AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Cool application of the technology, I'm curious if it can reduce environmental impact of the food industry in the long term. I'm going to wait until they can mass produce it before drawing any conclusions though.

Having no actual knowledge on how this will work in practice or theoretical I am going to take a stab at an uneducated guess.

Quite a lot of a living orgamism is intestines, organs which are not edible, brain and bones. If this allows us to grow muscles to use as food, then you have easily eliminated quite a lot of a body already. That removes a ton of energy and matter consumption to create the edible flesh. If we can at some point customize how it grows, we can make it grow to exactly what we need it to do. It can grow as a cube with skin so we can get leather and food from a nearly optimal design. It is a morally ambiguous field, but it is still a very interesting prospect. Quite a lot of our damage to the climate comes from cultivating living organisms for food and removing much of that mass without reducing the amount of edible meat from it is a major step forward.

Brekkjern wrote:Having no actual knowledge on how this will work in practice or theoretical I am going to take a stab at an uneducated guess.

Quite a lot of a living orgamism is intestines, organs which are not edible, brain and bones. If this allows us to grow muscles to use as food, then you have easily eliminated quite a lot of a body already. That removes a ton of energy and matter consumption to create the edible flesh. If we can at some point customize how it grows, we can make it grow to exactly what we need it to do. It can grow as a cube with skin so we can get leather and food from a nearly optimal design. It is a morally ambiguous field, but it is still a very interesting prospect. Quite a lot of our damage to the climate comes from cultivating living organisms for food and removing much of that mass without reducing the amount of edible meat from it is a major step forward.

also you don't have to kill things for meat

We would have to think about the economical impact of being able to produce meat this way. If this method becomes feasible both in the sense of cheddar and efficiency, then it could mean a tough time for farmers. That is only, however, if this technology takes off.

Now about Runes' article on Bible study sessions on how to be an actual man: I believe that being a man is not about eating bacon, or having a beard, or having pointy red sunglasses. I believe that being a man is about compassion for your friends and family and knowing that, at times, their needs come before your own.

BurntToShreds wrote:We would have to think about the economical impact of being able to produce meat this way. If this method becomes feasible both in the sense of cheddar and efficiency, then it could mean a tough time for farmers. That is only, however, if this technology takes off.

Now about Runes' article on Bible study sessions on how to be an actual man: I believe that being a man is not about eating bacon, or having a beard, or having pointy red sunglasses. I believe that being a man is about compassion for your friends and family and knowing that, at times, their needs come before your own.

farmers don't have animals
ranchers do

Burnt wrote:We would have to think about the economical impact of being able to produce meat this way. If this method becomes feasible both in the sense of cheddar and efficiency, then it could mean a tough time for farmers. That is only, however, if this technology takes off.

We can't worry about outdating professions when advancing technologically. Technological advancements will always outdate some jobs but always create new ones, so in the end it all balances out (until we make self-maintaining robots). It's part of a developing society, if you look at history you will see that the percentage of people farming in first world countries has decreased from almost a 100% to only about 5% now iirc.

Farming made hunting and gathering outdated. Nobody bothered to speak up for hunters and gatherers then because it is more effective and makes the society progress. What we should not do is to remove old skillsets because we now have newer and better methods. We never know if they will be useful down the line.

Clyve wrote:I dunno about ranching and all that jazz, but I do know corn is a big deal since it's pretty much in everything nowadays and there's a high demand for it to feed livestock and to develop ethanol technologies. If we can cut livestock out of the equation, then that's just less corn we have to plant for them.

Also, fuck corn ethanol. It's just not practical. We should be focusing on making better and better electrical cars. Or at the very least, other types of ethanol.

The bad part of corn ethanol is that it uses a food crop. so when gas prices go up ethanol goes up. and when corn goes up, ethanol does again.
The current ethanol leader seems to be current research on genetically altered algae.
they can be just thrown into swamps (useless land anyway) and they just feed off the water. then you scoop it out and process.

Syobon wrote:

Burnt wrote:We would have to think about the economical impact of being able to produce meat this way. If this method becomes feasible both in the sense of cheddar and efficiency, then it could mean a tough time for farmers. That is only, however, if this technology takes off.

We can't worry about outdating professions when advancing technologically. Technological advancements will always outdate some jobs but always create new ones, so in the end it all balances out (until we make self-maintaining robots). It's part of a developing society, if you look at history you will see that the percentage of people farming in first world countries has decreased from almost a 100% to only about 5% now iirc.

These are still things that need to be considered from an economical point of view. Something that makes ranching, a primary source of food for almost as long as recorded time, obsolete, should still be deliberated on.

If something that is ridiculously energy inefficient becomes obsolete, that's a good thing. If you want to record ranching techniques in case we suffer an apocalyptic event and lose modern technology, that's fine, but don't halt technology because you needlessly cling to tradition.

I am not saying that advancement in technology should be halted. I am saying that options need to be weighed as to whether or not the growing of meat artificially and using it as a food source is viable from an economic standpoint in this day and age. I am not sure of how it would stand; I am just saying that moving from ranching to growing meat means that there are a lot of things to consider.

Syobon wrote:If something that is ridiculously energy inefficient becomes obsolete, that's a good thing. If you want to record ranching techniques in case we suffer an apocalyptic event and lose modern technology, that's fine, but don't halt technology because you needlessly cling to tradition.

What if technology makes it possible to upload a human consciousness to a digital or mechanical body - thereby alleviating all the requirements of the human body for food, water, etc. - and also negating the huge amounts of waste material the human body produces - as well as all the physical demands like space, the need for a vehicle to travel, etc. etc?

Would you resist your body being mechanised/digitised, Syobon? Even though your human body is an outdated, uneconomical, polluting, waste of space?

DoNotDelete wrote:

Syobon wrote:If something that is ridiculously energy inefficient becomes obsolete, that's a good thing. If you want to record ranching techniques in case we suffer an apocalyptic event and lose modern technology, that's fine, but don't halt technology because you needlessly cling to tradition.

What if technology makes it possible to upload a human consciousness to a digital or mechanical body - thereby alleviating all the requirements of the human body for food, water, etc. - and also negating the huge amounts of waste material the human body produces - as well as all the physical demands like space, the need for a vehicle to travel, etc. etc?

Would you resist your body being mechanised/digitised, Syobon? Even though your human body is an outdated, uneconomical, polluting, waste of space?

I would.

I imagine most people would want to hold on to their human body.

I'm just using Syobon's same argumentative line of logic in an extreme case scenario.

Assuming that I could keep a creative brain I would instantly swap to a better body. Anyone who have experienced an injury would know how shitty the human body is at recovering from them.