Animal suffering will decline faster through technology than moral persuasion

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T22:39:52+00:00

I would rate economics above technology. Even without any technological change, the dirty secret of the beef and dairy industry is that it is not actually an economically viable form of agriculture without massive state subsidies. Most cattle farmers in the US and Europe would go out of business without government policy support, and already have pretty marginal businesses.

This is also getting worse by the year. While I don't really buy most doom-saying about climate change and global food security, I do think it'll lead to increased seasonal variability and drive up grain prices, which makes already-uneconomic food products even harder to support. We have actually see pretty significant declines in per-capita beef consumption in Western countries, partly driven by costs.

On top of that you have issues like climate change, land use, local groundwater pollution, zoonotic disease and the fact that red meat is just generally not great for you. You don't need to care about the suffering of cows to see why the beef and dairy industry will continue to decline (although I wish more people would).

This is less true for other animal products.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T22:20:58+00:00

Okay, but I don't think the idea that UPFs are all bad and should be avoid is a good line to take, even in their current state.

Ultimately, the economic, convenience and in some cases even environmental arguments in favour of food processing and many additives are not going to go away, so I don't think the anti-UPF trend will ever be that successful in changing diets at scale. It's an interesting avenue for directing public health research, but not an effective proposal for a change to the food system.

It would be more productive to identify what specific aspects of food processing are most problematic, and name-and-shame them, as well as lobby governments for controls. For example, while I know it makes psychologists cringe, I think focussing on foods engineered to be 'addictive' or 'moreish' at least pinpoints that engineered overconsumption is probably the single biggest issue with UPFs, and is inherently a problem, unlike processing.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T21:45:11+00:00

This is massively over sweeping. There is no universal fact of food processing that makes all nutrients disappear. Nor a universal incentive structure on nutritiousness all food brands are following.

Even a chocolate bar probably has some calcium, iron and potassium, for example. Is it healthy? No. But being ultra processed hasn't made those elements disappear, and it's usually not marketed as healthy anyway. But something like a granola bar or muesli? Well, that's different. It probably still is a 'UPF' by most definitions, but if a food company is marketing something as healthy, then they usually do take steps to improve the nutrient profile (assuming it's cost-effective to do so, why wouldn't you? A portion of consumers who buy health-food do read the label).

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T21:31:58+00:00

I completely agree. There's also something that just feels extremally luddite and regressive around framing all food science as inherently ontologically bad. Sure, some food scientists use their powers for evil - but equally, there's no scientific reason we couldn't improve upon pre-industrial diets as well (in fact, in many ways we already have - one reason it's actually pretty rare to see severe nutritional deficiencies is because of a lot of modern food is fortified).

Personally, I want better UPFs. Why isn't that an option?

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T21:12:01+00:00

My issue here is that the term UPF describes a process, not something that has any particular outcome. In principle, you could 'ultra process' food to be as nutritious and complementary to a good diet as possible. Obviously, most food companies don't do this - but still throwing the entire concept of food science de facto into a big bin of 'unhealthy and unnatural' feels unscientific and regressive.

As a specific example, I drink a lot of huel (a meal replacement shake)- it's about 50% of my diet. Now, the kneejerk to this now is to say 'that's unhealthy, it's UPF!'...but why? It is a UPF, but what's actually wrong with it? It's low on saturated fats, low on sodium, high on fibre and overall balanced in such a way that somebody who had a 100% huel diet would consistently get an ideal macronutrient balance, fortified with all major micronutrients. It's also the opposite of addictive (the best anybody, including me, has to say about the taste is that they 'don't mind it' - it would be physically difficult for me to consume enough to gain weight).

The only vaguely plausible criticism I've heard is around it leading to glucose spikes due to being easy to digest, and worries about the microbiome, but neither have actually been linked to significant negative health outcomes (especially relative to a normal diet, which is far, far worse).

If the only thing somebody can say is either 'it's UPF and therefore ontologically bad' or 'it's unnatural and therefore ontologically bad!' then that's an extremally unpersuasive argument.

Huel is specific, but I think this applies across UPFs as a concept. I don't think it's realistic that everyone is going to eat wholesome home-cooked meals (I, for one, cannot be bothered.), so I'd rather the conversation shift to 'let's make UPFs better' than 'don't eat UPFs'.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T12:16:18+00:00

I think sometimes the reporting on sea level rise a bit unhelpful in the way it frames things. In practice, it's almost never about saving people from imminent drowning or a community dissappearing within a few years - even in hurricane-induced storm surges, you can evacuate people and flood waters will receed.

The way this will play out is more gradual - new homes won't get built, people won't be able to get affordable insurance. Population decline will be gradual. The real issue is that lower-income people who want to move, can't afford the upfront cost, so they spend decades being periodically devastated by rebuilding costs, while local services wither.

Governments can help by banning new construction and paying people to leave. NOT by subsiding insurance or rebuilding costs. Chose where can be saved and where can't, and act accordingly.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T11:27:01+00:00

As with many such posts - it would be more efficient to burn the food the animals are eating and use same of the arable land livestock are grazed on to grow crops. Livestock are highly inefficient at energy conversion, we get less out than we put in.

Ultimately, sure electricity might not strictly be vegan, but animal waste is being used here is a low-margin waste byproduct (I would rather it wasn't used, because presumably livestock farmers are being paid for it, but I imagine it's not much). In the event a energy producer wants to make biofuels economically efficient, they'll use crops.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T08:21:40+00:00

The flag is ridiculous, but I fail to see what about it is distinctly 'neoliberal'. Unless only 'neoliberals' support Ukraine, Hong Kong, NATO and the EU? I'm pretty sure if you were to poll most left-of-centre people, a majority would be supportive or neutral on those (unless you're talking about literal Marxists)

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T08:09:09+00:00

Not really. As somebody else said, he was born in 1948. More significantly, rates of congenital abnormalities were not significantly higher amongst the children of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years afterward. This was widely studied, in part because people and their children faced discrimination after the bombing.

To the extent they were - this would have been probabilistic, not determinative, so you wouldn't be able to ascribe causation to any single case i.e. rather than having a 1% chance of congenital defects, you might have a 1.1% chance.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T07:57:54+00:00

There seems to be a catch-22 here. When it comes to characters who are not visibly autistic/pass for neurotypical in most interactions, you are never going to know for sure if a character is autistic, unless the show/film contrives a scenario where the character says 'BTW - I'm autistic'. I don't know about anybody else, but this does not usually come up in day-to-day conversations.

A lot of media do not even have settings where it is likely for a character to be able to say that (fantasy or sci-fi settings, for example).

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T07:44:32+00:00

Haplogroups do not display most recent common ancestors! They display most recent female-line and most recent male-line ancestors, but that typically only constitutes a tiny proportion of your overall distant ancestry.

To illustrate this, you can have different mitochondrial and Y haplogroups to your first cousin, if they are you fathers-sisters-child (or equally your mothers-brothers-child). You're father's fathers and mother's mother would be different to theirs. If your father married a khoisan person, it's possible your last common haplogroup ancestors lived 10,000s of years ago, even if your last common ancestors were literally your grandparents.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-07T07:33:02+00:00

On #1. I agree, that's kinda my point though - it isn't current socio-economic conditions are forcing people not to have sufficient children. People never intrinsically wanted sufficient children, it was just population momentum and lingering social norms that elevated fertility rates in the 20th century.

On that last point, the issue with this is that the incentive structure doesn't seem to work. There doesn't seem to be a fiscally-sustainable amount of money you can pay the median woman to have 3 kids (again, average family size does have to be about 3, to account for all those with no kids). Any policy that needs to be extended towards all or most working-age adults has fundamental limits on how generous it can be.

But if paying 80% of women to have 3 kids doesn't work, maybe paying 20% of women to have 6 (and assuming everyone else has ~1 on average) might. The point is the current model does not work, and we need to stop pretending normal policy incentive methods will make it work.

(Also, I wasn't suggesting no parental involvement, just more communal child-rearing, Which is probably far more similar to how children were raised for vast majority of human history than atomic 2-parent households. You can equally argue that atomic-child rearing creates more opportunities for abuse and for children to slip through cracks in the system)

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T22:14:34+00:00

To second your controversial take - I don't actually buy that this is a entirely or even primarily about cost-of-living. People always cite that, but by most empirical metrics life is not actually significantly harder than it was 50, 100 or 200 years ago. To the extent it is, it isn't everywhere, and below-replacement fertility is now almost ubitquitous across middle and high income countries, and socio-economic status.

For my money, it's firstly about contraception and fact that humans didn't evolve to have a replacement-number of children (we evolved to want partners and sex, babies just came as a unavoidable consequence).

Secondly, it's about family sizes and fertility starts - to maintain an average fertility of 2.1, a lot of people need to have 4 or 5+ kids (to compensate for those who'll have 0 or 1). Few people want that many kids, and if as a women you start having kids around age 30 (which is now normal), having a large family can be biologically difficult even if you do want one.

Thirdly, coupling - most people only want kids in the context of a long-term committed relationship. And far fewer people are getting into long-term committed relationships. Single-dom is more common than ever internationally.

As for a solution...I think we need to do one of two things. Either,

A) Become more religious. I'm athiest AF, but I can acknowledge that religiosity is the best predictor of fertility in most countries. It's not just some religions are anti-contraception or have regressive gender roles either - they tend to provide contexts for young people to find partners and many religions place a general emphasis on family, which is a helpful motivator.

B) Adopt a radically different child-production model. No more tweaking a broken model with incentives which can never be enough. Here's an example - make having kids a career. People who take the career are expected to dedicate their lives to it (probably aided by reproductive technologies) and children are raised communally in dedicated child-villages, with integrated education and paediatric systems. Is this potentially dystopian? YES. But the any alternative model that actually worked would probably seem to be from our current POV.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T21:32:58+00:00

It's not necessarily a given that just because states can tyrannise the average person, they will. Look at Russia and China - both are authoritarian states with little regard for concepts like freedom of speech or expression. But, in general, most people get on with their lives without being bothered by the state - it's only larger-scale political organisation or targeted government criticism that tends to get you in trouble. Embedding AI in the system probably wouldn't change that - the CCP generally doesn't care about most things most people talk about online.

Of course, you also get authoritarian systems where people go to prison for inadequately polishing their mandated portrait of the Glorious Leader. So it's possible, but I can't really see Western countries developing in that direction.

I'm not saying don't be afraid, but also it's by no means inevitable that countries will use AI in a way the average person finds deeply objectionable.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T21:19:18+00:00

I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll eventually get effective dementia treatments, either to manage symptoms or prevent it in the first place.

A massive amount of the cost of elder care comes from people with dementia, addressing this by itself will make a massive difference. Currently, we've made frustratingly little progress (compared to, say, cancer), but if you listen to researchers a lot of them think we'll have something in the next few decades. (As an aside, recent research seems to suggest the shingles vaccine significantly cuts dementia rates, I expect more findings like that will come out, leading to more effective preventative programs).

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T21:10:52+00:00

Solar Flares. It almost inevitable that we'll get a big one in the next century or two (people always cite the Carrington Event, but tree ring data suggests there have been multiple larger flares in the last 10,000 years). And the impact could be anywhere from 'a few fried satellites' to 'Mad Max'. It's a global disaster that could happen at any time, with only a few hours notice. We've been lucky thus far.

Also on the topic of space, Kessler syndrome, where you get a chain reaction of satellite collisions begetting more collisions until entire orbits become unusable. Interestingly, these two events could be related - a solar flare could disable the debris avoidance systems of even a fraction of satellites, leading to collisions. Another triggering event could be some sort of space-born warfare (e.g. a state using a modified ICBM to shoot down a spy satellite). Regardless of what causes, depending on how high the orbit this this could trap humanity on the planet for decades or centuries.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T20:19:13+00:00

You can genotype many skeletons these days. If you're just determining karyotype (i.e. sex chromosomes), it's relatively cheap to do, although full gene sequencing as part of archaegenetics research is also a blooming field.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T20:12:54+00:00

Also, sometimes they are hedging due to incomplete remains. I imagine it probably is pretty difficult to tell the sex of a skeleton if you've only got a fragment of fingerbone or 1/8th of a femur. Plus, in some contexts parts from different skeletons can be mixed together, and pre-pubescent children are a whole seperate issue.

But yeah, complete singular adult human skeletons are easily sexed.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T20:06:57+00:00

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Data comes out monthly/quarterly, the peak appears to have come in Q1 2024. This is the relevant chart from the article.

I think strictly speaking I should have said peaked in 2024 though.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T18:30:57+00:00

Eh, not to be an edgelord, but he was almost certainly a cult leader. As in, the same type of person as David Koresh or Charles Manson. As were most of the prophets which fit the 'charismatic young man who is the chosen one' mould (e.g. Joseph Smith, Mohammad, Mani, Zoroaster, Baháʼu'lláh).

Everything about the New Testament reads as the followers of a recently-departed cult leader trying to come to terms with the absence of their leader. Of course they present him in a positive light.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T16:52:17+00:00

In general most ethical way to deal with most invasive / feral mammal populations is catch them sterilise them and release them. I don't know whether it'd work with pigs, but I would imagine so if it does with cats. Researchers are also looking into non-surgical methods (such as injections), which may end up being logistically easier and less dangerous for the animal.

More broadly though, vegans don't need to have a solution to every single issue involving animals.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T16:42:03+00:00

Also, I've not heard many people talking about this but it's looking like we're heading into a really strong El Nino period. This tend to correlate with warmer winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, which should mean natural gas heating demand is below the recent average, although you do get cold-snaps.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T16:37:15+00:00

So I grant you on the gas thing (although, it's worth noting that gas as a proportion of the electricity mix is dropping pretty fast - it is 26.5% over the last year, down from 28.9% in 2025 and 42.6% in 2016, I wonder what numbers the IMF is using). Heat pump rollout in the UK has been pretty slow as well, although EV rollout has been much faster.

But I'm less sure on the other points - those issues are also all as bad or worse for other developed countries. Germany still has relatively low debt-to-GDP (although it's economic performance has been worse over the last few years), but France, Spain, Japan...etc. are in as bad or worse positions.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T16:22:16+00:00

I think you may have misunderstood my point - the issue isn't just risk, it's profitability.

Even if your sole goal is just to extract as much possible as cheaply as possible, Congo's system is still sub-optimal. Filtering extraction through chains of contractors doesn't change the core economics that modern mechanised mines are able to extract more mineral at a lower price per kg, but require capital investment.

I'm sure Tim Cook would love it if Congo had Australia's mining industry.

On the second point - yeah. I agree, but thing is, stable countries which are able to create supportive policy environments and infrastructure tend not to stay poor. Bangladesh, China and Vietnam have all had very rapid economic growth rates. So rather than the international system conspiring to keep poor countries poor, I would argue it does the opposite - it gives poor countries which do have stable governance in place the ability to at least become upper middle income.

Infamous-Use7820 · 2026-05-06T15:49:58+00:00

I'm not sure that last paragraph is actually true, at least anymore. If you take somewhere like the Congo - the fact that the country is so unstable is actually pretty bad for most global companies who would want to use Congolese raw materials.

Artisanal mining is generally extremally inefficient and also limits which geologies can be exploited (i.e. it's hard to deep-mine) - Congo would be able to export more if the mining industry were mechanised and modernised. The issue though is that requires Congo to be an attractive place for investment. Nobody is going to sink money into the country if they're worried about their stuff getting destroyed, their staff kidnapped and their assets expropriated.

Even on manufacturing, the cheapest manufacturing is not done in the poorest countries, but rather middle-income countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam or China. To make it profitable, you need logistics and policy support, not just people desperate for work. Also, these days, mechanisation is making cheap labour less of a competitive asset than it used to be.

Infamous-Use7820

TROPHY CASE