I agree, especially with your points on “necessary but not sufficient.” In my view, this represents mostly a pivot from the PTC hypothesis. I’m not sure whether to view this as post hoc hypothesizing (generally bad) or merely updating-on-evidence (generally good).
I do think the question of “what percent of the ‘work’ is PTC?” is probably not well-defined, but is likely a worthwhile starting point for disagreement.
Thanks for both of your responses (@Jacob_Peacock and @abrahamrowe). I was going to analyse the podcast in more detail to resolve our different understandings, but I think @BruceF ’s response to the piece clarifies his views on the “negative/positive” PTC hypothesis. The views that he would defend are: (negative) “First, if we don’t compete on price and taste, the products will stay niche, and meat consumption will continue to grow.” and (positive) “Second, if we can create products that compete on price and taste, sales will go up quite a lot, even if other factors will need to be met to gain additional market share.”
I expect that these two claims are less controversial, albeit with “quite a lot” leaving some ambiguity.
My initial response was based on my assumption that everyone involved in alt protein realises that PTC-parity is only one step towards widespread adoption. But I agree that it’s worth getting more specific and checking how people feel about Abraham’s “how much of the work is PTC doing- 90% vs 5%?” question.
I assume if you surveyed/ interviewed people working in the space, there would be a fairly wide range of views. I doubt if people have super-clear models, because we’re expecting progress in the coming years to come on multiple fronts (consumer acceptance, product quality, product suitability, policy, norms), and to mutually reinforce each other, but it would be worth clarifying so that you can better identify what you’re arguing against.
From my own work on alt-protein adoption in Asia I sense that PTC-parity is only a small part of the puzzle, but it would also be far easier to solve the other pieces if we suddenly had some PTC-competitive killer products, so PTC interact with other variables in ways that make it difficult to calculate.
Overall, I stand by my criticism that I don’t think the positive PTC-hypothesis as you frame it is commonly held. But I’d like to understand better what the views are that you’re critiquing. It would be interesting to see your anecdotal evidence supported- what people actually think when they say they (previously) bought into PTC, and who these people are. It could be true, for example, that people who work in PBM startups tend to believe more strongly that a PTC-competitive product will transform the market, but people working on the market side tend to realise how many barriers there are to adoption beyond these factors.
Thanks! My subsequent reply to Bruce might be helpful here—while Bruce doesn’t defend the claim here, I do think he says things that strongly resemble it elsewhere.
(Abraham and I both work for Rethink Priorities.)
I agree, especially with your points on “necessary but not sufficient.” In my view, this represents mostly a pivot from the PTC hypothesis. I’m not sure whether to view this as post hoc hypothesizing (generally bad) or merely updating-on-evidence (generally good).
I do think the question of “what percent of the ‘work’ is PTC?” is probably not well-defined, but is likely a worthwhile starting point for disagreement.
Thanks for both of your responses (@Jacob_Peacock and @abrahamrowe). I was going to analyse the podcast in more detail to resolve our different understandings, but I think @BruceF ’s response to the piece clarifies his views on the “negative/positive” PTC hypothesis. The views that he would defend are: (negative) “First, if we don’t compete on price and taste, the products will stay niche, and meat consumption will continue to grow.” and (positive) “Second, if we can create products that compete on price and taste, sales will go up quite a lot, even if other factors will need to be met to gain additional market share.”
I expect that these two claims are less controversial, albeit with “quite a lot” leaving some ambiguity.
My initial response was based on my assumption that everyone involved in alt protein realises that PTC-parity is only one step towards widespread adoption. But I agree that it’s worth getting more specific and checking how people feel about Abraham’s “how much of the work is PTC doing- 90% vs 5%?” question.
I assume if you surveyed/ interviewed people working in the space, there would be a fairly wide range of views. I doubt if people have super-clear models, because we’re expecting progress in the coming years to come on multiple fronts (consumer acceptance, product quality, product suitability, policy, norms), and to mutually reinforce each other, but it would be worth clarifying so that you can better identify what you’re arguing against.
From my own work on alt-protein adoption in Asia I sense that PTC-parity is only a small part of the puzzle, but it would also be far easier to solve the other pieces if we suddenly had some PTC-competitive killer products, so PTC interact with other variables in ways that make it difficult to calculate.
Overall, I stand by my criticism that I don’t think the positive PTC-hypothesis as you frame it is commonly held. But I’d like to understand better what the views are that you’re critiquing. It would be interesting to see your anecdotal evidence supported- what people actually think when they say they (previously) bought into PTC, and who these people are. It could be true, for example, that people who work in PBM startups tend to believe more strongly that a PTC-competitive product will transform the market, but people working on the market side tend to realise how many barriers there are to adoption beyond these factors.
Thanks! My subsequent reply to Bruce might be helpful here—while Bruce doesn’t defend the claim here, I do think he says things that strongly resemble it elsewhere.