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I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality. For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi wr
by marcus_holmes 5y ago
I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality.
For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance.
How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown meat until killing animals for food is banned? Is this a generational thing (so older people still consider eating animals to be acceptable, while younger people do not), or is it a country-wide thing (countries move to ban eating animals one by one, driven by a general shift in moral attitude), or what? How does this change in morality propagate through society?
Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then, will that act retroactively and currently-lionised people get cancelled because they are carnivores, even though the current culture that they exist in considers it acceptable?
Will we see clever re-interpretations of religious texts dealing with the eating of animals? Will we get religious divisions between different interpretations? Will some people refuse to accept the general moral stance on eating animals because their religious text says it's acceptable? How does this interaction between objective religious morality and subjective secular morality work?
It's going to be really interesting to watch this unfold.
- justinmchase 5y agoAnother question is, if its banned to kill an animal for meat, for various animals, how long until they go extinct? Many are co-dependent on humanity for their survival at the species level... Or at the very least how will it affect their evolution?
- falcolas 5y agoGood question. Another: How will the ranchland dedicated to their raising be used? In Montana, where the cows outnumber the people, the land they occupy is considered unfit for farming, largely because it’s not friendly for combines. There’s also the whole infrastructure and supply chain dedicated to the breeding and raising of various meat sources. What will happen to them?
- WJW 5y agoSeems fairly straightforward to predict, since this has happened dozens of times before as technology marched on: with no more business for them, they'll go bankrupt and the workers will eventually be assimilated into other professions. Maybe there will be a small remaining industry tending to hobbyists, similar to how horse shoeing and buggy whip manufacturing are very much a niche professions these days.
- falcolas 5y agoHave we had one of these "industry extinctions" in the last quarter century, particularly one at the scale of the meat industry? Our economy and workplaces are significantly different from what they were when horses were replaced by cars.
- jkelleyrtp 5y agoManufacturing and textiles, though they might have happened slightly more than 25 years ago.
- akiselev 5y ago> Our economy and workplaces are significantly different from what they were when horses were replaced by cars. The 21st century isn't special and we weren't born a quarter century ago. The economy and our workplaces will continue to evolve, as they have since the beginning of time.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoThe 20th century may have been special. In a hundred years we went from riding horses to landing on the moon. If the 21st century is to advance on a similarly breathtaking scale we'll need some astounding changes -- immortality, say, or true AI.
- akiselev 5y agoAbout 27% of the world still works in agriculture, as of 2019 - the vast majority as subsistence farmers - down from 44% of the world as of 1990 [1]. That's over 200 million people that just began the transition from pre-industrial agriculture to a modern market based economy. Modern technology is so unevenly distributed that over two billion people are still fed without the benefit of industrialized farming. I think you're vastly underestimating how much work there is left to do. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS
- erwald 5y agohumans have kept dogs and cats and horses around even though many of them aren’t used for their original purposes anymore, so I’d be surprised if some sentimental folks didn’t keep a few cows or sheep or whatnot around just for fun.
- InitialLastName 5y agoEspecially with cows, sheep and chickens, I suspect the market for their non-meat goods (milk, wool, eggs) will persist (perhaps in a progressively more artisanal market) for far longer than the killing-animals version of the meat industry.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI don't know about wool, but outside of artisanal situations the industry for milk and eggs is cruel from birth to death, not just at death.
- InitialLastName 5y agoFor sure, my thinking is that those industries are likely to survive more in the "I have a coop with a dozen chickens in my back yard" sense.
- jhauris 5y agoDomestic animals are already going extinct[1] as agriculture standardizes on the most profitable, most stable, or lowest maintenance breeds. Most domestic breeds wouldn't survive transition to wild living, survive by outcompeting native wildlife. That's why we don't have flocks of wild chickens roaming North America but there feral pigs are a menace. Based on this, I would bet that our current domestic meat animals would go extinct relatively quickly. There are some people who try to preserve various breeds in what are essentially zoos, but I can't imagine them operating in perpetuity. 1: https://www.livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/conservation-priority-list https://www.livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/inte...
- EForEndeavour 5y agoI would expect to see pockets of domesticated animals survive in captivity across the world for various non-meat purposes. Even if all captive breeding is banned, I would still expect allowances for governments or organizations to maintain breeding populations as a living reminder of where our civilization came from.
- zazen 5y agoRight. I've seen some zoos that already have a little "farm" section showing off some local heritage livestock breeds. I'd expect that sort of thing to take right off if it started to look like there was real risk of extinctions.
- hirundo 5y agoIf humans only existed as mindless stock animals, bred for food, I'd prefer extinction. But I wouldn't care to make that choice on behalf of Bovideae Bovinae Bos taurus.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- paulcole 5y ago> Many are co-dependent on humanity for their survival at the species level Can you list them?
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoIt's a hard problem. I'd like to imagine factory meat will free up land for use as wild nature preserves, which are the only real way to, well, preserve nature. But land has many other alternative uses. Until we value every one of those alternative uses less than we value preserving nature itself, we'll tend to use the land for something else. Of course it depends on the land in question. Any land that is currently good for grazing and nothing should immediately be freed up once grazing stops being economical. Unfortunately, the land like that is not the most biodiverse -- it's rocky scrub, not forest -- but I'll be happy to see it added to the set of lands we don't want to mess with.
- gwbas1c 5y agoI think "meat from animals" will quickly become considered higher quality, or luxury. We can kind-of see this now with seafood, where "wild caught" is more expensive than farmed.
- toxik 5y agoI'm not so sure about that. Lab grown meat has the potential of offering consistent quality at consistent prices, something that's hard to do in fish farms. You're still breeding animals, but far from their natural habitat and far from their natural diet -- with lab grown meat, the equation changes in that sense.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoThat's the theory, but in practice, lab/factory meat will become (much?) cheaper than 'natural' meat, so even if in terms of flavor and consistency there is no difference (which I doubt), 'organic' meat will be positioned as the luxury product.
- thehappypm 5y agoIt will take a while for lab-grown meat to match the variety available for regular meat, especially on the high-end market. Consider a steak, and how many cuts of steak there are from the same animal: T-bone, filet mignon, ribeye, flank, brisket.. the list goes on and on. Then within that, there are different breeds and styles of beef, like veal or Wagyu. Then on top of that you even have alternative species altogether, like lamb, which also have different styles and cuts. Lab-grown might eventually catch up but there's a lot of ground to cover.
- vidarh 5y agoLab-grown meat can exceed that thought. You can make cuts that are bigger than they currently can be. You can adjust composition, fat content, potentially embed flavourings directly into the meat, or combine types of meat, or create types of meat that doesn't even exist today. So I'm sure it will take time, but there's also a fairly good chance what will win people over will be that it'll be possible to provide products that just doesn't exist from "natural" sources.
- xbaq 5y agoIt is not a generational issue. Sometimes it seems like the Internet thinks that all the *isms have been invented after 2010. Studying newspapers or TV shows from the 1970s easily refutes that assumption. Also, there is no correlation between goodness and vegetarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler_and_vegetarianism
- marcus_holmes 5y agoSo, firstly, this: > For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. Also, is it vegetarianism if you only eat lab-grown meat? It's still meat, right, so you're still not vegetarian. Or is it the "not eating animals" that makes you a vegetarian now? I tend to think that (e.g.) Iain M Banks is right, and that eventually eating animals will be considered immoral (and not the same as vegetarianism). You may disagree, and that's fine - everyone has an opinion. The interesting question is not whether the future will consider this immoral, but whether if it becomes immoral in the future that applies retroactively and makes it immoral now? Does morality change over time, or regardless of time? I grew up in the '70's so I've seen the change in morality first-hand, but that all kinda caught us by surprise. It's going to be interesting being more aware of the change in morality around this.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago> Or is it the "not eating animals" that makes you a vegetarian now? That's the point of ethical veganism/vegetarianism, yes.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoSo will you still be a "ethical vegetarian" if you eat lab-grown meat?
- rhn_mk1 5y agoI know people self-describing as ethical vegans who eagerly await it. It sounds like a clear "yes" to me.
- wcoenen 5y agoI suspect reality will be a lot more boring. Animals are a low efficiency method of converting plant material into meat, both in terms of calories and protein mass input/output. So with scale, eventually lab-grown meat should become much cheaper than traditional meat. At the same time, it will be higher quality. Sterile production will eliminate E. Coli, salmonella, antibiotics... Input nutrients will be tightly controlled. Environmental pollutants and parasites will be kept out. Traditional meat will still be available, but it will be an expensive and morally questionable luxury product, like "foie gras" today.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoYou may be right. There's this weird thing with some speciality produce clashing with EU regulations on food prep at the moment. Not to mention unpasteurised milk. It could end up in that basket. Strange clubs of weirdos meeting up to butcher and eat an animal, and everyone else thinking that's completely disgusting.
- mildavw 5y agoDon’t forget that the flavors and textures will also be optimized along the way. It will taste better to more people than animal meat.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoAnd nutritional profiles! I read last year that beef engineered to have more B-vitamins starts to taste like fish.
- datavirtue 5y agoNow it is less efficient but when we needed a hedge against crop failure it was essential. One large beast can be kept alive by eating scrub and can subsist a large number of people. What we have going on right now is killing us.
- paulirwin 5y agoThis is spot on. (I'm a long time vegetarian, so I've thought a lot about this.) Hunting, fishing, and even specialty slaughterhouses will likely continue. The economics will cause mass meat production to go out of business, though. Beef first, probably. Engineering can evolve much faster than cows and chickens and fish can. No politician, at least in the U.S. mainstream, is going to commit political self-destruction by going after farmers and making animal meat illegal. What will likely happen though is once the big restaurant chains and grocery stores start selling lab-grown meat that is better quality and cheaper than animal meat, the market for cheap animal meat will dry up. We'll have politicians trying to "save beef jobs" just like they are trying to save coal jobs today, due to more efficient and environmentally-friendly alternatives taking over the market. But unlike coal, consumers can still choose animal meat (you can't exactly choose your power plant), so it might be a long transition due to that market demand. Expect the Arby's and ilk to continue to tout how they use "real meat" with hypermasculine advertising for a long time to come.
- smogcutter 5y ago> Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then, will that act retroactively and currently-lionised people get cancelled because they are carnivores, even though the current culture that they exist in considers it acceptable? Perhaps, if those statues were originally erected in honor of their diet, and to remind the vegetarians of the time who was in charge. I know the false equivalency isn’t really your point, but come on.
- Clewza313 5y agoWe're busily pulling down statues of various slave owners, none of which were erected to honor their slave ownership.
- psychometry 5y agoWell, no. Many of those (Confederate "heroes") were more principally known for treason, sedition, and waging war in defense of slave ownership rather than their personal predilection toward owning slaves.
- waterhouse 5y agoThomas Jefferson statue pulled down in Portland: https://www.opb.org/news/article/thomas-jefferson-statue-pulled-down-portland-jefferson-high/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/thomas-jefferson-statue-pul...
- psychometry 5y agoCongrats, you found a single counterexample, namely the founding father that was by all accounts the worst human being of the bunch, what with the likely raping and impregnation of his slaves and all. I'm all for replacing TJ statues with ones honoring better human beings.
- gowld 5y agoWhich ones? Most of the statues were specifically erected decades after the Civil War, by KKK and friends, as part of an intimidation campaign against black people and in support of Jim Crow -style laws and resistance to the progress of equal rights legislation.
- esens 5y ago> How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown meat until killing animals for food is banned? Is this a generational thing (so older people still consider eating animals to be acceptable, while younger people do not), or is it a country-wide thing (countries move to ban eating animals one by one, driven by a general shift in moral attitude), or what? How does this change in morality propagate through society? Just because they ate meat? Maybe not, but they may not look kindly on those that did large scale killing with less than humane practices. I could see this individuals being more likely to be "Cancelled." Maybe those that fought vegans or fought against animal rights activities? Those opposing change for the better or were active participants in things we in the future see as bad. Remember that most people cancelled were active participants, rather than passive bystanders going with the flow.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoTrue. We tend to cancel slave traders rather than slave owners, because if we were to cancel the slave owners then we'd have to cancel a lot of people. I should clarify. I'm not criticising cancel culture. I'm interested in how the shift in morality happens and how it propagates, and what that means for us now. Is morality retroactive? Am I an immoral person because I eat meat, even though it's common practise now?
- buu700 5y agoI wouldn't be surprised if this nuance were lost in the hypothetical future cancel culture, but I think anyone giving careful consideration to present circumstances would realize the terrible choice we all have to make. It's easy to judge someone for complicity in the mass murder of countless animals when you have the luxury of having been saved from that choice by more advanced technology.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago>I wouldn't be surprised if this nuance were lost in the hypothetical future cancel culture, but I think anyone giving careful consideration to present circumstances would realize the terrible choice we all have to make. It already is lost among many people today so that's not a stretch in the slightest. There are an egregious amount of people that use the morality of the present to judge the decisions of the past when the whole system and culture was different. All simply because these people were spoon-fed and told "this is bad because of 'x'" without explaining from a mindset of why people thought the way they did at the time. I mean the simple fact that there is a concept of "leftism" is enough to state that there is an ideology that someone can measure you against on how "woke" you may or may not be. It's exactly no different than the Catholic church setting up a mock trial to determine if you are a heretic! Except it's not a centralized theology. But clearly it has enough adherence that there are some aristocrats that are willing to kowtow to the belief system.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI don't think eating "from animal" meat will become too controversial within the next few decades yet. However, there will be a few shifts. Any meat that is unrecognizable as cuts of meat - hamburgers, sausages, etc - will be 'cut' with factory meat as a means to cut costs (assuming factory meat will become cheaper than livestock, which I'm confident it will with scale), similar to how it's now filled with water, MRM and other fillers, or how a few years back there was a big controversy in the UK when it turned out ground beef contained horse meat. It'll be awhile before legislation catches up to make it mandatory to indicate the source of the meat. But, if this scales up, I think total meat consumption will only increase.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoOK, but hypothetically, assume it does become immoral, and then illegal. If you eat a burger now, with lab-grown meat not really available, are you behaving immorally? If you eat an animal in (say) 10 years' time, when lab-grown meat is readily available, are you behaving immorally then? If you eat an animal in (say) 20 years' time, when that involves quite a lot of effort (finding a butcher who sells it, paying the price premium, etc). Are you behaving immorally then? If you eat an animal after they ban killing animals for food, is that immoral? (i.e. is it the law that makes the action immoral?) At what point does our (presumably moral) action of eating meat become immoral? Is that up to us as individuals, or is it up to our churches, or government, or what? Who makes this decision, and how is that communicated, and is it retroactive?
- ragazzina 5y ago(Disclaimer: I am not a vegetarian) I see it as immoral now, and immoral in twenty years. It is just socially accepted. Most of the meat-eating people I know don't even try and justify from a moral standpoint. They usually say "I know it's wrong, I just like meat". So in twenty years they will say "I knew it was wrong, it was just how life was back then".
- noduerme 5y agoSwitch meat-eating for slave-owning and you're starting to justify tearing down those statues of Washington and Jefferson.
- datavirtue 5y agoCancel culture will always exist. I learned that Hitler identified it as an essential method for success in establishing a political party (Rise and Fall of the Third Reich). He employed it extensively and discovered it through analyzing the success of the socialists--which he hated and was seeking to displace. Whatever you call it, it is just highly obnoxious behavior that uses rethoric to defame the target. It works and people will use it until it doesn't.
- dale_glass 5y agoHitler also was a vegetarian and really liked his dog. Anyway, after Hitler blew his brains out, he was "canceled", and that went just fine. It's a tool that works for positive ends just as well.
- jalk 5y agoAnd then the Synthianians will appear - that’s the ones only eating lab grown food, since plants are living beings as well
- marcus_holmes 5y agoThat's interesting, I've not heard that term before, thanks :) So if you assume that at some point in the future everyone becomes Synthianian (Synthian?) for moral reasons, is it immoral to eat plants now?
- sound1 5y agoI would say it is less immoral to be a vegetarian because you only kill the plant instead of killing an animal that killed and ate the plant ;-)
- akoncius 5y ago> Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Could you tell me any case where statue of famous people were pulled down because they used cotton products made by slaves? eating meat is not equal to agitating for keeping slavery. so I think meat eaters are safe :) on the other hand, hardcore people who insist on killing animals without consideration for alternatives could be condemned later after 50 years or something, but I think it's fine. bigger problem is when people keep insisting on immoral things without consideration of alternatives. overall it's really interesting to see such a big focus on "cancel culture" in this comment.
- doitLP 5y agoProbably so. But one thing is for sure. We’ll soon start seeing an apparent grassroots movement against lab grown meat, complete with talking points about its dubious manufacturing process and how it’s actually more unsanitary and now that we mention it morally questionable than good ol beef/chicken/pork
- growt 5y agoA quick google search told me that 12 US presidents where slave owners. So far I think none of their statues have been torn down because of the fact although slavery is almost universally outlawed and condemned. For shorter term analogies I think something like gay-marriage fits. "Progressive" countries allow it, while the more "backwards" or religious countries fight it. I guess it will play out something like this (And you habe to factor in that in case of lab-meat it will probably more expensive at the start, so people and countries have to be able to afford their morals - or eat vegetables I guess).
- gowld 5y agoAndrew Jackson is being cancelle^Wremoved from the $20. It might not be a coincidence that he was targetted as being perhaps the most racist genocidal President. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_twenty-dollar_bill#Biden_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_twenty-dollar_bi...
- TecoAndJix 5y agoIn reading up on this I had a good laugh when i discovered the URL for the "Bureau of Engraving and Printing" is https://www.moneyfactory.gov/ https://www.moneyfactory.gov/!
- InitialLastName 5y agoHis (undoubted) role in the Trail of Tears aside, it's not at all clear why Andrew Jackson belongs on money anyway. As far as I've read, it's not even clear how the decision to put him on the $20 was made, except that one fan of his at the mint thought he should be. All that not to mention, it's ridiculous to be putting someone who didn't think the US should have a central bank on the US's money. Statues, money, and the like are how we communicate to the world and ourselves reminders of those whose lives we find worth emulating. As our morals change and we start to find things like slavery, forced death-marches and ethnic cleansing abhorrent, is it really wrong for us to update our imagery of whose lives we should emulate? At least to stop idolizing those people who were most notable for, or even raised arms in insurrection in support of, those acts?
- vidarh 5y agoTo be honest, I think what will happen first is a multi-pronged marketing assault on "natural" meat from an environmental, animal rights, cost and quality angle. E.g. producers of lab-grown meat has an interest in: * Pushing for taxes or reduced subsidies on "natural" meat with environmental reasoning. This will get easier the more people switch. * Pushing a "our meat never had a face but is still real meat" angle. * Undercutting on price. * Providing "impossible" meat. E.g. cuts that are impossible, compositions that are impossible. Species that are impractical or annoying (e.g. quail and many other birds have so little meat relative to bones that while they're tasty they're a nuisance to eat - lab-grown meat can potentially be "better" than natural meat that way), or meat with other ingredients embedded directly in the meat. Marketing "old meat" as "old fashioned", boring and lower quality. * Pushing a "do you know where their meat has been? We know where ours has been" angle. I don't think a ban will happen until a ban is mostly pointless. That is, I think lab-grown meats have to succeed first, and then when most people have stopped caring because they mostly eat lab-grown meats, it's possible a ban would get sufficient support.
- billti 5y agoI've considered stuff like this a lot lately, as there seems to be a lot of hypocrisy amongst commonly held positions (including mine). I find it odd that people who truly believe in evolution, and that humans are just smarter animals, and that animals are also capable of sensing pain and emotion, can be deeply concerned (rightfully) about things such as trans rights, gender discrimination, etc. for humans (that are very high on "Maslow's hierarchy"), and yet are perfectly content to pay for meat they know was the product of an industry which is pretty horrific in its treatment of billions of cows, pigs, etc. a year. Similarly, I have friends who regularly rail against the "wealthy" and how it's immoral to have so much money when people are suffering in poverty. Then the same day will go spend $200 on a handbag or $20 on a cocktail or $1000 on a weekend getaway to Hawaii without blinking, knowing full well those unnecessary purchases cost as much as several meals or vaccines for those less fortunate people that the "rich" should be taxed to help. How do so many people act contradictory to their stated positions? Are they dishonest with themselves? Haven't thought it through? Or do people just want the world to be a better place... as long as it's not an inconvenience for them personally?
- shadilay 5y agoObjective analysis is proportional to the distance from the observer.
- bckr 5y ago> Are they dishonest with themselves? Haven't thought it through? Or do people just want the world to be a better place... as long as it's not an inconvenience for them personally? All of the above plus performative outrage / signaling. I'm definitely a healthier person after getting off social media and honestly just caring a lot less about my stances on things and whether they're perfect and holy.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago> I'm definitely a healthier person after getting off social media This. So much. Facebook was destroying my mental health.
- 5y ago
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoI think it's going to be interesting simply because in order to ban killing of animals for food, we're going to have to almost genocide livestock in order to make their continued existence feasible.
- bserge 5y agoPeople didn't seem too fussed about the mink mass killed because some were infected with Covid. "Had to be done" works every time.
- gbear605 5y agoIt’ll probably come gradually, without any sudden jump. More and more people will switch over because of convenience, so most of the market left will be there for higher quality products, and then they’ll ban the most egregious factory farming that isn’t being used anymore, and so on until only the most boutique animal farming is left, at which point no one will care.
- jl6 5y agoIt might turn out to be easy to get to a lab-grown product that is 90% as good as natural, but the last 10% could be tricky. There are countless examples of products where competitors have tried to approach the quality of a market-leader, and almost got there, but not quite. Meat is also a good example of a product where humans are exceptionally good at detecting minor variances in quality. Objectively speaking, these are variances that shouldn't matter, but somehow xkcd 915 still emerges.
- Bancakes 5y agoThe western world hasn't had a famine in decades, mainly eats for satiety - not survival. No hunting necessary. If we are in a position where we are starving and have animals at our disposal, morals will fade.
- mmazing 5y agoWhy does everything have to be a slippery slope?
- marcus_holmes 5y agoIt's a pretty binary decision (eat animals or not). What does the slope look like?
- mprovost 5y agoEating whales. Or dolphins. Or dogs. Or chimps.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoTrue, I hadn't considered that. The "should you eat horses?" question. So if there is vat-grown pork but they never manage to get the beef quite right, will it be acceptable to eat cows but not pigs? I guess that's the slope. So yes, this has to be a slippery slope ;)
- mmazing 5y agoYour version: Lab grown meat -> everyone agrees eating animals is immoral -> various extreme examples of society completely changing It's also entirely possible that lab grown meat becomes prevalent and simply coexists with raising animals for food for the foreseeable future.
- marcus_holmes 5y agoI don't think that's how humans work. There's a possibility of moral high ground here, so someone is bound to take it.
- Noos 5y agoIt won't be accepted. If anything it probably will be treated like veganism, which is mostly moral grandstanding. People who consume boutique products to show their virtue. A lot of us simply don't lose sleep over the suffering of factory animals, in the same way we didn't lose sleep over the starving kids in china our mothers used to berate us about when we didn't finish our vegetables. That doesn't mean we constantly try to make things like a hellscape, but you can try and treat everyone morally and not get in a tizzy over "someone is being oppressed somewhere! See! Our moral guardians of the media are showing us!" The idea of telescopic philanthropy and being a Mrs Jellyby needs to be remembered. If it got to the point where it was mandated, we'd probably be in some form of dystopia where everything was in the pursuit of either survival (animals no longer exist or are possible to eat) or sort of a planned world where our governing or elite classes mandate their virtue on everyone, and it would lead to a lot more lifestyle changing that not eating meat. I think the latter is fairly likely, China for example seems to be doing pretty well at a basic form of that.
- ainiriand 5y agoYour comment starts presenting an interesting debate but you steer towards some kind of partisanism or tribalism that is quite stange to witness. You do not need to hear any kind of moral guardian to do and conduct yourself knowing that every single person is responsible of the actions they make and though I am not responsible for those starving children I am responsible for many of the atrocities commited for the burgers I ate. It is not about virtue, it is taking responsibility of your own actions and checking your own ethic to decide if it is correct or not.
- Noos 5y agoIt's not partisan in the sense of right or left, the "starving kids in china" was pretty much the same thing on the right. Jellyby was definitely a moral conservative, and victorianism is surprisingly bi-partian. Usually its the fashions of the rich, if anything. HN in particular is unaware of how they imitate it, with the sudden rediscovery of Stoicism and Aurelius a bit much. I don't agree that easting meat is an atrocity. I think it devalues words to use them like that. I think a lot of veganism is the same reaction to the existence of suffering a lot of religions have had or deal with; it's a form of going to the desert as a monk or mystic to escape the contradictions of the world. That is up to everyone, but the difference here is the monks want to make the entire world the desert now.
- mdasen 5y ago> eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) There are a lot more vegetarians and vegans than just PETA. It looks like around 5% of the US and hitting 10% in many countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country). Many parts of India have very high vegetarian rates. > How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown meat until killing animals for food is banned? I doubt that it will be about banning animal meat anytime soon. However, I think we might see many countries start to tax the environmental cost of meat which will make it quite expensive. This is unlikely in the US, but I could certainly see it in many countries whose politics are different. > Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then I think this isn't a useful thought right now and just feeds into the "cancel culture gone mad" ideas. Few people have been canceled. Yea, Harvey Weinstein has been canceled...for rape. Kevin Spacey has been canceled...because of sexual assault against underage boys. Most people who seem to complain about being canceled are sitting on Fox News taking home giant paychecks. Tons of people encouraged riots at the Capitol and are making millions off it. Yes, at some point in the very distant future, we might decide that killing animals for food isn't an acceptable behavior. A hundred years ago, a man couldn't be guilty of raping his wife. 200 years ago, a lot of people owned slaves. 60 years ago we had racial segregation. 40 years ago, it was acceptable to say that gay people deserved to die from AIDS. Things change. But it's not like it's going to happen overnight. It's not like 2017 came along and Harvey Weinstein was like, "omg, is rape wrong now? Things change so quickly and I didn't know!" Attitudes will probably change over decades or centuries. Like, we've spent hundreds of years getting to the point of "Black people are equal and you shouldn't be racist" and people still often aren't getting canceled for racism. I've seen posts of police officers covering up explicitly racist tattoos saying that in the current climate they feel like they need to be careful. It's been over half a century since the Civil Rights Movement, but now they're like, "oh, I guess I might get in trouble for being explicitly racist in a position of power." The idea that someone would be canceled for eating an animal in our lifetime seems unlikely. It certainly won't happen as some surprise. > Will we see clever re-interpretations of religious texts dealing with the eating of animals? In Judaism, a lot of people hold the belief that we won't eat animals in the messianic era (when the messiah comes). People are only allowed to eat animals because Noah saved them from the flood. Before the flood, people weren't allowed to eat animals. Part of the messianic era is that it's supposed to be how the world is meant to be. This idea isn't a left-wing Jewish idea either. I would note that it's not widely known in the Jewish world and usually more known by orthodox people who do eat meat. Judaism often has a lot of things that might be a little less official, but nonetheless have some weight and resonance. I think we also see some of this in Christian stuff. I feel like Christians like Isaiah 11:6's "the lion will lie down with the lamb" (yes, I know that technically that's not quite the animals in the text, but it is how I often hear it said by English-language Christians). I think the idea that predators might not be predators in some world-to-come isn't something that has to be creatively reinterpreted. > Will we get religious divisions between different interpretations? Yes. I mean, we have religious divisions over really tiny things. This is certainly larger than a lot of religious divisions we've seen. > Will some people refuse to accept the general moral stance on eating animals because their religious text says it's acceptable? Do religious texts say it's acceptable? Jewish texts certainly do - and they have a lot to say on how. However, rabbis have modified it over the centuries. Chicken was once acceptable to eat with dairy and now it isn't. I think the big thing for the Jewish community would be that many rabbis would say that lab-grown meat is more in the spirit of how we're supposed to live combined with the fact that it's likely to be so much cheaper than kosher meat tends to be. Given the likely price difference, even people who might be in the "it's fine to kill and eat animals as prescribed" are likely to be buying the lab-grown meat simply because it will make meat accessibly priced. In fact, chicken was deemed to be "fleishig" so that people could have an affordable "meat" for Shabbat meals (the category of "meat" from a Jewish perspective is slightly different from "animal" and doesn't include fish...it's a long story outside the scope of this comment). I think Judaism also evolves around community standards that do change. The Bible condones all sorts of capital punishments, but the rabbis rid the religion of them all a long time ago. I can't really speak for other religions, but if lab-grown meat becomes available at a cheap price, has better food safety than the current system, can offer better consistency and taste, and causes slaughtered-meat to become niche and a lot more expensive...even if you don't have qualms about killing animals, do you want to pay for it? Manufactured goods are so cheap because we can manufacture them. Growing animals is hard. It requires a lot of labor, a lot of land, a lot of water, a lot of carbon emissions, a lot of food, etc. I'm sure there will be some market for "real" meat for a long time, but it will likely get expensive. Manufactured meat is likely to get pretty efficient and cheap. I think it's less about whether religions will continue to support killing animals and more about whether anyone will want to pay for it. "Hey, here's this $1 lab-grown burger that you know will be consistent and delicious and here's this $20 bespoke cow-slaughtered burger." The fact is that most people aren't going to want to pay a premium for the cow-slaughtered burger. -- Personally, I'm a vegetarian and have been for 15 years. I'm also Jewish. One thing I will note as a difference between semi-religious Jews and non-Jews is the difference in meat consumption. Many Jews, even if they aren't that religious, still won't mix meat and dairy and many won't eat non-kosher-certified meat. I have lots of friends who haven't been to a religious service in years, but still kinda do this out of a certain cultural thing or inertia. One of the things that this means is that they often don't eat meat with most meals. Meat is something they eat 2-4 times per week. By contrast, I'll have lunch with non-Jews where burgers, pizza with meat toppings, salads with chicken, etc. are the norm. Meat is a part of almost every meal. The difference isn't a moral one: my non-vegetarian Jewish friends don't think eating meat is wrong. Eating meat is simply inconvenient and expensive for them. So they eat meat with a minority of their meals. The fact is that it's likely that slaughtered-meat will become expensive and inconvenient compared to manufactured-meat. Taco Bell or your local pizza place isn't going to spend a lot more money on slaughtered-meat if they can get a wonderful, consistent product at a cheaper price. Regardless of whether slaughtered-meat stops being a thing or not, it will likely become a much smaller part of people's diets. This will be very important as we deal with global warming. Even if you're the type of person that's like, "I will always love a real steak on a grill and that's going to be every Saturday in the summer," the fact is that you're likely to also be eating a lot of lab-meat when you grab something at Burger King or getting deli-meat for sandwiches. I think people like thinking about "zero", but for me lab-meat is about the 90% of "well, I just wanted some meat texture and protein in my meal." I'm hoping it'll take off and we'll see a huge reduction of our dependence on slaughtered-meat and the environmental impact it causes. I think it'll take time, but I think it's hard to bet against manufacturing efficiencies.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoFor those that want to consume some amusing fiction on this I'd recommend the BBC mockumentary Carnage.
- zaptheimpaler 5y agoGiven the concerted media push for lab-grown meat over the recent years, i think the powers that be have made the decision already. There is no need to fight a culture/moral war - they will simply raise the prices of meat and add some nice marketing around the benefits of lab-grown alternatives.