As a general rule I try to avoid foods made with additives or processes that originated from modern science, because I think overall the selection of cultural traditions over human history is more effective at eliminating non-obvious harmful practices.
I’m not strict about this, I only apply it to things I eat regularly. I don’t try to convince anyone and I only mention it if it comes up. If I have children I’ll feed them the same way and explain why, but I won’t pressure them about it once they get old enough to procure their own food.
In most cases I have no opinion about other people’s diets.
I dislike excessively cruel animal raising practices such as packing live chickens together so tightly that they can’t move, but I’m not willing to devote my life to stopping it and anything less would have negligible effects in the absence of mainstream concern.
Even with the present, limited, state of knowledge about nutrition and health it seems to me that we can do significantly better than just avoid all additives or modern foods. I don’t have much faith that traditional diets are optimized for long-term health. That said, I agree that this is not a bad heuristic to use on the margin.
Does your being honest have anything more than negligible effects on the amount of honesty in the world? It is not at all obvious to me that the marginal benefit of more vegetarianism is increasing in the number of people who shift towards it.
I probably should have clarified that my actual heuristic is more complex than what I said, for example I do trust science’s advice on how to avoid nutrient deficiency and infectious disease.
I can think of reasons to be honest that have nothing to do with the total amount of honesty in the world, but I don’t see any reasons to prevent animal cruelty that are unrelated to the amount of animal cruelty in the world. Mostly because I don’t see instances as distinguishable and my utility function over the number of “bad things where each instance is indistinguishable” seems to be roughly hyperbolic.
If you think this position is wrong I’d be interested to hear why.
I can think of reasons to be honest that have nothing to do with the total amount of honesty in the world, but I don’t see any reasons to prevent animal cruelty that are unrelated to the amount of animal cruelty in the world.
Actually I agree. But what we eat does affect the amount of animal cruelty in the world, albeit a very small amount (I should have avoided the term negligible) compared to the sum of animal cruelty, or per capita animal cruelty.
Furthermore, my experienced utility function is quite a bit like yours, where we appear to differ is that I consider mine flawed and I’m working to change it. Therefore I shut up and multiply
I am only mostly vegetarian, and I probably never would have come that far if I didn’t fall into a social circle which had a lot of vegetarians. My guess is that the marginal benefit of two randomly selected people cutting half the meat from their diet is slightly greater than one person becoming strictly vegetarian. I think there are many things which are more important than choice of diet, but this does not mean we should ignore the effects of our diet.
As a general rule I try to avoid foods made with additives or processes that originated from modern science, because I think overall the selection of cultural traditions over human history is more effective at eliminating non-obvious harmful practices.
I’m not strict about this, I only apply it to things I eat regularly. I don’t try to convince anyone and I only mention it if it comes up. If I have children I’ll feed them the same way and explain why, but I won’t pressure them about it once they get old enough to procure their own food.
In most cases I have no opinion about other people’s diets.
I dislike excessively cruel animal raising practices such as packing live chickens together so tightly that they can’t move, but I’m not willing to devote my life to stopping it and anything less would have negligible effects in the absence of mainstream concern.
Even with the present, limited, state of knowledge about nutrition and health it seems to me that we can do significantly better than just avoid all additives or modern foods. I don’t have much faith that traditional diets are optimized for long-term health. That said, I agree that this is not a bad heuristic to use on the margin.
Does your being honest have anything more than negligible effects on the amount of honesty in the world? It is not at all obvious to me that the marginal benefit of more vegetarianism is increasing in the number of people who shift towards it.
I probably should have clarified that my actual heuristic is more complex than what I said, for example I do trust science’s advice on how to avoid nutrient deficiency and infectious disease.
I can think of reasons to be honest that have nothing to do with the total amount of honesty in the world, but I don’t see any reasons to prevent animal cruelty that are unrelated to the amount of animal cruelty in the world. Mostly because I don’t see instances as distinguishable and my utility function over the number of “bad things where each instance is indistinguishable” seems to be roughly hyperbolic.
If you think this position is wrong I’d be interested to hear why.
Actually I agree. But what we eat does affect the amount of animal cruelty in the world, albeit a very small amount (I should have avoided the term negligible) compared to the sum of animal cruelty, or per capita animal cruelty.
Furthermore, my experienced utility function is quite a bit like yours, where we appear to differ is that I consider mine flawed and I’m working to change it. Therefore I shut up and multiply
I am only mostly vegetarian, and I probably never would have come that far if I didn’t fall into a social circle which had a lot of vegetarians. My guess is that the marginal benefit of two randomly selected people cutting half the meat from their diet is slightly greater than one person becoming strictly vegetarian. I think there are many things which are more important than choice of diet, but this does not mean we should ignore the effects of our diet.