Thanks for the question, had to think a while. About infeasibility of cultivated meat, best counterevidence for me would be seeing a massive disinvestment in cultivated meat R&D, a consensus among researchers openly saying that it is too difficult to make progress.
Another crucial thing that would change my mind, is evidence about the feasibility of plant-based meat, that substitution towards plant-based is faster than I would expect (faster than cultivated meat innovation). This would mean seeing a fast increase in the number of vegans, and especially conservative male meat identifiers switching to plant-based meats.
Ok, thanks for that! Things that will update my mind include:
Social proof: The biggest thing that will change my mind is if Open Phil science team or other EA researchers that I trust generally update towards cost-competitive cultured meat being the most viable and plausible route to reducing factory farming (among many possible options). Of course that might be too late to be useful; I will also update somewhat if the top biotech VCs made major investments into cultured meat, and (to a noticeably lesser extent) if the most prestigious traditional VCs made significant investments in the sector. I will probably also update if top ~10 Metaculus forecasters or other top forecasters a) believe something very different and b) demonstrated to me that they spent considerable time looking into this.
Near term costs that arenāt VC etc subsidized: Humbirdās analysis claims costs of >$200/ākg using wild-type animal cells, so if I see credible evidence of <$100/ākg in the near future (say next 3 years), Iād consider that a moderate refutation of Humbirdās model, even though his endline numbers were lower. At the very least, Iād want to dig into how they did that. If they did it entirely through metabolic engineering improvements, Iād consider this less of a ding against Humbird than if they did it through other efficiencies.
Amino acid + other input prices: There are a number of things that will update me towards providing/āusing cheap amino acids is easier than I thought. Eg, Humbird thinks you need very pure amino acids to grow cultured meat. Many cultured meat proponents think you can do it with less. But this is an empirical question: You can just try to make cultured meat using less optimal concentrations of amino acids. There are a number of other statistical tests and empirical arguments that can convince me.
Hygiene: I think I can change my mind if I see either direct or indirect evidence that cheap hygiene at scale is much easier than I think.
Conceptual/āanalytic framework: On the conceptual level, the thing that will change my mind in terms of whether Iām framing this correctly includes a) if somebody empirically demonstrates that with a more accurate construction of reference classes, things that look like cultured meat (mechanical horses) are actually quite common in the wild. Or b) somebody logically or conceptually convinces me that my current categorizations of this car vs mechanical horses vs selectively bred horses ontology is confused/ābroken for reasons I donāt currently understand.
Comprehensiveness of search for alternative options: I donāt think of plant-based meat as a large crux, and certainly not vegan identification. I think Iāll be forced to be relatively more bullish on cultured meat if I see that reasonable people already did a comprehensive, first-principles-based search on ways to reduce animal suffering and landed on cultured meat and plant-based meat as the best methods they can find; right now I just think people are way too overindexed on existing ways of doing things (see eg the Decisive book or specifically my notes on āNarrow Framingā).
Thanks for the question, had to think a while. About infeasibility of cultivated meat, best counterevidence for me would be seeing a massive disinvestment in cultivated meat R&D, a consensus among researchers openly saying that it is too difficult to make progress.
Another crucial thing that would change my mind, is evidence about the feasibility of plant-based meat, that substitution towards plant-based is faster than I would expect (faster than cultivated meat innovation). This would mean seeing a fast increase in the number of vegans, and especially conservative male meat identifiers switching to plant-based meats.
Ok, thanks for that! Things that will update my mind include:
Social proof: The biggest thing that will change my mind is if Open Phil science team or other EA researchers that I trust generally update towards cost-competitive cultured meat being the most viable and plausible route to reducing factory farming (among many possible options). Of course that might be too late to be useful; I will also update somewhat if the top biotech VCs made major investments into cultured meat, and (to a noticeably lesser extent) if the most prestigious traditional VCs made significant investments in the sector. I will probably also update if top ~10 Metaculus forecasters or other top forecasters a) believe something very different and b) demonstrated to me that they spent considerable time looking into this.
Near term costs that arenāt VC etc subsidized: Humbirdās analysis claims costs of >$200/ākg using wild-type animal cells, so if I see credible evidence of <$100/ākg in the near future (say next 3 years), Iād consider that a moderate refutation of Humbirdās model, even though his endline numbers were lower. At the very least, Iād want to dig into how they did that. If they did it entirely through metabolic engineering improvements, Iād consider this less of a ding against Humbird than if they did it through other efficiencies.
Amino acid + other input prices: There are a number of things that will update me towards providing/āusing cheap amino acids is easier than I thought. Eg, Humbird thinks you need very pure amino acids to grow cultured meat. Many cultured meat proponents think you can do it with less. But this is an empirical question: You can just try to make cultured meat using less optimal concentrations of amino acids. There are a number of other statistical tests and empirical arguments that can convince me.
Hygiene: I think I can change my mind if I see either direct or indirect evidence that cheap hygiene at scale is much easier than I think.
Conceptual/āanalytic framework: On the conceptual level, the thing that will change my mind in terms of whether Iām framing this correctly includes a) if somebody empirically demonstrates that with a more accurate construction of reference classes, things that look like cultured meat (mechanical horses) are actually quite common in the wild. Or b) somebody logically or conceptually convinces me that my current categorizations of this car vs mechanical horses vs selectively bred horses ontology is confused/ābroken for reasons I donāt currently understand.
Comprehensiveness of search for alternative options: I donāt think of plant-based meat as a large crux, and certainly not vegan identification. I think Iāll be forced to be relatively more bullish on cultured meat if I see that reasonable people already did a comprehensive, first-principles-based search on ways to reduce animal suffering and landed on cultured meat and plant-based meat as the best methods they can find; right now I just think people are way too overindexed on existing ways of doing things (see eg the Decisive book or specifically my notes on āNarrow Framingā).