JubilantJaguar

We can be cynical and nihilist, or we can take a win, however tiny it is.

Let's remember that for the vast majority of the world's people, meat is either a banal feature of everyday life or an expensive luxury and an object of aspiration.

Changing the narrative is going to be hard. The fact that this is even on the agenda at such an international meeting is progress.

Not sure I understand. My point was that fake meats were seen as a great stealth solution. If only the meat was completely realistic, meat lovers would switch to it. Like smoking and electronic cigarettes, basically. No, it was never a solution that would please purist vegans. But personally I just want people to eat less meat, even tech bros if possible. So I was hopeful.

And it turns out it's not enough. Both Impossible and Beyond are tasty and pretty damn realistic, I have tried them. But the revolution did not happen. The cost differential and dropped and doesn't fully explain it. The psychological resistance is just tougher than expected.

This looks like an extremely dense and well-cited summary of the arguments. But I almost marvel at the earnestness of the author, who is obviously just preaching to the choir (as is this post). Because let's be real: the chances of converting a single omnivore to veganism by means of a fact-packed post on a vegan-identifying blog are essentially: nil.

Humans are social much more than they are rational. If we want people to move towards plant-based diets, we are going to have to act on that fact somehow.

Addendum: Again: downvoting does not make hard facts go away. I mean seriously, I find this totally mystifying. What's the point of this discussion space if people just downvote anything that gives them a marginally negative vibe? Are people so insecure that they just come here for confirmation and validation? I don't get it. Personally, I want people to become vegan or at least eat less meat. Do you? If so, then that is going to mean a fact-based discussion about how to do it.

While waiting for it, the air went out of the fake-meat balloon.

To be clear, I do not think this is a good thing.

Addendum: This information is completely relevant. Downvoting inconvenient facts does not make them go away.

Well if it wasn't you then I apologize.

Yes I was about 20 when mobiles took off. But my "rhetoric" wasn't proved wrong or right. It was just my perspective. You can have yours too and that's fine.

Somewhat true if you have anyone left who wants to talk to you by email.

First people stopped using it for socializing, and now it's slowly on the way out for work communication too IME. Not secure enough. Better to use a secure messenger which requires login. And personally I quite like this, assuming the messenger is on the web and requires no software install.

The reality is that the main surviving use case for email is as a notification engine.

By downvoting my comment you're saying you don't care what I have to say. So that's the end of this debate. Good night.

From an Atlantic article yesterday:

Bruno Maçães, a writer and consultant on geopolitics who has served as Portugal’s Europe minister, told me his phone had been ringing constantly since Trump’s election. European business leaders want to know what Trump will do with his second term, and how they can prepare. Maçães was not optimistic. He scoffed at Trump’s decision to create new, lofty-sounding administration posts for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and was baffled by the Silicon Valley types who believe the billionaires will transform the federal government, usher in a new era of unprecedented economic growth, and colonize Mars. “Maybe,” Maçães said. “I don’t know. But if you saw this in another country, you would see it as an acute sign of political decay when billionaires and oligarchy are taking over political policy.”

want to reschedule something on the fly

Yeah it certainly got easier to be late and generally not keep commitments, that's for sure.

I do agree that communication when out and about is a genuine killer feature. It's was the original use case after all. But doomscrolling social media, or banking, or shopping, or playing dumb games, or most of the other things I watch people doing in public - personally I am never going to buy the argument that this is about "convenience". To me it's pretty obvious that it's just addiction and irrational social contagion.

Almost all of these things can be done from a computer, siting in comfort at home. And some of them, i.e. communication, are even more pleasant that way. The supposed convenience of the mobile form factor is mainly a function of habit. I speak from experience, having mostly kicked that habit.

The "emergency" argument is particularly tiring BS IMO. Somehow we managed for all of history until basically yesterday without this functionality and got by just fine.

The fact that technology exists is not in itself a reason to adopt it. If only we would learn this lesson at last. Rant over.

I would prefer that "wrong" people without "proper education" be countered with arguments rather than jeering.

After all, without arguments, who is to say that the person who's wrong is not the one jeering?

To me it reads more as someone who is jaded, cynical, perhaps a bit wounded by other people's attacks on them and projecting their insecurity and frustration about that.

IMO very few people are assholes by nature. If we can create an atmosphere, and tools, that encourage civility, then we will get civility.