You should be vegan, and if not, at least offset
Offset now, and go vegan at some point later maybe
Some of this is a continuation of discussion from my post on my ethics. But I write this anyway for reasons.
Animals are morally relevant
While it is true that animals cannot meaningfully act on the world, they still experience pleasure and pain, likely in ways very similar to humans. It’s unclear how far this extends, do rodents suffer? probably. do insects and shrimp suffer? reasonable chance. Do molluscs suffer? probably not but unclear. So plant suffer? almost definitely not in the way humans suffer.
Thus, it is possible to hurt animals in a way that causes suffering.
Current factory farming practices hurt a very large number of animals, and also a very cause very large amounts of distress on animals.
Even if you factor in some amount of moral uncertainty, it seems extremely unlikely that the main benefits of eating animal products (eg: convenience in access, plausible improvement in taste) outweighs the vast suffering caused to obtain most animal products (eg: eggs, chicken, pork).
For example, a brief back-of-envelope calculation by GPT 5.4 estimates that 1 kcalorie of egg causes 30minutes of intense factory-farmed suffering for a chicken, and 1 kcalorie of of chicken causes 15minutes of suffering. These are some of the worst products, but it feels insane to consider conditions where this tradeoff makes sense.
Might vs Right (Decision Theory Reasons)
There is a plausible debate one can have where “might is right”. And thus, since animals cannot exert any might onto humans and are powerless, one need not one cooperate with them.
However, if you want to be consistent, this would mean that if there were ever any group of sufficiently powerful humans or other intelligent systems, that this group could exert sufficient power that most humans would be powerless, for the same reasons they would no longer need to cooperate with us, and this seems bad.
In general, one might expect most sufficiently intelligent systems to have some awareness that over time, there may be stronger systems than them that exist in a distant space or a future time.
You want other agents to cooperate in not causing vast amount of harm to others, when the personal benefit to them is substantially less, even if there is an asymmetry in who has power.
Norm-setting
I think one of the main benefits of being vegan, is in norm-setting. While it is true that the impact on the world of any individual meal can be negligible, following a relatively strict vegan policy signals to others that if they want to enter cooperative relation with you, that they need to be able to source vegan options.
For example, if you go to a common restaurant in a crowded area, you may go to the restaurant owner with some friends, and ask if they have vegan options. If they say yes, then you are increasing the proportion of revenue they get from having vegan options. But if they say no, you are still having a positive impact by leaving the restaurant and finding another, as you signal to the restaurant that they should start stocking vegan options. Perhaps a single occurrence of this is not enough to make them start stocking vegan options, but many occurrences can cause some places to change, and makes it easier for other people to be vegan too.
By being vegan, thus a substantial impact is in making it easier for others to be vegan too. There are people on various margins, such as those who do not want to inconvenience friends by ruling out restaurant options for not having vegan options, but who would choose a vegan option if it existed. And this is still valuable too.
Offsetting
One can believe that [direct cost to animal] is much higher than [direct benefit to you], but still believe that, despite this, [direct benefit to you] leads to [indirect benefits to others] that is higher than the [direct cost to animals].
This is plausible in theory. The cost of offsetting the direct costs to animals (before norm-setting) can be reasonably seen as ~$25/month. If one does effective work on the world’s most pressing problems, then one’s positive impact can far supersede whatever impact one has through veganism.
I guess here is where more aesthetic preferences come in on my part. For most (but not necessarily all1) people, I think you should just do both? That the cost of eating meat is mostly a skill issue psychologically, and if you truly spent time to internalize how much suffering each bite of most animal products costs, that it would feel obvious that you should not be eating meat. While being vegan does have other costs, most of these costs are relatively one-time informational ones. (I guess I do subscribe to a weak form of de-facto virtue ethics though, where it feels costly to me to even think about eating meat due to imagining the associated costs it has on animals, and so eating meat is not enjoyable)
However, I could reasonably see that there is a trade-off in what one considers [action] vs [inaction]. I think eating animal products counts as an action where you directly cause harm to animals with each meal. However, some see [eating the default food options] as inaction, and altering your diet to be an action. I guess I somewhat disagree, but I could see how this is coherent.
This, I think it is reasonable as a compromise to instead only offset instead of being vegan
Conclusion
You should just offset eating animals. It is not expensive
farmkind.org
You should go vegan, but I could see how one could debate this.
There are three main exceptions I think are reasonable.
The first, are people have difficulties with eating most food (eg: allergies to many vegan foods, severe eating disorders, etc), where even eating normal food is already quite difficult, and adding the restrictions makes it near impossible
The second, are people who I see sometimes, who are doing direct work on making the world better, and who I think are at-capacity for how much they could be doing, such that spending time to be learn how to be vegan would trade off against this too much.
The third is people who are just very poor and have no time. If you are struggling to work enough to pay for your heating bills or to afford or something, then yeah you probably should try to fix this situation first, but you probably also aren’t reading this blog. (It is possible to be vegan for cheap if you have much time, or for little time-cost if you have much money, but often not both)
If are one of these people, you probably already know, and I mostly think not being vegan is kind of reasonable. Being vegan in addition is still pretty commendable, though donating to offset seems like a fine alternative.