First thanks for your kind words, they were nice to receive :)
But I also think this is wonderfully put, and I think you’re right to point to your feelings on truth as similar. As truth for you, life to me is sacred, and I think I generally build a lot of my world out of that basic fact. I would note that I think one another’s values are likely important for us to, as truth is also really important to me and I value honestly and not lying more than most people I know. And on the flipside I imagine that you value life quite a bit.
But looking at the specific case you imagine, yeah it’s really hard to imagine either totally separate on their own because I find they often lead to one another. I guess one crux for me that might give me doubts on the goodness of the truth world is not being sure on the “whether humans are innately good” question. If they aren’t innately good, then everyone being honest about their intentions and what they want to do may mean places in the world where repression or some sort of suffering is common. I guess the way I imagine it going is having a hard time dealing with the people who honesty just want some version of the world that involves inflicting some sort of harm on others. I imagine that many would likely not want this, and they would make rules as such, but that they’d have a hard time critiquing others in the world far away from themselves if they’ve been perfectly straightforward and honest about where they stand with their values.
But I can easily imagine counterarguments here, and it’s not as if a life where reducing suffering were of utmost importance wouldn’t run the risk of some pretty large deviations from the truth that seem bad (i.e. a vegan government asserting there are zero potentials for negative health effects for going vegan). But then we could get into standard utilitarian responses like “oh well they really should have been going in for something like rule utilitarianism that would have told them this was an awful decision on net” and so on and so forth. Not sure where I come out either really.
Note: I’d love to know what practical response you have, it might not be my crux but could be insightful!
LessWrong is launching Dialogues pretty soon, would you be interested in doing one together? I’m most interested in high level “how do you navigate when two good principles conflict?” than object level vegan questions, but probably that would come up. An unnuanced teaser for this would be “I don’t think a world where humans are Bad as a whole makes sense”.
On a practical level:
I think you speak of veganism as the sustainable shelling point with more certainty than is warranted. How do you know it’s less sustainable, for everyone, than ameliatarianism or reducitarianism? How do you know that the highest EV is pushing veganism-as-ideal harder, rather than socially coordinate around “medical meat”?
I think “no animal products via the mouth” is a much more arbitrary line than is commonly considered, especially if you look at it on purely utilitarian grounds. What about sugar sifted through bones? Why isn’t “no vertebrates” sustainable? What about glue in shoes? What about products produced in factories that use rat poison?
Vegetarianism seems like a terrible compromise shelling point. My understanding is that most eggs are more suffering per calorie or nutrient than beef. But vegetarian is (currently) an easier line than milk-and-beef-but-not-eggs-or-chickens.
I knew a guy who went vegetarian for ethical reasons before learning all of the math. He chose to stay vegetarian after learning how bad eggs were, because he was worried that he couldn’t reconfigure himself a second time and if he tried he’d slide all the way back into eating meat.
When I’ve asked other people about this they answer based on the vegans they knew. But that’s inherently a biased group. It includes current vegans who socialize in animal-focused spaces. Assuming that’s true, why should that apply to vegans who don’t hang out in those spaces, much less omnivores considering reducitarianism?
It’s not obvious to me our protect-at-all-costs attitude towards young children is optimal. I can track a number of costs to society, parents, and the children themselves. And a bunch of harms that still aren’t being prevented.
I suspect you are underestimating the costs of veganism for some people. It sounds like that one guy didn’t value mac and cheese that much, and it was reasonable for him to forego it even if it also would have been easy to buy an offset. But for some people that bowl of mac and cheese is really important, and if you want society as a whole to shift then the default rules need to accommodate that.
Have no idea what it entails but I enjoy conversing and learning more about the world, so I’d happy do a dialogue! Happy to keep it in the clouds too.
But yeah you make a good point. I mean, I’m not convinced what the proper schelling point is, and would eagerly eat up any research on this. Maybe what I think is that for a specific group of people like me (no idea what exactly defines that group) it makes sense, but that generally what’s going to make sense for a person has to be quite tailored to their own situation and traits.
I would push back on the no animal products through the mouth bit. Sure, it happens to include lesser forms of suffering that might be less important than changing other things in the world (and if you assumed that this was zero sum that may be a problem, but I don’t think it is). But generally it focuses on avoiding suffering that you are in control of, in a way that updates in light of new evidence. Vegetarianism in India is great because it leads to less meat consumption, but because it involves specific things to avoid instead of setting a basis as suffering it becomes much harder to convincingly explain why they should update to avoid eggs for example. So yeah, protesting rat poison factories may not be a mainstream vegan thing, but I’d be willing to bet vegans are less apt to use it. And sure, vegans may be divided on what to do about sugar, but I’d be surprised if any said “it doesn’t involved an animal going in my mouth so it’s okay with me”. I don’t think it’s arbitrary but find it rather intentional.
I could continue on here but I’m also realizing some part of you wanted to avoid debates about vegan stuffs, so I’ll let this suffice and explicitly say if you don’t want to respond I fully understand (but would be happy to hear if you do!).
First thanks for your kind words, they were nice to receive :)
But I also think this is wonderfully put, and I think you’re right to point to your feelings on truth as similar. As truth for you, life to me is sacred, and I think I generally build a lot of my world out of that basic fact. I would note that I think one another’s values are likely important for us to, as truth is also really important to me and I value honestly and not lying more than most people I know. And on the flipside I imagine that you value life quite a bit.
But looking at the specific case you imagine, yeah it’s really hard to imagine either totally separate on their own because I find they often lead to one another. I guess one crux for me that might give me doubts on the goodness of the truth world is not being sure on the “whether humans are innately good” question. If they aren’t innately good, then everyone being honest about their intentions and what they want to do may mean places in the world where repression or some sort of suffering is common. I guess the way I imagine it going is having a hard time dealing with the people who honesty just want some version of the world that involves inflicting some sort of harm on others. I imagine that many would likely not want this, and they would make rules as such, but that they’d have a hard time critiquing others in the world far away from themselves if they’ve been perfectly straightforward and honest about where they stand with their values.
But I can easily imagine counterarguments here, and it’s not as if a life where reducing suffering were of utmost importance wouldn’t run the risk of some pretty large deviations from the truth that seem bad (i.e. a vegan government asserting there are zero potentials for negative health effects for going vegan). But then we could get into standard utilitarian responses like “oh well they really should have been going in for something like rule utilitarianism that would have told them this was an awful decision on net” and so on and so forth. Not sure where I come out either really.
Note: I’d love to know what practical response you have, it might not be my crux but could be insightful!
LessWrong is launching Dialogues pretty soon, would you be interested in doing one together? I’m most interested in high level “how do you navigate when two good principles conflict?” than object level vegan questions, but probably that would come up. An unnuanced teaser for this would be “I don’t think a world where humans are Bad as a whole makes sense”.
On a practical level:
I think you speak of veganism as the sustainable shelling point with more certainty than is warranted. How do you know it’s less sustainable, for everyone, than ameliatarianism or reducitarianism? How do you know that the highest EV is pushing veganism-as-ideal harder, rather than socially coordinate around “medical meat”?
I think “no animal products via the mouth” is a much more arbitrary line than is commonly considered, especially if you look at it on purely utilitarian grounds. What about sugar sifted through bones? Why isn’t “no vertebrates” sustainable? What about glue in shoes? What about products produced in factories that use rat poison?
Vegetarianism seems like a terrible compromise shelling point. My understanding is that most eggs are more suffering per calorie or nutrient than beef. But vegetarian is (currently) an easier line than milk-and-beef-but-not-eggs-or-chickens.
I knew a guy who went vegetarian for ethical reasons before learning all of the math. He chose to stay vegetarian after learning how bad eggs were, because he was worried that he couldn’t reconfigure himself a second time and if he tried he’d slide all the way back into eating meat.
When I’ve asked other people about this they answer based on the vegans they knew. But that’s inherently a biased group. It includes current vegans who socialize in animal-focused spaces. Assuming that’s true, why should that apply to vegans who don’t hang out in those spaces, much less omnivores considering reducitarianism?
It’s not obvious to me our protect-at-all-costs attitude towards young children is optimal. I can track a number of costs to society, parents, and the children themselves. And a bunch of harms that still aren’t being prevented.
I suspect you are underestimating the costs of veganism for some people. It sounds like that one guy didn’t value mac and cheese that much, and it was reasonable for him to forego it even if it also would have been easy to buy an offset. But for some people that bowl of mac and cheese is really important, and if you want society as a whole to shift then the default rules need to accommodate that.
Dialogues are launched now!
Have no idea what it entails but I enjoy conversing and learning more about the world, so I’d happy do a dialogue! Happy to keep it in the clouds too.
But yeah you make a good point. I mean, I’m not convinced what the proper schelling point is, and would eagerly eat up any research on this. Maybe what I think is that for a specific group of people like me (no idea what exactly defines that group) it makes sense, but that generally what’s going to make sense for a person has to be quite tailored to their own situation and traits.
I would push back on the no animal products through the mouth bit. Sure, it happens to include lesser forms of suffering that might be less important than changing other things in the world (and if you assumed that this was zero sum that may be a problem, but I don’t think it is). But generally it focuses on avoiding suffering that you are in control of, in a way that updates in light of new evidence. Vegetarianism in India is great because it leads to less meat consumption, but because it involves specific things to avoid instead of setting a basis as suffering it becomes much harder to convincingly explain why they should update to avoid eggs for example. So yeah, protesting rat poison factories may not be a mainstream vegan thing, but I’d be willing to bet vegans are less apt to use it. And sure, vegans may be divided on what to do about sugar, but I’d be surprised if any said “it doesn’t involved an animal going in my mouth so it’s okay with me”. I don’t think it’s arbitrary but find it rather intentional.
I could continue on here but I’m also realizing some part of you wanted to avoid debates about vegan stuffs, so I’ll let this suffice and explicitly say if you don’t want to respond I fully understand (but would be happy to hear if you do!).
I’d be happy to join a dialogue about this.