some Quarantime fun on the Miro Whiteboard, far right for 5/22 today: The left scribble: how to transcend traditional engineering and exceed human understanding though iterative algorithms (e.g. directed evolution, machine learning, generative design).
One of the topics we discussed was the activation energy of disruptive change, and how a good crisis can catalyze exploration, like a supply chain disruption leading to a search for more sustainable alternatives… like some faced when the grocery stores ran out of fresh meat. Some tried the new fake meats and loved them. Imagine the shift when a better, cheaper, healthier form of slaughterless meat arrives from Memphis Meats and others?
Folks pointed me to a poignant NYT Op Ed: “Our hand has been reaching for the doorknob for the last few years. Covid-19 has kicked open the door. At the very least it has forced us to look. When it comes to a subject as inconvenient as meat, it is tempting to pretend unambiguous science is advocacy, to find solace in exceptions that could never be scaled and to speak about our world as if it were theoretical.
Some of the most thoughtful people I know find ways not to give the problems of animal agriculture any thought, just as I find ways to avoid thinking about climate change and income inequality, not to mention the paradoxes in my own eating life. One of the unexpected side effects of these months of sheltering in place is that it’s hard not to think about the things that are essential to who we are.
We cannot protect against pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly. Much attention has been paid to wet markets, but factory farms, specifically poultry farms, are a more important breeding ground for pandemics. Further, the CDC reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — the result of our broken relationship with animals.
Factory farming is to actual farming what criminal monopolies are to entrepreneurship. If for a single year the government removed its $38-billion-plus in props and bailouts, and required meat and dairy corporations to play by normal capitalist rules, it would destroy them forever. The industry could not survive in the free market.
Perhaps more than any other food, meat inspires both comfort and discomfort. That can make it difficult to act on what we know and want. Can we really displace meat from the center of our plates? This is the question that brings us to the threshold of the impossible. On the other side is the inevitable.”
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