right—in that simple model, each extra marginal average person decreases the time taken to invent cultured meat at the same rate as they contribute to the problem, and there’s an exact identity between those rates. But there are complicating factors that I think work against assuring us there’s no meat-eater problem:
An extra person starts eating animals from a very young age, but won’t start contributing to the meat-eater problem until they’re intellectually developed enough to make a contribution (21 yers to graduate undergraduate, 25-30 to get a PhD).
There’s a delay between when they invent a solution and when meat eating can actually be phased out, though perhaps that’s implicitly built into the model by the previous point
I do concede that the problem is mitigated somewhat because if we expect cultured meat to take over within the lifetime of a new person, then their harm (and impact) is scaled down proportionately, but the intrinsic hedonic value of their existence isn’t similarly scaled down.
But it doesn’t sound as simple as just “there’s no meat-eater problem”.
right—in that simple model, each extra marginal average person decreases the time taken to invent cultured meat at the same rate as they contribute to the problem, and there’s an exact identity between those rates. But there are complicating factors that I think work against assuring us there’s no meat-eater problem:
An extra person starts eating animals from a very young age, but won’t start contributing to the meat-eater problem until they’re intellectually developed enough to make a contribution (21 yers to graduate undergraduate, 25-30 to get a PhD).
There’s a delay between when they invent a solution and when meat eating can actually be phased out, though perhaps that’s implicitly built into the model by the previous point
I do concede that the problem is mitigated somewhat because if we expect cultured meat to take over within the lifetime of a new person, then their harm (and impact) is scaled down proportionately, but the intrinsic hedonic value of their existence isn’t similarly scaled down.
But it doesn’t sound as simple as just “there’s no meat-eater problem”.