1. “Isn’t most of the focus [for cultivated meat] already on development?” Yes, it is. However, our experience was that during the peak hype period, clean meat was communicated as almost ready to be on store shelves worldwide. So we are arguing that there is pressure for ideas to be presented as close to last-mile delivery, even when this is not the case.
2. “I don’t see why [leafletting] was named as a ‘bubble’” For us, a bubble just refers to “a situation where expected impact in a given timeframe substantially exceeds realistic impact”, so it does not necessitate that the downward adjustment is wrong. Though maybe your point is more “why include it if the downward adjustment was justified?”. To that, we would say there is damage caused on the upswing and the downswing. In this instance, the damage was in the detraction from other strategies and the unnecessary disillusionment. Also, we meant for the historical examples to be more illustrative of the pattern, and definitely don’t mean to be disparaging to those efforts or decisions.
3. “I think one needs to make an actual argument at the object level for why there could be an overcorrection towards welfare tech” Interesting point for clarification! In part, we mean for this post to be a flag, giving a name to a pattern and signalling that welfare tech shares many of the hallmarks. Similarly, we don’t mean to say that any given effort is necessarily a mistake. That said, we do think that there is a significant amount of resources currently being directed towards welfare tech (for example here, here, here) in ways that are oriented towards a belief that welfare tech is either ready for implementation and scaling or close to it. That could totally be right in some instances! But it could also be wrong. Even the fact that we are talking about welfare tech as a monolith is, for us, a signal that it is being simplified in the way that we describe as part of the cycle of a bubble.
Hey Caleb!
Going through each point in turn:
1. “Isn’t most of the focus [for cultivated meat] already on development?”
Yes, it is. However, our experience was that during the peak hype period, clean meat was communicated as almost ready to be on store shelves worldwide.
So we are arguing that there is pressure for ideas to be presented as close to last-mile delivery, even when this is not the case.
2. “I don’t see why [leafletting] was named as a ‘bubble’”
For us, a bubble just refers to “a situation where expected impact in a given timeframe substantially exceeds realistic impact”, so it does not necessitate that the downward adjustment is wrong.
Though maybe your point is more “why include it if the downward adjustment was justified?”.
To that, we would say there is damage caused on the upswing and the downswing. In this instance, the damage was in the detraction from other strategies and the unnecessary disillusionment.
Also, we meant for the historical examples to be more illustrative of the pattern, and definitely don’t mean to be disparaging to those efforts or decisions.
3. “I think one needs to make an actual argument at the object level for why there could be an overcorrection towards welfare tech”
Interesting point for clarification!
In part, we mean for this post to be a flag, giving a name to a pattern and signalling that welfare tech shares many of the hallmarks. Similarly, we don’t mean to say that any given effort is necessarily a mistake.
That said, we do think that there is a significant amount of resources currently being directed towards welfare tech (for example here, here, here) in ways that are oriented towards a belief that welfare tech is either ready for implementation and scaling or close to it. That could totally be right in some instances! But it could also be wrong. Even the fact that we are talking about welfare tech as a monolith is, for us, a signal that it is being simplified in the way that we describe as part of the cycle of a bubble.