I've come to this post in 2026 and think I might have some value to add for future readers. 

Xia identifies six asymmetries, which I critically assess and add detail to: 

“Motivational asymmetry: Ultimately, we (animal advocates) care about reducing animal suffering/care more than consumers care about eating harm-causing animal products”

•  I think Xia is pitching that a moral imperative overrides a consumer preference, which seems intuitively like it should be true. However, people’s attachment to meat consumption is unusually sticky for a consumer preference.
  • Graça, Calheiros & Oliveira (2015) identified that meat-eating functions as an identity, comparable to veganism. Malek, Umberger & Goddard (2019) surveyed a representative sample of 287 Australians. The largest segment was ‘committed meat eaters’ who were unwilling to make any changes in their diet, making up 46% of the participants. Valli et al. (2021) shows the reluctance holds up even when people get a self-interested reason to change. Of 304 participants, over 75% were unwilling to stop their consumption of either unprocessed red or processed meat, and of those unwilling to stop, over 80% were also unwilling to reduce. When informed about the cancer incidence and mortality risks of meat consumption, most respondents still would not reduce their intake.
• The meat industry is large, concentrated, and at times extremely profitable industry, which is experienced in lobbying to inform consumer behavior. This institutional interest, and large warchest, means that consumers aren’t making decisions against an impartial backdrop of facts.
• I am suggesting for a large number of people, meat eating is a very sticky behavior, for reasons of entrenched preference, cultural-industrial factors, or perhaps ideological commitments. This means motivation may be less asymmetrical than it seems.
  
   
• “Truth asymmetry: "Ultimately, we are “more” right about the harm done to animals on various grounds: the moral alignment with consumers (animals are treated worse than consumers would like), the legality of some/much of the cruelty involved in animal farming and, for the moral realists among us, the morality of harming non-human animals."
  • I think putting aside claims about truth, morality, and righteousness (which are always contestable): “most current farming practices cause suffering that can’t be justified by the standards consumers and the law themselves accept” is a more defensible version of this claim.
  • The “legality” claim: In the UK, at least, the cruelty is entrenched in law, and the issue is more that the law is set at the wrong level of cruelty. Indeed, narratives around “lone bad actors breaching the law” function as smokescreens from the routine and institutional suffering.
  • A claim with stronger ontology could be: “Philosophers who work on animal ethics broadly agree that animal suffering has moral weight, and the strongest arguments for industrial farming are generally seen as weak”. 

• Efficiency asymmetry: Ultimately, alternative proteins are likely inherently more efficient conversion systems than animal farming.
  • Strongly agree; it is more efficient. 

• Agility asymmetry: Alternative protein startups and advocacy organizations can pivot and adapt to new AI capabilities more quickly than entrenched animal agriculture systems with massive physical infrastructure investments.
  • Strongly agree, there are big problems with stranded assets in factory farming, and patterns of organized crime propping up the paradigm. 

• Ceiling asymmetry: “As the animal advocacy movement, we have more to gain with AI technologies, given that we are currently less able to deploy the best possible ways we run interventions due to resource constraints.”
  • I do agree that in the short term, it allows dedicated activists to increase their output. Especially if we take-up new tools with asymmetrical speed.
  • I am lukewarm on the long-term advantage, as access to the best models, volume of compute, etc. might be asymmetrical in favour of capital.
  • Usually, we expect new technologies that allow activists to gain an advantage, to be colonized by the powerful. (See: Schradie (2019)The Revolution That Wasn’t, Harvard University Press)

• Cooperation asymmetry: “Animal advocacy organizations tend to be more collaborative and less competitive with one another, while industrial animal agriculture operates in competitive market structures that may inhibit industrywide coordination on AI adoption.”
  • I think Xia is underestimating the considerable collaboration of industry groups, who are highly consolidated, and often have either:
    • Actors whose interests converge so readily they don’t need formal collaboration
    • Cooperative structures that lets competing farmers sell jointly at one negotiated price instead of competing against each other (e.g. OMSCO)
    • “Unions” and other legal lobbying structures (e.g. NFU and Copa-Cogeca)
    • A ubiquitous and rarely prosecuted pattern of illegal cartel and antitrust collaboration behind the scenes.
  • Xia identifies exploiting market dynamics as a way to solve this asymmetry - but I think prosecuting legal noncompliance might be more effective.
    • E.g. DOJ vs Agri Stats in 2023 - Agri Stats shows the opposite: an industry built a shared intelligence layer that let nominal competitors act in concert. Market dynamics alone would not have unwound it, because every participant profited from it. Illegal collusion, antitrust, etc. - are all commonplace enough that producers have openly discussed them with me, seemingly not aware that it's illegal to do. 

Bibliography:

Graça, J., Calheiros, M.M. and Oliveira, A. (2015) ‘Attached to meat? (Un)willingness and intentions to adopt a more plant-based diet’, Appetite, 95, pp. 113–125. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2015.06.024.

Malek, L., Umberger, W.J. and Goddard, E. (2019) ‘Committed vs. uncommitted meat eaters: understanding willingness to change protein consumption’, Appetite, 138, pp. 115–126.

Schradie, J. (2019) The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

United States et al. v. Agri Stats, Inc. (2023) No. 0:23-cv-03009-JRT-JFD (D. Minn.). Complaint filed 28 September 2023.

Valli, C. et al. (2021) ‘Health related values and preferences regarding meat intake: a cross-sectional mixed-methods study’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(21), 11585. doi:10.3390/ijerph182111585.