On a meta-level, people seem to be reacting to this post by saying that vegan activists should not “make a scene” and feign sadness when encountering symbols of animal suffering, both because it’s excessive and because it’s counterproductive.
However, there are many cases in which I’d imagine people here would actively endorse experiencing an awkward emotional outburst about other issues.
Imagine the case of someone whose parent is on the fence about cryonics but never got around to signing up. The parent is in the hospital with a terminal condition, and family members frequently visit to express sadness and farewell. Is it ever appropriate to cause a huge intra-family controversy about signing up the parent for cryonics? I think the answer is yes. Under ordinary ethics, when someone’s life is on the line, it’s sometimes appropriate to take drastic actions, even awkward and socially shameful actions, to save their life.
It may be interesting to compare this case with the one in the post. In both cases, the actions taken are unlikely to change anyone’s minds; in fact, they’re more likely to turn people off and cause unnecessary strife. However, they both have a small chance of changing people’s minds: in both cases, a sympathetic family member might, upon seeing your strong reaction, realize how important the subject is to you and try to understand things from your perspective. If truly successful, that sympathetic family member may even intervene and join forces (ie. either go vegan too, or help convince the family member to sign up for cryonics).
The main difference between these cases might be that people think saving a family member’s life is extremely important, but going vegan isn’t. But if this is the main difference, then it’s ultimately an arbitrary and weak difference. Plausibly, deluks917 feels just as strongly about veganism as they would about a family member dying. Yet if that’s so, then some of the arguments in this thread seem to be missing the point: the only robust argument against this emotional outburst is that deluks917 shouldn’t feel so strongly about vegansm. But why?
there are many cases in which I’d imagine people here would actively endorse experiencing an awkward emotional outburst about other issues.
For me, I would not endorse an outburst on ANY topic, when that topic is incredibly predictable, and the outburst interferes with a private event in a very unexpected way.
Feeling sorrow and pain may or may not be in your control, and may or may not be helpful. I have no judgement on that, and I feel my own sadness at your suffering. Putting yourself in a situation where you reasonably expect to face such pain, without warning or seeking accommodation with the hosts and bystanders, is not something I can support or sympathize with.
If you’d instead said “I was too overcome with grief to go out, knowing the millions of animals killed for this holiday”, I’d feel nothing but sympathy for your suffering. Since you willingly and predictably imposed suffering on others as part of your pain, I’m less sympathetic.
[meta: this is probably the limit of what I’m willing to discuss on LW on this topic. Please feel free to rebut or respond as you will, without expecting further comment from me. ]
I think the commenters reacting negatively would take issue with your analogy. I think they see a fairer analogy as driving to something like Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day, then going to the car in grief during the service.
I will use this analogy to create distance from the contentious issue, but understand I am trying my best with the metaphor and any failures to charitably represent Deluks’s position are unintentional and should be raised so that I can fix them.
The action taken was with awareness of what situation would happen. The poster drove to the cemetery knowing what they would literally see.
Though they probably didn’t predict this, their imagination is what ended up hurting them. The poster did not see any soldier killed in front of them, they saw the graves. Their image of a widowed wife and broken family scarred by grief—representing their metaphorical family background—is not a fact of the territory but of their map.
I would sum up the other commenter’s position as “You shouldn’t take actions that you have reasonable belief will hurt you and then ask others to change”. I think the other commenters mostly don’t actually care about veganism or its merits in this instance. They are being priests of law, insisting that the argument is bad, not the conclusion (though the conclusion may be disagreed with too, and you may accuse them of motivated reasoning).
I think they see a fairer analogy as driving to something like Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day, then going to the car in grief during the service.
Who would get upset that someone needed to go to the car and cry during an Arlington National Cemetery service on Memorial Day!? If that’s a fairer analogy, then I’m still confused.
This seems quite disanalogous to deluks917′s analogy to me because (1) It is socially acceptable and often expected that people will cry during a cemetery service, (2) There is no “call to action” that such behavior is signaling, and there are no demands being put on others. The main way it’s analogous is that it might just be a mild inconvenience to others.
I would sum up the other commenter’s position as “You shouldn’t take actions that you have reasonable belief will hurt you and then ask others to change”.
Yes, but this argument doesn’t follow, at least if you admit you are morally permitted to act disruptively in my cryonics scenario. In that case, your actions would be reasonably expected to harm your reputation, and possibly insult others, and yet even still, it is permissible, because your parent’s life is on the line. The principle is simple: your parent’s life > minor reputational harm.
Similarly, one may believe that {some amount of animal misery > minor reputational harm}. Of course, as highly social and conformist animals ourselves, it may be hard to actually walk-the-walk and act in accordance with this belief. But that’s not an argument against doing so, if we are indeed committed to the principle.
Hey, I appreciate your reply, but I think you should give me more credit. You claim a few times that there is some difference between what I said and what Deluks said. There is a whole space of beliefs that might be pointed at by what I said, why not pick the beliefs that don’t have trivial objections?
When someone goes to Arlington and cries, it is expected to be because they are sad people died, not out of blind grief and rage against the Military Industrial Complex. If someone came back from Memorial Day service outraged about the service, and brought out a pledge detailing the fact that they would refuse to take place in any militarily-influenced acts and try to convince others to do the same, this would not be typical.
Whether or not I think it is “morally permitted to act disruptively in my cryonics scenario”, I think introducing morality is a pretty easy way to fuzz up a conversation. As Scott Alexander points out in “In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization”,
Suppose I am a radical Catholic who believes all Protestants deserve to die, and therefore go around killing Protestants. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, there might be some radical Protestants around who believe all Catholics deserve to die. If there weren’t before, there probably are now. So they go around killing Catholics, we’re both unhappy and/or dead, our economy tanks, hundreds of innocent people end up as collateral damage, and our country goes down the toilet.
So we make an agreement: I won’t kill any more Catholics, you don’t kill any more Protestants. The specific Irish example was called the Good Friday Agreement and the general case is called “civilization”.
it’s not always a good idea to fight for your idea at 100%, because there are lots of ideas. You are attempting to get me to agree, similarly, that all religious folks with hell-type places are best served by constantly attempting to convert you. Would you convert in this case? I wouldn’t! It would be incredibly irritating, and hey, in real life, we do a pretty good job of ignoring anyone who goes around trying to sell us things, from door-to-door salesmen to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This is a component of the argument: intentionally radicalizing yourself is hurtful because it doesn’t get you more options, just less restraint. I believe Deluks themself previously has endorsed the strategy of leaving options open to your future self after regretting a large charitable donation that they later thought was unwise. I believe this is part of the reason they are avoiding taking a pledge over an issue they care about.
On a meta-level, people seem to be reacting to this post by saying that vegan activists should not “make a scene” and feign sadness when encountering symbols of animal suffering, both because it’s excessive and because it’s counterproductive.
However, there are many cases in which I’d imagine people here would actively endorse experiencing an awkward emotional outburst about other issues.
Imagine the case of someone whose parent is on the fence about cryonics but never got around to signing up. The parent is in the hospital with a terminal condition, and family members frequently visit to express sadness and farewell. Is it ever appropriate to cause a huge intra-family controversy about signing up the parent for cryonics? I think the answer is yes. Under ordinary ethics, when someone’s life is on the line, it’s sometimes appropriate to take drastic actions, even awkward and socially shameful actions, to save their life.
It may be interesting to compare this case with the one in the post. In both cases, the actions taken are unlikely to change anyone’s minds; in fact, they’re more likely to turn people off and cause unnecessary strife. However, they both have a small chance of changing people’s minds: in both cases, a sympathetic family member might, upon seeing your strong reaction, realize how important the subject is to you and try to understand things from your perspective. If truly successful, that sympathetic family member may even intervene and join forces (ie. either go vegan too, or help convince the family member to sign up for cryonics).
The main difference between these cases might be that people think saving a family member’s life is extremely important, but going vegan isn’t. But if this is the main difference, then it’s ultimately an arbitrary and weak difference. Plausibly, deluks917 feels just as strongly about veganism as they would about a family member dying. Yet if that’s so, then some of the arguments in this thread seem to be missing the point: the only robust argument against this emotional outburst is that deluks917 shouldn’t feel so strongly about vegansm. But why?
For me, I would not endorse an outburst on ANY topic, when that topic is incredibly predictable, and the outburst interferes with a private event in a very unexpected way.
Feeling sorrow and pain may or may not be in your control, and may or may not be helpful. I have no judgement on that, and I feel my own sadness at your suffering. Putting yourself in a situation where you reasonably expect to face such pain, without warning or seeking accommodation with the hosts and bystanders, is not something I can support or sympathize with.
If you’d instead said “I was too overcome with grief to go out, knowing the millions of animals killed for this holiday”, I’d feel nothing but sympathy for your suffering. Since you willingly and predictably imposed suffering on others as part of your pain, I’m less sympathetic.
[meta: this is probably the limit of what I’m willing to discuss on LW on this topic. Please feel free to rebut or respond as you will, without expecting further comment from me. ]
I think the commenters reacting negatively would take issue with your analogy. I think they see a fairer analogy as driving to something like Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day, then going to the car in grief during the service.
I will use this analogy to create distance from the contentious issue, but understand I am trying my best with the metaphor and any failures to charitably represent Deluks’s position are unintentional and should be raised so that I can fix them.
The action taken was with awareness of what situation would happen. The poster drove to the cemetery knowing what they would literally see.
Though they probably didn’t predict this, their imagination is what ended up hurting them. The poster did not see any soldier killed in front of them, they saw the graves. Their image of a widowed wife and broken family scarred by grief—representing their metaphorical family background—is not a fact of the territory but of their map.
I would sum up the other commenter’s position as “You shouldn’t take actions that you have reasonable belief will hurt you and then ask others to change”. I think the other commenters mostly don’t actually care about veganism or its merits in this instance. They are being priests of law, insisting that the argument is bad, not the conclusion (though the conclusion may be disagreed with too, and you may accuse them of motivated reasoning).
Who would get upset that someone needed to go to the car and cry during an Arlington National Cemetery service on Memorial Day!? If that’s a fairer analogy, then I’m still confused.
This seems quite disanalogous to deluks917′s analogy to me because (1) It is socially acceptable and often expected that people will cry during a cemetery service, (2) There is no “call to action” that such behavior is signaling, and there are no demands being put on others. The main way it’s analogous is that it might just be a mild inconvenience to others.
Yes, but this argument doesn’t follow, at least if you admit you are morally permitted to act disruptively in my cryonics scenario. In that case, your actions would be reasonably expected to harm your reputation, and possibly insult others, and yet even still, it is permissible, because your parent’s life is on the line. The principle is simple: your parent’s life > minor reputational harm.
Similarly, one may believe that {some amount of animal misery > minor reputational harm}. Of course, as highly social and conformist animals ourselves, it may be hard to actually walk-the-walk and act in accordance with this belief. But that’s not an argument against doing so, if we are indeed committed to the principle.
Hey, I appreciate your reply, but I think you should give me more credit. You claim a few times that there is some difference between what I said and what Deluks said. There is a whole space of beliefs that might be pointed at by what I said, why not pick the beliefs that don’t have trivial objections?
To get all of this explicitly represented, I’ll add a few more sentences below. I’ll also consider more heavily how much shared background I’m imagining.
When someone goes to Arlington and cries, it is expected to be because they are sad people died, not out of blind grief and rage against the Military Industrial Complex. If someone came back from Memorial Day service outraged about the service, and brought out a pledge detailing the fact that they would refuse to take place in any militarily-influenced acts and try to convince others to do the same, this would not be typical.
Whether or not I think it is “morally permitted to act disruptively in my cryonics scenario”, I think introducing morality is a pretty easy way to fuzz up a conversation. As Scott Alexander points out in “In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization”,
it’s not always a good idea to fight for your idea at 100%, because there are lots of ideas. You are attempting to get me to agree, similarly, that all religious folks with hell-type places are best served by constantly attempting to convert you. Would you convert in this case? I wouldn’t! It would be incredibly irritating, and hey, in real life, we do a pretty good job of ignoring anyone who goes around trying to sell us things, from door-to-door salesmen to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This is a component of the argument: intentionally radicalizing yourself is hurtful because it doesn’t get you more options, just less restraint. I believe Deluks themself previously has endorsed the strategy of leaving options open to your future self after regretting a large charitable donation that they later thought was unwise. I believe this is part of the reason they are avoiding taking a pledge over an issue they care about.