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Midtermist12Dec 16 202418

I am very happy to see this post.

As a practical matter, agents can only burden themselves so much in so many ways. Even if an agent is committed to impartial utility maximization, increasing his/her burden will decrease productivity and/or risk value drift via burnout.

If the burden of restricting one's diet to veganism burdens an agent more than the utility derived from this restriction (which can be calculated and paid for in offsets), it does not make sense for an agent to do so. Of course, it may be difficult to calculate the value of this dietary restriction, which may include avoidance of negative utility, by contributing to demand for animal products and thus harming animals, but also the preemption of positive utility from contributing to demand for vegan products and sending a broader social signal as to the value of animal rights and the normality of veganism. Thus, the value of being vegan vs. omnivore has quite a bit to it to calculate the total value attributable to it.

However, if you are not a significant public figure and you would be significantly burdened by switching to veganism (due to your cultural or family situation, health issues, or you just really enjoy consuming animal products), it may very well make more sense to spend your altruistic sacrifice points on increasing utility in other ways, such as by donating to charities that effectively address farmed animal welfare.

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My Problem with Veganism and Deontology

by sammyboiz🔸

Dec 16 20243 min read 54

27

Animal welfareCause prioritizationPhilosophyDeontologyExpected valueMoral philosophy

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My Problem with Veganism and Deontology

My Problem with Deontology and Deontological Side-Constraints

When the only thing stopping you from making the world a better place via EU maximization is a personal unwillingness to commit harm, are you just being selfish? Are you prioritizing keeping your own hands clean over reducing overall suffering? Yes, causing harm may feel horrible, but do your feelings justify the suffering you could have alleviated? EA involves significant personal sacrifice, and I currently feel that sacrificing a “clean conscience” in the pursuit of EU maximization should be considered praiseworthy. I feel similarly about risk aversion.

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97GiveWell may have made 1 billion dollars of harmful grants, and Ambitious Impact incubated 8 harmful organisations via increasing factory-farming?

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MarcusAbramovitchDec 16 202480

My reasons for being vegan have little to do with the direct negative effects of factory farming. They are in roughly descending order of importance.

A constant reminder to myself that non-human animals matter. My current day-to-day activities give nearly no reason to think about the fact that non-human animals have moral worth. This is my 2-5 times per day reminder of this fact.
Reduction of cognitive dissonance. It took about a year of being vegan to begin to appreciate, viscerally, that animals had moral worth. It's hard to quantify this but it is tough to think that animals have moral worth when you eat them a few times a day. This has flow-through effects on donations, cause prioritization, etc.
The effect it has on others. I'm not a pushy vegan at all. I hardly tell people but every now and then people notice and ask questions about it.
Solidarity with non-EAA animal welfare people. For better or worse, outside of EA, this seems to be a ticket to entry to be considered taking the issue seriously. I want to be able to convince them to donate to THL over a pet shelter and to SWP over dog rescue charities and the the EA AWF over Pets for Vets. They are more likely to listen to me when they see me as one of them who just happens to be doing the math.
Reducing the daily suffering that I cause. It's still something even though it pales in comparison to my yearly donations but it is me living in accordance with my values and is causing less suffering than I would otherwise.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 16 202416

I don't know man, virtue signaling to non-vegans and vegans that you care about animals can be done simply by telling people you donate 10% of your money to animal welfare. It doesn't take much more than that. Utilitarianism can be explained.

As for lowering cognitive dissonance, this is an extremely person to person thing. I would never prescribe veganism to an EA with this reasoning. And this this was a common reason, why haven't I also been told to have a pet/animal companion to increase how much moral worth I give animals?

And reducing daily suffering that you cause can also be done better with an extra 10 cents or so. Wouldn't this be more in accordance with your values? Surely 10 cents is also cheaper than veganism.

Sorry if I sound attacking.

MarcusAbramovitchDec 16 202416

I listed in descending order of importance. I might be confused for one of those "hyper rationalist" types in many instances. I think rationalist undervalue the cognitive dissonance. In my experience, a lot of rationalists just don't value non human animals. Even rationalists behave in a much more "vibes" based way than they'd have you believe. It really is hard to hold in your head both "it's okay to eat animals" and "we can avert tremendous amounts of suffering to hundreds of animals per dollar and have a moral compulsion to do so".

I also wouldn't call what I do virtue signaling. I never forthright tell people and I live in a very conservative part of the world.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 2024-6

NickLaingDec 20 20244

I don't think that virtue signaling by telling most people you donate 10 percent would with week to noon vegans would work well. Most of my friends would consider me a hypocrite for doing that, and longer explanations wouldn't work for many.

Utilitarianism can be explained, but even after that explanation many would consider eating meat and offsetting hypocritical, even if it might be virtuous.

The point of the virtue signaling is the signaling, not the virtue and the cleanest and easiest way to do that in many circles might be going vegan.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 20242

So if they ask you, "why are you vegan?", your honest answer would be "because I need you to accept me as a non-hypocrite."????? I don't think vegans would give you any extra consideration if they knew this was your reasoning. Any other reason you give would be dishonest and misleading.

Jeff Kaufman 🔸Dec 16 202424

Therefore, veganism does not make sense for someone aiming to maximize their EU. ... The only other factor stopping me from eating meat was a deontological side-constraint.

It looks to me like you're not including some other pretty important ways veganism can increase expected utility beyond the direct impact of reducing the suffering caused by your diet. For example, it's a clear signal to other people that you think animals matter morally and are willing to make sacrifices for their benefit. And it helps build a norm of not harming animals for human benefit, reducing the risk of locking in speciesist values. I think there are many EAs who wouldn't make the sacrifice to be vegan in a hypothetical world where no one would ever know their dietary choices, but who think it's a very important thing to do in the world we do live in.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 16 20249

I believe that honesty and acting according to your values is more important. If your value is EU maximization, then your actions and opinion should reflect that. I didn't appreciate that I learned veganism through EA only to discover that it may be an order of magnitude less effective than animal welfare donations. I think EAs should also not forget they need to signal to each other. I think many EAs have been given the message "go vegan to reduce suffering," but not "animal welfare is the most effective way to help animals."

Jeff Kaufman 🔸Dec 16 202410

Sorry! I've edited my comment to make it clearer that I'm trying to say that suffering caused by eating meat is not the only factor you should weigh in estimating expected utility.

(For what it's worth I do still think it's likely that, taking these other benefits into account and assuming you think society is seriously undervaluing the moral worth of animals, veganism still doesn't make sense as a matter of maximizing utility.)

MatthewDahlhausenDec 19 20241

Maximization is not as simple as choosing the single action the produces the most benefit; actions are not necessary exclusive. If I go to the grocery store, I don't only by beans because I think they have the highest nutritional value per dollar. I buy other things too, and need to be because beans alone are insufficient. One can donate to animal welfare charities and be vegan; those aren't exclusive.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 19 20241

Im confused what other goal there is beside the maximization of expected utility.

As for being exclusive, I argue that effort needs to be prioritized according to importance.

MatthewDahlhausenDec 19 202421

A useful test when moral theorizing about animals is to swap "animals" with "humans" and see if your answer changes substantially. In this example, if the answer changes, the relevant difference for you isn't about pure expected value consequentialism, it's about some salient difference between the rights or moral status of animals vs. humans. Vegans tend to give significant, even equivalent, moral status to some animals used for food. If you give near-equal moral status to animals, "offsetting meat eating by donating to animal welfare orgs" is similar to "donating to global health charities to offset hiring a hitman to target a group of humans". There are a series of rebuttals, counter-rebuttals, etc. to this line of reasoning. Not going to get into all of them. But suffice to say that in the animal welfare space, an animal welfarist carnivore is hesitantly trusted - it signals either a lack of commitment or discipline, a diet/health struggle, a discordant belief that animals deserve far less rights and moral status as humans, or (much rarer) a fanatic consequentialist ideology that thinks offsetting human killing is morally coherent and acceptable. A earnest carnivore that cares a lot about animal welfare is incredibly rare.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 20246

Are people here against killing one to save two in a vacuum? I thought EA was very utilitarian. I think intuitively, causing harm is repulsive but ultimately, our goal should be creating a better world.

To your "animal" to "human" swap, it's hard to give "would you kill/eat humans if you could offset" as an double standard since most self-proclaimed utilitarians are still intuitively repulsed to immoral behavior like causing harm to humans, cannibalism, etc. On the other hand, we are biologically programmed to not care when eating animal flesh, even if we deem animal suffering immoral. What this means is that I would be way to horrified to offset killing or eating a human even if I deem it moral. On the other hand, I can offset eating an animal because I don't intuitively care about the harm I caused. I am too disconnected, biologically preprogrammed, and cognitively dissonant. Therefore, offsetting animal suffering is not repulsive nor immoral to me.

MatthewDahlhausenDec 24 20243

"we are biologically programmed to not care when eating animal flesh" this isn't obvious or intuitive to me. It seems like our attitudes toward eating animals are largely culturally conditioned. Regardless, even if it is "innate", a personal insensitivity to animals is not a moral reason to treat them as interchangeable, expendable, or offsetable.

It seems your justifications for offsets are bit of fanatic consequentialism and a belief that animals do not deserve similar moral status as humans.

Two points in response. First, many vegans were similarly callous towards animals before they became vegan. Cognitive dissonance is incredibly powerful. It's why many vegans first went vegan for health reasons, then were able to earnestly consider animal moral status, and then stayed vegan for the animals. Second, I think you should be horrified at how some animals are treated as if they were human. Pigs for example are similar enough in biology that they are used for organ transplants and to test painkiller efficacy. There don't seem to be good reasons to think the experience of pain to a pig is all that different from that of a human infant.

MarcusAbramovitchDec 20 20244

This comment is extremely good. I wish I could incorporate some of it into my comment since it hits the cognitive dissonance aspect far better than I did. It's near impossible to give significant moral weight to animals and still think it is okay to eat them.

Midtermist12Dec 16 202418

I am very happy to see this post.

Richard Y Chappell🔸Dec 17 202417

I basically agree with the core case for "animal welfare offsetting", and discuss some related ideas in Confessions of a Cheeseburger Ethicist. The main points of resistance I'd flag are just:

For some people, there may not be any "tradeoff" between going vegan and donating. If you can easily do both, all the better! So it's worth being clear that the argument isn't really against veganism so much as against investing too much moral effort into becoming vegan (if it would require significant willpower).
As Jeff notes, there may be better second-order effects from going vegan. Presumably a sufficiently large extra donation could balance those out, but it's very hard to guess what would be sufficient. (I do think there's also value to omnivores like us being public about valuing animal welfare and donating accordingly. That might help reach some different audiences, for example. But I still think it's worth esteeming veganism as a laudatory practice, even if it shouldn't be everyone's top priority.)

Theodore Yohalem Shouse 🔸 Dec 18 20244

I think @Richard Y Chappell🔸 is right. I'd add that lots of my non-EA peers care about hypocrisy (ie, they would be unwilling to entertain arguments in favour of veganism or donating to animal welfare coming from a non-vegan).

I care a lot about spreading the cause of veganism (and effective altruism more generally), and I think that by eating vegan I hold a certain amount of moral legitimacy in the eyes of others that I don't want to give up because it might help me convince them about animal welfare or EA one day. (Being vegan also provides some reflective moral legitimacy or satisfaction to the irrational part of me that also cares about hypocrisy.)

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 20242

My question for you is why do you promote AW donation AND veganism. Do you think you can increase your EU by only advocating for AW donations? Do you care that others abide by deontological side-contraints?

Theodore Yohalem Shouse 🔸 Dec 22 20245

I don't care about deontic constraints as such (that goes for me and my peers). But insofar as many people (especially non-EAs) care about weird deontic things like personal proximity to a cause and hypocrisy, I think advocating veganism is worthwhile, and perhaps has a higher EV than advocating for AW donations.

I doubt many people who aren't vegan donate to AW (beside some EAs, like yourself). A lot of people would clearly prefer to donate lots of money than go vegan, but I think the main thing stopping people from caring about veganism and animal welfare is motivated reasoning; ie, they don't want to admit to themselves that their diet is immoral. And so I'm not sure I'd be able to convince many people that animal welfare matters and that they should donate to it but don't have to go vegan. I could be wrong, and if I am that bodes well because getting lots of people to donate to AW would be great!

As to why I advocate both AW and veganism, see what I wrote above about why I myself am vegan. I think it is communicatively powerful and lends you a certain kind of moral legitimacy that other people (especially non-EAs) tend to care about. The few times I have tried to convince my family members about veganism, they've almost immediately started in on hypocrisy. For example, they would mention things like when I took a bite of my sister's meal that had meat in it, how I used to not be vegan, how I still fly on planes even though I care about the environment, etc. I think all these objections are insane (esp. the one about flying), but they go to show how non-EAs put a lot of emphasis on hypocrisy as something that's morally relevant.

I think there needs to be a general cultural shift toward caring about animals such that we'd view killing them instrumentally as repulsive in the same way that many people intuitively feel killing humans for the greater good is still wrong (I really liked what you wrote about this here). And to achieve this cultural shift, we probably shouldn't be hypocrites because the people we're trying to convince really don't like being lectured by hypocrites.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 22 20242

Your reasoning is solid to me. great response.

Joanna MichalskaDec 17 202412

I think offsetting your emissions and offsetting your meat consumption are treated differently by EAs because they really are different.

I liked the two examples presented by William MacAskill in 'Doing good better':

Offsetting your contribution to climate change by donating to CoolEarth, so that all the CO2 you produce gets offset before it gets to harm anyone - the 'undoing harm' kind
Donating to an org that advocates for not cheating on your spouse to offset your cheating on your spouse - the 'apology' kind

In the second case the damage is already done; by offsetting, you just prevent further harm. Eating meat while donating to animal welfare organizations is more like the second example. You harm some animals and then pay for some other animals to be saved. You can't undo the harm done to the animals harmed.

Sujan RoyDec 19 20242

I think MacAskill's claim in (1) is based on a scientifically inaccurate picture of how Earth's climate and weather systems work. In my view, the harm caused by CO2 emissions clearly isn't the kind which can be undone by carbon offsetting practices.

The atmosphere is a chaotic system, meaning even small changes to it can lead to butterfly-like effects. These changes snowball into significant differences in weather patterns, affecting the timing and location of extreme weather events like cyclones, heat waves, and monsoons decades later. So, when we emit CO2 in one place and offset it elsewhere, we are almost certainly causing some people to lose their homes, be injured, fall ill or die when they otherwise wouldn't have, while making it so that a different set of people avoid those tragedies when they otherwise wouldn't have. And that is why neither carbon nor factory farm offsets undo any kind of harm. Both involve harming others and then conferring an equivalent benefit to an entirely different group of people. Thus, they can't differ in terms of acceptability, I think.

The empirical support for my claims can be found in doi: 10.1088/0951-7715/27/9/R123

JasonDec 17 202411

Eating meat seems indirect enough that offsetting feels acceptable. When you purchase meat, the harm unfolds as follows: A farm reviews the previous year's demand and decides to expand operations to supply another 1,000 chickens. Of course, this decision typically occurs for every 1,000th chicken sold. This level of indirectness feels similar to the harm caused by emitting CO₂ during a commute. For instance, my emissions might exacerbate a flood by 0.1% twenty years later, leading to one extra death for every 1,000 commutes on average.

One could classify a whole lot of harms as "indirect enough" under this logic. I'm hesitant to trot out examples involving serious mistreatment of human beings on the Forum. However, I submit that consideration of some examples along those lines would suggest that while "indirect enough" (as described in your post) may be a necessary precondition to offsetting being morally acceptable, it is not a sufficient precondition.

The CO2 hypothetical strikes me as meaningfully different. There's a sustainable amount of CO2 emission, and certain forms of offsetting can ensure that your net contribution to CO2 emission does not exceed your fair share of the sustainable amount. In that scenario, you're not violating the side constraint of taking more than your net fair share from the commons at all.

I continue to think many (but not all) offset calculations are too low in ways that may be problematic from a deontological perspective. For instance, some end up shifting much of the cost of one's own morally problematic conduct onto third parties, which doesn't seem to fit within a deontological framework. And standards for crediting impact need to be stricter here because multiple counting is a much more meaningful problem than when an altruistic donor is deciding where to donate. But that is somewhat of a different issue.

David TDec 17 20243

The other problem with the "indirect enough" argument is that the donations are even more indirect

Sure, the meat people eat is usually killed long before it's ordered and eating a few dozen chickens per year doesn't individually shift an industry. But likewise, a $1000 donation doesn't meaningfully affect an advocacy charity's ability to win a court case.

Both only work in aggregate, and on a causal basis the link between meat demand and factory farming is much more robustly-established than advocacy charity income and relative absence of factory farms^[1]

And standards for crediting impact need to be stricter here because multiple counting is a much more meaningful problem than when an altruistic donor is deciding where to donate

This is a good point too. If you're using donations to prioritise in a counterfactual scenario, what part of the outcome is actually "your impact" is irrelevant. If you're using them to buy indulgences, that's less obviously the case.

^{^}
on a money basis it's less certain, but I still don't think vegan diets are dramatically more expensive than meat ones, and the DALY impact of eating half a chicken doesn't seem to be very different from favourable estimates of DALY impact of a dollar donation to Legal Impact for Chickens...

DavidmanheimDec 16 202410

You seem to be generally conflating EA and utilitarianism. If nothing else, there are plenty of deontologist EAs. (Especially if we're being accurate with terminology!)

sammyboiz🔸Dec 16 20242

Deontology can't help you differentiate between charities or impactful careers. Only utilitarianism can, right?

DavidmanheimDec 16 20247

Deontology doesn't require you not to have any utilitarian calculations, just that the rules to follow are not justified solely on the basis of outcomes. A deontologist can believe they have a moral obligation to give 10% of their income to the most effective charity as judged by their expected outcomes, for example, making them in some real sense a strictly EA deontologist.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 19 2024-1

I see, so an EA deontologist would be an EA with a deontological side-constraint and who is otherwise utilitarian with his positive impact.

DavidmanheimDec 23 20242

You seem to be framing this as if deontology is just side constraints with a base of utilitarianism. That's not how deontology works - it's an entire class of ethical frameworks on its own.

Christoph Eggert🔸Dec 17 20249

As an omnivore who wants to eat lots of protein for fitness, I would love to agree with this and just keep on piling up chicken breasts on my plate. However, I think there are some factors ignored here. Most of them have already been addressed, but I'd like to add another that I did not find so far:

Not eating meat has not only an effect in terms of less demand for meat, it also increases demand for alternatives. This should, in my opinion, not be underestimated, as it also makes the diet change much easier.

For example: In Germany, we have a company called Rügenwalder Mühle. The origins of this company go back to a butcher shop back in 1834 and consequently, they always sold meat-based products. However, in 2014 they introduced vegetarian and vegan alternatives that were so great in terms of taste, quality and nutritional value that the demand was incredibly high. By now, these products bring in more revenue for them than the meat products. Obviously, this company will now focus more and more on the alternatives and they keep expanding their catalogue, often times with very high protein. This makes it much easier for a person like me to consider alternatives, and leads people to consume less meat even if they don't have any moral motivation to go vegan.

I doubt that any realistic amount of donations can top this. Sure, e.g. The Good Food Institute is basically trying to go into this direction, but at the end the demand needs to be there for it to work out long-term. Similar to voting in democracies, I think the "small effect" of our decisions can have quite an impact here that is hard to replace with donations.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 20241

I know that you state this as a reason that has not been addressed so your argument is probably not your main argument. But if you are using this as a main reason for going vegan, I feel like it misses the point. Maybe going vegan yourself makes it 20% easier for the next person to go vegan. That is still nowhere near the cost-effectiveness/effort-effectiveness of donating to animal welfare since the one estimate I listed was $1000 to offset a lifetime of veganism.

yanni kyriacosDec 20 20246

Interesting post! Would you keep a human slave if there was an effective anti slavery charity? Or is this speciesism?

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 20241

I would respond to this, the same way I did to this other comment

Alexander Herwix 🔸Dec 16 20244

Maybe I am naive but what is the cost that’s associated with not eating meat? Not having the taste of it? What motivates you to donate money to reduce animal suffering if you believe that your taste is more valuable than the life of the animal in the first place? Or are you at a point where you believe that animals matter enough to warrant some small amounts of donations but not to deprive you of their taste?

I mean, of course it’s good to donate but I don’t see why this means that you should continue the practice that you want to offset if you can help it or am I missing something?

Similarly, if I offset pollution, I do not turn around and pollute more because that would defeat the purpose?!

sammyboiz🔸Dec 16 20243

I am not maximally EA and I assume you aren't either. (In the sense that we aren't spending every living second trying to generate impact). We both have some level of commitment towards altruism that we are willing to put in. I believe that spending effort to be vegan has a cost, if I spent that time making more money, I could do more for the world. Therefore yes, my taste is more important the life of the an animal.

I can ask you a similar question: Do you believe spending time on your hobby yesterday is more valuable than the life of the animals that you could have saved?

As for pollution, I can say that my commute is more important that the impact of my emissions because I can outweigh my suffering caused through donations.

Alexander Herwix 🔸Dec 18 20243

I don’t agree with this sentiment. At least for me I really do not see any real cost associated with being vegan that would keep me from earning more or being a better person in any meaningful way.

For example, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t work more if I ate more meat, why would I? There really doesn’t seem to be a causal pathway here. Maybe if you really crave beef and you can’t help yourself thinking about this all the time… yeah, that could be distracting and reduce your performance but I am not sure that something like this occurs all that often. Never happened to me at least.

I would argue it’s actually quite the opposite. Being vegan is normally quite a healthy lifestyle that has positive effects on health all around. Don’t underestimate the impact of having to live with the cognitive dissonance of being directly responsible for the unnecessary suffering of harmless animals.

But I guess there are different preferences and maybe you see things differently. I just wanted to flag that you are not really presenting knock down arguments here. To me it seems more like a self-justificatory move to somehow “absolve” you from doing the right thing.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 16 20242

We are imperfect and we need to prioritize the most important actions to reduce suffering. We don't have infinite energy. A lifetime of veganism is difficult. Making or saving $1000 is comparatively not.

Tejas SubramaniamDec 17 20244

I think offsetting emissions and offsetting meat consumption are comparable under utilitarianism, but much less comparable under most deontological moral theories, if you think animals have rights. For instance, if you killed someone and donated $5,000 to the Malaria Consortium, that seems worse – from a deontological perspective – than if you just did nothing at all, because the life you kill and the life you save are different people, and many deontological theories are built on the “separateness of persons.” In contrast, if you offset your CO2 emissions, you’re offsetting your effect on warming, so you don’t kill anyone to begin with (because it’s not like your CO2 emissions cause warming that hurts agent A, and then your offset reduces temperatures to benefit agent B). It might be similarly problematic to offset your contribution to air pollution, though, because the effects of air pollution happen near the place where the pollution actually happened.

Sujan RoyDec 20 20243

I believe the consequences of eating vegan are more plausibly characterized as falling under the domain of procreation ethics, rather than that of the ethics of killing. When you eat meat, the only difference you can reasonably expect to make is affecting how many farmed animals are born in the near future, since the fate of the ones that already exist in the farms is sealed (i.e. they'll be killed no matter what) and can't be affected by our dietary choices.

So I think, rather than factory farm offsets being similar to murdering someone and then saving others, they're akin to causing someone's birth in miserable conditions (who later dies prematurely), and then 'offsetting' that harm by preventing the suffering of hundreds of other human beings.

I submit that offsetting still feels morally questionable in this scenario, but at least my intuitions are less clear here.

Tejas SubramaniamDec 20 20242

I didn’t say they fell under the ethics of killing, I was using killing as an example of a generic rights violation under a plausible patient-centered deontological theory to illustrate the difference between “a rights violation happening to one person and help coming for a separate person as an offset” and “one’s harm being directly offset.”

(I agree that it seems a bit more unclear if potential people can have rights, even if they can have moral consideration, and in particular rights to not be brought into existence, but I think it’s very plausible.)

Tejas SubramaniamDec 17 20242

Note, however, that I think the question of whether there can be deontic side-constraints regarding our treatment of animals is unclear even conditioning on deontology. Many deontologist philosophers – like Huemer – are uncertain whether animals have “rights” (as a patient-centered deontologist would put it), even though they think (1) humans have rights and (2) animals are still deserving of moral consideration. Deontologists sometimes resort to something like “deontology for people, consequentialism for animals” (although some other deontologists, like Nozick, thought that this was insufficient for animals).

Aidan🔸Dec 17 20244

As a vegan I agree with Marcus and Jeff's takes but also think at least carnitarianism (not eating fish) is justifiable on pure utilitarian grounds. The 5 cent offset estimate is miles off (by a factor of 50-100) for fish and shrimp here, and this is how your argument falls.

I made a rough model that suggests a 100g cooked serving for farmed carp is ~1.1 years in a factory farm, and that of farmed shrimp is ~6 years in a factory farm. I modelled salmon and it came out much lower than this, but I expect this to grow when I factor in the fact salmon are carnivorous and farmed fish are used in salmon fish feed.

This is a lot of time, and it's more expensive to pay for offsets that cover a longer time period. We have two main EA-aligned options for aquaculture 'offsets', one is the Fish Welfare Initiative, which (iirc) improves the life of a single fish across its lifetime for a marginal dollar, and the other is the Shrimp Welfare Project, which improves the death (a process lasting 3-5 minutes) of 1000 shrimp per year for a marginal dollar (we don't know how good their corporate campaigns will be yet).

I'm really not sure how good it is for a carp to have a lower stocking density and higher water quality, which is FWI's intervention in India, and essentially the best case for FWI's effectiveness. If we assume it's a 30% reduction in lifetime pain we can offset a fish meal for roughly $3.33.

I don't think it's good to prevent 1 year of shrimp suffocation and then go off and cause shrimp to spend 100 years in farmed conditions (which are really bad, to be clear). Biting the bullet on that and assuming a stunner lasts 20 years and no discount rate, to offset a single shrimp meal you'd have to pay $4.6 (nearly 100 times more than the estimate you used).

Maybe you could offset using a different species (chicken, through corporate commitments). Vasco Grilo thinks a marginal dollar gets you 2 years of chicken life in factory farms averted. Naively I'd think that chicken lives are better than shrimp lives, but shrimp matter slightly less morally. This time you probably have to pay $3 to offset a shrimp meal using the easiest species to influence.

Additionally, the lead time on offsets is long (I would think at least five years from a donation to a corporate commitment being implemented). It's not good to have an offset that realises most of its value 20 years from now when, by then, there is a much higher chance of lab grown meat being cheaper or animal welfare regulations being better.

I think that you should at least be carnitarian because this is incredibly easy and based on my modelling (second sheet) it's the vast majority (90-95%) of the (morally adjusted) time saved in factory farms associated with vegetarianism. I doubt that any person gets $4 of utility from eating a different kind of meat, and this just adds up over time.

sammyboiz🔸Dec 21 20242

love it

MichaelStJulesDec 16 20243

Related thread here.

BerkeDec 17 20243

For the issues you raised in the last section, you may find this paper by Mogensen & Macaskill valuable. From the abstract: "Given plausible assumptions about the long-run impact of our everyday actions, we show that standard non-consequentialist constraints on doing harm entail that we should try to do as little as possible in our lives."

Jeff Kaufman 🔸Dec 16 20242

It looks like this posted twice? It seems to be a duplicate of My Problem with Veganism and Deontology

sammyboiz🔸Dec 16 20240

I put this one back up and took the other one down. Thx

agagagwakaDec 19 20241

Here's another reason to be vegan that donations alone can't replicate: individual vegans create crucial demand-side pressure that drives market transformation. Even one vegan in a social group often forces restaurants to add plant-based options (the "veto voter" effect). This creates positive feedback loops by:

1. Making veganism more accessible for others by increasing availability
2. Providing the initial market that makes alternative protein R&D viable
3. Normalizing plant-based options in mainstream establishments

This market development mechanism is distinct from direct animal welfare impact. Without a base of committed vegan consumers, it may be harder to develop the scalable alternative proteins needed for widespread adoption - something that donations to animal welfare charities don't directly address. This is one way to signal to the market that there's a segment of customers willing to buy (and potentially pay more for) cultivated meat in the future.

SummaryBotDec 16 20241

Executive summary: The post argues against veganism and deontological ethics, claiming that offsetting harm through effective donations is more impactful than avoiding meat consumption, and that deontological side-constraints are inconsistently applied and may prevent greater good through utility maximization.

Key points:

According to EA calculations, a $1,000 donation to animal welfare organizations can offset a lifetime of meat consumption, making veganism less efficient than earning-to-give strategies.
The indirect nature of harm from meat consumption is comparable to carbon emissions, yet EAs are more willing to offset the latter - suggesting inconsistent application of moral principles.
Deontological side-constraints (refusing to cause direct harm) may be selfish if they prevent greater positive impact through utility maximization.
The post identifies a key contradiction: deontologists inconsistently apply their principles to actions with butterfly effects, which all ultimately cause some form of harm.
The author questions whether personal moral purity (avoiding direct harm) should be sacrificed for greater overall positive impact.

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.

SatorDec 17 20241

Some general thoughts I have on reading this post. I feel it's worth mentioning that I use a stark example to illustrate my point and do so in the hope that nobody is offended (as that isn't my intention).

I support moral trade, but find it hard to set aside a low level of suspicion/uncertainty I feel when people advance this argument.
Imagine a person who claims "I love humans and think they're great, but I also really enjoy torturing and even raping them. I recognise that this causes harm to them, but over my lifetime, I'll probably only torture and rape about 20 people. However, I have found this charity that would offset the harm of doing so by preventing torture and rape of humans. A donation of about $1000 would offset the harm I intend to do over my lifetime. Therefore, if I will not forgo my urges to torture and rape humans, but earn-to-give and donate to this charity. After all, I believe in EV maximisation, not deontological constraints."
The bottom line might be positive expected utility, but something in the refusal to abandon one's own personal convenience or constrain a darker urge (in the case of your post, liking the taste of meat since I'm assuming this isn't health related) leaves me suspicious.
I claim that the person should resist the urge to torture and rape humans as a starting point.
- As a side note, I sometimes wonder if vegans have diminished sensitivity to taste, making veganism easier by reducing the urge to eat meat

When you purchase meat, the harm unfolds as follows: A farm reviews the previous year's demand and decides to expand operations to supply another 1,000 chickens. Of course, this decision typically occurs for every 1,000th chicken sold. This level of indirectness feels similar to the harm caused by emitting CO₂ during a commute. For instance, my emissions might exacerbate a flood by 0.1% twenty years later, leading to one extra death for every 1,000 commutes on average.

This argument presupposes that the value of being vegan is measured only in animals directly saved from the act of a given vegan not eating them. It ignores the (difficult to quantify) gains from establishing veganism as of a social norm, creating demand for alt proteins, demonstrating the viability of living healthily as a vegan and so on.
It also neglects the lose of credibility incurred by eating animals. Imagine if our person from the previous example began advocating for women's rights. Virtually nobody would take them seriously. They might even end up doing more damage to this cause, despite their protest, "my actions are in fact positive EV". Even if we assume this claim is true, there is something dubious about such a person. I'm being unfair by not elucidating exactly what it is, but the best I can think of right now is to gesture at the mismatch between the person's system 1 and system 2.
It's harder to take someone seriously on the plight of animals when they themselves are eating one, as it is harder to take a slave owner seriously on the plight of slaves while they are actively depriving someone of their freedom.

sammyboiz🔸Feb 21

This makes sense if you are a public figure or an advocate for animal rights. You talk about having suspicions of people who do moral trade and how they lose credibility. But what if someone is just earning to give and whose advocacy extends only to talking about EA with family and friends? Frankly, I don't value expending my effort to keep appearances and signal my deontological constraints to others. That isn't what a true utilitarian would do in this scenario.

Venky1024Dec 23 20241

There are several things here:

As others have argued, there are other positive consequences of going vegan besides the direct impact on the change in the demand. These include
1. demonstrating that a vegan diet is healthy and sustainable in the long-term and can be achieved by people such as the individual in question
2. provide data for long term studies on vegan health, nutrition and longevity
3. increase demand for vegan products including vegan options at restaurants and grocery, meat alternatives, cultured meat, vegan alternatives in clothing, etc.
4. the reduction in demand from animals arising from those who made dietary changes inspired by the individual
I disagree that eating meat is as indirect an effect on the ultimate harm (animal abuse) as contribution to GHG is. With emissions, there are a few more steps: emission --> greater concentrations in the atmosphere -- > greater radiative forcing --> increase in temperature --> (potentially) disruptive and destructive climatic events --> harm individuals. That is quite different for most people than eating the flesh of an animal that was alive not too long ago and whose life was dominated by unimaginable misery and suffering.
When it comes to the issue of deontology, I don't think one has to embrace the philosophical position in a thoroughgoing manner to believe that one should live a life that is relatively in accordance with the principles that one believe in. And if the principle is to minimize animal suffering, then it follows that one would do one's best to consume fewer products that increase the demand for that suffering (although that in and of itself does not lead to full-fledged veganism; more on that subsequently)
Even in the case of emissions, while offsetting is fine, I would still be a little troubled if someone is using a private jet for frivolous reasons regardless of how much they are offsetting it. The idea of offsetting without making any effort to reduce GHG in the first place is not ideal although I am a bit of a utilitarian monster and would bite the proverbial bullet (just as my grudging approval of a meat-eater who contributes plenty of money for animal charity although I won't deny the bad taste it leaves in my mouth).
That said, I am fully on board - and have argued quite a bit about this myself - that one should not be expected to a 100% vegan if one is advocating on behalf of animal rights/welfare. Or more generally, the focus should not be on how close one is to some arbitrary ideal but doing what one can given all the constraints.

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