I think the confusion of the experts comes from comparing how clean it is now vs it can be. Clearly cultivated can be much cleaner, because it is more efficient. On the other hand, the other factors (animal suffering, pandemic prevention, antibiotic resistance) are clear wins.
In any case, it would be a surprising and suspicious convergence if helping farmed chickens were the best way to build capacity to help soil invertebrates.
I don't think "helping farmed chickens" is the best way, but I do think that the foot-in-the-door strategy proposed by Tobias Lenaert is (among?) the most effective strategy if the goal is to change other people's minds. This means requesting very small changes, because in humans, values often follow behaviour. Thus, I believe political campaigns can help expand the moral circle, and I do not see a way to arrive at non-vertebrates without going through chickens (and fish, and other farmed animals in general).
What would be your overall recommendation? It seems cage-free dominates in the plot above, and GWWC is also not a single intervention or area, so it confuses me a bit. Is your best guess the Arthropoda foundation or something like this?
I think you might be neglecting the effect of increasing animal welfare motivation in the general population. Eg, I can donate X to save nematodes or termites, but all things considered, my intervention is tiny. Have you considered that cage-free campaigns (or others) may make animal welfare considerations more important to people? I see ~no way to purposefully and meaningfully influence nematodes' lives unless we figure out how to "expand the moral circle".
Why would we have a special duty to help chickens, but not soil ants and termites?
I see no reason why your conclusions might be wrong, but they are still fairly weird, even to many EAs like myself. This increases my moral uncertainty about the topic.
My general take was not to make it dismissive; sorry if it sounded that way. Rather, I wanted to signal that the EA community is generally happy to change their minds in light of new evidence, and given the shared goals, the evidence of success would likely make funding much more available. Meanwhile, I think the EA community would be happy to fund exploratory research on how to make advocacy effective (despite the probable lack of easy solutions). I am a big fan of the "foot in the door" strategy by Tobias Lenaert for this; I think it is the closest thing we have to success. A funny example, by the way, is Project Slingshot, which seems to be having some early successes, including the potential ban in the UK of CO2 gas chambers for pigs.
For what it's worth, though, I think alternative proteins stand a greater chance of success precisely because they require much less change in people's behaviour, and would make campaigning for animals much easier and much more effective. I think you agree with that.
Hey David! This is great, thanks for sharing, I'll take a more detailed look. For now, some comments:
I agree that a more detailed Monte Carlo than the one I did is desirable.
I also think it is reasonable to present a trio of scenarios (neutral, optimistic, pessimistic), though science is somewhat tricky in that what matters is "what is reasonably achievable", not the average of efforts. Eg, we do not measure AI progress by the average AI model, but the best. Thus, my bias towards optimistic figures and towards considering Pasitka's numbers as more relevant than Humbird's. Additionally, the scaling issues also seem more relevant for the bioreactor than for the media, so I don't think a lack of large-scale commercial proof is strong evidence against Pasitka's numbers being achievable. In general, my best guess is that $0.3/L to $0.2/L is likely to be achievable for the media, even if it is not easy. And I think that is ultimately the interesting question to answer.
Hey Bruce, thanks for such a detailed comment. Having also read the book, I very much agree with it.
for consumers, “same meat, less likely to make you sick” or contain drug residues or mercury seems like it could be a pretty compelling message
I think that could be true in case of some contaminated meat scandals, but if people are already used to a perceived level of risk they may not automatically adjust their behavior. It is the same as telling people that motorbikes are so much more dangerous than all other transportation methods; I think most people don't change their behaviour based on that. That is also why I think there is no strong pull incentive for cultivated meat, unfortunately. However, the same applies to EV and yet they seem bound to succeed, so I think the government support strategy is likely correct.
Consumer Motivation 2: animal suffering
I think this is likely a severely underestimated retention effect and also probably (IMHO) the biggest lever we have to cause a societal change: once the societal, health and taste pressure on people severely decreases, people will find it less and less acceptable to eat meat. My theory of change is that it might be hard to obliterate factory farming just on price and other features, but cultivated meat should catalyse a societal moral change by eroding the justifiability of factory farming.
Plant-based meat has failed because almost no one understood the assignment:
I think it makes sense, but I think there is also a possibility that people psychologically distinguish meat from plant-based meat, and just follow inertia and custom to avoid social pressure. There are a lot of people who do not want their identity to be vegetarian. I do not have strong priors here. However, I model this on the webpage https://pabloamc.github.io/Cultivated_meat/interactive.html and let people assign value to meat being identical (including made of animal cells), or even to meat being produced from animals -- which I find significantly more unlikely and is different from neophobia. Significantly more unlikely because they'd have to explicitly put value on killing animals, which seems to me like a less natural psychological separation than "just being meat". In any case, my goal was partly to allow the EA community to see how different priors would lead to different market shares.
I think you miss the much stronger arguments that can really move policymakers: GDP and food security, which are my focus in chapters 9 and 10, respectively (chapter 10 walks through the incentives for China, India, the US, Brazil, Europe, and small tech forward countries (Japan, S. Korea, Israel, Singapore).
Probably you have much better access to information here. The only thing that worries me is that every small field (like quantum, where I work) claims "national security" relevance, and I am not sure the politicians can calibrate things accurately. For example, quantum computing, where I work, is largely not a national security issue, as long as one uses some well-understood cryptographic standards. Also, it so happens that AI can be a blessing for the scientific and technological component of our endeavour, but it will almost certainly eclipse all other topics for the next few years to come. Again, no strong priors; you probably know better.
I think most cuts should be something that we could replicate without significant price difference. Or perhaps scaffolding ends up being a challenge. Also probably cultivated gives you more freedom to explore conventionally infeasible options.
Are you saying "factory farming" an actual axis of variation people will seek? Or are you arguing that since some species are much more challenging to achieve price parity with, people will keep eating those species too? I think the latter makes sense to me.
I think the confusion of the experts comes from comparing how clean it is now vs it can be. Clearly cultivated can be much cleaner, because it is more efficient. On the other hand, the other factors (animal suffering, pandemic prevention, antibiotic resistance) are clear wins.
Thanks Vasco,
I don't think "helping farmed chickens" is the best way, but I do think that the foot-in-the-door strategy proposed by Tobias Lenaert is (among?) the most effective strategy if the goal is to change other people's minds. This means requesting very small changes, because in humans, values often follow behaviour. Thus, I believe political campaigns can help expand the moral circle, and I do not see a way to arrive at non-vertebrates without going through chickens (and fish, and other farmed animals in general).
Hey Vasco, I have some points:
I see no reason why your conclusions might be wrong, but they are still fairly weird, even to many EAs like myself. This increases my moral uncertainty about the topic.
Hey Bruce, Thanks for the comment. It also reminded me of your recent post https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/imoynWhpY5AqxcaDG/ea-should-invest-in-animal-liberation-and-diet-change, which may be of interest to readers.
My general take was not to make it dismissive; sorry if it sounded that way. Rather, I wanted to signal that the EA community is generally happy to change their minds in light of new evidence, and given the shared goals, the evidence of success would likely make funding much more available. Meanwhile, I think the EA community would be happy to fund exploratory research on how to make advocacy effective (despite the probable lack of easy solutions). I am a big fan of the "foot in the door" strategy by Tobias Lenaert for this; I think it is the closest thing we have to success. A funny example, by the way, is Project Slingshot, which seems to be having some early successes, including the potential ban in the UK of CO2 gas chambers for pigs.
For what it's worth, though, I think alternative proteins stand a greater chance of success precisely because they require much less change in people's behaviour, and would make campaigning for animals much easier and much more effective. I think you agree with that.
Thanks for crossposting it Elaine!
Hey David! This is great, thanks for sharing, I'll take a more detailed look. For now, some comments:
With regards to the bioreactor, it seems progress has been happening there too, (see eg https://parima.bio/blog/parima-demonstrates-ton-scale-cultivated-meat-production-at-viable-unit-economics). Interestingly, they claim to have used a 22k L bioreactor, which is roughly the large scale that Humbird and Pasitka had envisioned. Again, not an insider, but it seems we live in the "optimistic" world.
Last: my $15 to $30 estimate was an eyeball from the results I had, it was just meant to be an anchor for people's minds.
You can also use the forum chat.
Hey Bruce, thanks for such a detailed comment. Having also read the book, I very much agree with it.
I think that could be true in case of some contaminated meat scandals, but if people are already used to a perceived level of risk they may not automatically adjust their behavior. It is the same as telling people that motorbikes are so much more dangerous than all other transportation methods; I think most people don't change their behaviour based on that. That is also why I think there is no strong pull incentive for cultivated meat, unfortunately. However, the same applies to EV and yet they seem bound to succeed, so I think the government support strategy is likely correct.
I think it makes sense, but I think there is also a possibility that people psychologically distinguish meat from plant-based meat, and just follow inertia and custom to avoid social pressure. There are a lot of people who do not want their identity to be vegetarian. I do not have strong priors here. However, I model this on the webpage https://pabloamc.github.io/Cultivated_meat/interactive.html and let people assign value to meat being identical (including made of animal cells), or even to meat being produced from animals -- which I find significantly more unlikely and is different from neophobia. Significantly more unlikely because they'd have to explicitly put value on killing animals, which seems to me like a less natural psychological separation than "just being meat". In any case, my goal was partly to allow the EA community to see how different priors would lead to different market shares.
Probably you have much better access to information here. The only thing that worries me is that every small field (like quantum, where I work) claims "national security" relevance, and I am not sure the politicians can calibrate things accurately. For example, quantum computing, where I work, is largely not a national security issue, as long as one uses some well-understood cryptographic standards. Also, it so happens that AI can be a blessing for the scientific and technological component of our endeavour, but it will almost certainly eclipse all other topics for the next few years to come. Again, no strong priors; you probably know better.
I think most cuts should be something that we could replicate without significant price difference. Or perhaps scaffolding ends up being a challenge. Also probably cultivated gives you more freedom to explore conventionally infeasible options.
Are you saying "factory farming" an actual axis of variation people will seek? Or are you arguing that since some species are much more challenging to achieve price parity with, people will keep eating those species too? I think the latter makes sense to me.