Good post—I appreciate this synthesis of evidence and agree with your conclusions. One (minor) point of disagreement:

Likewise, they expected the labor force participation rate to be 55%, down only slightly from today’s roughly 61%.

I’d characterize a 6 percentage point decline as fairly substantial rather than “only slightly.” In absolute terms, 6pp may not sound like much, but relative to historical variation in labor force participation, it’s quite large.

Since measurement began in the 1940s, the labor force participation rate has remained within a relatively narrow 58–67% band. Even the COVID shock was associated with only about a 3pp decline. That historical range also spans the transition from a predominantly male workforce to much higher female labor force participation.

Generally agree, especially the emphasis on cognitive processes as partial determinants of taste. Also interesting to think more about the limitations of other sensory measurement approaches, although I find myself somewhat less skeptical (and less informed). I'm also pro-big taste test! Do you have any insight into why human taste testing in the alt protein industry has been so limited for so long? Thoughts on how these massive taste tests should be designed?

Wow, congrats!

Out of curiosity, are you able to share why you're leaving?

Exciting results! Is the RCT written up in more detail anywhere? I'm confused by the current reporting because it seems to compare pre-post intervention results, rather than treatments and controls. Also, how was the control group set up? (Eg, no intervention, active control, waitlist control etc)

I agree this would be an implication of such a bar and that it seems demanding, to say the least! I'll reiterate I have a great deal of uncertainty on this and related topics. That said, I do think the answer is potentially yes, or that those lives were possibly mostly instrumental in getting to a world where some lives were worth creating.

I think it's also notably "convenient" that the bar was crossed so recently; perhaps the bar is even higher and we have largely not yet reached it. Of course, this seems like a very counter-intuitive conclusion, although I think most conclusions on the topic will be.

This is a great video, congratulations to all involved! It seems like it could be valuable in getting the word out and increasing engagement on the issue. I also thought the production value was high and the story compelling.

Who is the intended audience? I think it may be too technical for a general audience, and might not be effective in conveying it's message to such an audience. Was there any audience testing involved in the script writing and production process? I would be interested to see work akin to what I've worked on re:factory farming documentaries.

Thanks, Vera, appreciate your responses here! I'll have to learn more about Frick's work at some point.

I think my key uncertainty remains what sorts of lives are acceptable to create? My intuition is that the sorts of lives cage-free layer hens live are still far from worth creating. For example, to my mind, lives of sufficient quality probably have meaningful availability of individual moderate-to-high-quality health care—so that an individual would not die due to infection of a minor wound or a condition requiring surgical intervention. I think this bar makes it quite unlikely that lives on CAFOs would ~ever be worth creating. But, perhaps that's too high a bar, especially if chickens don't experience, say, anxiety about uncertain health care availability as a human might, even if that health care is never needed.

Perhaps somewhat beyond the scope of your paper, although it does seem like a crux of the argument, do you have a sense for the sorts of lives you think are acceptable to create?

Yup, I posted a longer top-level comment.

Ah, that reasoning makes sense! From my perspective, the difference is (by definition) small, but (again, by definition) very meaningful since it differentiates lives worth creating and those that are not.