Well, as I am seemingly just learning what thinks are “rude” in English: How strong is “taken aback” in this context? The dictionaries give me everything from “well, I was surprised” to “this is a real disaster!”. I read it as the former, and would agree, as moral theory is so often a topic here that I would also be surprised if vegetarianism is no topic //at all//...
Semi-OT: The sad thing is that although statistics show that moral philosophers do significantly more often agree to “killing animals for the purpose of eating them is wrong”, they have a more or less exactly the same percentage of vegans/vegetarians in their group than other people.
This is sad because whereas first aid course causes people to help others and escape the bystander effect, studying and teaching moral philosophy obviously does not. We often assume, especially for CEV, that knowledge of the facts is a much stronger divider for different human morals than our actual core values. However, this shows that even significant knowledge and even outspoken positions do not really lead to actually different valuations.
And this is bad because it seems possible that there could live some supercharged posthumans side by side with regular humans (maybe semi-mutated, for life-span and health, maybe not at all). Will those posthumans decide that humans are not worth of moral considerations? I do not intent to stay on the Luddite side, but I do not want to associate with a group which thinks that abstract intellectual ability is the single-most everything-else overriding factor for moral reasoning.
In this case “taken aback” is a little stronger and hostile than “surprised,” but it’s not at all in terms of “I should get free food of my choosing.” I’m not frustrated that a Holiday party on the other side of the continent isn’t offering free food that I like. I’m frustrated that in a gathering of intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to rationality and the study of how to create AI that will, hopefully, be able to radically change the world, eating meat doesn’t seem to have even registered as a bad thing with any of them. This does not bode well, IMO, on the nature of the hypothetical utopian future I might look forward to.
(It was later pointed out that the menu DID include vegetarian things, but those things were all things I’d consider obviously a “side dish” as opposed to a main course. Other vegetarians might disagree with me on that, and if that was the intent of the organizers, than I do apologize. But when the subject was brought up in that thread it didn’t seem to be)
Perhaps the intellectuals of less wrong individually have decided that they don’t see animal suffering as a bad thing, or eating meat as leading to animal suffering, or any other very normal reasons for not choosing to not eat meat. I avoid eating meat because I prefer to get a higher percentage of my calories from carbohydrates in my diet than protein and fat. But when I’m working out, you can’t get a better protein-to-fat ratio than you can in meat (nuts, grains, etc. all have at least a 1:2 protein:Fat ratio, lean meat is more like 9:1, and I don’t like getting my dietary protein from supplements). Which is only to say there are reasons for eating meat (I guess I only addressed reason 2, but I’ve thought about reason 1, and reason 3 is initially unconvincing to me, although I should do more research about it.) It seems to me that you are surprised and/or upset by the fact that other rational people haven’t come to the same rational conclusions as you. What you should rather be pointing out is that this is an actual discussion that rational people should be having, and such a discussion hasn’t yet happened.
God forbid someone should offer to make free food at their expense that isn’t to your taste.
Am I the only one that this presumption strikes as breathtakingly rude?
See, the difference is not that meat isn’t “to my taste”. I like the taste. The problem is that it’s EVIL.
Well, as I am seemingly just learning what thinks are “rude” in English: How strong is “taken aback” in this context? The dictionaries give me everything from “well, I was surprised” to “this is a real disaster!”. I read it as the former, and would agree, as moral theory is so often a topic here that I would also be surprised if vegetarianism is no topic //at all//...
Semi-OT: The sad thing is that although statistics show that moral philosophers do significantly more often agree to “killing animals for the purpose of eating them is wrong”, they have a more or less exactly the same percentage of vegans/vegetarians in their group than other people.
This is sad because whereas first aid course causes people to help others and escape the bystander effect, studying and teaching moral philosophy obviously does not. We often assume, especially for CEV, that knowledge of the facts is a much stronger divider for different human morals than our actual core values. However, this shows that even significant knowledge and even outspoken positions do not really lead to actually different valuations.
And this is bad because it seems possible that there could live some supercharged posthumans side by side with regular humans (maybe semi-mutated, for life-span and health, maybe not at all). Will those posthumans decide that humans are not worth of moral considerations? I do not intent to stay on the Luddite side, but I do not want to associate with a group which thinks that abstract intellectual ability is the single-most everything-else overriding factor for moral reasoning.
In this case “taken aback” is a little stronger and hostile than “surprised,” but it’s not at all in terms of “I should get free food of my choosing.” I’m not frustrated that a Holiday party on the other side of the continent isn’t offering free food that I like. I’m frustrated that in a gathering of intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to rationality and the study of how to create AI that will, hopefully, be able to radically change the world, eating meat doesn’t seem to have even registered as a bad thing with any of them. This does not bode well, IMO, on the nature of the hypothetical utopian future I might look forward to.
(It was later pointed out that the menu DID include vegetarian things, but those things were all things I’d consider obviously a “side dish” as opposed to a main course. Other vegetarians might disagree with me on that, and if that was the intent of the organizers, than I do apologize. But when the subject was brought up in that thread it didn’t seem to be)
Perhaps the intellectuals of less wrong individually have decided that they don’t see animal suffering as a bad thing, or eating meat as leading to animal suffering, or any other very normal reasons for not choosing to not eat meat.
I avoid eating meat because I prefer to get a higher percentage of my calories from carbohydrates in my diet than protein and fat. But when I’m working out, you can’t get a better protein-to-fat ratio than you can in meat (nuts, grains, etc. all have at least a 1:2 protein:Fat ratio, lean meat is more like 9:1, and I don’t like getting my dietary protein from supplements). Which is only to say there are reasons for eating meat (I guess I only addressed reason 2, but I’ve thought about reason 1, and reason 3 is initially unconvincing to me, although I should do more research about it.)
It seems to me that you are surprised and/or upset by the fact that other rational people haven’t come to the same rational conclusions as you. What you should rather be pointing out is that this is an actual discussion that rational people should be having, and such a discussion hasn’t yet happened.
I agree. There is a reasonable expectation of vegetarian choices at public functions.