Startlingly awesome and refreshingly modest.

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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Short version for anyone wondering:

    Even assuming the absolute best, most rose colored glasses kind of outlook, lab-grown meat will be many times as expensive as meat currently is, and that’s notwithstanding the billions in investment it will take to get there. Currently it’s so expensive to produce that it doesn’t even really exist except as publicity stunts. But unlike other potentially paradigm-shifting tech like solar, there’s not an exponential downward-sloping cost-adoption curve to look forward to. As of right now, inexpensive lab-grown meat doesn’t seem difficult, it seems scientifically impossible.

    It would probably be much better to spend those billions on reducing methane in cow farts (seriously), using sustainable grazing to preserve and rejuvenate disappearing and desertifying grasslands, accelerating carbon capture, subsidizing Omnivore’s-Dilemna-style holistic farming, etc.

    Because, seriously, affordable lab-grown meat is not going to happen without several Nobel-worthy breakthroughs. Instead, it’s just going to waste a bunch of money out of the pockets of well-intentioned VCs and institutional investors who could be using it more effectively.