In this case “taken aback” is a little stronger and hostile than “surprised,” but it’s not at all in terms of “I should get free food of my choosing.” I’m not frustrated that a Holiday party on the other side of the continent isn’t offering free food that I like. I’m frustrated that in a gathering of intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to rationality and the study of how to create AI that will, hopefully, be able to radically change the world, eating meat doesn’t seem to have even registered as a bad thing with any of them. This does not bode well, IMO, on the nature of the hypothetical utopian future I might look forward to.
(It was later pointed out that the menu DID include vegetarian things, but those things were all things I’d consider obviously a “side dish” as opposed to a main course. Other vegetarians might disagree with me on that, and if that was the intent of the organizers, than I do apologize. But when the subject was brought up in that thread it didn’t seem to be)
Perhaps the intellectuals of less wrong individually have decided that they don’t see animal suffering as a bad thing, or eating meat as leading to animal suffering, or any other very normal reasons for not choosing to not eat meat. I avoid eating meat because I prefer to get a higher percentage of my calories from carbohydrates in my diet than protein and fat. But when I’m working out, you can’t get a better protein-to-fat ratio than you can in meat (nuts, grains, etc. all have at least a 1:2 protein:Fat ratio, lean meat is more like 9:1, and I don’t like getting my dietary protein from supplements). Which is only to say there are reasons for eating meat (I guess I only addressed reason 2, but I’ve thought about reason 1, and reason 3 is initially unconvincing to me, although I should do more research about it.) It seems to me that you are surprised and/or upset by the fact that other rational people haven’t come to the same rational conclusions as you. What you should rather be pointing out is that this is an actual discussion that rational people should be having, and such a discussion hasn’t yet happened.
In this case “taken aback” is a little stronger and hostile than “surprised,” but it’s not at all in terms of “I should get free food of my choosing.” I’m not frustrated that a Holiday party on the other side of the continent isn’t offering free food that I like. I’m frustrated that in a gathering of intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to rationality and the study of how to create AI that will, hopefully, be able to radically change the world, eating meat doesn’t seem to have even registered as a bad thing with any of them. This does not bode well, IMO, on the nature of the hypothetical utopian future I might look forward to.
(It was later pointed out that the menu DID include vegetarian things, but those things were all things I’d consider obviously a “side dish” as opposed to a main course. Other vegetarians might disagree with me on that, and if that was the intent of the organizers, than I do apologize. But when the subject was brought up in that thread it didn’t seem to be)
Perhaps the intellectuals of less wrong individually have decided that they don’t see animal suffering as a bad thing, or eating meat as leading to animal suffering, or any other very normal reasons for not choosing to not eat meat.
I avoid eating meat because I prefer to get a higher percentage of my calories from carbohydrates in my diet than protein and fat. But when I’m working out, you can’t get a better protein-to-fat ratio than you can in meat (nuts, grains, etc. all have at least a 1:2 protein:Fat ratio, lean meat is more like 9:1, and I don’t like getting my dietary protein from supplements). Which is only to say there are reasons for eating meat (I guess I only addressed reason 2, but I’ve thought about reason 1, and reason 3 is initially unconvincing to me, although I should do more research about it.)
It seems to me that you are surprised and/or upset by the fact that other rational people haven’t come to the same rational conclusions as you. What you should rather be pointing out is that this is an actual discussion that rational people should be having, and such a discussion hasn’t yet happened.
I agree. There is a reasonable expectation of vegetarian choices at public functions.