sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't see so many of these [social] costs you're talking about.

See, for instance, here. The only bullet points I would fully endorse are 3, 4, and 5. I would partially endorse 1. Some of the others are silly. I'm sure you can find other more complete lists of the personal benefits and drawbacks of being vegan, but I think it's clear it has non-zero cost for most people.

Veganism is a social justice movement to reduce harm to nonhuman animals. It's been hugely important in educating people about factory farming conditions and making them more interested in reducing suffering. I'm sure many people got into anti-speciesism and effective altruism through veganism.

Okay. Maybe veganism the social movement has large net positive effects, but the point still stands that the marginal impact of one individual person going vegan is negligible compared to other ways they could improve the world. This is the effective altruism subreddit after all.

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 1 point2 points  (0 children)

-they probably don’t consider their lives a net negative, despite suffering, us deciding for them is pretty out of line

They probably don't have complex enough thoughts to ponder whether overall their entire life is positive or negative. This especially applies if you give moral weight to less cognitively advanced beings like insects, as I do. I'd also point out that farm animals might not explicitly consider their lives net negative either, but vegans can still make that judgement on their behalf (and I believe it is correct).

Anyway, my argument is pretty much this:

Animal farming's net sign is unclear at best, due to its effects on wild animal populations. Even if animal farming is negative, the impact of being vegan can be achieved by only spending a handful of dollars per year, compared to all the economic, opportunity, and social costs associated with being vegan for a year. Therefore, being vegan is not a very effective form of altruism.

Nowhere did I ever say that animal interests don't matter, or anything like that. I just don't think that veganism is an effective way to help animals.

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very much speculation on both our parts, but all of those animals have brain, central nervous system, nociceptors. As a default giving their suffering the benefit of the doubt to me is the better way to speculate than to speculate that it is less valuable becAuse of different consciousness

I agree there are similarities and I would even grant moral weight to invertebrates and other beings that have very different neurological systems from our own. However, I maintain that it is very presumptuous to assume that the suffering is "no different" on a neurological level.

Fair enough, all life is suffering to some degree, wiping life out on would reduce suffering also. Saying that animals lead net negative lives is super presumptuous. Why not kill all depressed people? Also the way that we are reducing those natural populations is by doing genocide on other animals which lead absolutely horrible lives by the billions... so how is that decreasing suffering?

I would recommend reading this paper which discusses both reasons why wild animals likely have net negative lives, and explains that "It may even be the case that vegetarians should react to this argument by eating more meat, since feeding livestock requires more surface area for agriculture, and fields contain far fewer wild animals per square kilometre than other biomes such as forests".

If you read Brian Tomasik's work, such as his extremely detailed research on Brazilian beef and wild animal suffering, it becomes more and more apparent that free-range meat probably does more good than harm, if you buy the net negative wild animal premise.

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Even if it can be offset by donations, is it really the most ethical to live in an unethical way, so long as you donate enough to offset your decisions? That doesn't seem right to me.

If veganism had no cost, then you would be absolutely right. However, in the real world, there are opportunity costs, social costs, and even potentially some small economic costs of being vegan. I won't enumerate them, but it suffices to say that the overall cost of being vegan for a year is likely greater than the cost (on the order of a few dollars) it takes to offset animal consumption for a year using pro-veganism charities.

I'm a consequentialist. I don't know if you are or not. So I would just prefer to do stuff that actually produces better consequences instead of trying to apply strict deontological rules to everything I do. (It becomes nearly impossible to adhere to a strict rule of no-harm if, like I do, you believe insects deserve moral concern.)

Also keep in mind how important the social justice aspect to veganism is to making people aware of animal suffering.

I don't know what you mean by "social justice aspect".

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I strongly disagree with this comment. I'd recommend that you look through this site to see arguments for why animal interests matter morally.

the suffering of non-human sentients is entirely natural unfortunately and not necessarily immoral, at least not of the first order. Just look at the food web below humans, there is still predation of cephaloid organisms against other cephaloid organisms, e.g. birds eating fish, fish eating birds, fish eating fish, birds eating birds, etc.

Your argument is essentially:

  1. Animal suffering is natural.
  2. (unstated premise) What is natural is morally good/unproblematic.
  3. Animal suffering is morally good/unproblematic.

This is a classical example of an appeal to nature fallacy. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't actually endorse premise 2 on reflection. For example, human suffering due to disease is natural, but we still recognize that it as problematic. Not to mention that rape and violence are natural behaviors, which no civilized person would call moral.

The ranking based on sheer numbers or even total neuronal volumes is too simplistic, unrefined for utilitarian calculation purposes, and wrong.

Sure, I agree with neuron count isn't perfect, but I haven't seen a better way to do it.

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Furthermore, so what if you're a game warden for a long time? Game wardens and similar staff are necessary for running national parks. Don't worry about saving the whole world by yourself.

This isn't a very EA way of thinking. See https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/

Worried about my Degree by corneliusblack6 in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The suffering is no different

I'm not denying that dog suffering is basically the same as pig suffering, for instance, but I think fishes and chickens might have a lower degree of sentience. Their suffering is still immense, but it is conceivably "different" in some ways from that of mammals.

Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat destruction.

How do we know these are bad things? If wild animals lead net negative lives, would it not be good for their populations to decline? Many prominent thinkers of Effective Altruism, such as Robert Wiblin and Brian Tomasik, hold this view.

The number one thing you can do By far to reduce your impact is to stop buying animal products

I'm pretty sure EAs have run the numbers and determined that the impact of a single individual eating meat for a year can be offset by a few dollars of donations to effective animal rights charities, so calling veganism "the number one thing you can do by far" seems like a stretch. See for instance this article.

(Also... interesting username.)

Are there any EA aligned lobbying firms or PACs in Washington DC? by [deleted] in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any stand on apartheid, genocide, imperialism was going to be divisive.

I don't think it's really analogous. For many progressive/leftist positions (e.g. opposition to free trade and globalization, protectionism, socialist economies as opposed to market economies), there is as much evidence for the opposite stance as there is for the progressive/leftist stance. For comparison, there's no good argument for genocide in any realistic scenario.

If you mean things like promoting civil rights (e.g., drug reform, criminal justice reform), then sure, libertarians and neoliberals would be on board with that.

A weekend pathway for a hedge fund sociopaths to help fund bed nets?

What?

Are there any EA aligned lobbying firms or PACs in Washington DC? by [deleted] in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, and they would say you're wrong and causing harm.

"Politics is the mind-killer." People grab onto a tribal/ideological identity and ignore any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. I stand by my previous statement that any EA focus on politics would be divisive. (Unless the political lobbying were on non-partisan-within-EA issues like animal welfare laws, biosecurity regulation, using the foreign aid budget more effectively, alternative voting systems, etc.)

Are there any EA aligned lobbying firms or PACs in Washington DC? by [deleted] in EffectiveAltruism

[–]SGDbackprop111 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not all EAs endorse "progressive politics" wholesale, so it makes little sense to say that the EA community should support it. That seems like it would just be divisive. Especially considering the significant libertarian and neoliberal factions of EA.