6 ms·

Obviously, he's wrong. There are things we know, there are things we know that we don't know, and, thirdly, there are things that we don't know that we don't kn

Obviously, he's wrong. There are things we know, there are things we know that we don't know, and, thirdly, there are things that we don't know that we don't know. Anyone betting against autonomous vehicles, fusion reactors, and similar hard challenges knows about that third part and will never say "never" - instead they pad their predictions with "not soon," "unlikely," etc. In contrast, this dude went full bore and just said "no way we'll ever get below $17 per pound." Again, there is definitionally no chance that the third aspect was baked into that prediction, so he's either insanely naive or just financially incentivized to act that way. And then I found it: > Humbird’s job is to look into the crystal ball. He’s one of the experts NREL contracts to figure out which approaches are viable at scale, how much they would cost, and ultimately if the government should fund them. Well, if you make it your job to give yes or no predictions, then you cannot take that third factor into account, because you would make it very clear to your employer that your work is absolutely worthless. Someone could have equally hired him 10 years ago to answer: "how many man hours would it take to build a rocket that will take us to Mars?" You think he would have said: "no idea, that's too unpredictable, we have to leave this to crazy people like Elon and then just see what happens?" No, he would have happily spent the next 2 years writing a 100 page document that would spit out some random number between 10 and 10,000,000 years. And then he would lean on his PhD and call it a scientifically backed result.

tacticalmook 5y ago
It would behoove you to read more than just the summary
- aerosmile 5y ago
  It would take about 30 mins to do so diligently. I took about 5 mins and skimmed it top to bottom. What I found is a lot of statements that didn’t have any amount of humility or recognition that not all of science has been invented yet. It sounds like you took a deeper stab at it. What did I miss?
  - cycrutchfield 5y ago
    Then it would have been preferable if you had started your original post with “I haven’t read the article fully, but…” It’s a good read. Don’t be lazy.
  - tacticalmook 5y ago
    While overly wordy and negative, most of the premises of dissent seem to be well founded. The article's own summary: > *For cultured meat to move the needle on climate, a sequence of as-yet-unforeseen breakthroughs will still be necessary. We’ll need to train cells to behave in ways that no cells have behaved before. We’ll need to engineer bioreactors that defy widely accepted principles of chemistry and physics. We’ll need to build an entirely new nutrient supply chain using sustainable agricultural practices, inventing forms of bulk amino acid production that are cheap, precise, and safe. Investors will need to care less about money. Germs will have to more or less behave. It will be work worthy of many Nobel prizes—certainly for science, possibly for peace. And this expensive, fragile, infinitely complex puzzle will need to come together in the next 10 years.* More snippets below Note that GFI refers to the optimistic analysis/factory proposal and Humbird is the author of the pessimistic analysis commissioned by Open Philanthropy. > The single, hypothetical facility described by GFI would require nearly a third of <the entire capacity of the biopharmaceutical industry today>, just to make [.0002, or one-fiftieth of one percent, of the 100 billion pounds of meat produced in the U.S. each year.] ... If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030, we will need 4,000 factories like the one GFI envisions, according to an analysis[link] by the trade publication Food Navigator. To meet that deadline, building at a rate of one mega-facility a day would be too slow. Each of those facilities would also come with a heart-stopping price tag: a minimum of $1.8 trillion, according to Food Navigator. > Humbird’s analysis ... represent the lowest prices companies can expect. ... The final product would be a single-cell slurry, a mix of 30 percent animal cells and 70 percent water, suitable only for ground-meat-style products like burgers and nuggets. With markups ... [this] becomes $40 at the grocery store—or a $100 quarter-pounder at a restaurant. Anything resembling a steak would require additional production processes, introduce new engineering challenges, and ultimately contribute additional expense. ... “The requirements for return on investment need to be set much lower than common practice in commercially motivated investments,” the authors [of GFI] write. ... It will likely need public [subsidies] or philanthropic support to be competitive. > In cell culture, sterility is paramount. Animal cells “grow so slowly that if we get any bacteria in a culture—well, then we’ve just got a bacteria culture,” Humbird said. ... "The culture has no immune system. If there’s virus particles in there that can infect the cells, they will. And generally, the cells just die, and then there’s no product anymore. You just dump it.” ... It may not matter if governments end up allowing cultured meat facilities to produce at food-grade specs, critics say—cells are so intensely vulnerable that they’ll likely need protection to survive. ... According to Humbird’s report, those economics will likely one day limit the practical size of cultured meat facilities: They can only be big enough to house a sweet spot of two dozen 20,000-liter bioreactors, or 96 smaller perfusion reactors. Any larger, and the clean room expenses start to offset any benefits from adding more reactors. The construction costs grow faster than the production costs drop. For comparison, GFI’s hypothetical plant would have 130 fed-batch reactors and 430 perfusion reactors—a facility that could easily cost over a billion dollars if Humbird’s specs and prices prove to be accurate. > In Humbird’s projection, the cost of amino [acids] alone ends up adding about $8 per pound of meat produced—already much more than the average cost of a pound of ground beef. GFI’s study, on the other hand, reports that the cost of aminos may eventually be as low as 40 cents per kilo. Why the discrepancy? ... the price figures for macronutrients are largely based on a specific amino acid protein powder that sells for $400 a ton on ... Alibaba.com. That source ... is not likely not suitable for cell culture. ... Because they’re not intended for human consumption, they may include heavy metals, arsenic, organic toxins, and so on. ... foreign substances that aren’t consumed by the cells—or that don’t kill them outright—likely end up inside the cells. Currently, global production of individual amino acids is far too low to support cultured meat production, even at a modest scale. ... “There can be no cultured meat scale-up without concomitant and dramatic scale-up of amino acid production,” Humbird’s report concludes.
mythrwy 5y ago
I also think this works out. Maybe it's just wishful thinking but I feel it will. I suspect the answer may be not culturing "animal" cells they are now but instead a genetically modified "something" (perhaps yeasts?) that grow well under lab culture and produce the same amino acid/ fat profiles. And after processing it will be close enough to "meat", maybe even better. I believe there is a company growing milk proteins with yeasts now.
- car 5y ago
  Almost there! How about growing the meat essence, say hemoglobin with yeast, and providing the fibrous structure from plants? That's exactly what Impossible Foods has done. Edit: That company is also working on milk. [0] [0] https://www.engadget.com/impossible-milk-154404741.html https://www.engadget.com/impossible-milk-154404741.html
paulintrognon 5y ago
With this rethoric, you cant rule out lightsabers either. Or any science fiction stuff at all.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lm28469 5y ago
Just look at any of "the world in 50 years" from the 20th and 19th century and you'll notice the extremely vast majority of expected technological advances didn't mature even remotely close to what technocrats predicted, if at all. We're in the middle of a hype cycle, we've been in hype cycles many times since the 30s. People think everything is possible, that science is an unlimited power and that we just have to work hard enough on a problem to solve it. Technocrats of the 60s said we'd have 2 days workweek by the year 2000 thanks to automation, artificial intelligence experts of the 70s said we'd reach AGI in a decade, engineers of the 80s predicted flying cars would be the norm, 2012 Musk said autonomous cars would be there "in two years". Some people view technology as some kind of deity, as if wishful thinking and disguised prayers were all you need
- aerosmile 5y ago
  I take the opposite view - technology has progressed faster than any other aspect of our experience on this planet. From first flight to landing on the moon = 60 years. From first computers to an iPhone = 60 years. What else has changed in this world faster than technology?
  - lm28469 5y ago
    I'd say going to the moon and shitting 15% faster iphones every 6 months is easy compared to fission, lab grown meat and fully autonomous vehicles. You're under the impression that we've accomplished a lot, and we did to some extent, but the vast majority of it is regular incremental updates, not paradigm shifting discoveries. Running water, central heating or the invention of fridges is more exciting to me than anything we came up with since the 60s, including going to the moon. We have iphones, tiktok, and subscription based meditation apps sure. We're still living in the exact same ways, just with more distractions and less available time. Productivity increased dramatically but we're not doing better things, we're just doing more things. The gap between "what could be" and "what is" is filled with an incredibly huge amount of gadgets and clutter. Also, life isn't a video game, the fact that we did ABC in the past doesn't mean we can do XYZ in the future. If you listen to Musk we'll be sipping mojitos on Mars by 2050, I'd be surprised if we have fully autonomous cars on earth by then tbh. Lab grown meat or fission are more like "invention of the wheel -> modern electric car" rather than "og iphone -> iphone 13"

tacticalmook 5y ago

It would behoove you to read more than just the summary

aerosmile 5y ago
It would take about 30 mins to do so diligently. I took about 5 mins and skimmed it top to bottom. What I found is a lot of statements that didn’t have any amount of humility or recognition that not all of science has been invented yet. It sounds like you took a deeper stab at it. What did I miss?
- cycrutchfield 5y ago
  Then it would have been preferable if you had started your original post with “I haven’t read the article fully, but…” It’s a good read. Don’t be lazy.
- tacticalmook 5y ago
  While overly wordy and negative, most of the premises of dissent seem to be well founded. The article's own summary: > *For cultured meat to move the needle on climate, a sequence of as-yet-unforeseen breakthroughs will still be necessary. We’ll need to train cells to behave in ways that no cells have behaved before. We’ll need to engineer bioreactors that defy widely accepted principles of chemistry and physics. We’ll need to build an entirely new nutrient supply chain using sustainable agricultural practices, inventing forms of bulk amino acid production that are cheap, precise, and safe. Investors will need to care less about money. Germs will have to more or less behave. It will be work worthy of many Nobel prizes—certainly for science, possibly for peace. And this expensive, fragile, infinitely complex puzzle will need to come together in the next 10 years.* More snippets below Note that GFI refers to the optimistic analysis/factory proposal and Humbird is the author of the pessimistic analysis commissioned by Open Philanthropy. > The single, hypothetical facility described by GFI would require nearly a third of <the entire capacity of the biopharmaceutical industry today>, just to make [.0002, or one-fiftieth of one percent, of the 100 billion pounds of meat produced in the U.S. each year.] ... If cultured protein is going to be even 10 percent of the world’s meat supply by 2030, we will need 4,000 factories like the one GFI envisions, according to an analysis[link] by the trade publication Food Navigator. To meet that deadline, building at a rate of one mega-facility a day would be too slow. Each of those facilities would also come with a heart-stopping price tag: a minimum of $1.8 trillion, according to Food Navigator. > Humbird’s analysis ... represent the lowest prices companies can expect. ... The final product would be a single-cell slurry, a mix of 30 percent animal cells and 70 percent water, suitable only for ground-meat-style products like burgers and nuggets. With markups ... [this] becomes $40 at the grocery store—or a $100 quarter-pounder at a restaurant. Anything resembling a steak would require additional production processes, introduce new engineering challenges, and ultimately contribute additional expense. ... “The requirements for return on investment need to be set much lower than common practice in commercially motivated investments,” the authors [of GFI] write. ... It will likely need public [subsidies] or philanthropic support to be competitive. > In cell culture, sterility is paramount. Animal cells “grow so slowly that if we get any bacteria in a culture—well, then we’ve just got a bacteria culture,” Humbird said. ... "The culture has no immune system. If there’s virus particles in there that can infect the cells, they will. And generally, the cells just die, and then there’s no product anymore. You just dump it.” ... It may not matter if governments end up allowing cultured meat facilities to produce at food-grade specs, critics say—cells are so intensely vulnerable that they’ll likely need protection to survive. ... According to Humbird’s report, those economics will likely one day limit the practical size of cultured meat facilities: They can only be big enough to house a sweet spot of two dozen 20,000-liter bioreactors, or 96 smaller perfusion reactors. Any larger, and the clean room expenses start to offset any benefits from adding more reactors. The construction costs grow faster than the production costs drop. For comparison, GFI’s hypothetical plant would have 130 fed-batch reactors and 430 perfusion reactors—a facility that could easily cost over a billion dollars if Humbird’s specs and prices prove to be accurate. > In Humbird’s projection, the cost of amino [acids] alone ends up adding about $8 per pound of meat produced—already much more than the average cost of a pound of ground beef. GFI’s study, on the other hand, reports that the cost of aminos may eventually be as low as 40 cents per kilo. Why the discrepancy? ... the price figures for macronutrients are largely based on a specific amino acid protein powder that sells for $400 a ton on ... Alibaba.com. That source ... is not likely not suitable for cell culture. ... Because they’re not intended for human consumption, they may include heavy metals, arsenic, organic toxins, and so on. ... foreign substances that aren’t consumed by the cells—or that don’t kill them outright—likely end up inside the cells. Currently, global production of individual amino acids is far too low to support cultured meat production, even at a modest scale. ... “There can be no cultured meat scale-up without concomitant and dramatic scale-up of amino acid production,” Humbird’s report concludes.

mythrwy 5y ago

I also think this works out. Maybe it's just wishful thinking but I feel it will. I suspect the answer may be not culturing "animal" cells they are now but instead a genetically modified "something" (perhaps yeasts?) that grow well under lab culture and produce the same amino acid/ fat profiles. And after processing it will be close enough to "meat", maybe even better. I believe there is a company growing milk proteins with yeasts now.

car 5y ago
Almost there! How about growing the meat essence, say hemoglobin with yeast, and providing the fibrous structure from plants? That's exactly what Impossible Foods has done. Edit: That company is also working on milk. [0] [0] https://www.engadget.com/impossible-milk-154404741.html https://www.engadget.com/impossible-milk-154404741.html

paulintrognon 5y ago

With this rethoric, you cant rule out lightsabers either. Or any science fiction stuff at all.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

lm28469 5y ago

Just look at any of "the world in 50 years" from the 20th and 19th century and you'll notice the extremely vast majority of expected technological advances didn't mature even remotely close to what technocrats predicted, if at all. We're in the middle of a hype cycle, we've been in hype cycles many times since the 30s. People think everything is possible, that science is an unlimited power and that we just have to work hard enough on a problem to solve it. Technocrats of the 60s said we'd have 2 days workweek by the year 2000 thanks to automation, artificial intelligence experts of the 70s said we'd reach AGI in a decade, engineers of the 80s predicted flying cars would be the norm, 2012 Musk said autonomous cars would be there "in two years". Some people view technology as some kind of deity, as if wishful thinking and disguised prayers were all you need

aerosmile 5y ago
I take the opposite view - technology has progressed faster than any other aspect of our experience on this planet. From first flight to landing on the moon = 60 years. From first computers to an iPhone = 60 years. What else has changed in this world faster than technology?
- lm28469 5y ago
  I'd say going to the moon and shitting 15% faster iphones every 6 months is easy compared to fission, lab grown meat and fully autonomous vehicles. You're under the impression that we've accomplished a lot, and we did to some extent, but the vast majority of it is regular incremental updates, not paradigm shifting discoveries. Running water, central heating or the invention of fridges is more exciting to me than anything we came up with since the 60s, including going to the moon. We have iphones, tiktok, and subscription based meditation apps sure. We're still living in the exact same ways, just with more distractions and less available time. Productivity increased dramatically but we're not doing better things, we're just doing more things. The gap between "what could be" and "what is" is filled with an incredibly huge amount of gadgets and clutter. Also, life isn't a video game, the fact that we did ABC in the past doesn't mean we can do XYZ in the future. If you listen to Musk we'll be sipping mojitos on Mars by 2050, I'd be surprised if we have fully autonomous cars on earth by then tbh. Lab grown meat or fission are more like "invention of the wheel -> modern electric car" rather than "og iphone -> iphone 13"