MIT 2024. High commitment low skill EAer. Interested in improving personal and community centainty arround short vs longtermism. Hoping to use qualitative and reasoning skills for cause prioritization and impact analysis. Down to talk to anyone about things that are not specialized beyong my horizon of understanding, but especially: Generalist views on x-risks; Practical models for impact analysis; Super high level moral questions (ideal distribution of limited IQ points); High level EA meta things (why the heck did I get a grant? what is the most under-rated bio x-risk);
Currently my declared major is EE+CS (6-2) but I'm not convinced of is utility in helping ME have impact.
Take anything I say I "want to do"with the following caveat: I'm hyper aware that even being my best rational self, the more concrete and narrow and accessment is, the higher the chance it'll turn out to be wrong. This is especially relevant when making predictions about one's future interest and impact. Nevertheless, when carving a path, even though you don't know what the destination is, it makes sense to have very specific immediate guesses of what that destination is so you can go in that direction. You just have to keep in mind your guesses are just that, guesses.
Oh and I really like music.
I agree with this "The key point is that, under an anti-speciesist philosophy, there’s no clear difference between the human factory farming and the animal factory farming."
I don't think this "I couldn’t possibly imagine eating these humans. I have a viscerally disgusted reaction to the idea of doing so." is a good argument.
I also can't imagine being the one pulling the plug on the 16yo of the article you mentioned, and I'm viscerally repulsed by human blood and most things surgeons interact with. Visceral repulsion is the reason for many people to not eat meat, but I think falls short on being something useful for convincing others.
I also agree that it might be the case that, actually no, the impact of being vegan yourself could be (depending on how you weigh some moral things) very big. If you were to think the entire lifetime suffering of a hen in a stereotipically bad factory farm is worth 1/100 of a human dying of malaria, it's very possible the suffering you cause by eating one chicken breast every day is extremely sizeable.
Context: I don't buy meat, and subsist on a diet that is 99% plants 1% whey. When I attend events I eat whatever they have. The reasons for my diet choices, currently, are mostly sustainability and cost related