lab grown meat is a vaguely EA/rationalist/self IDed neolib meme. in theory it will save the environment (ok) and prevent suffering (yay) in a way that concentrates capital (double yay) and involves a lot of tech magic (triple yay).
hot luigi is a big fan apparently. seeing this discussed reminded me of this excellent article which shreds the concept of mass produced lab grown meat. I haven’t really seen this circulate much over the years, but it is really a masterwork of grift dissection. please enjoy
archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20241208141305/https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
Very good read, but throughout I can’t help but say to myself “ye so the issue is scale. AS ALWAYS”
This is a tale as old as time. Fusion energy is here! Quantum computers will revolutionise the world! Lab-grown meat! All based on actual scientific experiments and progress, but tiny, one-shot experiments under best-case conditions. There is no reason to think it brings us closer to a future where those are commonplace, except for a very nebulous technical meaning of “closer” as “yes, time has passed”. There is no reason to think this would ever scale in any way! Like, there is a chance that e.g. fusion energy at any meaningful scale is just… impossible? Like, physically impossible to do. Or a stable quantum computer able to run Doom. Or lab-grown meat on a supermarket shelf. Every software engineer should understand this, we know there are ideas that work only when they’re in a limited setting (number of threads, connections, size of input, whatever).
The media is always terrible at communicating this. Science isn’t fucking magic, the fact that scientists were able to put one more qubit into their quantum computer means literally nothing to you, because the answer to “when will we have personal quantum computers” is “what? how did you get into my lab?”. We have no idea. 50 years? 100 years? 1000 years? Likely never? Which number can I pull out of my ass for you to fuck off and let me do my research in peace? Of course, science is amazing, reading about those experiments is extremely interesting and cool as all fuck, but for some fucking reason the immediate reaction of the general public is “great, how quickly can we put a pricemark on it”.
And this leads to this zeitgeist where the next great “breakthrough” is just around the corner and is going to save us all. AI will fix the job market! Carbon capture will fix climate change! Terraforming Mars will solve everything! Sit the fuck down and grow up, this is not how anything works. I don’t even know where this idea of “breakthroughs” comes from, the scientific process isn’t an action movie with three acts and a climax, who told you that? What even was the last technological “breakthrough”? Transistors were invented like 70yrs ago, but it wasn’t an immediate breakthrough, it required like 40yrs of work on improving vacuum tubes to get there. And that was based on a shitton of work on electric theory from the XIX century. It was a slow process of incremental scientific discoveries across nations and people, which culminated in you having an iPhone 200 years later. And that’s at least based on something we can actually easily observe in the natural world (and, funnily enough, we still don’t have a comprehensive theory of how lightning storms even form on Earth). With fusion you’re talking about replicating the heart of a star here on Earth, with lab grown meat you’re talking about growing flesh in defiance of gods, and you think it’s an overnight thing where you’ll wake up tomorrow and suddenly bam we just have cold fusion and hot artificial chicken?
I hate how everyone seems to be addicted to, I don’t know, just speed as a concept? Things have to be now, news is only good if it arrives to me breaking in 5 minutes, science is only good if it’s just around the corner, a product is only good if it gets one billion users in a month. Just calm the fuck down. When was the last time you smelt the roses?
If you keep running through life all the roses are gonna burn down before you realise.
Also I’m sorry but
Why the discrepancy? A footnote in the CE Delft report makes it clear: the price figures for macronutrients are largely based on a specific amino acid protein powder that sells for $400 a ton on the sprawling e-commerce marketplace Alibaba.com.
this is exactly the sort of magical thinking I’m talking about “it will scale because we can order tons of the stuff off Alibaba” just what the fuck are you smoing mate, this can’t be good faith analysis
The riff-raff have brought us a graft grift.
Techbros: “I’m hungry for that Lab Grown Meat!”
Labs:
count another yay for how magic tech could (meaning: won’t) solve major problem without people using it being inconvenienced in any way (giving up meat)
“Friedrich argued that investor buy-in was the de facto proof that cultivated meat has legs. Major meatpackers, prominent venture capital firms, the government of Singapore: You could trust that these stakeholders had done their due diligence, and they wanted in.”
Ow god it is a scam. This was a reaction to researchers saying “we dont see it”.
Investors as a general class are usually pretty terrible at staying in their lane and not listening when actual subject matter experts disagree with the guy with a good story. I think the only reason they have any reputation otherwise (compared to e.g. physicists’ disease) is survivorship bias.
Great article.
I have long suspected that it was a dead end, because at most you get a slurry that you then have to process. We already have that, the slurry is just made of vegetables. Growing animal cells in a way is way more complex then mashing peas or beans and make processed food from that.
Or you know, be unafraid to try tofu.
This is not a good take. Even if the tech is further away than the optimistic takes of the industry that doesnt make it impossible, and “at best” you could definitely have more than a slurry. There are mang current scientific studies revolving around growing human organs in a lab. Eventually we will be able to grow meat that is essentiallt indistinguishable from the ‘real thing’. And yes, while everyone should just go vegetarian, they arent going to. So the sooner we get to that point, the better.
“We can’t get people to eat less meat and more vegetables, therefore we must invest billions so that we can get to the logical endpoint: million dollars steaks!”
“Or at least, that is what we told them. Now, feast on the most expensive meat yet as we now can literally eat up the planets resources!”
Evil laughter as the billionaires twirl their mustaches and salivates.
You should read the article first.
I did. The articles conclusions are that its currently impossible to produce lab grown meat at such a scale that it could replace a large porton of the meat industry and still be viable economically as a short term investment. Im not denying that, and i dont care about investor returns. I dont think any industry should be privatized anyway, and especially beneficial scientific research that could shape the future. But the point is the technology is here, and will continue to get cheaper and more efficient, and in the meantime any meat consumption that is replaced is a good thing, even if its not all at once. The whole article reads like an investment prospectus, not a critique of the technology itself which is how its being presented.
I just want to have a chance to get some for myself even if it’s super over priced I’ll go for it, my whole life meat has been my favorite type of food, either gmo me a plant that can make fat and gristle or I’m stuck with lab grown stuff
I just want a non destructive way to enjoy my favourite thing
You could always move out to the country and raise your own cows, just a few, for the milk and occasionally meat. Get some chickens too, for endless eggs.
Farm a small plot of land to feed them.
Get a big freezer, resign yourself to eating meat monthly instead of weekly or daily, and you’ll be set for life with minimal impact on the environment.
eggs are alright but I just can’t get the same thrill(not exactly the right word) out of cooking vegetable stuff, baking can have a bit of fun trying something new but meat is way more interesting to make good food with
I don’t think I could really get into full butchery, I’m fine with cutting up meat but killing and dressing is a bit much for me but I guess that’s where I could hire someone out
tired: lab grown meat
wired: worm filet mignon
hired: eat the rich
Man I don’t need to be reminded of the sorry state of meat alternatives.
It’s bitterly funny to me that fashoid governments started banning cultivated meat as if the economic and technical issues weren’t enough. Ignorants terrified of threats they made up in their head as always.
carbon capture you can eat
Carbon capture is just another techno fix that will never scale up to our needs.
It’s very easy, just eat vegetables.
I eat very little meat these days, and I’d be happy to have lab-grown as an option. Even if it’s more expensive and not produced at the same scale
at least make a pretense of having read the article instead of very obviously reacting to the headline jfc
I read the article and nothing there contradicts the commenters opinion.
That’s the power of not saying anything interesting, you can’t contradict it
The article doesn’t say anything interesting in the first place.
“Start-ups optimistic about future of their product, wish for public investment, expert disagrees.”
That’s about it
you really should have read the article
“I’m going to double down on not reading this article herpa derpa gerpa poop” that’s you. Please fuck off
The article itself does mention that creating cultured meat is already possible, just that the limits of the technology presently known for doing it make creating it at the same cost as regular meat infeasible. Which technically doesn’t contradict with what the person you replied to said, because the commenter didn’t exactly say how expensive or niche they expected it to be, so even something like a hundred dollar hamburger that doesn’t replace a significant fraction of food consumption but does exist as a novelty luxury for someone that had the money to spend on animal protein once in a blue moon, fits.
fwiw the post this is replying to originally didn’t have the phrase “instead of very obviously reacting to the headline,” I edited that in later. without the edit I think it does come across like I thought zweibel was contradicting some specific point in the article. not true, b/c they didn’t address the article at all
Did that locker just say “but it was technically correct”?
Locker?
As awful.systems is a spinoff, of reddits sneerclub, there is a bit of lingo some of the old timers have taken with, these tend to go a bit nerdy. In this case the nerd being pushed into the lockers by the jocks. This is because the people sneerclub sneered about had a trauma of the nerd/jock thing from highschool and tended to see a lot of things via that lens. (So anybody who was their detractor was obviously a jock). This has created a bit of a tradition where you see a annoyingly dumb reply, esp when it does things in an annoying way that also often applies to the LessWrong Rationalists, like for example ignoring written and unwritten context (steelmanning nonsense is also a good point), to say you are putting the poster into a locker, or saying they should be shoved in one (of course, we are just as nerdy as the Rationalists, so if jocks were real we would also be in a locker just like them.). So here is a bit of initial context, we all want subconsciously be shoved into a locker by Henry Cavill.
Now how does this apply to our current situation? Well the first reaction here is a bit nonsensical and mentions things already mentioned, and argued against in the article. For example how the upper middle class of the western world eating a bit of vat grown meat every now and then is not going to solve the problems which vat grown meat should solve. It actually also makes the problems worse because money can only be spend once. As mentioned in the article. So sc_griffith, the OP rightfully replies with ‘read the article please’. Which is fine, as it is a bit of a dumb reaction to all the myriads of problems shown in the article.
Then you come along, having reinvented Rationalist ways of discourse from first principles, or that Futurama episode, and you end up defending the person missing the point of the article, why it was posted here (ow look unwritten context, as foreshadowed), and you react with a somewhat annoying post going basically ‘technically he is correct, if you squint, and steelman’. Ergo, into the locker you go.
Holy shit, why am I talking to a locker? Is it because I’m taking a bit of perverse glee too type out all the context both written and unwritten way, in a sick way to make myself feel superior to end with weak bad meme reference? Nah, it must be the kids who are wrong (I say from my own locker (in reality I have to do some things irl and im procrastinating)).
tl;dr: I was saying you were a bit annoying and you shouldn’t steelman posts of other people like that.
Im not familiar with steelman either, tbh. I know that sneerclub and lesswrong were/are things that exist because Ive seen the names in passing, but dont actually know what theyre about. I tend to have a habit (possibly a bad one, carried over from reddit) of engaging with posts on the /all feed without stopping to look at what kind of community theyre actually in, so maybe Ive stumbled into some more niche community with its own lingo whilst thinking it a general purpose thing for discussing tech articles. What I was trying to say with all that was that I could easily see a situation where the person had read the article and yet had replied the same, as the article itself mentions what is being talked about, and so figured that the unwritten context was that they just thought what the article described as being a more realistic pricing and lack of large scale change for cultured meat was fine with them vs it not existing at all, but straight up replying with “I think you might be accusing someone of not reading because youre misunderstanding why they said it” felt rudely direct, so it felt like it would come across nicer if it was implied. Im sorry that was annoying, I dont really think it should cause annoyance, but I recognize emotional reactions like that dont tend to be consciously decided anyway, its probably just a result of my being rather bad at figuring out how I come across to other people.
Steelman is the reverse of strawman, so you take the best argument the other side could have made and attacked that, so if a neo-nazi says ‘I want to kill those degenerates’ you make up some story on how dunno I’m not going to steelman that. It is a Rationalist habit, and it just opens your mind to the worst ideas because of a fear you might dismiss a good idea which was presented badly. It has gargantuan failure modes, and if you want to start a cult teaching people to steelman is prob a good idea.
And yeah we can be a bit unfriendly, esp when this place goes ‘this tech is bad’ and then people go defend the tech, or miss the point. We prob also picked up some bad habits (this is me saying nay, it is not just you, we also suck at times).
Personally I think the whole reddit model of the internet where you had an /all and not just subforums was a mistake. It worked a bit for SA (I’m not a goon btw), but in SA it at least was somewhat clear where you were posting. The reddit/facebook/twitter ification makes everything one big goo where it is unclear you walked into a longer conversation, a different style of having conversations, or a nazi bar etc.
In short, lab-grown cannot realistically replace a significant portion of the meat industry, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it’s far too expensive and doesn’t scale well because so much active machinery is required at each step in the manufacturing process. There are also issues regarding infected vats and if the cells’ nutrition compares to that of natural meat.
At least it’s possible in theory? I’m glad we’re that far. But it clearly isn’t going to happen at a large enough scale for lab-grown meat to start appearing at grocery stores.
In many people’s minds lab-grown meat is a fact, and a reason to condemn everybody who isn’t eating it. It has become a belief system - like thinking Tesla invented all of modern technology. If the companies disappear because investors got tired of flushing money down them, the default reason will be a conspiracy engineered by evil meat lords.
like thinking Tesla invented all of modern technology
You mean the Croatian scientist or the company founded by Eberhard and Tarpenning?
Nah my neighbour, Steve Tesla. He’s real smart. Found a way to get free cable
You can probably work that out - one of them is much more often credited with inventing all of modern technology.
In my social bubble, neither really is. Honestly. Dead serious.
i had a bit of hope that this “cellular agriculture” from luigi’s twitter would be growing hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria or something of that nature, but no it’s a bad grift
