I heartily endorse eating better food, including making trade-offs with time and/or money to do so. There can be little doubt that there’s a trade-off between long term health and hedonic value of food as well, but certainly most of us are not at the frontier.
I would recommend also:
Step four: Be willing to throw food away.
A lot of people attach strong negative emotions to throwing away food, even if the food is no longer worth eating. Some of it is pure sunk costs, but often it goes beyond that and many people look upon it as a moral issue, or that it means somehow taking food away from someone else who needs it. It isn’t one, and you’re not.
My mum, among others, doesn’t like wasting food. I frame it thus, in the hope that it will nudge her wanting in the more useful direction: if you’re not going to enjoy eating it, or if eating it is going to have effects you don’t want, then eating it is more wasteful than throwing it away.
Still, isn’t it better to plan so you won’t have to throw food away? For example: if I cook a big pot of lentils to last me all week, and then end up eating at friends’ houses several times and my lentils are smelling bad, I’ll throw them out, but I’ll make a mental note not to make such a big pot next time, or to put some in the freezer if I think I’ll be away a lot.
These aren’t contradictory. Throw away food that doesn’t have value through needed nutrition or net pleasure. At the point you realize this, the waste has already occurred—you don’t actually avoid the waste by eating it.
You should also plan as well as possible to avoid waste, but those decisions are made at a different point in time, with different levels of uncertainty about the future value of the food.
Yes, of course it’s better to plan so you won’t have to throw food away. But that’s not what’s being contested—A desire to plan efficient meals is as far from the fear of throwing food away as wanting to have accurate beliefs is from fearing having to change your beliefs.
A desire to plan efficient meals is as far from the fear of throwing food away as wanting to have accurate beliefs is from fearing having to change your beliefs.
I’ve reread that sentence several times, and I don’t get the comparison. A strong negative emotion reaction to throwing food away can motivate you to plan efficient meals (as it does for me), but being afraid to change your beliefs won’t motivate you to make them accurate–the two are working in opposite directions!
I think they’re closer than you think. Not wanting to change beliefs can make you think things through properly in the first case IF you have a prior position of being susceptible to reason rather than just ignoring it. Similarly, not wanting to throw food away can increase your meal efficiency IF you have a drive to have good, enjoyable food.
Both of them can potentially reinforce a rational drive, even though in themselves they are irrational. But without enough rational purpose underlying them, they can become totally counterproductive. So if they suit you depends on a fairly empirical question of how you act with them and how you act without them.
It’s worth noting that people who don’t have any resistance to changing their beliefs aren’t usually brilliant rational agents. They’re people who just agree with whatever argument is presented to them at the time, because they don’t think about things in depth, or really care about having accurate views, and therefore accord beliefs no weight at all.
No question that wasting money and effort is bad, and you should make that note and that smaller pot. But often such things are not possible, especially if you are not cooking for yourself.
For a good pure example, I would prefer if the muffins they sell at my local bagel place were slightly smaller, even if they cost the same price.
Among the many things you have to put up with if you don’t cook for yourself. (I have a pretty big appetite, so I have the opposite problem; I find that restaurant helpings leave me still hungry).
Still, I understand that some people live in conditions that make cooking for themselves hard (packed work schedule, inadequate kitchen facilities, etc). You should consider making a comment to the staff at the bakery that they sell different sizes of muffins, maybe the small ones for 15 cents less so they still make a higher profit margin. They wouldn’t necessarily have to buy different muffin tins, just fill them with less dough, since bakery muffins are often all top anyway.
Excellent point—I can’t think of a way to move away from the hedons/health frontier faster than by feeling obligated to eat food you don’t even want anymore.
I agree with Swimmer963 -- my quite strongly enforced rule not to throw food out nudges me to buy less and waste less. In fact I think it’s quite similar to the way that your rules 2 and 3 nudge the brain to make better decisions.
I heartily endorse eating better food, including making trade-offs with time and/or money to do so. There can be little doubt that there’s a trade-off between long term health and hedonic value of food as well, but certainly most of us are not at the frontier.
I would recommend also:
Step four: Be willing to throw food away.
A lot of people attach strong negative emotions to throwing away food, even if the food is no longer worth eating. Some of it is pure sunk costs, but often it goes beyond that and many people look upon it as a moral issue, or that it means somehow taking food away from someone else who needs it. It isn’t one, and you’re not.
I think this quote is from Eliezer’s grandma: “Better to throw it out than throw it in.”
My mum, among others, doesn’t like wasting food. I frame it thus, in the hope that it will nudge her wanting in the more useful direction: if you’re not going to enjoy eating it, or if eating it is going to have effects you don’t want, then eating it is more wasteful than throwing it away.
Still, isn’t it better to plan so you won’t have to throw food away? For example: if I cook a big pot of lentils to last me all week, and then end up eating at friends’ houses several times and my lentils are smelling bad, I’ll throw them out, but I’ll make a mental note not to make such a big pot next time, or to put some in the freezer if I think I’ll be away a lot.
These aren’t contradictory. Throw away food that doesn’t have value through needed nutrition or net pleasure. At the point you realize this, the waste has already occurred—you don’t actually avoid the waste by eating it.
You should also plan as well as possible to avoid waste, but those decisions are made at a different point in time, with different levels of uncertainty about the future value of the food.
Yes, of course it’s better to plan so you won’t have to throw food away. But that’s not what’s being contested—A desire to plan efficient meals is as far from the fear of throwing food away as wanting to have accurate beliefs is from fearing having to change your beliefs.
I’ve reread that sentence several times, and I don’t get the comparison. A strong negative emotion reaction to throwing food away can motivate you to plan efficient meals (as it does for me), but being afraid to change your beliefs won’t motivate you to make them accurate–the two are working in opposite directions!
I think they’re closer than you think. Not wanting to change beliefs can make you think things through properly in the first case IF you have a prior position of being susceptible to reason rather than just ignoring it. Similarly, not wanting to throw food away can increase your meal efficiency IF you have a drive to have good, enjoyable food.
Both of them can potentially reinforce a rational drive, even though in themselves they are irrational. But without enough rational purpose underlying them, they can become totally counterproductive. So if they suit you depends on a fairly empirical question of how you act with them and how you act without them.
It’s worth noting that people who don’t have any resistance to changing their beliefs aren’t usually brilliant rational agents. They’re people who just agree with whatever argument is presented to them at the time, because they don’t think about things in depth, or really care about having accurate views, and therefore accord beliefs no weight at all.
I guess the Umesh principle applies. If you never have to throw food away, you’re preparing too little.
Or worse, eating things you otherwise wouldn’t whenever that would be necessary to keep things from spoiling.
No question that wasting money and effort is bad, and you should make that note and that smaller pot. But often such things are not possible, especially if you are not cooking for yourself.
For a good pure example, I would prefer if the muffins they sell at my local bagel place were slightly smaller, even if they cost the same price.
Among the many things you have to put up with if you don’t cook for yourself. (I have a pretty big appetite, so I have the opposite problem; I find that restaurant helpings leave me still hungry).
Still, I understand that some people live in conditions that make cooking for themselves hard (packed work schedule, inadequate kitchen facilities, etc). You should consider making a comment to the staff at the bakery that they sell different sizes of muffins, maybe the small ones for 15 cents less so they still make a higher profit margin. They wouldn’t necessarily have to buy different muffin tins, just fill them with less dough, since bakery muffins are often all top anyway.
You could share them half/half with a friend—who also might appreciate a free half-muffin :)
Excellent point—I can’t think of a way to move away from the hedons/health frontier faster than by feeling obligated to eat food you don’t even want anymore.
I agree with Swimmer963 -- my quite strongly enforced rule not to throw food out nudges me to buy less and waste less. In fact I think it’s quite similar to the way that your rules 2 and 3 nudge the brain to make better decisions.
having pets that can eat leftovers might help with this.