If EAs won't go vegan what chance do animals have?

EAs are especially rational people and not eating animals is obviously the more rational choice for 90%+ people reading this

I'm about 99% bivalve vegan (occasionally I eat fish for cognitive reasons). However, I think it doesn't make sense for strongly longtermist individuals in terms of the direct straightforward benefits of veganism. The direct animal suffering is negligable relative to the future. I'm strongly longtermist, but I stay vegan for a combination of less direct reasons like signaling to myself and generally being cooperative (for reasons like acausal decision theory and directly being cooperative with current people).

Thanks for your post. One place where you might get pushback is in whether or not “not eating animals is obviously the more rational choice”. I’m vegan, but I think there are somewhat persuasive arguments that promoting veganism may not be net positive: https://reducing-suffering.org/vegetarianism-and-wild-animals/

I expect that if plant based alternatives ever were to become as available, tasty, and cheap as animal products, a large proportion of people and likely nearly all EAs would become vegan. Cultural effects do matter, but in the end I expect them to be mostly downstream of technology in this particular case. Moral appeals have unfortunately had limited success on this issue.

I am one of those meat-eating EA's, so I figured I'd give some reasons why I'm not vegan, to aid the goals of this post in finding out about these things.

Price: While I can technically afford it, I still prefer to save money when possible.
Availability: A lot of food out there, especially frozen foods which I buy a lot of since I don't like cooking, involves meat. It's simply easier to decide on meals when meat is an option.
Knowledge: If I were to go vegan, I would be unsure how to go vegan safely for an extended period, and how to make sure I got a decent variety rather than eating the same foods over and over (which comes into taste - I don't mind vegan food but there's much more variety I can find in meat-based dishes)
Convenience: Similarly to above - it takes resources to seek out vegan options, more resources than to just eat normally.

The harms are real, but the harms are far away and abstract. So when I feel vaguely guilty about eating meat, I think about all the hassle and cost it would take to swap diets, and I shy away from it and don't do it. 

I'm not quite sure why those harms are far away and abstract, whereas the harms caused by malaria or AI risk don't invoke the same feelings in me. I think it's because I can use maths to determine the number of humans impacted and then put myself in the place of one of those humans - it's harder to do that with chickens. Also, giving away 10% of my income is actually less of a day-to-day drain on my resources than going vegan would be. I feel aversion to spending money, but I only give away money once a month, and it doesn't cause me financial hardship. By contrast, veganism requires daily effort.

As a micro-example of where these considerations don't apply - there are some plant meat based strips that I can get at my local supermarket. I find them tastier than actual meat when put into curry, and they're just as cheap when on special. So whenever they're on special, I pick a bunch of them up and they become my default option for a while. I know how to cook them, I know where to get them, they're just as cheap (sometimes) and I enjoy the taste. So I end up avoiding meat by default. I hope plant-based meat will eventually reach that saturation point for all kinds of dishes too.

Although I'm not sure (because I don't have enough knowledge) if your claim on "not eating animals is the more rational choice for 90%+ people reading this" is correct, I liked this mental model. 

As a member of EA community and an altruist, I eat meat. Not because it's cheaper (it's not, at least in Brazil), it's convenient (I live in a massive city with a lot of vegan options), or it's rational (I'm not sure if it is) but because eating is more then putting calories in...

Eating is a social activity. It's about belonging and connections. 

And what is our most important need after physiological and safety, according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?

Belonging and Love. 

So I believe most people don't go vegan (EAs or not) because it's hard to adapt to this lifestyle socially,  unless other vegans surround you. 

I don't have a definitive solution to this puzzle (to have more vegans, we need more vegans). Still, I would like to share my view on that because I think what most vegan advocates get wrong is framing "eating" as a purely rational and physiological activity. 

It's like soccer. 40.000 people doesn't go to the stadium because it's rational to watch 22 guys running for a soccer ball, but because their social lives are embedded on it. 

I agree with the thrust of the argument but I think its a little too pessimistic. A lot of EAs aren't especially altruistic people. Tons of EAs got involved because of Xrisk. And it requires very little altruism to care about whether you and everyone you know will die. You can look at the data on EA donations and notice they aren't that high. EAs dont donate 10% until they have a pre-tax income of around one million dollars per year!