A recent piece in the WSJ suggests that some vegan businesses are rebranding themselves as "dairy and egg free" because the vegan label plays so poorly in middle America ....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 50892.html

This doesn't surprise me, to be honest. I would say a majority of the vegans I've known - or at least a majority of the ones who've made it clear that they're vegan, which introduces large bias but might be the point in itself - have been quite unpleasantly aggressive in pushing their views. Even as a vegetarian I've been abused quite heavily for not 'going all the way', all the more so when I tried to explain the reasoning behind my position.

I'm always sort of surprised at how words manipulate people's behaviour. Don't they have any brains to figure stuff out themselves? Vegan food is just vegan, whatever words you use to describe it. Of course, I see why businesses do this, but I just don't understand the customers that think words can change the product.

Jaew, you're the first spammer who has written a post that's relevant enough to the topic of the article so as to make me think you're a real person. Welcome to Felicifia, so long as your posts continue to be relevant.

(The other possibility is that spambot technology has gotten really good. If so, I'm impressed. One idea for how this could work is that spammers could find a popular news story like the WSJ url, write a generic-but-meaningful reply about it, and then post on forums where that article is linked-to prominently. It still seems like a lot of manual work to write the replies, though.)

Arepo, I agree with your sentiments about "angry vegans." So does Vegan Outreach. Alas, I fear that VO itself may itself lose some credibility on account of its name. When I mention VO, I'm quick to say that it "distributes literature on vegetarianism on college campuses" so as to emphasize that it's less radical than it sounds. And I much prefer Even if You Like Meat over Why Vegan?, as does Nick Cooney.

In general, I wish there were a word for people who avoid fish/chicken/eggs but don't mind eating some dairy and maybe even the occasional hamburger. This diet is 95+% as good as veganism, at least in terms of direct animal suffering averted, compared with standard omnivorism. Promoting this diet would probably prevent more total suffering than promoting veganism because the former one is much easier to hold to. Unfortunately, "Lacto-vegetarian Outreach" is a mouthful to say.

relevant:http://xkcd.com/810/

RyanCarey wrote:relevant:http://xkcd.com/810/

Perfect. There's a cartoon for everything.

In general, I wish there were a word for people who avoid fish/chicken/eggs but don't mind eating some dairy and maybe even the occasional hamburger. This diet is 95+% as good as veganism, at least in terms of direct animal suffering averted, compared with standard omnivorism. Promoting this diet would probably prevent more total suffering than promoting veganism because the former one is much easier to hold to. Unfortunately, "Lacto-vegetarian Outreach" is a mouthful to say.

However, if the goal is to spread the meme that animal suffering matters, it is unclear whether promoting such a diet would most effectively accomplish that goal. In most people's minds, the link between their dietary decisions and their concern for suffering is not mediated by a complex calculation about which diet minimizes suffering.

I tend to see veganism, not as itself a way of spreading concern for suffering, but as a way of enabling such a concern to be spread. Insofar as people continue to use animal products, they will likely experience some cognitive dissonance when confronted with the idea that we should reduce the suffering of wild animals or sentient extraterrestrials. For this reason, it seems to me that the development of in vitro meat would much more rapidly and effectively accomplish this goal than VO-style pamphleteering. This is however only a general sensation that I have; I'd be curious to hear what others think about this issue.

Pablo Stafforini wrote:Insofar as people continue to use animal products, they will likely experience some cognitive dissonance when confronted with the idea that we should reduce the suffering of wild animals or sentient extraterrestrials.

Good point! Of course, this is partly because vegans have popularized the mental connection between rather inconsequential things like "leather" with "animal use," but they haven't talked about the massive numbers of frogs killed by rice farming. But yeah, once that link is established, it would take more work to replace it with a new one.

Pablo Stafforini wrote:For this reason, it seems to me that the development of in vitro meat would much more rapidly and effectively accomplish this goal than VO-style pamphleteering. This is however only a general sensation that I have; I'd be curious to hear what others think about this issue.

Well, you were part of a long private email thread on this topic. We also had the debate here.

Alan Dawrst wrote:Well, you were part of a long private email thread on this topic. We also had the debate here.

Thanks for the pointer. Could you please forward me the first email of that exchange? I had to mute some email discussions recently due to mounting time pressures, but I'd be very interested in taking a closer look at this one.

EDIT: Okay, I can now see the exchange.

Pablo Stafforini wrote:I had to mute some email discussions recently due to mounting time pressures

Did you say you're doing work for 80k?

If you need to know what people here think more quicly maybe if you start a thread and put all your questions in it you might get what you're looking for quicker, Im sure people here would want to help if its for 80K:)!

Ruairi wrote:If you need to know what people here think more quicly maybe if you start a thread and put all your questions in it you might get what you're looking for quicker, Im sure people here would want to help if its for 80K:)!

Thank you, Ruairi. I'm inclined to think it makes more sense for me to sift through the old posts and leave whatever remaining questions I have on the corresponding threads. This approach preserves the thematic unity of the forum, and has no obvious drawbacks.

(Although I generally oppose disclaimers, I should perhaps clarify that I'm not acting in representation of 80,000 Hours, but am only volunteering to do some research for them.)

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Pablo Stafforini wrote:For this reason, it seems to me that the development of in vitro meat would much more rapidly and effectively accomplish this goal than VO-style pamphleteering. This is however only a general sensation that I have; I'd be curious to hear what others think about this issue.

Well, you were part of a long private email thread on this topic. We also had the debate here.

Interestingly, in that private exchange (which I only read after Brian mentioned it) Mark Lee of Giving What We Can makes essentially the same argument I offered above. Since his formulation is clearer, I thought I was worth reposting it here:

People have a deep psychological need to believe they are not bad people. If they eat meat and hear the arguments for why eating meat causes immense suffering, then to preserve their belief that they are not bad people they must either stop eating meat or reject the arguments. Some stop eating meat, but most reject the arguments. Because the arguments are plausible, the rejections tend to be rationalizations of their causing suffering. In vitro meat would remove the need to rationalize, and enable concern for suffering.

Then, I claim that in vitro meat's removing the barrier to caring about animals will affect far more people (viz. the meat-eaters) than will THL's initiatives (classes and booklet-distribution), and that affecting far more people will entail more concern.

Ludvig Lindström, of the World Happiness Organization, also made a similar argument.