Do you think vegans are too “preachy”, “moralistic”, or “judgmental”? I sometimes hear these sorts of complaints. It sounds like it’s all very well for these finicky vegans to fill their own plates with tofu and broccoli if they want. But where do they get off bothering everyone else with their “moral concerns” and trying to make people feel guilty? When are they going to just shut up and drink their kale juice?
"It is estimated that humans kill about 74 billion animals per year for gustatory pleasure...In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals." - This doesn't acknowledge one of the most common and powerful arguments for eating meat, namely, health benefits for humans. The reason we get "gustatory pleasure" from eating meat in the first place is because we are genetically adapted to a diet that includes animal products. Veganism can have devastating health consequences, especially for children. If it were just a tradeoff between animal suffering and gustatory pleasure, the moral calculation would be easy. But if it's between animal suffering and human health, it's much more complicated. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2018.1437024
I think this is similar to how people should understand evangelists. They don't just think that not worshiping the true God is a little foible. They think that it is an extreme wrong. In terms of quantity of harm, this class of actions outweighs all other wrongs done by human beings combined, and by a wide margin. Once understood, there should be a greater patience.
Mike, do you maintain friendships with people that eat meat? E.g. if the moral arguments for vegetarianism/veganism are sound, it seems that someone like Bryan Caplan is participating in a moral horror of a scale that would, in other contexts, be more than sufficient reason to justify disassociating from them, and perhaps even *require* doing so.
When I steelman the "preachy vegan" sentiment, or idealize it, it is a charge of hypocrisy against those vegans who don't reflect on their own continued participation in animal suffering. All of us on the grid are full participants in a form of life that is terrible for the planet, humans and non- alike. I'm what people would call vegan, but if vegan means "eating and living ahimsically" I feel pretty far from vegan. I assume they don't check for bird & squirrel nests, let alone social insect colonies, when they cut trees for lumber and paper products I use. And the highways I rely on are terrible for animals. The list goes on and on. But yeah, factory farming is a straight-up nightmare I want no connection to.
>Do you think vegans are too “preachy”, “moralistic”, or “judgmental”?
Nah, these qualities naturally come about from having a radical and exotic moral framework detached from what most people believe
>It is very common for people to agree that buying meat is wrong while declaring that they plan to continue doing it anyway, because they are weak-willed.
I agree. Moreover, it's pathetic. I respect vegans more than these people.
>the objections they raise are among the lamest, most easily answered objections to be found in all of philosophy
Most people being stupid is not evidence for or against veganism
>In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals.
...and quality nutrition, that vegan diets can match only with great difficulty and expense, if at all. Funny you omit that, huh?
> So, even if human welfare were 1,000 times more important than animal welfare, this would still plausibly count as the worst thing humans have ever done
That's where the problem is. Let's consider a variation of the trolley dilemma, and tie 1000 pigs to one side, and a single, regular human being to another, which matters more? As far as I'm concerned, anyone who chooses to save the pigs has his moral compass badly miscalibrated. Same with ten thousand pigs. Or a million. Or bazillion of them.
Why? The difference between animals and humans is qualitative, not merely quantitative. A human can lead a life filled with meaning. A pig...is a pig. Me getting quality, tasty and reasonably priced nutrition matters more than N pigs because it empowers me to act in ways that matter. I think most grasp this intuitively even if they struggle to put it into words.
And I graciously neglected to mention the problem of whether animals can even suffer - we don't know how consciousness works, and science is powerless to establish it, so definitive judgement is difficult to produce on this matter, even if vegans like to pretend that it's obvious.
P.s. I'm not a hater - you've written the best libertarian book I know of, but I think you let your emotions get in the way of your reason on this
A moral agent is an entity that is sufficiently able and willing to fulfill moral obligations, and of reconciling via restitution if they fail to fulfill those.
Obligation is a relation among moral agents. If I have an obligation regarding a moral non-agent, it will be mediated through an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent. If there is no such moral agent, there is no obligation.
If I am obligated not to buy factory farmed meat, I must be obligated to a moral agent that is responsible for the relevant animals.
I could be obligated to the animals directly, or to some group of other moral agents, or to myself, or to god/the universe, if those are moral agents or can somehow be assisted to fulfill obligations.
I don’t think animals are all moral agents. I am not obligated to avoid causing suffering of animals in general, because they are not obligated to avoid bringing about my suffering, either as a group or as specific individuals. They are not moral agents on their own. So there cannot be a direct symmetric obligation without assistance or mediation from genuine moral agents.
For there to be a direct asymmetric obligation requires that a moral agent take responsibility for each animal involved. That way, the other moral agent can assume the obligations on behalf of the animal toward me, making the relationship symmetric.
I don’t think I am obligated to other persons to avoid factory meat, because for me to be obligated to them they would need a form of standing, they would need to have taken responsibility for the animals in question. The persons with standing regarding the animals in question are the factory operators. If PETA had standing, the animals would not be in the farms. PETA would be caring for all of them, and protecting them from harm. It would not be sufficient for PETA to destroy the factory farms and free the animals, they would have to adopt them and protect them, which is infeasible. They are free to protect as many animals as they can, but that gives them no rights over animals claimed by others. They could perhaps sue for custody and adopt them, but then they would be responsible for them, and could not set them free.
So, to the extent that I am obligated to refrain, I am obligated to the factory operators, persons who consent for me not to refrain. Those who object to treatment of animals they have no responsibility for have no standing, no basis for claiming that I have an obligation to them.
I might be obligated to myself. Perhaps I think it would make me a worse person to eat meat and cause the suffering of animals. Certainly I think it would make me a worse person to torture them pointlessly. But obligations to the self are not enforceable by other persons. It is not much of an obligation if it is also my free choice.
I don’t think I am obligated to any god or to the universe, beyond the necessity of obeying physical laws, such as they are. If I find a way to violate them, that means I misunderstood what they are. If an obligation is to be enforced upon me, it will be through physical law or social enforcement. Social enforcement requires that I be obligated to specific persons, not the universe. To say that I am obligated to the universe is a denial of my premise that obligation is a social relation between moral agents. The universe is not a moral agent. It does not fulfill,obligations symmetrically.
Cruelty to animals is icky, and indicative of danger of more serious mental problems with potential social consequences. But the impact of factory farming on the psychology of producers and consumers should be an empirical question, not a moral one. This violates our intuitions.
A serious objection can be raised. What about children or dementia patients? Are they moral agents? According to this account they are not, and must depend on a relatives, guardians, or some other genuine moral agent to act as proxy. This violates the universalism common in our culture. But what is the practical difference? If there truly is no relative, adoptive parent, charitable agency, religious organization of shoddy government bureaucracy willing to take responsibility for an infant or a helpless adult, that infant or helpless adult is doomed to die. This account says the quiet part out loud. For infants and invalids to have social standing, society must take responsibility for them, and do so explicitly. There is no external agency that forces society to do so. Members of society may choose to do so, or choose not to.
I have a couple of questions about the "factory farming causes animal suffering" argument against eating meat.
1. When driving through the rural USA, it is quite common to see cows grazing on pastures. This doesn't look like animal torture; it looks like cows living typical cow lives. Are these grazing cows just very atypical?
2. What about fish? Aren't they often caught in their natural habitat, not in factory farms? If the objection is to the torture of animals in factory farms, not that animals have a right not to be killed for food, then why wouldn't it be fine to eat fish?
- Of course there are plenty of meat eaters who are not good at articulating the reasons for their position. That is true of almost every philosophical position unless it is extremely rare.
- It is possible that vegans are both morally correct and annoying about it.
- The meat eating question is absolutely 2-sided. The moral argument for veganism relies more on logic than actual experience (ie, what most people think/do). It’s not at all clear that morality should work that way.
Couldn't the argument be made that those billions of chickens, cows, pigs, etc., that are raised for slaughter would not have been born at all if they were not intended to be eaten? I understand that animals suffer the same way humans do, but their slaughter is a tiny moment of their lives that they cannot anticipate in the way humans can ponder our mortality. Maybe they are aware to some extent of their impending demise, like this scene from Silence of the Lambs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLBotH5Bki8
I also don't see why veganism is morally superior to vegetarianism. Being hooked up to milking machines is probably not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it's not like cows and chickens are deprived of spending their time how they want when humans collect eggs and milk. They may be harmed in some way in the process; I am not entirely sure.
My guess is that this problem will be solved in a similar way as the shift to renewable energy. When it is cheaper to replace meat with alternatives judged to be just as good or better, then we will do so. At the same time, we will rationalize our choice with moral arguments to make ourselves feel better. We will thus get a triple win — cheaper meat, less killing and suffering, and we will feel superior by doing so.
Long term, if someone is interested in making the world a better place, then this is a fruitful area of research.
I fully agree with you myself (im vegetarian, not vegan due to gluten reasons… plus family pressures)
But i think most people simply dont CARE about morality like that. Their concern is about things they immediately care about, things society or people they care about care about, or with what kind of people they admire or don’t.
The moral consequences or suffering is very secondary to that.
So when one says that one think eating meat is morally wrong, the standard reaction from many is not “oh, so my action is doing harm” but “oh your saying i and everyone else that eats meat is immoral? But we are normal and people agree its normal and not psychopathic!!”
I have very low hopes of solving this problem, and is hoping for labgrown meat and vegan alternatives to get better.
(And also for vegan options to stop randomly having what in them so i can go more fully vegan without having to spend a full time job on it)
This is one of the few areas I disagree with you so I’ve tried to think about why because I’m confident you are a better thinker than me. In survival situations it is widely accepted that eating other humans is okay. So it must be that in survival situations eating animals is okay. For most of human history (before the Industrial Revolution?) people were in a survival situation. So there must be a point in human history where eating animals switched from being okay to not okay - I’ve never heard a vegan identify this point - seems like a bit like the abortion issue. Very complicated and almost taste based.
To me this just raises the question of why should people be moral when nobody is looking.
And an even more important question, why should people not simply do the bare moral mimimum required by the society they live in? Why should they be exceptionally morally good?
Is the punishment for not being exceptionaly morally good only feelings of guilt?
That does not seem to be enough to persuade people in many cases.
Are they simply ignorant of all the negative effects of not being exceptionally morally good or what is going on?
I’m a vegan for the animals. I do think there are a lot of preachy vegans and their tactics close hearts and minds to veganism. Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong and Vegan Gains are just three of the worst examples, but they’re not alone. What they do is intellectual and moral domination. The ethics of veganism is both simple and complex. Like any ethical position there are many lifeboat situations, moral dilemmas and gray areas in it. I’d say I was 99% de-ontological and 1% consequentialist, but that’s a rough description.
The clever, sociopathic, mensa-member, philosophy pedants in the comments section are probably unreachable, and it’s probably an egotistical waste of time trying to “preach” or argue with them at all. I think the tried-and-true method of reaching people, little by little, is the friendly potluck method. Invite people to vegan and/or vegetarian potlucks, enjoy the good food, and answer the questions of the vegan-curious in a relaxed, non-threatening and non-judgmental way. Admit veganism can raise important questions and it doesn’t have all the answers.
Back to philosophy---consequentialism, de-ontology, etc.---Reducing the horrible suffering AND WRONGFUL DEATHS, however “humane”, to some sort of hoity-toity debating exercise, or scientific analysis of evolutionary biology, or economic or ecological cost/benefit calculation, is a grotesque abuse of otherwise respectable and noble traditions. Nazi death camps, abandoning a three year old in Times Square, child-rape….are all just horrible and evil things, and I don’t need to hear cost/benefit or environmental impact analyses on them, or what Hegel or Dawkins has to say about them. Yes, I’m a backwards person who believes in Good and Evil. Hurting and killing, mental or physical---unnecessarily, willfully, negligently---is EVIL. At some point you’ve got to set philosophy and science aside and take a stand. But do it with skill, tact and patience. Do it with vegan potlucks.
I think a steelmanned version of vegan-aversion is that most people aren't open by default to others' perspectives, so criticizing them serves only to frustrate. They are perceived similarly to those who yell at passers-by about the end-times. Of course, such preachers may think that they are trying to avert a catastrophe of epic proportions, but whether it is true or not, people's perception of it means that their only effect is annoying others.
Vegans have every right judge others, but if they want to impact others' behavior, they need to cultivate a different perception.
Part of the problem is that animal consumption is ubiquitous, but everyone has already heard of veganism. If you hit them with the basic vegan arguments, they won't engage with it, since they already know that everyone has heard of those crazy vegans and their arguments.
Perhaps more effective, would be to present them with an idea that they don't already associate with crazies, and they don't already have mentally categorized as 'something we all know not to take seriously' - selective animal consumption.
By some estimations, the per gram or calorie impacts on animal welfare of consuming beef are far far lower than those of consuming chicken (with cows' much larger size and better typical conditions far outweighing greater sentience).
Almost no one has heard this argument, so people won't already have it in a mental folder of "stuff only weird other people think." It may also be perceived as much more pragmatic and hence, less preachy.
I hate those preachy anti child abusers. When I ask them if they’d like to go looking for a child to abuse, they get upset!
"It is estimated that humans kill about 74 billion animals per year for gustatory pleasure...In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals." - This doesn't acknowledge one of the most common and powerful arguments for eating meat, namely, health benefits for humans. The reason we get "gustatory pleasure" from eating meat in the first place is because we are genetically adapted to a diet that includes animal products. Veganism can have devastating health consequences, especially for children. If it were just a tradeoff between animal suffering and gustatory pleasure, the moral calculation would be easy. But if it's between animal suffering and human health, it's much more complicated. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2018.1437024
I think this is similar to how people should understand evangelists. They don't just think that not worshiping the true God is a little foible. They think that it is an extreme wrong. In terms of quantity of harm, this class of actions outweighs all other wrongs done by human beings combined, and by a wide margin. Once understood, there should be a greater patience.
Mike, do you maintain friendships with people that eat meat? E.g. if the moral arguments for vegetarianism/veganism are sound, it seems that someone like Bryan Caplan is participating in a moral horror of a scale that would, in other contexts, be more than sufficient reason to justify disassociating from them, and perhaps even *require* doing so.
When I steelman the "preachy vegan" sentiment, or idealize it, it is a charge of hypocrisy against those vegans who don't reflect on their own continued participation in animal suffering. All of us on the grid are full participants in a form of life that is terrible for the planet, humans and non- alike. I'm what people would call vegan, but if vegan means "eating and living ahimsically" I feel pretty far from vegan. I assume they don't check for bird & squirrel nests, let alone social insect colonies, when they cut trees for lumber and paper products I use. And the highways I rely on are terrible for animals. The list goes on and on. But yeah, factory farming is a straight-up nightmare I want no connection to.
>Do you think vegans are too “preachy”, “moralistic”, or “judgmental”?
Nah, these qualities naturally come about from having a radical and exotic moral framework detached from what most people believe
>It is very common for people to agree that buying meat is wrong while declaring that they plan to continue doing it anyway, because they are weak-willed.
I agree. Moreover, it's pathetic. I respect vegans more than these people.
>the objections they raise are among the lamest, most easily answered objections to be found in all of philosophy
Most people being stupid is not evidence for or against veganism
>In return, we get enhanced gustatory pleasure during meals.
...and quality nutrition, that vegan diets can match only with great difficulty and expense, if at all. Funny you omit that, huh?
> So, even if human welfare were 1,000 times more important than animal welfare, this would still plausibly count as the worst thing humans have ever done
That's where the problem is. Let's consider a variation of the trolley dilemma, and tie 1000 pigs to one side, and a single, regular human being to another, which matters more? As far as I'm concerned, anyone who chooses to save the pigs has his moral compass badly miscalibrated. Same with ten thousand pigs. Or a million. Or bazillion of them.
Why? The difference between animals and humans is qualitative, not merely quantitative. A human can lead a life filled with meaning. A pig...is a pig. Me getting quality, tasty and reasonably priced nutrition matters more than N pigs because it empowers me to act in ways that matter. I think most grasp this intuitively even if they struggle to put it into words.
And I graciously neglected to mention the problem of whether animals can even suffer - we don't know how consciousness works, and science is powerless to establish it, so definitive judgement is difficult to produce on this matter, even if vegans like to pretend that it's obvious.
P.s. I'm not a hater - you've written the best libertarian book I know of, but I think you let your emotions get in the way of your reason on this
A moral agent is an entity that is sufficiently able and willing to fulfill moral obligations, and of reconciling via restitution if they fail to fulfill those.
Obligation is a relation among moral agents. If I have an obligation regarding a moral non-agent, it will be mediated through an obligation to the moral agent responsible for that moral non-agent. If there is no such moral agent, there is no obligation.
If I am obligated not to buy factory farmed meat, I must be obligated to a moral agent that is responsible for the relevant animals.
I could be obligated to the animals directly, or to some group of other moral agents, or to myself, or to god/the universe, if those are moral agents or can somehow be assisted to fulfill obligations.
I don’t think animals are all moral agents. I am not obligated to avoid causing suffering of animals in general, because they are not obligated to avoid bringing about my suffering, either as a group or as specific individuals. They are not moral agents on their own. So there cannot be a direct symmetric obligation without assistance or mediation from genuine moral agents.
For there to be a direct asymmetric obligation requires that a moral agent take responsibility for each animal involved. That way, the other moral agent can assume the obligations on behalf of the animal toward me, making the relationship symmetric.
I don’t think I am obligated to other persons to avoid factory meat, because for me to be obligated to them they would need a form of standing, they would need to have taken responsibility for the animals in question. The persons with standing regarding the animals in question are the factory operators. If PETA had standing, the animals would not be in the farms. PETA would be caring for all of them, and protecting them from harm. It would not be sufficient for PETA to destroy the factory farms and free the animals, they would have to adopt them and protect them, which is infeasible. They are free to protect as many animals as they can, but that gives them no rights over animals claimed by others. They could perhaps sue for custody and adopt them, but then they would be responsible for them, and could not set them free.
So, to the extent that I am obligated to refrain, I am obligated to the factory operators, persons who consent for me not to refrain. Those who object to treatment of animals they have no responsibility for have no standing, no basis for claiming that I have an obligation to them.
I might be obligated to myself. Perhaps I think it would make me a worse person to eat meat and cause the suffering of animals. Certainly I think it would make me a worse person to torture them pointlessly. But obligations to the self are not enforceable by other persons. It is not much of an obligation if it is also my free choice.
I don’t think I am obligated to any god or to the universe, beyond the necessity of obeying physical laws, such as they are. If I find a way to violate them, that means I misunderstood what they are. If an obligation is to be enforced upon me, it will be through physical law or social enforcement. Social enforcement requires that I be obligated to specific persons, not the universe. To say that I am obligated to the universe is a denial of my premise that obligation is a social relation between moral agents. The universe is not a moral agent. It does not fulfill,obligations symmetrically.
Cruelty to animals is icky, and indicative of danger of more serious mental problems with potential social consequences. But the impact of factory farming on the psychology of producers and consumers should be an empirical question, not a moral one. This violates our intuitions.
A serious objection can be raised. What about children or dementia patients? Are they moral agents? According to this account they are not, and must depend on a relatives, guardians, or some other genuine moral agent to act as proxy. This violates the universalism common in our culture. But what is the practical difference? If there truly is no relative, adoptive parent, charitable agency, religious organization of shoddy government bureaucracy willing to take responsibility for an infant or a helpless adult, that infant or helpless adult is doomed to die. This account says the quiet part out loud. For infants and invalids to have social standing, society must take responsibility for them, and do so explicitly. There is no external agency that forces society to do so. Members of society may choose to do so, or choose not to.
I have a couple of questions about the "factory farming causes animal suffering" argument against eating meat.
1. When driving through the rural USA, it is quite common to see cows grazing on pastures. This doesn't look like animal torture; it looks like cows living typical cow lives. Are these grazing cows just very atypical?
2. What about fish? Aren't they often caught in their natural habitat, not in factory farms? If the objection is to the torture of animals in factory farms, not that animals have a right not to be killed for food, then why wouldn't it be fine to eat fish?
- Of course there are plenty of meat eaters who are not good at articulating the reasons for their position. That is true of almost every philosophical position unless it is extremely rare.
- It is possible that vegans are both morally correct and annoying about it.
- The meat eating question is absolutely 2-sided. The moral argument for veganism relies more on logic than actual experience (ie, what most people think/do). It’s not at all clear that morality should work that way.
Couldn't the argument be made that those billions of chickens, cows, pigs, etc., that are raised for slaughter would not have been born at all if they were not intended to be eaten? I understand that animals suffer the same way humans do, but their slaughter is a tiny moment of their lives that they cannot anticipate in the way humans can ponder our mortality. Maybe they are aware to some extent of their impending demise, like this scene from Silence of the Lambs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLBotH5Bki8
I also don't see why veganism is morally superior to vegetarianism. Being hooked up to milking machines is probably not the most pleasant thing in the world, but it's not like cows and chickens are deprived of spending their time how they want when humans collect eggs and milk. They may be harmed in some way in the process; I am not entirely sure.
My guess is that this problem will be solved in a similar way as the shift to renewable energy. When it is cheaper to replace meat with alternatives judged to be just as good or better, then we will do so. At the same time, we will rationalize our choice with moral arguments to make ourselves feel better. We will thus get a triple win — cheaper meat, less killing and suffering, and we will feel superior by doing so.
Long term, if someone is interested in making the world a better place, then this is a fruitful area of research.
I fully agree with you myself (im vegetarian, not vegan due to gluten reasons… plus family pressures)
But i think most people simply dont CARE about morality like that. Their concern is about things they immediately care about, things society or people they care about care about, or with what kind of people they admire or don’t.
The moral consequences or suffering is very secondary to that.
So when one says that one think eating meat is morally wrong, the standard reaction from many is not “oh, so my action is doing harm” but “oh your saying i and everyone else that eats meat is immoral? But we are normal and people agree its normal and not psychopathic!!”
I have very low hopes of solving this problem, and is hoping for labgrown meat and vegan alternatives to get better.
(And also for vegan options to stop randomly having what in them so i can go more fully vegan without having to spend a full time job on it)
This is one of the few areas I disagree with you so I’ve tried to think about why because I’m confident you are a better thinker than me. In survival situations it is widely accepted that eating other humans is okay. So it must be that in survival situations eating animals is okay. For most of human history (before the Industrial Revolution?) people were in a survival situation. So there must be a point in human history where eating animals switched from being okay to not okay - I’ve never heard a vegan identify this point - seems like a bit like the abortion issue. Very complicated and almost taste based.
To me this just raises the question of why should people be moral when nobody is looking.
And an even more important question, why should people not simply do the bare moral mimimum required by the society they live in? Why should they be exceptionally morally good?
Is the punishment for not being exceptionaly morally good only feelings of guilt?
That does not seem to be enough to persuade people in many cases.
Are they simply ignorant of all the negative effects of not being exceptionally morally good or what is going on?
I’m a vegan for the animals. I do think there are a lot of preachy vegans and their tactics close hearts and minds to veganism. Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong and Vegan Gains are just three of the worst examples, but they’re not alone. What they do is intellectual and moral domination. The ethics of veganism is both simple and complex. Like any ethical position there are many lifeboat situations, moral dilemmas and gray areas in it. I’d say I was 99% de-ontological and 1% consequentialist, but that’s a rough description.
The clever, sociopathic, mensa-member, philosophy pedants in the comments section are probably unreachable, and it’s probably an egotistical waste of time trying to “preach” or argue with them at all. I think the tried-and-true method of reaching people, little by little, is the friendly potluck method. Invite people to vegan and/or vegetarian potlucks, enjoy the good food, and answer the questions of the vegan-curious in a relaxed, non-threatening and non-judgmental way. Admit veganism can raise important questions and it doesn’t have all the answers.
Back to philosophy---consequentialism, de-ontology, etc.---Reducing the horrible suffering AND WRONGFUL DEATHS, however “humane”, to some sort of hoity-toity debating exercise, or scientific analysis of evolutionary biology, or economic or ecological cost/benefit calculation, is a grotesque abuse of otherwise respectable and noble traditions. Nazi death camps, abandoning a three year old in Times Square, child-rape….are all just horrible and evil things, and I don’t need to hear cost/benefit or environmental impact analyses on them, or what Hegel or Dawkins has to say about them. Yes, I’m a backwards person who believes in Good and Evil. Hurting and killing, mental or physical---unnecessarily, willfully, negligently---is EVIL. At some point you’ve got to set philosophy and science aside and take a stand. But do it with skill, tact and patience. Do it with vegan potlucks.
I think a steelmanned version of vegan-aversion is that most people aren't open by default to others' perspectives, so criticizing them serves only to frustrate. They are perceived similarly to those who yell at passers-by about the end-times. Of course, such preachers may think that they are trying to avert a catastrophe of epic proportions, but whether it is true or not, people's perception of it means that their only effect is annoying others.
Vegans have every right judge others, but if they want to impact others' behavior, they need to cultivate a different perception.
Part of the problem is that animal consumption is ubiquitous, but everyone has already heard of veganism. If you hit them with the basic vegan arguments, they won't engage with it, since they already know that everyone has heard of those crazy vegans and their arguments.
Perhaps more effective, would be to present them with an idea that they don't already associate with crazies, and they don't already have mentally categorized as 'something we all know not to take seriously' - selective animal consumption.
By some estimations, the per gram or calorie impacts on animal welfare of consuming beef are far far lower than those of consuming chicken (with cows' much larger size and better typical conditions far outweighing greater sentience).
Almost no one has heard this argument, so people won't already have it in a mental folder of "stuff only weird other people think." It may also be perceived as much more pragmatic and hence, less preachy.