this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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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/

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

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