I think a mixed strategy with at least some people pushing the no-animals-as-food norm and others reducing animal consumption in various ways is best for the animals.
As far as norms go, this heavily violates the norm of honesty. What you are suggesting implies that even if all those people believe exactly the same thing, some should tell you not to eat animals and some should tell you to cut down. But implicit in what they’re telling you is “my moral values state that this course of action is the most moral”, and it’s not possible for both of those courses of action to be moral. You can justify one, and you can justify the other, but you can’t justify them both at the same time—either the person saying “no eating animals” or the person saying “it’s okay to just cut down” must be a liar.
(Separately, even if they didn’t all believe the exact same thing, I would still be very skeptical. If you really think eating animals is mass murder, telling me to eat fewer animals without going completely vegan is equivalent to telling me “If you do what I say, I will no longer think you are murdering 50 people, I will only think you’re murdering 25 people”. But the moral condemnation curve is pretty flat; being a murderer of 25 people is not condemned substantially less than being a murderer of 50 people.)
Why do you think it is dishonest for different people to have different levels of commitment and willingness to eliminate animal products or different levels of belief that this is an effective strategy for them? There needn’t be any contradiction in observing that a mixed strategy might be most successful (fact) and different people being moved to different levels of diet change as one front of their animal activism.
Seems like you’re either DxE or you haven’t been vegetarian in this world. The truth is not enough people agree that it is wrong to raise animals in horrid conditions for food. If not enough people agreed about murdering a human outgroup, a strategy of purist outrage wouldn’t work, and you’d probably end up switching to a harm reduction strategy like animal EAs have. 25 lives saved is good. You’re objecting because you think it will work to object and you can save more. You think I would object if I really cared about animals but I think you just don’t understand the reality of the situation. IMHO harm reduction is how we create the change to one day be able to protect animals with outrage alone.
Why do you think it is dishonest for different people to have different levels
The argument is that you should do this “as a mixed strategy”, which would mean that even a group of people with identical beliefs would act differently based on a random factor. Furthermore, I qualified it with:
even if all those people believe exactly the same thing
so they don’t have different levels.
And even in the different levels case, it’s easy for people to pretend they have greater differences than they really do, and their actual differences may not be enough to make the statements truthful.
IMHO harm reduction is how we create the change to one day be able to protect animals with outrage alone.
It may be the case that you can save more animals if some percentage of you lie than if you all tell the truth. Whether it’s okay to lie in a “harmless” way for your ideology is a subject that’s been debated quite a lot in a number of contexts. (I do think it’s okay to lie to prevent the murder of a human outgroup, although even then, you need to be very careful, particularly with widespread lies.)
I don’t appreciate your hostility and assumption of bad faith here. Like I could answer your objections and point out that your hypothetical is misleading (because you’re stipulating that people aren’t different and differences in preferences and motivations are what explain why a mixed strategy works), but it seems like that’s not really your issue.
The concept of “least convenient possible world” comes in here. There may be situations in which a mixed strategy is possible without lying, but your idea applies both to those situations and to less convenient situations where it does require lying.
Direct Action Everywhere— it’s the most deontological animal welfare adjacent to EA. They break into farms and liberate animals and stuff like that. I don’t think it’s on the whole the most effective strategy, although I think there’s a place for it.
I think your flat condemnation curve logic raises some weird problems. If the condemnation curve going from the murder of 25 people to 50 is relatively flat, then what do you say to someone who has already killed 25 and plans to kill 25 more? It seems like you would say “We have already decided you are maximally evil, so if you turn back from this course of action, or follow through, it won’t make any difference to our assessment.” That logic seems incorrect to me. To me, when the mass murder stops killing people (or starts to kill significantly fewer) then that behavioural change seems significant.
Okay, let me clarify a little. If you ask some people what they think of someone who’s killed 25 people, and you ask a similar group what they think of someone who’s killed 50 people, you’re going to get responses that are not meaningfully different. Nobody’s going to advocate a more severe punishment for the 50-person killer, or say that he should be ostracized twice as much (because they’ve already decided the 25 person killer gets max and you can’t go above max), or that they would be happy with dating the 25 person killer but not the 50 person killer, or that only half the police should be used to try to catch the 25 person killer.
It seems like you would say “We have already decided you are maximally evil, so if you turn back from this course of action, or follow through, it won’t make any difference to our assessment.”
Nobody will say that. But they’ll behave that way.
when the mass murder stops killing people
Which is the equivalent of completely avoiding meat, not of eating less meat.
(And to the extent that vegetarians don’t behave with meat-eaters like they would with human killers, I’d say they don’t alieve that meat-eaters are like human killers.)
I agree completely that your focus groups are going to give similar responses. I especially enjoy your dating example. “Oh, George you haven’t! When you were only a 25 fold murderer I could look the other way, but I don’t think I can marry a man who has killed 26 people.”
As far as norms go, this heavily violates the norm of honesty. What you are suggesting implies that even if all those people believe exactly the same thing, some should tell you not to eat animals and some should tell you to cut down. But implicit in what they’re telling you is “my moral values state that this course of action is the most moral”, and it’s not possible for both of those courses of action to be moral. You can justify one, and you can justify the other, but you can’t justify them both at the same time—either the person saying “no eating animals” or the person saying “it’s okay to just cut down” must be a liar.
(Separately, even if they didn’t all believe the exact same thing, I would still be very skeptical. If you really think eating animals is mass murder, telling me to eat fewer animals without going completely vegan is equivalent to telling me “If you do what I say, I will no longer think you are murdering 50 people, I will only think you’re murdering 25 people”. But the moral condemnation curve is pretty flat; being a murderer of 25 people is not condemned substantially less than being a murderer of 50 people.)
Why do you think it is dishonest for different people to have different levels of commitment and willingness to eliminate animal products or different levels of belief that this is an effective strategy for them? There needn’t be any contradiction in observing that a mixed strategy might be most successful (fact) and different people being moved to different levels of diet change as one front of their animal activism.
Seems like you’re either DxE or you haven’t been vegetarian in this world. The truth is not enough people agree that it is wrong to raise animals in horrid conditions for food. If not enough people agreed about murdering a human outgroup, a strategy of purist outrage wouldn’t work, and you’d probably end up switching to a harm reduction strategy like animal EAs have. 25 lives saved is good. You’re objecting because you think it will work to object and you can save more. You think I would object if I really cared about animals but I think you just don’t understand the reality of the situation. IMHO harm reduction is how we create the change to one day be able to protect animals with outrage alone.
The argument is that you should do this “as a mixed strategy”, which would mean that even a group of people with identical beliefs would act differently based on a random factor. Furthermore, I qualified it with:
so they don’t have different levels.
And even in the different levels case, it’s easy for people to pretend they have greater differences than they really do, and their actual differences may not be enough to make the statements truthful.
It may be the case that you can save more animals if some percentage of you lie than if you all tell the truth. Whether it’s okay to lie in a “harmless” way for your ideology is a subject that’s been debated quite a lot in a number of contexts. (I do think it’s okay to lie to prevent the murder of a human outgroup, although even then, you need to be very careful, particularly with widespread lies.)
I don’t appreciate your hostility and assumption of bad faith here. Like I could answer your objections and point out that your hypothetical is misleading (because you’re stipulating that people aren’t different and differences in preferences and motivations are what explain why a mixed strategy works), but it seems like that’s not really your issue.
The concept of “least convenient possible world” comes in here. There may be situations in which a mixed strategy is possible without lying, but your idea applies both to those situations and to less convenient situations where it does require lying.
What is DxE?
Direct Action Everywhere— it’s the most deontological animal welfare adjacent to EA. They break into farms and liberate animals and stuff like that. I don’t think it’s on the whole the most effective strategy, although I think there’s a place for it.
I think your flat condemnation curve logic raises some weird problems. If the condemnation curve going from the murder of 25 people to 50 is relatively flat, then what do you say to someone who has already killed 25 and plans to kill 25 more? It seems like you would say “We have already decided you are maximally evil, so if you turn back from this course of action, or follow through, it won’t make any difference to our assessment.” That logic seems incorrect to me. To me, when the mass murder stops killing people (or starts to kill significantly fewer) then that behavioural change seems significant.
Okay, let me clarify a little. If you ask some people what they think of someone who’s killed 25 people, and you ask a similar group what they think of someone who’s killed 50 people, you’re going to get responses that are not meaningfully different. Nobody’s going to advocate a more severe punishment for the 50-person killer, or say that he should be ostracized twice as much (because they’ve already decided the 25 person killer gets max and you can’t go above max), or that they would be happy with dating the 25 person killer but not the 50 person killer, or that only half the police should be used to try to catch the 25 person killer.
Nobody will say that. But they’ll behave that way.
Which is the equivalent of completely avoiding meat, not of eating less meat.
(And to the extent that vegetarians don’t behave with meat-eaters like they would with human killers, I’d say they don’t alieve that meat-eaters are like human killers.)
I agree completely that your focus groups are going to give similar responses. I especially enjoy your dating example. “Oh, George you haven’t! When you were only a 25 fold murderer I could look the other way, but I don’t think I can marry a man who has killed 26 people.”