Re:New study suggests that lab-grown meat produces up to 25 ...
by haswell on Friday June 23, 2023 @11:41AM
(#36448416)
> There's no path from where we are now to nobody eating animals that involves us just making incremental progress, a bit at a time.
It sounds like you’re imposing a specifically slow set of increments here.
We know that these goals can’t be met overnight, so the only option is some kind of incremental progress.
But the size of those increments certainly isn’t set, and will be increased (voluntarily or not) as our situation becomes more dire.
> Long-term goals are great, but long-term goals that can't plausibly be achieved are bad.
I think it’s problematic to conclude that what we’re discussing can’t be plausibly achieved. Insanely difficult, sure, but at some point these decisions will be made for us.
Going further and calling these kinds of goals “bad” seems actively harmful.
It's not even a feasible long term goal, though. There are plenty of places where steady progress will lead to achievements in the long term that seem unbelievable now - science may yet reverse climate change, achieve nuclear fusion at scale, cure cancer (and aging), etc.
This isn't one of those things, though. There's no path from where we are now to nobody eating animals that involves us just making incremental progress, a bit at a time. Long-term goals are great, but long-term goals that can't plausibly be achieved are bad.