Neil_Dullaghan🔹

Cul­tured meat: A com­par­i­son of techno-eco­nomic analyses

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Sep 17, 2021, 8:24 AM

  12 points

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  in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic

  I don’t think it’s reasonably likely this particular prediction was delayed by COVID-19, given they made this prediction in early 2019 about a product being on offer *in 2019*. I don’t think there is much to suggest any impediments to a product roll-out in 2019 from the pandemic since it only started having major impacts/​reactions in 2020.
  
  For other predictions in this dataset made by companies, research institutes, and reported in the media it seems likely the pandemic threw up an unexpected obstacle and delay. However, that would presumably also be true for whatever other tools or sources we might alternatively rely on for cultured meat timelines and so I don’t think it changes the overall conclusion on how much stock to put into the types of predictions/​predictors represented in this dataset.
  
  

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Sep 16, 2021, 10:40 PM

  6 points

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  on: Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic

  My colleague Linch asked me “to include a random sample of 9 predictions that resolved negatively.” I numbered the incorrect market/​supermarket predictions and then randomised the list of numbers, and used an online random number generator to select nine numbers.
  

  • March 2019 “JUST, the San Francisco-based company racing to be the first to bring cell-based meat to market, announced in a CBS San Francisco interview last month that they would debut their first product — a cultured chicken nugget — in Asia sometime this year”

  • February 2018 “Tetrick claims his startup has finally made the process cost-effective enough to take to market: At the end of this year, he says, Just will officially introduce an as yet undisclosed lab-grown meat, the first time the stuff will hit shelves.”

  • March 2018 “Memphis Meats is trying to bring its products to high-end restaurant menus by next year, and, by 2021, bring production costs down to equal grocery store meat products at $3 to $4 per pound.”

  • December 2018 “The steak product is expected to be ready to sell within two years.”—Aleph Farms

  • January 2018 “It [Supermeat] reckons it is still up to three years away from putting SuperMeat products on supermarket shelves.”

  • ACE reported that in February 2017 Mark Post predicted “​​For small-scale, somewhat expensive products, most companies will have cultured meat products on the market in 3–4 years (i.e., 2020–2021). It will probably take another 3–4 years (i.e., 2023–2025) for the price to come down to the level where it’s acceptable for the broader public.”

  • June 2006 Scientist Paul Kosnik: “We believe the goal of a processed meat product is attainable in the next five years if funding is available and the R&D is pursued aggressively.”

  • January 2016 (no hyperlink was given in the MotherJones article but they credit GFI as the source and you can see it copy-pasted into at least two media articles on Google Search) ”Memphis Meats is already growing real meat in small quantities using cells from cows, pigs, and chickens. The company’s first products—hot dogs, sausages, burgers, and meatballs—will be developed using recipes perfected over a half century by award-winning chefs. The founders expect to have products to market within five years.”

  • August 2009 Jason Matheny of New Harvest said “We think that a technology to produce cultured ground meats—burgers, sausages, nuggets, and so forth—could be commercialized within ten years,”

  What links here?

  • Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic by Neil_Dullaghan🔹 (Sep 15, 2021, 12:32 PM; 195 points)

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Sep 16, 2021, 2:28 PM

  13 points

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  in reply to: Eleos Arete Citrini’s comment on: Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic

  I don’t think Anders Sandberg uses the EA Forum, so I’ll just repost what Anders wrote in reaction to this on Twitter:
  
  ”I suspect we have a “publication bias” of tech predictions where the pessimists don’t make predictions (think the tech impossible or irrelevant, hence don’t respond to queries, or find their long timescales so uncertain they are loath to state them).
  
  In this case it is fairly clear that progress is being made but it is slower than hoped for: predictions as a whole made a rate mistake, but perhaps not an eventual outcome mistake (we will see). I think this is is[sic] a case of Amara’s law.
  
  Amara’s law (that we overestimate the magnitude of short-term change and underestimate long-term change) can be explained by exponential-blindness, but also hype cycles, and integrating a technology in society is a slow process”
  
  Fwiw, I broadly agree. I think those in the industry making public predictions have plausibly “good” reasons to skew optimistic. Attracting the funding, media attention, talent necessary to make progress might simply require generating buzz and optimism- even if the progress it generates is at a slower rate that implied by their public predictions. So it would actually be odd if overall the majority of predictions by these actors don’t resolve negatively and overly optimistic (they aren’t trying to rank high on the Metaculus leaderboard).
  
  So those who are shocked by the results presented here may have cause to update and put less weight on predictions from cultured media companies and the media repeating them, and rely on something else. For those who aren’t surprised by these results, then they probably already placed an appropriate weight on how seriously to take public predictions from the industry.
  
  On how this industry’s predictions compare to others’, I too would like to see that and identify the right reference class(es).
  
  

Cul­tured meat pre­dic­tions were overly optimistic

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jul 23, 2021, 4:31 PM

  4 points

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  on: Strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tions for up­com­ing EU farmed an­i­mal legislation

  See some updates in Lewis Bollard’s latest Farmed Animal Welfare newsletter https://​​forum.effectivealtruism.org/​​posts/​​WF3Dxes2GJ6QhESfW/​​an-end-to-cages-in-europe

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jul 23, 2021, 4:19 PM

  18 points

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  in reply to: FC’s comment on: An End to Cages in Europe?

  As some examples, Open Wing Alliance, Compassion in World Farming, Humane Society International/​Europe (HSI), and Animal Protection Denmark (Dyrenes Beskyttelse) have already submitted comments to this feedback period.

  For the subsequent public consultation process I would again highlight that Alice DiConcetto, of Animal Law Europe recently published a short manual on how to submit feedback to an EU Public Consultation that I think will be valuable for advocates. IMO, feedback will be more impactful if it sends a consistent message but avoids sending duplicate submissions which the EU civil servants will just batch together as such.

  Also worth flagging that the Commission included in its inception impact assessment two options for Animal welfare at the time of killing considering farmed fish (page 7 of the downloadable doc).

  “Option 1: In the light of new scientific evidence, add species-specific provisions for the killing of the five main species of farmed fish (Atlantic salmon, common carp, rainbow trout, European sea bass and gilthead sea bream), and review current requirements which cannot be applied to farmed fish (such as individual monitoring and certain definitions) to better ensure the welfare of those species.

  Option 2: In the light of new scientific evidence, add species-specific provisions for the killing of European sea bass and gilthead sea bream and review current requirements which cannot be applied to farmed fish (such as individual monitoring and certain definitions) to better ensure the welfare of those species.”

  And on Animal welfare at the farm level noted (page 6) considering “New species-specific animal welfare requirements on dairy cows (and possibly on rabbits, pullets, layer breeders, broiler breeders and day-old chicks ) and with empowerments for the Commission to adopt at a later stage further, detailed rules on additional species – such as farmed fish – based on scientific evidence as it progressively becomes available.” This also mirrors recent comments by Commissioner Kyriakides in which she said “we cannot solve every issue by the end of 2023 . .. it is not possible to have updated EFSA opinions for all relevant species, so we must prioritise while paving the way for future actions. This is why when revising the legislation the Commission intends to propose empowerments allowing specific welfare requirements to be introduced to certain species at a later stage . . . we intend to agree a mandate with EFSA for future reports, . . . , allowing us to lay down rules at a later stage, should co-legislators grant us the relevant empowerments”.

Con­sumer ac­cep­tance of al­ter­na­tive pro­teins: A sum­mary of Red to Green Sea­son 3

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jun 11, 2021, 4:39 AM

  5 points

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  on: A bunch of rea­sons why you might have low en­ergy (or other vague health prob­lems) and what to do about it

  I’m no expert, and appreciate the honest epistemic status, but I quickly asked an IBS R.D. who said:
  
  ”like irritable bowel disease, which is much worse”
  ->It’s inflammatory bowel disease not irritable. There’s irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. There’s is no irritable bowel disease.
  
  ”there’s not that much you can do to diagnose it”
  ->IBS is diagnosed based off the Rome IV diagnostic criteria
  

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 May 21, 2021, 8:54 PM

  4 points

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  on: Three char­i­ta­ble recom­men­da­tions for COVID-19 in India

  Did you consider advocacy, as mentioned in a recent Future Perfect piece (talking about vaccine supply generally, not specific to India): https://​​www.vox.com/​​future-perfect/​​22440986/​​covax-challenges-covid-19-vaccines-global-inequity

  ″ Arguably, donors could have a bigger impact by donating to an advocacy group than by donating to Go Give One, though this field is so new that it’s hard to know for sure.

  For donors who prefer to invest in advocacy, Dodson and Glassman both recommended three groups: Global Citizen, the ONE Campaign, and the Pandemic Action Network.

  “To the extent that advocacy movements help reduce the political cost of doing the right thing and create political benefits, I think it’s a good thing,” Glassman said. “And the amounts of money at stake that they could potentially influence are large, especially in the United States.” ”

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Apr 21, 2021, 4:53 PM

  2 points

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  on: Why An­i­mals Mat­ter for Effec­tive Altruism

  Just noticed that the Animal Pain and Suffering section on the Wikipedia page on Denialism that you mention was deleted 29 November 2019 after discussion about what constitutes denialism.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Apr 18, 2021, 6:30 PM

  16 points

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  in reply to: 80000_Hours’s comment on: Launch­ing a new re­source: ‘Effec­tive Altru­ism: An In­tro­duc­tion’

  Hi, I wrote the cause area EA Survey 2019 post for Rethink Priorities so thought I should just weigh in here on this minor point.

  Fwiw, I think it’s more accurate to say 22% of respondents thought Global Poverty should be at least one of the top priorities, if not the only top priority, but when forced to only pick only one of five traditional cause areas to be the top priority, 32% chose Global Poverty.

  The data shows 476 of the 2164 respondents (22%) who gave any top priority cause rating in that question selected Global Poverty and “this should be the top priority”. However, 356 of those 476 also selected another cause area as “this should be the top priority”, and 120 only selected Global Poverty for “this should be the top priority”. So 5.5% thought Global Poverty should be the ONLY top priority, and 16.5% thought Global Poverty should be one, among others, of the top priorities. Also note that the subsequent question forced respondents to only chose one of five traditional cause areas as a top priority and there 32% (of 2023) chose Global Poverty.

Strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tions for up­com­ing EU farmed an­i­mal legislation

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Aug 26, 2020, 2:39 PM

  6 points

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  on: Re­duc­ing long-term risks from malev­olent actors

  Thanks for this!
  I see you referenced Matthews et al. (2018), which I haven’t read, and wondered if you had also seen the Authoritarian Ruling Elites Database, compiled by Matthews (2019): “a collection of biographical and professional information on the individuals who constitute the top elite of authoritarian regimes.” Each of the project’s 18 datasets focuses on a particular regime, such as the military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. The biographical data-points include gender, occupation, dates of birth and death, tenure among the elite, and more. (This came to me via the Data Is Plural mailing list fwiw). Apologies if you mentioned it and I missed it.
  

Do coun­tries com­ply with EU an­i­mal welfare laws?

Ways EU law might mat­ter for farmed animals

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Aug 15, 2020, 9:18 PM

  11 points

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  in reply to: Chi’s comment on: EA Fo­rum up­date: New ed­i­tor! (And more)

  +1 that the footnotes issue is quite an inconvenience.

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Jul 16, 2020, 5:50 AM

  1 point

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  in reply to: Z’s comment on: EA Sur­vey 2019 Series: En­gage­ment Levels

  GWWC membership here refers to anyone who provided a year in response to the question in the EA Survey “If you have taken the Giving What We Can pledge, please note the year:”

EA Sur­vey 2019 Series: En­gage­ment Levels

• Neil_Dullaghan🔹 Mar 5, 2020, 10:14 PM

  2 points

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  in reply to: sky’s comment on: EA Sur­vey 2019 Series: Com­mu­nity De­mo­graph­ics & Characteristics

  Glad to hear that it is a useful resource!

  I have updated the summary to include links to all the posts in the series so far (a pingbacks list will also appear at the bottom of the post if one opts into the experimental features on the Forum). The entire list of articles in the EA Survey 2019 Series (plus our other publications) can also be found on our website.