for that reason.

Comment author: Swimmer963 24 July 2013 09:10:04PM *  2 points [-]

I went back and edited it. I personally thought it was ambiguous tending in the direction of not exist=never have existed in the first place, as opposed to 'stop existing'. Illusion of transparency, etc.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 July 2013 05:52:16PM 3 points [-]

I think Peter is concerned about individual animals and not about the abstract/semantic fence we draw about some of them, labelling it their "species". But you're right to point out that the word "save" is used in a very unusual way. If we're talking about factory farmed animals, abstaining from consumption prevents the existence of individual beings that live short and miserable lives with slaughter at the end. Whether we call this "saving" or not, I regard it as something I want to be done more often in the world.

Comment author: pianoforte611 24 July 2013 02:06:57PM *  2 points [-]

Consider the two groups of animals.

Group A consists of factory farmed animals which suffer a total of X units of pain in their lives. Group B consists of animals in the wild that also suffer a total of X units of pain in their lives*

We could try to reduce suffering by preventing Group A's existence (your suggestion), or we could try to reduce suffering by preventing Group B's existence. Ignoring convenience why should we choose your option?

*I used the groups so as to address the fact that the individual animals may suffer different amounts.

Comment author: Solitaire 05 January 2014 11:03:58PM 0 points [-]

Perhaps the ultimate rational position for the continued survival of humans and the reduction of suffering would be to have no animals at all and turn all available land mass over to trees for oxygen and the growing of crops for some kind of sustainably producible, nutritionally perfect food (perhaps a further developed version of the Soylent reference above), but pure rationality aside, don't we also value something that can't so easily be quantified about wild animals and the wild environment? I for one take great pleasure from the diversity of life exhibited on our planet. I would feel pretty depressed if I knew the future survival of life was predicated on such cold, unappealing utility alone.

Comment author: hyporational 06 January 2014 09:41:11AM 0 points [-]

don't we also value something that can't so easily be quantified about wild animals and the wild environment?

This an interestingly common position (that I share) considering how little time people spend in the nature. What exactly is it that I value, some vague idea about wildlife that can't be had without diverse wildlife existing somewhere out there? I like to watch nature documentaries, but I'm not sure what exactly I value in them.

Comment author: Solitaire 06 January 2014 12:24:22PM 0 points [-]

I do agree with you that many people have a romanticised idea of the natural world that probably has little to do with the reality; they appreciate the polished, TV-friendly aesthetics of nature documentaries without actually spending much time beyond their urban boundaries. I come at it from the perspective of someone who grew up in the countryside and love the feeling of being in wild places far more than in a city, so I suppose I have a different perspective. Personally I find busy cities really bring me down and leave me yearning for space and greenery.

Comment author: MTGandP 24 July 2013 11:03:53PM *  0 points [-]

This doesn't directly address your question, but I think it's relevant nonetheless. Here is an excellent article in The New York Times about reducing predation.

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 03:01:31PM 0 points [-]

The reason is Group A seems more feasible to change at the moment. Though I am deeply interested in considerations of wild animal suffering as well. I don't see why you need to focus on one or the other.

Also, Group A at least has a clear action to take -- eating less meat. Group B does not have a clear action.

Comment author: pianoforte611 24 July 2013 03:28:45PM 1 point [-]

I specified ignoring convenience. Is the lack of a clear action for Group B your true rejection? Would you actually try to minimize suffering in wild animals if you knew how to?

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 09:14:26PM *  0 points [-]

I would definitely try to minimize suffering in wild animals if I knew how to. Would you?

And why would you ignore convenience?

Comment author: pianoforte611 24 July 2013 09:26:08PM 1 point [-]

I'm interested in the intrinsic value of reducing suffering, which is why I posed the question. I wanted to know if you thought that the suffering of animals raised by humans is worse than the suffering of wild animals, all else being equal.

If you truly do care about the suffering of wild animals then I appreciate your consistency. I am not particularly bothered by fish getting eaten by sharks or zebras getting eaten by lions. I'm curious though, if you had sufficient resources, would you attempt to convert carnivorous animals to herbivores as well?

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 10:04:24PM 2 points [-]

I'm curious though, if you had sufficient resources, would you attempt to convert carnivorous animals to herbivores as well?

Yes. Predation seems quite painful. Wouldn't you agree?

Comment author: pianoforte611 25 July 2013 03:00:10AM 0 points [-]

I think it is non-obvious that reducing predation is a worthwhile use of resources. I do appreciate your consistency in applying your altruistic principles though.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 July 2013 02:37:05PM 4 points [-]

Why not choose both as long as this doesn't lead to unwanted side-effects? It gets interesting when the two are mutually exclusive. If it turns out that eating more meat reduces the amount of wild animals that are suffering, then that would imo be the best argument against vegetarianism. It is hard to estimate what the effects of global warming will be on wild animal populations though. And even if the argument goes through, I think the biggest benefit from raising the issue of vegetarianism comes from promoting concern for the interests/suffering of nonhumans. To the extent that current memes determine the trajectory of the far future, this would dominate over the direct impact of personal consumption.

Comment author: pianoforte611 24 July 2013 03:31:26PM *  0 points [-]

Why not choose both as long as this doesn't lead to unwanted side-effects?

Exactly my question. Why the concern over group A and almost no concern over group B?

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 July 2013 05:36:59PM 3 points [-]

Lots of people care about the suffering of wild animals. The facebook group "reducing wild animal suffering" currently has 500+ members and many are part of the rationalist community.

Comment author: pianoforte611 24 July 2013 06:04:27PM 3 points [-]

Thank you, this is news to me. The page is fairly non-descript though, do you know what sorts of measures they are taking to reduce animal suffering in the wild? Most of what I saw was actually only addressing human caused animal suffering.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 July 2013 06:23:01PM *  9 points [-]

The general consensus is that at this stage, it's most important to raise awareness about wild animal suffering so future generations are likely to do something about the issue. This is done by spreading anti-speciesism and by countering the view that whatever is natural is somehow good or that nature "has a plan". It seems especially important to try to change the paradigm in ecology and conservation biology in order to focus more attention on the largest source of suffering on the planet. Some altruists also focus on this issue because of concerns about space colonisation, for instance, future humans might want to colonise the universe with Darwinian life or do ancestor simulations, which would be very bad from an anti-speciesist point of view.

Some imagined long-term solutions for the problem of wild animal suffering range from a welfare state for elephants to reprogramming predators to reducing biomass, but right now people are mainly trying to raise awareness for more intuitive interventions such as vaccinating wild animals against diseases (which is already done in some cases for the benefit of humans), not reintroducing predators to regions for human aesthetic reasons, and helping individual animals in distress as opposed to obeying the common anti-interventionist policies in wildlife parks.

Comment author: davidpearce 27 July 2013 11:26:08AM 1 point [-]

Obamacare for elephants probably doesn't rank highly in the priorities of most lesswrongers. But from an anthropocentric perspective, isn't an analogous scenario for human beings - i.e. to stay free living but not "wild" - the most utopian outcome if the MIRI conception of an Intelligence Explosion comes to pass?

Comment author: pianoforte611 25 July 2013 02:57:05AM 5 points [-]

Upvoted for specificity. I appreciate that the people in this movement are taking altruistic vegetarianism to its logical conclusion.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 02:33:34AM 1 point [-]

Be wary of Facebook groups whose consensus is "it's most important to promote awareness at this stage".

That said, I like the group/concept. It's interesting to ponder, and a welcome counterpart to "reduce farmed animal suffering".

Comment author: MTGandP 25 July 2013 03:12:24AM 2 points [-]

Be wary of Facebook groups whose consensus is "it's most important to promote awareness at this stage".

I was just thinking about how I agree with you, but I realized that I don't know why. What's wrong with promoting awareness? Even though I find it intuitively unappealing, I think the reason why it's usually ineffective is because most interventions are ineffective. I don't see any other reason. Sometimes (e.g. when fundraising), promoting awareness is extremely effective.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 25 July 2013 03:36:56AM *  2 points [-]

I don't know about you, but my explanation for being leery is: what Facebook groups do I expect to encounter? Answer: those that devote a large amount of effort to promoting themselves. (I also expect to encounter Facebook groups that are popular/worthy, but note that the anthropic reason I gave first applies no matter whether the group is actually good). Be skeptical of things that come to your attention through Facebook - at least beware privileging the hypothesis.

I agree that awareness promotion can be good, but another instinct tells me that Facebookers love to conclude that the best thing they can do is share/like/etc. - it's like finding the cheapest way possible to feel like a good person.

Comment author: MTGandP 25 July 2013 04:36:19AM 1 point [-]

I agree that awareness promotion can be good, but another instinct tells me that Facebookers love to conclude that the best thing they can do is share/like/etc. - it's like finding the cheapest way possible to feel like a good person.

Yes, the "share/like/etc" phenomenon. I do think there's a big difference between "share this video because this will somehow help those child soldiers in some indefinite way" versus "get more people to care about this issue, but also we have no idea how to actually fix it so we can't really recommend anything beyond that." Many supports of reducing wild-animal suffering want to actually solve the problem, but it looks like the best way to do that is to bring the problem to the attention of more people who will potentially be able to help solve it.

It's a very different situation from, say, malaria, where we already know that donating to AMF is among the best things to do. But now that I think about it, a video promoting AMF that got popular on Facebook would probably elicit a lot of new donations.

Comment author: Zaine 24 July 2013 08:14:37AM *  -1 points [-]

Obtaining optimal health is an unsolved problem. With optimal health, a human will live longer. This human weights probably sentient life as worth more than probably non-sentient life. According to this human's values, the amount of probably non-sentient life this human must consume in order to obtain optimal health does not justify consumption in and of itself. As a human will live longer with optimal health, this human also has more time they can devote to offsetting their consumption, in the end making their human life worth more in net than the cumulative probably non-sentient lives consumed in sustaining optimal health.

The more resources required optimal health, the greater the burden on the human to offset the negative externalities produced utilising those resources.

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 08:46:48AM 0 points [-]

I'm confused about what you're saying.

If what I think you're saying is what you're saying, then I disagree with you that either (1) nonhuman animals are probably non-sentient or (2) sentience shouldn't matter, depending on what you meant by "sentient".

I also think that vegetarianism cannot provide optimal health (but so can a diet that involves meat, as can veganism).

Comment author: Zaine 24 July 2013 09:41:08AM *  1 point [-]

For item 1, that's fine.

I'm only presenting an argument from the perspective of one who wants to live well and longer, but also wishes to leave a positive impact upon the world; my goal was to raise concerns someone from this mindset would like to see addressed, but ended up arguing (perhaps repugnantly) in favour of the mindset instead.
Let me know if that doesn't help clear confusion.

Probably non-sentient lives are not limited to non-human animals, but marine and plant life, as well as human animals in extreme interpretations.

For item 2, sentience means self-awareness, and refers to the distinction between, for example, depression caused by mere neuro-adaptation of neurotransmitter signalling to external stimuli, and a depressive state furthered by the ability to reflect upon one's depressive situation - internal stimuli.

You might have a typo in the latter-most statement.

Comment author: peter_hurford 24 July 2013 03:04:01PM *  0 points [-]

I'm sorry, I'm still confused.

1.) Do you think nonhuman animals can suffer? If not, why not?

2.) If yes to #1, do you think that suffering is something you might care about? If not, why not?

Comment author: Zaine 24 July 2013 09:30:42PM *  1 point [-]

1) The question is whether they can experience the subjective realisation of, "Because of this situation, I am experiencing negative emotions. I dislike this situation, but there is no escape," and thus increase their suffering by adding negative internal stimuli - appreciation and awareness of their existence - to already existing negative external stimuli. This is a stricter condition some may have for caring about other creatures to an inconvenient degree. For a fictional example, Methods!Harry refused to eat anything when he considered the possibility that all other life is sentient. To be charitable, assume he is aware that pinching a rabbit's leg will trigger afferent nociceptive (pain) neurons, which will carry a signal to the brain, leading to the experience of pain. Your cited research demonstrates this. It does not demonstrate, however, whether the subject has the awareness to reflect upon the factors that contribute to their suffering, such that their reflection can contribute it by further adding negative stimuli, negative stimuli that is generated only by that organism's selfsame reflection. Causing misery to a probably non-sentient creature did not give Methods!Harry hesitation, but causing misery to a probably sentient creature did; hopefully this helps elucidate the mindset of one ascribing to this stricter condition of care.

2) If a human considers that they themselves satisfy the above condition, then they will be more inclined to attribute more worth to fellow humans than other creatures of a dubious status. That said, they will still realise that misery is not a pleasant experience regardless of one's capacity for self-reflection, and should be prevented and stopped if possible. One must thus argue to this person that it should behove their moral selves to exert effort towards mitigating or decreasing that misery, and that the exertion will not detriment this person's endeavours to reduce the misery of humans.

This person cares more about optimising the good they can achieve while living, which leads them to take pains to live longer; the longer they live, the more good they can achieve. One must convince this person that either non-human animals have the capacity for self-reflection to the degree specified above, or that caring about the misery of non-human animals and acting upon that care does not adversely affect their net ability to introduce good to the world; id est, in the latter condition, acting upon that care must not adversely affect this person's lifespan, quality of life, capacity to help humans, or must only do so by small enough margin to justify the sacrifice.

These are things I think a rational agent making a comfortable salary should think about, assuming they desire to optimise the quantity of good they effect in the world. To someone whose objective is convincing the masses to do the most good they possibly can, this doesn't matter, as arguing for both vegetarianism and giving substantial sums to the AMF only have a potential conflict of interest to the party seeking optimal quality of life and greatest possible life-span.

Comment author: peter_hurford 25 July 2013 04:24:19PM 0 points [-]

To be charitable, assume he is aware that pinching a rabbit's leg will trigger afferent nociceptive (pain) neurons, which will carry a signal to the brain, leading to the experience of pain. Your cited research demonstrates this. It does not demonstrate, however, whether the subject has the awareness to reflect upon the factors that contribute to their suffering, such that their reflection can contribute it by further adding negative stimuli, negative stimuli that is generated only by that organism's selfsame reflection.

To be fair, you can't demonstrate this for any human either. That's the problem with consciousness.

Comment author: Zaine 25 July 2013 09:44:48PM 1 point [-]

Naturally; we're working from the same fabric.

Comment author: Zaine 24 July 2013 08:19:05AM 0 points [-]

If optimal health requires strict consumption of only sea-vegetables and coconut oil, one must offset the resources required their sustainable, scalable harvesting. If optimal health requires eating meat procured from animals eating only their native food sources in their native habitat, killed while their hunter whispers sweet nothings and severs their vertebrae at the nape with a swift, sure, and gentle strike, one must offset the costs required making the operation sustainable, scalable, and global warming-friendly - perhaps by inventing meat-vats, solving global warming, or discovering a means of feasible space colonisation.

Comment author: Alicorn 24 July 2013 07:23:02AM 12 points [-]

Incidental: I don't care unusually much about evangelizing vegetarianism, but I happen to like to talk about food and most of what I know about it is vegetarianism-specialized, so if people are curious about practicalities I am happy to answer questions about what vegetarians eat and how it can be yummy.

Comment author: MileyCyrus 24 July 2013 08:05:22PM -2 points [-]

What vegetarian things can I eat that won't leave me hungry an hour later?

Comment author: TabAtkins 27 July 2013 03:32:17PM 1 point [-]

If you're having issues with your hunger response, it's almost certainly because you've simply eliminated meat from the meal, without replacing it with something nutritionally equal. Your hunger response is mediated by a number of food chemicals, which you've like never had to notice before because meat provides the appropriate ones automatically,

Solving it is easy - just eat protein (nuts, beans, etc) and fat (nuts, oil, peanut butter, etc.). That'll hit you with the right stuff to replace what you're losing with meat, and keep your stomach's brain happy because it's receiving the right chemicals.

People too often think vegetarianism is just a light salad at every meal. >_<

Comment author: Jabberslythe 26 July 2013 08:15:38PM -1 points [-]

It could be that the vegetarian stuff you are eating doesn't have much protein in it. Or that the protein source doesn't have all the amino acids. There is certainly vegetarian stuff that does have these things, it just takes more knowledge and meal design that for meat diets.

Protein powder can also be helpful for vegetarians (and everyone). I recommend pea protein powder.

Comment author: MTGandP 24 July 2013 11:11:14PM 3 points [-]

I don't find that this is ever a problem for me. YMMV, but I'd suggest eating calorie-dense foods such as nuts, beans, grains, and fatty foods.

This LiveStrong article has a sample meal plan:

A meal plan that provides over 3,000 calories begins with 1 cup of cooked quinoa topped with1/4 cup raisins, 1 oz. toasted almonds, 1 tbsp. honey and 1 cup hemp milk. For lunch, have 2 cups of whole wheat pasta tossed with 1 tbsp. olive oil, 1 cup white beans and sautéed kale. Dinner might include 6 oz. of firm tofu stir fried with broccoli, soy sauce, 1 oz. cashews and served over 1 cup brown rice. Snack on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made with whole grain bread, 2 tbsp. peanut butter and all-fruit spread; ½ cup of granola with soy milk and a smoothie made by blending a frozen banana with mangos, flaxseed meal, almond butter and coconut water.

Comment author: Alicorn 24 July 2013 10:52:34PM 3 points [-]

I don't have this problem with most any food so I'm not sure what exactly might cause it, but if you find that you have this problem with vegetarian food and not with meat, I'd try heavy stuff like cheese omelets, preferred unmeats with nice sauces on them, maybe bean stew.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 24 July 2013 03:26:40PM 1 point [-]

Do you eat eggs and dairy?

If you do not, then question: what is the best non-eggs/dairy solution to desserts? That is, what would you substitute in e.g. pastry cream, whipped cream, meringue, cakes, pastry dough, etc.? Is there some general solution, or is it handled on a case-by-case basis?

(If you do eat eggs/dairy, disregard this question.)

Comment author: Alicorn 24 July 2013 10:59:13PM *  1 point [-]

I do eat eggs and dairy - and lots of 'em - but I have a really good vegan chocolate cake recipe which I will paste below. Churros are also vegan and delicious, and they're not really hard to make if you know how to deep-fry. Direct substitution for dairy ingredients is mostly disappointing, although coconut products can do some neat things and coconut oil often substitutes straight across with butter.

1 1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 c sugar
1/4 c cocoa or carob powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 c canola oil
1 c water

Preheat oven to 350º. Mix the dry ingredients in an 8" square pan. Add the wet ingredients and stir well, making sure the edges and corners of the pan are not omitted. When the batter is smooth and incorporated, bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Comment author: Allison_Smith 24 July 2013 05:13:50PM 6 points [-]

I am not Alicorn, but I also like talking about delicious food and I do not eat eggs and dairy. Unfortunately, there is no general solution to the egg/dairy substitution problem, especially for the eggs end of it.

There are some things I just don't try to adapt: meringue, pastry cream, and whipped cream fall more-or-less into this category. I have had delicious dairy-free versions of whipped cream that seem to have been based on the fatty part of coconut milk, but I haven't made any myself.

There are some substitutions that are easy and consistent. In baking cakes, cookies, and similar things, you can usually use any unsweetened soy or nut milk 1:1 for milk, and use margarine in place of butter, or mild flavored vegetable oil in place of melted butter. It is easiest to get good results if your recipe is for spice or chocolate cake, or is otherwise meant to taste like something other than butter, as even the best non-dairy butter substitutes do not taste quite like the real thing. Eggs are a slightly harder thing to substitute for, so for a really easy experience, go for a recipe that does not use them; sometimes these are "light" cakes or recipes written when food was expensive or rationed.

Eggs, even in baking where they are non-obvious in the final product, can be tricky to substitute for because they do so many things. If the eggs are mainly adjusting the consistency of the batter or dough, you can substitute for 1 egg with 1/4 cup of soft silken tofu , applesauce, or soy yogurt, or anything of a similar texture that you think would taste good. If I expect the egg to actually do some work on helping the rising process, I use 1/4 cup of the liquid from the recipe or of soy milk, plus 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed or 1 tsp ground psyllium husk. If there are more than 1 or 2 eggs called for, I re-evaluate whether I want to use this recipe (things that are supposed to get flavor from eggs, or that use eggs in complicated ways, like with yolks and whites separated, are beyond my skill level to adapt), and if I still want to, I use some combination of the substitutions available to me, to avoid the food tasting heavily of flax or applesauce when I didn't intend that.

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 24 July 2013 06:51:41PM 1 point [-]

Thank you for your response!

I was, in fact, largely thinking of recipes where the butter, eggs, cream, etc. are doing a lot of the flavor and texture work. It sounds like that's something that is lost in an eggs/dairy free diet. This is valuable information.

Next question: would you be able to recommend a good source of dessert recipes that make the most of veg*an limitations on ingredients (rather than attempting to imperfectly substitute for eggs/dairy/etc.)?

(My motivation for these questions, by the way, is that I regularly bake desserts for my friends, and I'd like to be able to make sure that any people of my acquaintance who have veg*an dietary limitations don't feel left out.)

Comment author: Allison_Smith 24 July 2013 09:59:51PM 1 point [-]

There seem to be a lot of vegan dessert cookbooks out there these days, but of course they are of varying quality. My personal favorites are by Isa Chandra Moskowitz; the link goes to the Desserts category of her blog, so you can see if you like her style.

One really specific recipe that I found surprising, in terms of successfully replacing a food that depends heavily on dairy, is this chocolate mousse. The other creamy food it is easy to successfully replace milk in is pudding; a blancmange (aka Jello cook'n'serve) will work fine with soymilk or with a thick enough nut milk. (Rice milk in particular is thin enough that you have to adjust the ratios or cooking time to get it to set properly.)

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 24 July 2013 11:13:07PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the links, I will check them out!

Glancing quickly at the chocolate mousse recipe, something occurred to me: how do you deal with vegan ingredients being more expensive than non-vegan ones? For instance, vegan chocolate is way pricier around here than regular chocolate. Maple syrup is VERY expensive (is imitation syrup vegan?).

Comment author: Allison_Smith 25 July 2013 04:19:49PM -1 points [-]

I tend to figure that price increase on individual ingredients is compensated for by the fact that avoiding animal products encourages me to buy food in an earlier state of processing, which tends to be less expensive. Also, some aspects of a vegetarian or vegan diet are less expensive than the alternative; for instance, protein from dried beans is often cheaper than protein from meat. I have never found groceries a problematically large portion of my budget.

I think imitation syrup is usually high fructose corn syrup with colors and flavors added, so in most cases it is probably vegan. I'm not sure it would taste good in this recipe, but you could experiment.

Comment author: thomblake 24 July 2013 05:40:01PM 0 points [-]

The last category you mention is basically "eggs used as an emulsifier" - so other emulsifiers should also work.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 July 2013 01:50:35PM 2 points [-]

I'm interested! I became a vegetarian about 4 months ago, shortly after I started doing my own cooking. My abilities are basically limited to pasta, salads, mushrooms in sandwiches or tortilla wraps, and lots more pasta. To learn recipes, Youtube videos were my main sources. I just haven't gotten around to searching for vegetarian specific foods. What are some more options out there?

Comment author: Alicorn 24 July 2013 11:21:18PM *  8 points [-]

Not to knock pasta (and I recommend my signature sauce, as well as putting artichokes through the blender and adding them to cream sauces for pasta), but I'm more of a soup fan. Bean soup, veggie soup (here's one way to do veggie soup), eggdrop soup, chowder (clam if you eat seafood, broccoli or corn if you don't), polenta leaf soup, miso soup.

There's also more things you can put in sandwiches besides mushrooms. I like Tofurkey, but even if you don't, here are things I put on bread (all of these things include cheese, but you could omit it if you aren't a huge fan of cheese):

  • Panfried tofu slices, spinach sauteed with cheese, hummus
  • Hummus, avocado, shredded cheddar, cucumber slices, sprouts, lettuce
  • Goat cheese, avocado slices, over-easy egg with dill and cayenne
  • Particularly copious amounts of cheese (melted), with optional hummus, avocado, onion slices
  • Fried zucchini and eggplant slices, avocado, hummus, fresh mozzarella
  • Minced garlic, basil leaves, fresh mozzarella

In most of the above cases I make the sandwiches open-faced, and fry them in butter to crisp them up (the last I put in the toaster oven with olive oil, and add the basil and mozzarella after they come out toasty).

Many veggies are lovely roasted. For pretty much all of them, you cut them into bites, put them on an oil-spritzed baking pan, and put them in a 400º oven for twenty minutes. This works for several kinds of squash, asparagus, broccoli, potatoes, etc. You can eat roasted veggies by themselves, or put them in omelets or your pasta or whatever.

I go on Foodgawker for inspiration. For advanced food-related fun, learn to deep fry things - I use my wok and spider skimmer, I don't usually bother with a thermometer and just flick little bits of whatever I'm cooking to see how it reacts, and then I filter the oil for reuse with paper towels and a funnel.

Comment author: AlexanderD 24 July 2013 07:14:16PM 1 point [-]

Tofu is a good choice, and can be used in many ways. One secret to tofu is to pay attention to the amount of water in the tofu, as that seriously changes the way it tastes, feels, and acts in dishes. For example, when you are making a stew with tofu, such as the spicy and delicious Korean soup kimchi jiggae, you probably want to choose silken tofu, which is soft and will interact well with the rich broth. But if you are making something like McFoo, a tofu sandwich where you marinate the tofu in select spices until it tastes like junk food, then you want a firm and chewy tofu. You can achieve the latter by pressing your tofu for an hour (there are special things to do this, but a towel, cutting boards, and a brick does just fine). You can make it even firmer and more textured by freezing it first, so most of my tofu goes right into the freezer until I need it.

There are also a few veg-specific things that you almost certainly have never had, such as TVP: textured vegetable protein. Despite the unappetizing sci-fi name, it's actually an amazing thing to include in your diet. The trick to learning to love and use it is not to make the sad mistake of just pretending it's meat. Most fake meat things don't taste anything like meat, but instead have a rank and lingering chemical taste and overwhelming profile of salt and sugar, as they try to mimic what you might have liked about meat. TVP and other decent meat substitutes are different, and they just taste good without trying to taste like meat. So TVP chili is hearty and rich and has a great mouthfeel, giving you that chewiness and resistance that's part of what makes meat good, but it doesn't try to ape meat.

Other things you can make: veggie shepherd's pie (lentils and veggies for the filling), pumpkin mac and cheese (add shredded pumpkin when making mac and cheese; if you use a sharp cheese the tastes blend amazingly), filo-wrapped spinach and veggies (you can buy prepared filo dough), loaded baked potatoes, pizza, calzones, quiches, grilled cheese and chard sandwiches, and lots of variations on curries and stews and things.

Comment author: jbay 24 July 2013 03:39:03PM 3 points [-]

I recommend getting familiar with chickpeas and tofu. They are both very cheap, very filling, and very nutritious (chickpeas in particular, once you learn how to reconstitute the dried ones). Experimenting with recipes that involve those ingredients is definitely a good idea. Learning to cook quinoa and rice is another helpful skill (wild rice is also nutritious and filling, and quinoa offers a complete protein). Working with those four ingredients and mixing in other vegetables, spices, mushrooms, sauces, etc will offer a very wide range of delicious and nutritious foods that you can make as a baseline.

You can also look into the dishes of different cultures that have vegetarian traditions. For example, Indian food has a very large range of interesting vegetarian dishes. So does Taiwan, and other strongly Buddhist-influenced cultures. In Japan, Buddhism-inspired vegetarian food is referred to as "Shojin-ryouri", so if you like Japanese food, you might look up some shojin recipes. Those are just some examples =)

Comment author: lsparrish 24 July 2013 06:30:02AM *  5 points [-]

I've been eating less meat lately for a reason that has nothing directly to do with animal suffering. Rather I have been experimenting with a lifestyle of nutrient powders, aka DIY Soylent, to substitute for meals. The recipe I settled on happened to be vegan, since it uses soy powder as the main protein source. One could substitute whey (the main Soylent is whey based) or meat based protein, however I am thus far happy with the taste and effects of the soy version.

Anyway, I don't know how widely this practice is likely to spread. It makes remarkable sense to me, and people like me, but perhaps not to the majority. I am attracted to novelty to an above-average degree, and not particularly attached to eating (as long as I can be full/satisfied). The idea that humans can live (not just live, but thrive) on a bit of powder, oil, and water, is somehow fascinating and thrilling -- more so than the idea of surviving on lettuce and veggie burgers, which sounds like more of a boring halfway solution. The reports of less sleep / more energy / better cognition (which seem true to my experience so far) also caught my attention -- perhaps for the same reasons that transhumanism seems like a good idea.

So maybe when advertising veganism to transhumanists specifically, Soylent / quantified self / powder based diet is a good pitch. Market it as "cyborg food" or something. Yes, animals suffering is bad, we get that... But if we focus on animals suffering, what happens? Lab research gets subjected to a bunch of new regs that slow things down, while the food factories in their arrogance keep cranking away and making us look like idiots. The economics are strongly in favor of the meat industry continuing for as long as people remain attached to their meat products, ensuring that they are the last to go despite doing more harm and less good than labs. And as a transhumanist, I really want the labs to succeed -- at least on the important life extension related stuff.

Comment author: AlexanderD 25 July 2013 12:48:40AM 4 points [-]

This seems rather a separate issue, especially since you admit that your choice of "cyborg food" only happened to be vegan. You're an accidental vegan. Next week, you might discover that a powder made from lamb faces had more bio-available iron, and that'd be the end of that.

Unrelated: The Accidental Vegan also sounds like the most boring movie imaginable.

Comment author: lsparrish 25 July 2013 04:42:57AM *  0 points [-]

Yes, it is very different, if we are talking about core motivations. The main point of powdered cyborg food is to be cool for transhumanist hacker types (by virtue of being convenient, useful, inexpensive, cognition-boosting, and liberating oneself from the conventional norms and hassles of food dependency), and not to save helpless suffering animals.

However, just because cyborg food is not motivated by animal rights does not mean that it does not serve the interests of animal rights. The main competitors in the cyborg food market are soy and whey, neither of which is flesh based (although some whey contains rennet from calf stomach). Contrast to conventional food, where veggie burgers play second fiddle to aggressively marketed and addicting meat products.

Whether the whey based version is harmful for animal rights is debatable, given its status as a waste product from cheesemaking. Purchasing whey does support the dairy industry, but since we are talking about replacing meals that contain cheese, it could actually reduce demand for cheese and thus reduce milk production overall. Under current market conditions, casein (cheese protein) is more expensive than whey protein, despite representing 80% of the protein content of cow's milk.

If it were to become a primary food product (as opposed to a niche bodybuilding product), particularly if there was a reduced demand for cheese, I expect that whey protein would become more expensive, and thus would probably be disfavored as a base for cyborg food on grounds of cost. Thus it is probably not straightforwardly analogous to the chicken wing example in Peter's post.