Curated and popular this week
LewisBollard
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> Despite the setbacks, I'm hopeful about the technology's future ---------------------------------------- It wasn’t meant to go like this. Alternative protein startups that were once soaring are now struggling. Impact investors who were once everywhere are now absent. Banks that confidently predicted 31% annual growth (UBS) and a 2030 global market worth $88-263B (Credit Suisse) have quietly taken down their predictions. This sucks. For many founders and staff this wasn’t just a job, but a calling — an opportunity to work toward a world free of factory farming. For many investors, it wasn’t just an investment, but a bet on a better future. It’s easy to feel frustrated, disillusioned, and even hopeless. It’s also wrong. There’s still plenty of hope for alternative proteins — just on a longer timeline than the unrealistic ones that were once touted. Here are three trends I’m particularly excited about. Better products People are eating less plant-based meat for many reasons, but the simplest one may just be that they don’t like how they taste. “Taste/texture” was the top reason chosen by Brits for reducing their plant-based meat consumption in a recent survey by Bryant Research. US consumers most disliked the “consistency and texture” of plant-based foods in a survey of shoppers at retailer Kroger.  They’ve got a point. In 2018-21, every food giant, meat company, and two-person startup rushed new products to market with minimal product testing. Indeed, the meat companies’ plant-based offerings were bad enough to inspire conspiracy theories that this was a case of the car companies buying up the streetcars.  Consumers noticed. The Bryant Research survey found that two thirds of Brits agreed with the statement “some plant based meat products or brands taste much worse than others.” In a 2021 taste test, 100 consumers rated all five brands of plant-based nuggets as much worse than chicken-based nuggets on taste, texture, and “overall liking.” One silver lining
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I can’t recall the last time I read a book in one sitting, but that’s what happened with Moral Ambition by bestselling author Rutger Bregman. I read the German edition, though it’s also available in Dutch (see James Herbert's Quick Take). An English release is slated for May. The book opens with the statement: “The greatest waste of our times is the waste of talent.” From there, Bregman builds a compelling case for privileged individuals to leave their “bullshit jobs” and tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. He weaves together narratives spanning historical movements like abolitionism, suffrage, and civil rights through to contemporary initiatives such as Against Malaria Foundation, Charity Entrepreneurship, LEEP, and the Shrimp Welfare Project. If you’ve been engaged with EA ideas, much of this will sound familiar, but I initially didn’t expect to enjoy the book as much as I did. However, Bregman’s skill as a storyteller and his knack for balancing theory and narrative make Moral Ambition a fascinating read. He reframes EA concepts in a more accessible way, such as replacing “counterfactuals” with the sports acronym “VORP” (Value Over Replacement Player). His use of stories and examples, paired with over 500 footnotes for details, makes the book approachable without sacrificing depth. I had some initial reservations. The book draws heavily on examples from the EA community but rarely engages directly with the movement, mentioning EA mainly in the context of FTX. The final chapter also promotes Bregman’s own initiative, The School for Moral Ambition. However, the school’s values closely align with core EA principles. The ITN framework and pitches for major EA cause areas are in the book, albeit with varying levels of depth. Having finished the book, I can appreciate its approach. Moral Ambition feels like a more pragmatic, less theory-heavy version of EA. The School for Moral Ambition has attracted better-known figures in Germany, such as the political e
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Cross-posted from Otherwise. Most people in EA won't find these arguments new. Apologies for leaving out animal welfare entirely for the sake of simplicity. Last month, Emma Goldberg wrote a NYT piece contrasting effective altruism with approaches that refuse to quantify meaningful experiences. The piece indicates that effective altruism is creepily numbers-focused. Goldberg asks “what if charity shouldn’t be optimized?” The egalitarian answer Dylan Matthews gives a try at answering a question in the piece: “How can anyone put a numerical value on a holy space” like Notre Dame cathedral? For the $760 million spent restoring the cathedral, he estimates you could prevent 47,500 deaths from malaria. “47,500 people is about five times the population of the town I grew up in. . . . It’s useful to imagine walking down Main Street, stopping at each table at the diner Lou’s, shaking hands with as many people as you can, and telling them, ‘I think you need to die to make a cathedral pretty.’ And then going to the next town over and doing it again, and again, until you’ve told 47,500 people why they have to die.” Who prefers magnificence? Goldstein’s article draws a lot on author Amy Schiller’s plea to focus charity on “magnificence” rather than effectiveness. Some causes “make people’s lives feel meaningful, radiant, sacred. Think nature conservancies, cultural centers and places of worship. These are institutions that lend life its texture and color, and not just bare bones existence.” But US arts funding goes disproportionately to the most expensive projects, with more than half of the funding going to the most expensive 2% of projects. These are typically museums, classical music groups, and performing arts centers. When donors prioritize giving to communities they already have ties to, the money stays in richer communities. Some areas have way more rich people than others. New York City has 119 billionaires; most African countries have none. Unsurprisingly, Schil