[This is a cross-post from my blog, which you can find here]

The EA space is certainly a unique intersection of people from many walks of life, each with their own priorities and goals. However, an interesting contradiction arose in a recent conversation I had over dinner with friends. As I state in the conclusion, this may be either a criticism of longtermism or of vegetarian/veganism, depending on your perspective.

If you are someone who subscribes to Longtermism, (the idea that future people hold equal moral weight as compared to present people, and that we should adjust our actions to be accordingly biased to creating future growth.) Then, it seems to me that it would actually be non-optimal of you not to eat the most convenient/delicious/nutritious meal that you can find, whenever possible, and without much regard for animal welfare.

ANIMAL WELFARE VS HUMAN PREFERENCES

The argument goes like this: Whatever people may do to make future people better off, they will probably do more of it/do it better if they are more satisfied/happier. There are some studies on this (link, link, link), that suggest it might be a difference somewhere between 10-20%. Anecdotally, just take a look at the sometimes ludicrous lengths that tech companies go to please their employees. This is not altruism, it’s just good business.

So okay, great. We agree that happy people are more productive. Now let’s consider this within the domain of diet choice.

Is veganism/vegetarianism a choice that makes people happy? Maybe for some people, but usually not in a vacuum. If you truly do enjoy eating vegetarian/vegan more than a meat based diet on the basis of taste and convenience alone, more power to you. However, it seems that around the world, there is a strong revealed preference for people to eat more meat as it becomes more available. We can tell this by looking at the rate of meat consumption vs. GDP per capita.

Many vegetarians/vegans do so for religious or moral reasons, but messages that our inherent preference to eat meat is morally bad can be harmful, because they don’t actually change how a meatless diet tastes, they simply add costs like guilt and disgust in an attempt to tip the scale in people’s choices, and do not make material changes in either diet.

Okay, so we’ve now established that there is a large cost to not eating meat for those whose inherent...

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