Acceptable Hypocrisy

Last Friday, I ate some delicious coffee-glazed baby back ribs with Phu. Every time we have Asian food, he's immensely grateful to the point where I shed tears. He hasn't had the resources to visit home since arriving to the U.S. two years ago, and it was his first time indulging in the luxury of dim sum here.

At one point during our meal, my thoughts turned to the tender piglet. On top of San Francisco prices eating into our food budget, I suddenly wondered how much we were contributing to animal suffering with this single meal.

I've previously mentioned the book Doing Good Better by Dr. William MacAskill. There's a great passage in which he traces the impact of forgoing consumption:

"...economists estimate if you give up one pound of beef, beef production falls by 0.68 pounds; if you give up one pound of pork, production ultimately falls by 0.74 pounds; if you give up one pound of chicken, production ultimately falls by 0.76 pounds..."

It would be remarkable if correct, that over 50% of your consumptive reduction trickles through to the production side. But unfortunately, that's still 20 times short of where I'd like my intervention to be.

I strongly believe killing and eating animals is morally wrong, especially via factory farming. Causing suffering is evil, to any living creature. We simply should not do it. Ever!

But on the other hand, I'm an engineer. I think in systems and I look for high-leverage activities that lead to 10x breakthroughs. So I'll only consider not eating pork if for every pound I give up, I reduce at least ten pounds of production.

I'm a hypocrite. I think eating meat is ethically bad, but I will deliberately continue said eating. Especially when I selfishly want convenient protein after a workout.

I accept that I'm a hypocrite. This decision to embrace hypocrisy kind of feels like coupons or credit cards to me. I purposefully avoid optimizing those things too, just to reduce my day-to-day cognitive load. I mostly don't care about recycling or compost, choosing to single-stream with enthusiasm.

Everything is a tradeoff, and I spend my focus on other things. We cannot save the world with every action we take. Why not specialize in our philanthropy and acts of service to humanity the same way we specialize in our jobs to create wealth and reduce poverty? The same way that tracking is one of the most impactful interventions in education per dollar.

We can and should try our best to do helpful things, large and small. We can and should applaud those who do such things, however they feel is best. Sometimes, I'll randomly pick up trash on the street. I loved living in Ecuador where my neighbors had happy chickens. Now I buy fancy free-range eggs whenever I can.

Nobody believes they are the bad guy. I believe I'm the good guy because at least I acknowledge my hypocrisy. I proudly declare and own it. I create transparency around it.

So call me out on my meat-eating if you like...heck, I'm calling out myself!

I think the real sin is complacency, moral laziness, or to not think things through at all. Even worse, to not understand oneself while preaching misguidedly at others. Or to bury and hide hypocrisy, purposefully deceiving the world.

When everyone else can see your hypocrisy but you remain blind to it, we are stepping toward a serious problem.