Nice post!

I think most people who have an interest in scholarship should seriously try language learning. You learn a lot of meta skills that I haven't picked up anywhere else. And to learn you actually have to use those meta skills and you get to see them having an effect on the way you are thinking.

When you say:

"they commit a bunch of words about it to their short term memory"

I'm not entirely confident, as I have only recently started studying memory. But that is more of a general public definition of STM. What you describe would actually be Long Term Memory. STM only describes things that are kept in 'RAM' for a minute or two. While LTM encodes anything longer, even if it is basically forgotten by the next day. I believe that is an essential foundation for spaced repetition, which is related to scholarship, otherwise I wouldn't have tried to explain my thoughts.

Anyway, again a nice post! I'll be thinking about it as I go through my day

This to me is amazing and so exciting!

When I was a child in preschool I was diagnosed with Autism. I had trouble recognising emotions. One doctor warned my mother that it'd be unlikely that I'd make more than 1 or 2 friends in my life.

I started "early intervention" pretty soon after. For years I was drilled once a week on flash cards of cartoon faces expressing different emotions. And eventually I guess it stuck because I'm pretty excellent at picking up emotions these days.

I still have major trouble if I can't see the face. Laughing and crying sound very similar to me. Now I'm actively thinking about it, I don't think I pick up much with body language. Unless it is cliche level obvious like curling over in pain. But, I honestly don't know if that is something that people can see??

However, when I am looking at a face and listening to the content of speech I'd say I am now extremely accurate at determining emotions. Especially in people I am close to as I have a larger bank of information I am able to predict on. I don't want to say I am better than most people, because I don't know, and there is that once bias that I forget the name of but it's the one where in coples both partners claim to start about 70% of the fights and do 70% of the cleaning. However, I can sometimes just, tell what people are thinking/going to say. I'd assign a 25% probability that the early intervention had some effect on my predicting of emotions. Purely because as a child I had to actively and consciously guess the feelings of these flashcards.

After a quick squiz at the Wiki entry about Bupropion, it seems to be a high risk treatment for ADHD.

If you haven't looked at the Wiki yourself yet, have you experienced any side effects due to usage?

Australian here,

I think that survey data suffers from some major anchoring bias. I'm betting that most people just put numbers all around the same areas.

I only noticed this because I was surprised to see my culture listed and I don't think most people outside of Australia even know what Fairy Bread is, and probably think the term "Sausage Sizzle" sounds funny while never having been to a Bunnings. While we lay claim to the Meat Pie, I find it hard to back considering such a similar dish was served in the original globe theatre.

Stuff like Witchetty Grubs and Bush Tucker are probably illegal to serve in other countries. While many Australians eat Kangaroo, it's mostly dog food. Americans are often surprised to read the back of their dog food cans. It's not advertised that it's Roo to You. Croc is so rarely eaten. I've only had it once or twice.

Drinks wise, we've got great coffee and VB.

People famously hate Vegemite and no one knows what a Chiko Roll is.

Anyway, that was a culture rant. I hope someone learnt something about Australian food.

pain

Bread in the neck?

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.

Though I don't have any stats on hand. I believe it is "Common Knowledge" that eating animal products has a detrimental effect on the environment. To what extent this would effect levels of happiness of future humans remains to be seen. But I would bet it doesn't have a positive effect.

We agree that happy people are more productive.

Absolutely agree with this point! Though your citations are dubious. Two news sites. And none are studies on if being vegan/vegetarian (Vegs) makes people less happy.

Is veganism/vegetarianism a choice that makes people happy?

I think this point may be the first in a short series of missteps? Let me highlight another before addressing this one.

it seems that around the world, there is a strong revealed preference for people to eat more meat as it becomes more available.

While meat consumption rises as income does, so does the sale of other luxury items. Most people prefer to have a luxury boat than to have no boat. But as long as you aren't watching boat commercials all day, you will rarely even think about luxury boats because it's just not within your option space.

Going back to the first point now. I think the question is wrong. I think rephrasing it to "Is veganism/vegetarianism a choice that makes people Long Term happy?" would fit better.

This is where it gets tricky. One one hand, there is the hedonic set point. People who get an arm cut off don't remain sad about that arm forever. In fact they recover pretty quickly (mentally). Their happy set point is readjusted to help them survive.

However, I know of at least one paper that claims (Vegs) have a lower level of general happiness than the average person. Though I would claim this isn't due to dietary restrictions. Instead more of a "curse of knowledge" knowing what horrible things happen behind the stone walls, as well as evidence that Vegs Have a High level of public discrimination and there are no social checks yet in place to stop uncles making jokes at dinner tables because the Vegs group is currently too low in numbers to have a large enough cultural shift away from this. The above paper claims that Vegs even worry about leaving the house or talking to stranger on a level higher than the average person.

If these assumptions I make hold up then we can lower our worry about Vegs having a lower level of happiness due to diet.

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,

I agree with your premise that messages about meat and morality can be harmful. Before giving a person information that they may be taking part in something that they oppose they should be warned. Showing others graphic content should be approached with care. It should only be used if no other method leads them to "The Way". And even then, I feel uncomfortable writing up those boundaries off the cuff.

However, if someone is doing something that they themselves would deem to be immoral. I do not think that person should be shielded from the truth. Arguably the harm that is being done to the animals is greater than any loss of utility that person may gain.

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

I disagree with this. It is an assumption swaying on a stack of other assumptions.

Now consider that the 100 or so chickens that it takes to make the researchers 365 sandwiches were spared. Even if we weigh chicken utils as equal to human utils, and even if the total # of utils they experience is the same sum of 800,000, what do they do with them?

Now, my math isn't great. In fact it's quite shocking. And I sadly don't have the time to do the math (Because I'm so totally bad at it that doing and checking it will take me several hours and this comment has already taken 1½ hours)

But, I believe the Vegs position is that these chickens would never be brought into existence in the first place. Considering that there would be no use for them at all. Their utils would be Null.

However bringing a Meat chicken into existence is a painful thing. Though I am currently working on a theory of mind that will refute this, My current belief is that a chicken is sentient.

If we say our researcher isn't buying from a vendor while out of the house, and is instead making what they believe to be the optimal cost/benefit decision. Buying chicken from a grocery store, where they can check the packaging. Buying RSPCA approved only. Cooking at home etc. Then we can say with high probability that He's probably with an alright dude. This however is beside the point.

Here is the Broiler Chicken section of Dominion This is all Australian farming, which applies to me, but likely not you. However these practices are common place. I warn you. This is disturbing to watch. I have taken the time to read through the RSPCA publicly available documentation. This section of the Doco at least holds it's own. I back it. I would describe in text what happens. But this comment is now at 2h writing time and I have spring rolls cooking downstairs!

My point however is, this is one scientist. Not all people are scientists. Some people are truck drivers, Marketing agents, service workers, plumbers, sales people, and trades people. Actually, most people are these things. They all bring value in their own way. But I go out on a limb here in saying not as much as our researcher.

The animals that feed our masses however, go through insufferable torture. There is no better word for the cages, the electricity, the gas chambers, having your throat slit, then as you are dying feeling your calf emergency birth process beginning, and it thrashes and tears at your insides until it is cut out of you buy a worker, who "Thumps" (bludgeons) your beloved to death as she takes her first steps in her mothers blood. and then you die.

Better to never have been.

A util is a util, and the same is true for negative utils.

If we ought to be so concerned about future welfare, why obsess over present suffering

This also seems to be an argument against charity that helps current people. Is this your position?

This leads me to health and nutrition claims. I think that nutrition is still a rather woo-woo area of science today, and that most diet studies do not show significant health results when compared to a control diet. Therefore, I rate the health claims on either side of the meat eating divide as a wash.

In agreement with this statement.

If the researcher from the example above didn’t like the taste of chicken, it’s likely that he would not have been able to leverage that into working harder for the day.

Something I didn't mention earlier was meat substitutes. Let's skip the nutrition talk because we both agree it's woo-woo. But substitutes are remarkable these days! Available in all areas. Taste preference is no longer a reason at all.

As always, if you think differently, please feel free to dunk on me in the comments below, maybe this is more of a criticism of longtermism than vegetarian/veganism, depending on your perspective!

While writing this I was really worried about being a total dick wad. I don't want to attack you. If you did feel attacked at any point I would really appreciate you pointing those moments out to me pretty please with a cherry on top? I hope I did a good job of explaining. I assign a high probability that you are a cool person and we would get along well IRL. But that these walls of text make doing that much harder.

breeding dumber animals

Dumb ≠ Insentient

Look into Peter Singer's "Name the trait" argument for more info

I want to eat an A-5 Wagyu steak everyday, and I think it’ll be sooner rather than later that the easiest way to produce such a luxury will be via cultured meat.

Absolutely agree on this point. I would love luxury boat plz

If it is your taste preference to eat meat, then it seems unlikely that you can consciously decide to prefer veggies or meat alternatives

Anecdotal: No, you can't change the preference. But preference doesn't equal moral right. I would like to have sex whenever I want. This does not mean that I am morally permitted to rape. Or, even commit an act of bestiality if you think it's silly to compare humans and non-human animals.

Summary: I appreciate your arguments. But i think your moral foundations are shaky. This comment ended up taking 2.5 hours to write. I didn't do this to dunk on you. But because I'd like to push you to think about those foundations.

And... finally, I'd like to extend the same offer to you

if you think differently, please feel free to dunk on me in the comments below, maybe this is more of a criticism of longtermism than vegetarian/veganism, depending on your perspective!

I would like to volunteer as a test subject! As someone new to LW I was hoping to train my rationality skills this spring anyway. I have quite a clear schedule and can dedicate at least 2-4 hours a day.

Get in touch if you decide to run a trial within the next two months. I myself teach kids at weekly art classes and have been slowly trying to integrate my own rationality exercises. Some guidance and external pressure to continue my training would be beneficial to me.

I would be interested to see if it helps to be familiar with the space you are walking in. If not, you could for example generate a new MineCraft world for every episode of a podcast. Then name that world as the podcast name just in case.

It could possibly be more effective to travel through google maps. Doing this would lead to clearer landmarks to anchor to.

Or, there are many ambient walking/driving videos on YouTube. Would watching one of these have the same effect? I have doubts. I remember as a child watching the road as my Mother drove me to school every day. But when it came time for me to finally drive I could only vaguely get the route. A similar thing happens when I'm following someone else's directions as I walk with them.

Ideally you would just walk. Exercise and learning at the same time is wonderful. But, you'll exhaust the possible directions you can travel in eventually. I use my daily walking route as a mind palace to place characters in at predetermined landmarks. I then give each a corresponding number. It's taking a while, but eventually the goal is to use this to remember stats and dates.

Winston Smith is about to lose his job