I think this is a good point, but it doesn’t totally knock me out of feeling sympathy for the “rowing” case.
It looks quite likely to me that factory farming is going to end up looking something like air pollution—something that got worse, then better, as capabilities/wealth improved. I expect the combination of improving “animal product alternatives” (Impossible, Beyond, eventually clean meat) with increasing wealth to lead this way.
Granted, this is no longer a “pure trend extrapolation,” but I think the consistent and somewhat mysterious improvement in the lives of humans (the population that has been getting more empowered/capable) is still a major part of a case I have a lot of sympathy for: that by default, at least over the next few decades and bracketing some “table-flip” scenarios, we should expect further economic growth and technological advancement to result in better quality of life.
I think this is a good point, but it doesn’t totally knock me out of feeling sympathy for the “rowing” case.
It looks quite likely to me that factory farming is going to end up looking something like air pollution—something that got worse, then better, as capabilities/wealth improved. I expect the combination of improving “animal product alternatives” (Impossible, Beyond, eventually clean meat) with increasing wealth to lead this way.
Granted, this is no longer a “pure trend extrapolation,” but I think the consistent and somewhat mysterious improvement in the lives of humans (the population that has been getting more empowered/capable) is still a major part of a case I have a lot of sympathy for: that by default, at least over the next few decades and bracketing some “table-flip” scenarios, we should expect further economic growth and technological advancement to result in better quality of life.