I actually applied for funding for something quite related which was to use VR goggles to get people who want to eat less meat to subliminally associate meat, when the goggles detect it, with negative stuff (the word 'no' or things that are gross or something). We didn't get funding for it but here's something in the same vein 

Camp, B., & Lawrence, N. S. (2019). Giving pork the chop: Response inhibition training to reduce meat intake. Appetite, 141, 104315. 

Abstract:

Meat consumption is damaging to the environment, health and animal welfare. Despite a growing interest in reducing meat intake, many people eat too much. This is partly due to the pleasure associated with eating meat. Research has used go/no-go response inhibition training (RIT) to reduce the intake and reward value (liking) of snack foods. However, RIT has not yet been applied to meat. We investigated whether an internet-delivered RIT with meat pictures would reduce meat intake and liking relative to a non-food control RIT condition. Participants (N = 81) were meat eaters with a desire to reduce their intake. They completed four 10-min training sessions in one week. Active participants inhibited responses to meat, and responded to fruits and vegetables. Meat intake was measured using food frequency questionnaires at pre- and one month post-training, and a daily meat diary for one week during training. Liking of meat and other foods was measured at pre- and one month post-training. There was a reduction in meat intake over one month in both groups, with active participants showing a significantly larger decrease than controls. Conditions did not differ in meat intake during the training week. Both groups showed a devaluation of meat, with active participants showing a significantly larger devaluation of food overall, suggesting some generalisation of devaluation effects. The reduced frequency of meat intake was associated with greater devaluation of meat in active but not control participants. These findings suggest that meat RIT helps to reduce meat intake and food liking. Future research should conduct larger randomised controlled trials with longer-term outcomes.

Not drugs and not working through the biological mechanism but indeed attempting to get there through automaticity /bypassing the need for self-control & willpower.

BTW mentioning my meta-analysis is a good way to summon me!!

I live to amuse 🫡 

Yeah, when you put it that way, I can see why this might be difficult to navigate. I suppose I'm finding this navigable because the 'diet change' work I do is inherently evaluative -- my projects help funders make decisions about what to fund, rather than asking them to fund a particular TOC. 

Re: EAG NYC: I had a few moments where I wanted the meals to be a bit more segregated, like not to have to try too hard to find the animal people. I agree that AI seems to be getting most of the energy lately. 

Hi Toby, on mobile (iphone 17e), if I'm scrolling the forum and I click 'New and upvoted,' then click one of those posts, then click back, 'New and upvoted' is still underlined, but I'm back to the 'featured' view. This is pretty clearly a bug but in the context of this conversation it sure feels like the forum is trying (unconsciously? is the forum an agent? I have totally become unmoored on the question of where 'intent' resides) to steer me back to featured.

I also wrote a post today that I think is pretty good and I don't see it now under the new and upvoted section until the very bottom of the page. I guess I'd like to see more of an emphasis on 'new' in 'new', considering many of the other posts there are from days or weeks ago.

Are EA posts getting indexed on Google Scholar now? 

The (sorted by date) citations for my paper "Meaningfully reducing consumption" include links to Vasiel Stanescu's profile and Bruce Friedrich's post EA Should Invest in Animal Liberation and Diet Change Advocacy, presumably because the paper got cited a few times there (and put into proper bibliographic format by Vasile). But that's not a citation in the traditional sense, and if EA posts get reliably indexed, it opens up a really easy way to metric-max (just keep hyperlinking to your own papers in comments). 

The indexing might be a mistake. But if it's not, I think we should discuss it, and if we do have that dicsussion, I'll weigh in to say I'm very against it.

Lovely and ever timely. 

Something else here. Bruce writes:

> I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of EA animal welfare advocates see diet change and animal liberation advocacy as incapable of making much difference. 

No, this is not a fair characterization. I would never use the word 'incapable' in this context. I regularly speak to many "EA animal welfare advocates" and I think they would similarly not wish to be characterized this way. A problem can be very hard without being intractable. 

You are a careful attender to the things people say! I had forgotten both about Hal's piece and about the reddit thread. 

Than you for your kind words, @Vasile Stanescu ! I look forward to discussing more at Reducetarian 😃

I can't recall anyone saying that the 2026 meta suggests that diet change is not viable. What remarks are you thinking of?  Lewis, for instance, cites three papers I worked on as "finding little evidence of impact." That's a good high-level summary. James Ozden cites the same three papers in a Susbtack comment as evidence that "we haven’t figured out how to meaningfully reduce meat consumption." Also a good high-level summary. 

Who is saying otherwise and citing my/HSFL’s papers in support of that point?

Four remarks.

•  Vasile gives the paper I worked on a fair overview, and indeed Maya's previous paper found very different results. Your milage may vary, data are inherently messy, etc. Personally I think that attitude/intention change is much easier than behavior change, and the core difference between the papers is that the more recent paper focuses exclusively on consumption. 9 of the 10 largest effects in the Mathur 2021 meta are attitudinal or intentional, if I recall. (This is a general problem in behavioral research.)
• Kramer and Landry measure outcomes a week later. the context of this being a 'great' paper is that almost no one else has even accomplished that, at least not with an RCT with high implementation fidelity. But Peter and Lisa would be the first to say that a week is not the long-term measurement they want.
• Like Lewis, I find it a lot easier to think about what should happen on the margin rather than what everyone everywhere should do. I think that evaluating diet change and persuasion efforts is a good use of my time because I think there are a bunch of interesting questions that have yet to be asked in a research context. The meta helped identify them.
• I have never felt excluded from EA for my interest in diet change and persuasion. If anything the opposite, folks love taking about this at EAGs and such. The difference, if I might flatter myself, is that my work is consistent with EA epistemic, communication, and knowledge-sharing norms. A lot of advocacy is not.