Published on December 22, 2024 10:08 PM GMT
Once I talked to a person who said they were asexual. They were alsoheavily depressed and thought about committing suicide. I repeatedlytold them to eat some meat, as they were vegan for many years. I myselfhad experienced veganism-induced depression. Finally, after many weeksthey ate some chicken, and the next time we spoke, they said that theywere no longer asexual, nor depressed.
I was vegan or vegetarian for many consecutive years. Vegetarianism wasmanageable, perhaps because of cheese. I never hit the extreme lowpoints that I did with veganism. I remember once after not eating meatfor a long time there was a period of maybe a weak, where I gotextremely fatigued. I took 200mg of modafinil[1], without having anybuild-up resistance. Usually, this would give me a lot of energy. Butthen I was barely able to enter some terminal commands to transcribesome of Rob Miles' videos with a whisper such that he could add bettercaptions. Another day I took 30mg of lisdexamfetamine[1:1] which wouldusually last the entire day and have a pretty strong effect, but thistime I got so tired after 3 or 4 hours that I had to lay down and take anap.
But then I ate some tuna. And felt a lot better the next day. Some timelater I did a blood test that indicated iron deficiency as a probablecause.
But even when I take a lot of iron supplements and eat my soybeans(which contain a lot of iron) with bell peppers (which contain VitaminC, which boosts iron absorption) I still notice a big difference when Ieat meat after a long period of abstinence.
So here is my proposition. If you are working on AI alignment then whatyou think with your brain is very important. If don't usually eat meatyou might be missing some important nutrients that would help you thinksignificantly better. As somebody who didn't eat meat until my bodyscreamed into my ear from 5 inches away, I think I understand why youdon't want to eat meat. But if you do the expected utility computationis it actually worth it?
What if it makes you only 5% worse at thinking? Is whatever animalsuffering you prevent worth the tradeoff in reduced probability ofsaving the world? What about 10%? What about 50%? Don't answer thisquestion in the abstract. Instead, I recommend the following experiment:
Eat 7 days in a row a large amount of meat. E.g. 1kg of chicken everyday. (Start with a lower quantity on the first day. My body sometimesdoes weird things when starting to eat meat after long abstinence.) Thegoal: Gather data. You want to eat too much meat (more than you likelyend up needing) to make sure that if you are missing any nutrients,you'll definitely get them by the end of the week, such that you cannotice an as large as possible difference. While doing this experimentwrite a journal (ideally starting at least a couple of days before youstart to eat meat) in which you precisely document:
- Every 2 hours:
- How you feel.How much energy you have.How easy is it to focus.
For each point give a 0-9 score, plus prose comments where appropriate.
This generates a lot of data on how much of a positive impact eatingmeat has.
If meat didn't have a positive impact: Congratulations, you cancontinue not eating meat. And now you know that this is actually thecorrect thing to do, because you are not missing out cognitively.
If meat had a positive consider the following options:
- Just start eating meat.Research what exactly it was that was missing before from your dietsuch that you don't eat meat. You'll end up not eating meat, buteating meat was useful in noticing that something was wrong withyour diet.Combine the previous two approaches. Eat meat but try to minimizehow much meat you eat by improving your diet over a longer duration.This way you don't need to fix it all at once. I still haven'tmanaged to do fully do this after spending at least 20 hours on this(probably much more).
Important: Consider that you can minimize animal suffering by eatingless meat. I'd guess usually people eat more than the optimal amount ofmeat (which I think is can even be unhealthy). If you eat 20% (this is arandom guess) of what people eat on average it might be sufficient toavoid any negative nutritional side effects, while still reducing animalsuffering.
It's much easier to be fundamentalist about not eating meat. It makesthings simple. Saying "Never eat meat, it's evil" is quite simple,and an easy rule to follow. Saying "Animal farming is terrible, and howwe treat "food animals" is one of the greatest moral failures of ourtime. But AI is gonna destroy the universe. You are trying to preventthis, and possibly not eating meat negatively effects how well you canutilize your brain. So you need to eat meat now first to figure out ifthere is a nutritional problem, and second to fix that nutritionalproblem if required. Because that is actually what maximizes theexpected utility of getting a good future. But because animal farming isactually terrible you want to minimize the amount of meat that youeat." This is much harder to act upon. It boils down to "Hey, youdon't know what's best! You'd better run a bunch of experiments tofind out."
Discuss
