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[smjjames]

...what's ethically weird about lab meat?

Because we've established that it's generally only ethical if our meat sources are free-range, and

Like, I kinda get the sense that free-range bacteria is a bad idea.

If it is, it's a bad idea literally covering the planet.

...*shudder*

Hrm, the quote link bug is back as those don't go to the correct one on the previous page.

[Starver]

(The NEW image-link on the various thread lists continued to erroneously send me to the end of the thread rather than the first of the messages I hadn't seen on the prior read-through, as discussed elsewhere. Never been overly concerned with replied-quotes back-linking, whether that aspect became fixed or not.)

[smjjames]

Well, if the quote link function not working very well becomes enough of a problem, then I could make a new thread. Though I was thinking of rebooting the thread for the 2019-2020 election season anyway since the first debates for the Dems are supposed to start sometime in the summer, possibly late spring.

[Rolan7]

...what's ethically weird about lab meat?

Because we've established that it's generally only ethical if our meat sources are free-range, and

The free-range part is out of compassion for thinking beings.  Vat-grown meat dodges that by not having a brain at all.  Which, I like to hope, increases its theoretical efficiency a lot - A ton of organs are suddenly unnecessary, the brain included.

I was a little surprised at your question too, so I'll put it another way - brainless zombie cows operated purely by cybernetic impulses would be more ethical than the current system.  That's my take, anyway.

[Starver]

And then they escape the lab, directed by McKing Wendy Bell's answer to Skynet...

[Rolan7]

Maximum Cattledrive

[Starver]

Armoogeddon.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

In either case, I just want to point out that our food crops and livestock are rather dependent on the current biosphere, and if it's too expensive now to build enough hydroponics to feed ourselves, we shouldn't expect it to be any easier or cheaper when half of humanity is rioting because all the cows are dead.

Correction: It is too expensive to do an overhaul to feed our current population.  Eventually enough of us would die from the riots that our current stocks of hydroponics and what would be built later on would be able to catch up.  And hey look, there's a lot more living space available in the aftermath.

As a further "bonus", once everyone too poor to survive the global famine is finally dead and the rich stride forth from their bunkers, there won't be any poor refugees to screen for "criminal habits" and potentially send back to their home countries to start revolutions, right? /s

I'm noticing a pattern here...

In either case, I just want to point out that our food crops and livestock are rather dependent on the current biosphere, and if it's too expensive now to build enough hydroponics to feed ourselves, we shouldn't expect it to be any easier or cheaper when half of humanity is rioting because all the cows are dead.

Correction: It is too expensive to do an overhaul to feed our current population.  Eventually enough of us would die from the riots that our current stocks of hydroponics and what would be built later on would be able to catch up.  And hey look, there's a lot more living space available in the aftermath.

An Essay on the Principle of Population isn't meant to be a how-to manual for wiping out poor people.

...Aaand, there's my cue to leave this thread again after a bit of hope was restored with the discussion earlier in thread.  Seriously, where did I state the poor should be wiped out in my statement rather than state how the issue proposed by Karne would be selfcorrecting?  The "more available land" thing?  Fucking morbid Thanos/Black Death aftereffects joke off of the 'half of humanity' comment the guy made.  Fucking christ.

[hector13]

T’be fair, text isn’t the best form of communication humans have. It wasn’t clear you weren’t being serious. I had a pedantic response half-typed out before I decieded to assume you were joking.

you assume the hydroponics don’t get destroyed in the riots, you fool!

[Reelya]

How is "feeding people won't be a problem because everyone will be dead" not being assumed to be Dark Humor rather than a serious point? I'd kinda think that it was far enough out there to not really require sarscasm tags.

[Karnewarrior]

Why didn't people just assume he was joking about half the population of the earth dying being a good thing? Have we really gone so far down the rabbit hole that people are taking A Modest Proposal as a dead serious suggestion? 

In either case, while losing all our cattle would be good environmentally in a lot of ways, it's also unthinkable to a subset of the population, is what I was getting at. But that's also where some of those people are headed. To put it another way, Fido isn't going to be living a happy life in a fallout bunker either, and is equally dependent on a working biosphere with a diverse bounty of life. Global Warming is going to kill a lot of people's dogs, but by the time that becomes clear enough to trigger a reaction in the more relaxed, the dogs are already doomed.


In any case, the aftereffects of mass starvation due to Climate Change would prevent any significant attempts at reversing the problem, since we would be bleeding the valuable raw resource providers needed for that kind of infrastructure. It could potentially be done, but I don't think it would be, particularly if the rich do the same kind of sociopathic stuff they've been doing for the past half century and just try to fuck off to Mars or to some fallout shelter with a poppy mascot and robot butlers. Leaving the middle class stranded alone with a lower class that's no longer able to go after the real culprits and is hopping mad. It's not good juju at all, that.

Also, what Hector said. A big part of our existing hydroponics labs would probably get busted up by butthurt mobs with the mentality of "IF I DON'T EAT, YOU DON'T EAT" because people are very unlikely to think about the survival of the species unless it means they get laid.

[Reelya]

Why didn't people just assume he was joking about half the population of the earth dying being a good thing? Have we really gone so far down the rabbit hole that people are taking A Modest Proposal as a dead serious suggestion? 

The level to which each half of the US political divide caricature's the other side has gotten to the point where liberals assume that conservatives can perfectly reasonably talk about genociding the "poor half" of the population as normal after-dinner chat. Pro-tip: even to conservatives, genocide is a bit far.

[Trekkin]

It could potentially be done, but I don't think it would be, particularly if the rich do the same kind of sociopathic stuff they've been doing for the past half century and just try to fuck off to Mars or to some fallout shelter with a poppy mascot and robot butlers. Leaving the middle class stranded alone with a lower class that's no longer able to go after the real culprits and is hopping mad. It's not good juju at all, that.

I was mostly objecting to Zanzetkuken's justification for calling the climate change overstated being, well, a small set of unspecified people (but, in reality, obviously the extremely rich) going off to Mars or fallout shelters and the rest of humanity apparently not needing a solution at all.

Pro-tip: even to conservatives, genocide is a bit far.

Are you sure about that? They've started shooting up synagogues.

[Rolan7]

We're pushing our own species on a path that could very easily lead to our own extinction. My son has to live in this world, I don't want a bunch of self-righteous, old, dying rich entitled fucks to ruin it for him. I want him to grow up and live a full life that includes nature.

Oh, please.  Humans are fucking cockroaches that figured out how to live in space.  Absolute worst case scenario, we're going to be living in vaults and biodomes (even with nuclear war.  Switzerland has enough vaults for a massive chunk of its populace, after all, so it just means the future humanity will be descended from the Swiss in such a scenario).  Seriously, we figured out how to live in space.  How hard would it be when we both have gravity and can build bigger due to not having the massive expense of lifting the stuff to orbit?

And full life that includes nature?  Mate, medical tech is constantly improving at an exponential rate so you don't have to worry about the former, and as I said above with the latter, some species are starting to thrive better than before and be created as a result of our fucking around.  Now it won't be the same nature you grew up with (though damn if we don't have major conservation efforts in zoos that'll allow for several species to live a long time after death in the wild minus the biodome scenario), but them and their descendants'll still have it.

You forgot the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, which was in part caused by the Deccan Traps (sort of a super-supervolcano), but was likely a combination of events.

Super-supervolcano?  Fuck, that concept sounds terrifying.

I was very happy to have someone stirring up the thread with a contrapoint.  I even agree with a lot of what Z is saying.  But I don't read this as a joke.  This is "The lucky few might survive".

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The level to which each half of the US political divide caricature's the other side has gotten to the point where liberals assume that conservatives can perfectly reasonably talk about genociding the "poor half" of the population as normal after-dinner chat. Pro-tip: even to conservatives, genocide is a bit far.

No it isn't. I know rightists a plenty in the US, and though not all of them do it, plenty will go with minimal digging to advocating genocide with the levity of a joke, but nothing else. A removal of one step is as good as a removal of zero steps once circumstances align.

For fuck's sake, the US puts undocumented immigrants in concentration camps, this is not the time for "well, the people from the Fuck You Die Party don't really hate everyone else, they just think that you should be allowed to die if the government thinks so too".