I’ve been eating less meat lately for a reason that has nothing directly to do with animal suffering. Rather I have been experimenting with a lifestyle of nutrient powders, aka DIY Soylent, to substitute for meals. The recipe I settled on happened to be vegan, since it uses soy powder as the main protein source. One could substitute whey (the main Soylent is whey based) or meat based protein, however I am thus far happy with the taste and effects of the soy version.
Anyway, I don’t know how widely this practice is likely to spread. It makes remarkable sense to me, and people like me, but perhaps not to the majority. I am attracted to novelty to an above-average degree, and not particularly attached to eating (as long as I can be full/satisfied). The idea that humans can live (not just live, but thrive) on a bit of powder, oil, and water, is somehow fascinating and thrilling—more so than the idea of surviving on lettuce and veggie burgers, which sounds like more of a boring halfway solution. The reports of less sleep / more energy / better cognition (which seem true to my experience so far) also caught my attention—perhaps for the same reasons that transhumanism seems like a good idea.
So maybe when advertising veganism to transhumanists specifically, Soylent / quantified self / powder based diet is a good pitch. Market it as “cyborg food” or something. Yes, animals suffering is bad, we get that… But if we focus on animals suffering, what happens? Lab research gets subjected to a bunch of new regs that slow things down, while the food factories in their arrogance keep cranking away and making us look like idiots. The economics are strongly in favor of the meat industry continuing for as long as people remain attached to their meat products, ensuring that they are the last to go despite doing more harm and less good than labs. And as a transhumanist, I really want the labs to succeed—at least on the important life extension related stuff.
This seems rather a separate issue, especially since you admit that your choice of “cyborg food” only happened to be vegan. You’re an accidental vegan. Next week, you might discover that a powder made from lamb faces had more bio-available iron, and that’d be the end of that.
Unrelated: The Accidental Vegan also sounds like the most boring movie imaginable.
Yes, it is very different, if we are talking about core motivations. The main point of powdered cyborg food is to be cool for transhumanist hacker types (by virtue of being convenient, useful, inexpensive, cognition-boosting, and liberating oneself from the conventional norms and hassles of food dependency), and not to save helpless suffering animals.
However, just because cyborg food is not motivated by animal rights does not mean that it does not serve the interests of animal rights. The main competitors in the cyborg food market are soy and whey, neither of which is flesh based (although some whey contains rennet from calf stomach). Contrast to conventional food, where veggie burgers play second fiddle to aggressively marketed and addicting meat products.
Whether the whey based version is harmful for animal rights is debatable, given its status as a waste product from cheesemaking. Purchasing whey does support the dairy industry, but since we are talking about replacing meals that contain cheese, it could actually reduce demand for cheese and thus reduce milk production overall. Under current market conditions, casein (cheese protein) is more expensive than whey protein, despite representing 80% of the protein content of cow’s milk.
If it were to become a primary food product (as opposed to a niche bodybuilding product), particularly if there was a reduced demand for cheese, I expect that whey protein would become more expensive, and thus would probably be disfavored as a base for cyborg food on grounds of cost. Thus it is probably not straightforwardly analogous to the chicken wing example in Peter’s post.
I’ve been eating less meat lately for a reason that has nothing directly to do with animal suffering. Rather I have been experimenting with a lifestyle of nutrient powders, aka DIY Soylent, to substitute for meals. The recipe I settled on happened to be vegan, since it uses soy powder as the main protein source. One could substitute whey (the main Soylent is whey based) or meat based protein, however I am thus far happy with the taste and effects of the soy version.
Anyway, I don’t know how widely this practice is likely to spread. It makes remarkable sense to me, and people like me, but perhaps not to the majority. I am attracted to novelty to an above-average degree, and not particularly attached to eating (as long as I can be full/satisfied). The idea that humans can live (not just live, but thrive) on a bit of powder, oil, and water, is somehow fascinating and thrilling—more so than the idea of surviving on lettuce and veggie burgers, which sounds like more of a boring halfway solution. The reports of less sleep / more energy / better cognition (which seem true to my experience so far) also caught my attention—perhaps for the same reasons that transhumanism seems like a good idea.
So maybe when advertising veganism to transhumanists specifically, Soylent / quantified self / powder based diet is a good pitch. Market it as “cyborg food” or something. Yes, animals suffering is bad, we get that… But if we focus on animals suffering, what happens? Lab research gets subjected to a bunch of new regs that slow things down, while the food factories in their arrogance keep cranking away and making us look like idiots. The economics are strongly in favor of the meat industry continuing for as long as people remain attached to their meat products, ensuring that they are the last to go despite doing more harm and less good than labs. And as a transhumanist, I really want the labs to succeed—at least on the important life extension related stuff.
This seems rather a separate issue, especially since you admit that your choice of “cyborg food” only happened to be vegan. You’re an accidental vegan. Next week, you might discover that a powder made from lamb faces had more bio-available iron, and that’d be the end of that.
Unrelated: The Accidental Vegan also sounds like the most boring movie imaginable.
Yes, it is very different, if we are talking about core motivations. The main point of powdered cyborg food is to be cool for transhumanist hacker types (by virtue of being convenient, useful, inexpensive, cognition-boosting, and liberating oneself from the conventional norms and hassles of food dependency), and not to save helpless suffering animals.
However, just because cyborg food is not motivated by animal rights does not mean that it does not serve the interests of animal rights. The main competitors in the cyborg food market are soy and whey, neither of which is flesh based (although some whey contains rennet from calf stomach). Contrast to conventional food, where veggie burgers play second fiddle to aggressively marketed and addicting meat products.
Whether the whey based version is harmful for animal rights is debatable, given its status as a waste product from cheesemaking. Purchasing whey does support the dairy industry, but since we are talking about replacing meals that contain cheese, it could actually reduce demand for cheese and thus reduce milk production overall. Under current market conditions, casein (cheese protein) is more expensive than whey protein, despite representing 80% of the protein content of cow’s milk.
If it were to become a primary food product (as opposed to a niche bodybuilding product), particularly if there was a reduced demand for cheese, I expect that whey protein would become more expensive, and thus would probably be disfavored as a base for cyborg food on grounds of cost. Thus it is probably not straightforwardly analogous to the chicken wing example in Peter’s post.