Cultured meat doesn’t seem like a ‘science fiction intervention’ to me. It’s true that it has appeared in several works of science fiction, but it is also being actively developed by several labs and companies, with prototypes having already been made—for more detail on both halves of this sentence, see the Wikipedia page.
Regardless, it seems really weird to me that being in a science fiction novel is a critique of a new idea. If I think about intellectual work happening in the past 30 years that has the potential to be the most important work, I think about superintelligence, uploads, nanotech, the fermi paradox, making humanity interplanetary, and a bunch of other ideas who could have happily been critiqued as ‘from science fiction’ when first examined.
Could we grow animals that desire to be eaten, or perhaps don’t feel pain? I recall many years ago in Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show On Earth about wild wolves that became incredibly tame and underwent massive morphological changes in just a few generations of pure artificial selection. I’m not sure what traits you’d select on for animals in factory farms, but it’s an interesting idea.
(Edit: In case it’s not clear, I’m responding to the top-level comment’s initial criticism, not DanieFilan’s point. I probably should’ve just replied directly, it was just after reading Daniel’s comment that I thought up my comment.)
The following question seems interesting: Of the technological advances that have made a substantial difference to the world since the time when science fiction first emerged as a genre, what fraction (weighted by impact, if you like) appeared in science fiction before they became fact, and how closely did the reality resemble the fiction?
Yes. That might actually be a better question—except that the actually-relevant population is presumably something like “technologies introduced in science fiction that seemed like they might actually be possible in the not-outrageously-far future”.
I’m aware that there are labs that claim to have produced prototype lab meat, at enormous expense. This is some evidence that lab meat is feasible at scale, but mass-produced lab meat is still something in the future, not the present, and therefore to some extent inherently speculative.
Cold fusion enjoys similar status, as did until recently the EmDrive. Some such ventures work out; others don’t.
I would agree that cultured meat is “to some extent inherently speculative”. What I’m reacting to is your assertion that it’s science fiction in the same way that the Ameglian Major Cow is science fiction. I think that it is both significantly less speculative than the prospect of making an Ameglian Major Cow, and also not “science fiction” as most people would understand the term.
I agree that there’s a difference in degree. But, the difference between a more and less highly speculative technology is not really the distinction “literally science fiction” implies, and it’s important to call out things like that even if there is some other, more valid argument the person could or should have made. I agree that some of the examples, especially the Ameglian Major Cow, were much more speculative than lab-grown meat. On the other hand, administering opioids to factory farmed animals may be substantially less speculative.
First, I agree that administering opioids to farmed animals is less speculative than cheap mass-produced cultured meat, i.e. lab meat, but I don’t think that that’s relevant to the conversation, since it wasn’t what tommsittler was referring to by “literally science fiction”.
I think you’re saying something like <<Because lab meat doesn’t yet exist, it’s highly speculative technology, and therefore you shouldn’t distinguish it from the Ameglian Major Cow by calling the Amegilan Major Cow “literally science fiction”, even though the Ameglian Major Cow is much more speculative than lab meat—if the Ameglian Major Cow is “science fiction”, then so is lab meat, which is why it makes sense to say “2 objects to the OP using an example from science fiction, and immediately goes on to propose a science fiction intervention”>>. I’m not sure this is right, so please correct me if it’s wrong.
My response is that the degree in how speculative the technologies are is in fact relevant: there exists a prototype for one and not the other, it’s easier to see how you would make one than the other, and one seems to be higher esteemed than domain experts (this last factor maybe isn’t crucial, but does seem relevant especially for those of us like me who don’t have domain expertise), and these differences make one a relevantly safer bet than the other. These differences are evidenced by the fact that one has mostly been developed in a soft science fiction series, and one is the subject of active research and development. As such, it makes sense to call the Ameglian Major Cow “literally science fiction” and it does not make sense to call lab meat “science fiction”.
Cultured meat doesn’t seem like a ‘science fiction intervention’ to me. It’s true that it has appeared in several works of science fiction, but it is also being actively developed by several labs and companies, with prototypes having already been made—for more detail on both halves of this sentence, see the Wikipedia page.
Regardless, it seems really weird to me that being in a science fiction novel is a critique of a new idea. If I think about intellectual work happening in the past 30 years that has the potential to be the most important work, I think about superintelligence, uploads, nanotech, the fermi paradox, making humanity interplanetary, and a bunch of other ideas who could have happily been critiqued as ‘from science fiction’ when first examined.
Could we grow animals that desire to be eaten, or perhaps don’t feel pain? I recall many years ago in Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show On Earth about wild wolves that became incredibly tame and underwent massive morphological changes in just a few generations of pure artificial selection. I’m not sure what traits you’d select on for animals in factory farms, but it’s an interesting idea.
(Edit: In case it’s not clear, I’m responding to the top-level comment’s initial criticism, not DanieFilan’s point. I probably should’ve just replied directly, it was just after reading Daniel’s comment that I thought up my comment.)
The following question seems interesting: Of the technological advances that have made a substantial difference to the world since the time when science fiction first emerged as a genre, what fraction (weighted by impact, if you like) appeared in science fiction before they became fact, and how closely did the reality resemble the fiction?
Of course, it’s also important to consider the fraction of technologies introduced in science fiction that then came into existence.
Yes. That might actually be a better question—except that the actually-relevant population is presumably something like “technologies introduced in science fiction that seemed like they might actually be possible in the not-outrageously-far future”.
I’m aware that there are labs that claim to have produced prototype lab meat, at enormous expense. This is some evidence that lab meat is feasible at scale, but mass-produced lab meat is still something in the future, not the present, and therefore to some extent inherently speculative.
Cold fusion enjoys similar status, as did until recently the EmDrive. Some such ventures work out; others don’t.
I would agree that cultured meat is “to some extent inherently speculative”. What I’m reacting to is your assertion that it’s science fiction in the same way that the Ameglian Major Cow is science fiction. I think that it is both significantly less speculative than the prospect of making an Ameglian Major Cow, and also not “science fiction” as most people would understand the term.
I agree that there’s a difference in degree. But, the difference between a more and less highly speculative technology is not really the distinction “literally science fiction” implies, and it’s important to call out things like that even if there is some other, more valid argument the person could or should have made. I agree that some of the examples, especially the Ameglian Major Cow, were much more speculative than lab-grown meat. On the other hand, administering opioids to factory farmed animals may be substantially less speculative.
First, I agree that administering opioids to farmed animals is less speculative than cheap mass-produced cultured meat, i.e. lab meat, but I don’t think that that’s relevant to the conversation, since it wasn’t what tommsittler was referring to by “literally science fiction”.
I think you’re saying something like <<Because lab meat doesn’t yet exist, it’s highly speculative technology, and therefore you shouldn’t distinguish it from the Ameglian Major Cow by calling the Amegilan Major Cow “literally science fiction”, even though the Ameglian Major Cow is much more speculative than lab meat—if the Ameglian Major Cow is “science fiction”, then so is lab meat, which is why it makes sense to say “2 objects to the OP using an example from science fiction, and immediately goes on to propose a science fiction intervention”>>. I’m not sure this is right, so please correct me if it’s wrong.
My response is that the degree in how speculative the technologies are is in fact relevant: there exists a prototype for one and not the other, it’s easier to see how you would make one than the other, and one seems to be higher esteemed than domain experts (this last factor maybe isn’t crucial, but does seem relevant especially for those of us like me who don’t have domain expertise), and these differences make one a relevantly safer bet than the other. These differences are evidenced by the fact that one has mostly been developed in a soft science fiction series, and one is the subject of active research and development. As such, it makes sense to call the Ameglian Major Cow “literally science fiction” and it does not make sense to call lab meat “science fiction”.