I'm pretty familiar with animal rights thinking, and used to be rather militant in that regard (I also btw was the spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_Front) Support Group in my country for a short while).
I however think it's very wise that SIAI is not preaching vegetarianism/etc very much (Anissimov has actually done some of that on his blog, and if you look closely, you find a lot of vegetarianism among SIAI folks even though they don't usually make a big deal of it). Myself, I have eaten something like 4 hamburgers in the last ~5 years, so I'm indeed not 100% vegan anymore.
The reason is that paying attention to existential risks is a concern so astronomically more important, that insofar as being (or becoming) vegan/etc requires *effort*, one in most cases shouldn't do it, or require others to do it. Essentially all effort we're able to spend on being ethical should be spent on trying to minimize existential risks, since the stakes are so unbelievably high there.
So I'm not vegan in the situations where it requires effort (like looking for a new place to eat at) or makes life difficult for people I'm visiting or something, and SIAI shouldn't expect veganism from its employees -- it would be similarly silly from an ethics POV as requiring people to save every earthworm that they see drying to death on asphalt. There unfortunately are greater threats to tackle, and we all have limited effort to spend. One thing that we really should avoid is becoming like those animal rights people who spend much time trying to go from 99,9% vegan to 100% vegan, and debating what perfect veganism actually is.
Not requiring a particular diet is a very good anti-cultishness measure, it has been said. This argument I also support wholeheartedly. I was quite uncomfortable with the amount of cultishness I saw when I was part of the radical animal rights movement.
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Re: obviousness of possible failure modes
Date: 2010-05-18 06:48 am (UTC)I however think it's very wise that SIAI is not preaching vegetarianism/etc very much (Anissimov has actually done some of that on his blog, and if you look closely, you find a lot of vegetarianism among SIAI folks even though they don't usually make a big deal of it). Myself, I have eaten something like 4 hamburgers in the last ~5 years, so I'm indeed not 100% vegan anymore.
The reason is that paying attention to existential risks is a concern so astronomically more important, that insofar as being (or becoming) vegan/etc requires *effort*, one in most cases shouldn't do it, or require others to do it. Essentially all effort we're able to spend on being ethical should be spent on trying to minimize existential risks, since the stakes are so unbelievably high there.
So I'm not vegan in the situations where it requires effort (like looking for a new place to eat at) or makes life difficult for people I'm visiting or something, and SIAI shouldn't expect veganism from its employees -- it would be similarly silly from an ethics POV as requiring people to save every earthworm that they see drying to death on asphalt. There unfortunately are greater threats to tackle, and we all have limited effort to spend. One thing that we really should avoid is becoming like those animal rights people who spend much time trying to go from 99,9% vegan to 100% vegan, and debating what perfect veganism actually is.
Not requiring a particular diet is a very good anti-cultishness measure, it has been said. This argument I also support wholeheartedly. I was quite uncomfortable with the amount of cultishness I saw when I was part of the radical animal rights movement.