So agree with this, and I have another option to add to the list: where you evaluate the net value of an animal’s life individually. Because some animals seem clearly net negative (e.g. caged egg-laying hens) and others seem very plausibly net positive (beef cattle).
Because of this reasoning, I myself am no longer vegetarian/vegan, despite being vegan since I was 17 and vegetarian since I was 12 (so around 18 years veg). Instead, I eat cow products because my investigations into their lives make me feel decently confident that they’re net positive. I still never eat anything from factory-farmed chickens, fish, or pigs, including eggs, because my research shows them to be very probably net negative. I’ll also eat wild-caught fish because their lives up until death were unaffected by my actions and their death, while bad, would have happened anyways, and most ways of dying are bad, and I don’t think that human-caused death for fish is much worse on average than the counterfactual*.
Also, you mention coordination and what’s a good thing to promote in the community. I think that for the public as a whole, my approach is too complicated. However, in the EA / rationalist sphere, I think this method of making an internal model of animals could actually be far more popular and effective. Being a vegan except for cow products is a loooot easier of a change to make than giving up cheese and all meat.
*Of note, I’m the least confident about wild-caught fish and dairy. I think the thing that’s most likely to destroy my reasoning there is that I’m secretly sneaking in speciesism. Like, would I do the same for humans, controlling for flow-through effects?
I think the kind of diet you outline also makes sense on asymmetric consequentialist views, including negative utilitarianism. See Brian Tomasik’s writing. That being said, the net positive lives are for pretty large animals (cows), so you have very little impact on them either way, and the main effects are likely on wild animals, and then you’d want to judge their lives and the effects on them.
Population effects on wild-caught fish (including for fishmeal, fed mostly to farmed fish and shrimp) and other animals in their ecosystems together can be messy, but wild-caught fish supply may be so inelastic (regionally and in the aggregate) that the main (short-term) effect of eating wild-caught fish on animals would be to increase fish farming. In case wild-caught fish supply is sufficiently elastic (regionally, even if aggregate supply is inelastic due to negative elasticities from overfishing and positive elasticities from underfishing cancelling out when aggregated), then eating farmed fish (fed fishmeal) could have very large effects on wild animals with very uncertain sign.
So agree with this, and I have another option to add to the list: where you evaluate the net value of an animal’s life individually. Because some animals seem clearly net negative (e.g. caged egg-laying hens) and others seem very plausibly net positive (beef cattle).
Because of this reasoning, I myself am no longer vegetarian/vegan, despite being vegan since I was 17 and vegetarian since I was 12 (so around 18 years veg). Instead, I eat cow products because my investigations into their lives make me feel decently confident that they’re net positive. I still never eat anything from factory-farmed chickens, fish, or pigs, including eggs, because my research shows them to be very probably net negative. I’ll also eat wild-caught fish because their lives up until death were unaffected by my actions and their death, while bad, would have happened anyways, and most ways of dying are bad, and I don’t think that human-caused death for fish is much worse on average than the counterfactual*.
Also, you mention coordination and what’s a good thing to promote in the community. I think that for the public as a whole, my approach is too complicated. However, in the EA / rationalist sphere, I think this method of making an internal model of animals could actually be far more popular and effective. Being a vegan except for cow products is a loooot easier of a change to make than giving up cheese and all meat.
*Of note, I’m the least confident about wild-caught fish and dairy. I think the thing that’s most likely to destroy my reasoning there is that I’m secretly sneaking in speciesism. Like, would I do the same for humans, controlling for flow-through effects?
I think the kind of diet you outline also makes sense on asymmetric consequentialist views, including negative utilitarianism. See Brian Tomasik’s writing. That being said, the net positive lives are for pretty large animals (cows), so you have very little impact on them either way, and the main effects are likely on wild animals, and then you’d want to judge their lives and the effects on them.
Population effects on wild-caught fish (including for fishmeal, fed mostly to farmed fish and shrimp) and other animals in their ecosystems together can be messy, but wild-caught fish supply may be so inelastic (regionally and in the aggregate) that the main (short-term) effect of eating wild-caught fish on animals would be to increase fish farming. In case wild-caught fish supply is sufficiently elastic (regionally, even if aggregate supply is inelastic due to negative elasticities from overfishing and positive elasticities from underfishing cancelling out when aggregated), then eating farmed fish (fed fishmeal) could have very large effects on wild animals with very uncertain sign.