Meat eating is a possibility. I don’t see it being universal, but veganism is on the ride and it makes sense to a lot of people.
It’s just not sustainable. Lab-grown meat is here, it just needs to get to scale, get a bit cheaper and boom. Farming and killing animals for food will be obsolete.
That is, of course, providing it’s sustainable, which at the moment it isn’t.
https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/lab-grown-meat-carbon-footprint-worse-beef
My money is on this one. Once we find a more sustainable way to get meat, and that scales to the globe, whatever that method is, I think the idea of keeping animals only to kill then will quickly be viewed as abhorrent.
Likely won’t be as quick as within 20 years, however. Lots of companies currently making a fortune selling meat who will stand in the way of that.
This is the first thing that came to my mind, too. I’m a omnivore myself and admittedly love my meat, but it’s very bad for the environment and I can’t deny the ethical concerns are there. At the very least, I can see low key vegetarianism being the norm in 20 years, where the norm would simply be to not have meat products, and meat might instead be a more niche diet or simply not the norm.
If lab grown meat manages to become scalable enough, I can also see that nearly completely replacing “real” meat. Once it’s at least as affordable, I think “real” meat’s days would be numbered. It’d become a thing only for purists/elitists/exotic diners. I would even expect that lab grown meat would eventually become cheaper than “real” meat simply because it would be far faster to grow and take fewer resources than to grow an entire animal to adulthood.
As an aside, would labe grown meat be considered vegan? I think it would be since no animal is harmed in the making of it. I imagine many existing vegans wouldn’t want to eat something that tastes like meat, but it would be the thing that converts practically everyone else. I sure don’t see why I’d ever want to eat “real” meat again if I could get a comparable lab grown meat that doesn’t harm animals and is better for the environment. That’s just a win win.
Lab grown meat is grown from cell cultures that were taken from animals that were not capable of consenting to donate these cells.
Hardcore vegans will likely still despise it, but for a lot of less hardcore vegan people it might become an option, especially if marketing hides the origin.
IMHO it’s more important that the carbon footprint of growing cell cultures is bigger than that of growing animals. Unless this changes, lab grown meat is not an option to fight global warming.
This definitely. For ethical or cost-effective reasons. I think price is going to be the main incentive. If its a dollar less a pound for lab grown hamburger and options at fast food outlets - we’ll definitely be there. Real meat will become the new “fancy food” - wasteful and indulgent spending.
When the quality and cost of labgrown meat matches the real thing - we’ll see the tables turn. Especially if they’re able to produce various *cuts^ and styles.
Even beyond that, I wouldn’t underestimate the power of cultural change. From what I can tell, drugs, sex and clearly defined gender identities are all on the decline in the younger generations in the west. I’m not sure there’s any good or clear external force pushing this. I think it’s just change. When it comes to eating meat, it’s pretty easy to start thinking through why you don’t need to do it as much as the typical western diet does, which feels pretty ripe for some form of merely cultural change.
My theory is that drugs, excessive sex and to some extent petty crime are partly a result of boredom for teenagers.
Teenagers today have less reasons to be bored than a generation or two ago. Instead, they’re getting dopamine fixes from social media and gaming.
I’m not sure if that’s related to dieting.
If done right, the cultural climate to change from eating living things to lab grown meat will be as simple as ordering the same dishes at restaurants with substitute ingredients that nobody notices.
And cost. It’s hard to justify a diet change otherwise.
Americans went from eating sheep to cows in the 1800s because cows were cheaper per pound, more resilient to diseases and easier to maintain.
Veganism is popular because it’s still a cost effective diet. Mass farming is compatible with it.
I can easily see “Pepsi Challenge” style ad campaigns where people blindly guess which bite was the real meat - and which one they prefer.
Though, I also see a backlash. In a way that the proliferation of hybrid and electric vehicles created the anti-environmental practice of “coal rolling”, whereas asshats modify their truck engines to produce more pollutants to own the libs.
Traditionally grown meat will go the way of vinyl. Slowly fall out of popularity, then eventually become a status good, popular among aficionados, ignoring its actual inferiority in blind tastings. Calling it now, in 25 years, most US beef will be Kobe style, “we brushed our cows’ hair and sang it lullabies” and differentiated by marketing.
I think basically every single top level comment has zero understanding of what a short time 20 years actually is.
I also expect almost everything that is acceptable today will also still be in 20 years, including nearly every example suggested in this discussion.
The world simply does not change that fast as a general rule.
Completely disagree, but if you haven’t been around for at least a couple of sets of twenty years I can see why you would think this.
Someone else gave a great set of things that were different, but really, twenty years ago was almost completely different in nearly every dimension of life I can remember.
In 2003 not only was gay marriage not legal, gay sex and relationships were illegal where I live, and was punishable by prison time.
In 2003 most of the country wasn’t online, pagers were more common than cell phones, and 3DFX VooDoo graphics cards were still a thing.
In 2003 I used to smoke inside my community college’s cafeteria, where people ate because it was the designated smoking area.
In 2003 minimum wage was $5.15 nationwide, and gas was just a little over a dollar.
In 2003 people didn’t use laptops in school and electronics were confiscated on site, sometimes teachers would ‘lose’ them and you never got it back, and somehow that was an expected outcome - I lost a laser pointer that way.
In 2003 casual homophobia was mainstream, all your friends, and probably you would be making gay jokes, and transphobia was not a concept. I thought transgender people were the same thing as intersex, I didn’t know gender transition was possible.
American society was post 9/11 and highly patriotic, even liberal people were unusually patriotic, and politics were probably the most ‘neutral’ that I’ve ever seen, it was nothing like they are now, but in general things trended towards cultural conservatism.
I remember being an outcast because I didn’t believe in God, and people would casually tell me I was going to go to Hell.
Nah, 20 years is an entirely different cultural paradigm.
I don’t know how old you are but I lived through a completely different experience than you…
I’d been selling and repairing computers for 6+ years by 2003 and had been in the workforce many years before that. I can assure you people were definitely using laptops in schools (as I sold them to them)… Maybe not as ubiquitously as they do now but it was already quite common.
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on how much things have changed since then … Now, if you want to go back 30 or 40 years then I can definitely agree we’ve seen some significant changes.
Hell, the first time I flew out of the country I didn’t even need photo ID much less a passport.
I was in high school in the nineties and no one had a laptop in class, then when I went into community college, things like online classes were a novelty, with a handful of offerings and a large computer lab because most people didn’t have Internet access at home, so you would do your online work there, or at home and bring it to school to upload on a floppy disk.
This was my regional reality, southeast US, but was very much the experience of tens of thousands up until the period of time, 2003, that you’re referring to.
Up until then it was only rich people that had Internet access at home, and most of the people I knew would often lose their lights and phones from their parents not being able to pay for utilities.
Some of my experience is skewed towards poverty because that was the social circle I had, but I still never had the impression that the masses actually had Internet or even laptops at home. Most people did have an offline computer, usually five to eight years old though.
Bro out of that entire list the only one you could contradict was computers, which I definitely don’t remember being widespread 20 years ago, and they were certainly nothing like the computers of today in terms of experience. What about, y’know, the whole gay marriage thing? Seems like a pretty dramatic change you’ve just brushed over.
Most schools didn’t have Wifi in 2003, so it’s not clear what “using laptops” would’ve been. There were computer labs, sure (mostly desktops).
Colleges had ethernet jacks in every desk in improved/modern classrooms (and nothing outside of those). The use of laptops in college was already common, in school - not yet.
Cell phones were already common, but smartphones - not at all. Palm phones were the epitome of “smart phone” - and getting data on/off them was a pain. Many plans still didn’t include unlimited calling. Verizon was innovative with offering unlimited calls to a preselect group of numbers.
Not sure what your point is about having sold and repaired computers for 6+ years before 2003. Sure, computers had been sold for far longer than that. But we are talking about what was (and wasn’t) commonplace.
In 2005 at a top 50 liberal arts school, I was the only person in almost every class I was in using a laptop to take notes. Huge 200 person lectures there were definitely a few, and in later years I still remember being crazy jealous of a woman who had a laptop with a stylus for drawing econ graphs - one set of classes I wrote manually in - but she was a rarity. My notes were always highly sought after for sharing because I’d have 4 pages typed instead of 2 scrawled and not keeping up.
Voodoo cards were largely irrelevant to new buyers by 2001. The Vodoo 5 line was launched in 2000 and wasn’t a terrible value, but then Nvidia launched the GeForce 3 in early 2001 and ate their lunch. 3dfx went defunct in 2002 and their assets were bought up by Nvidia.
But your point is completely valid, culture moves slow even when business and technology don’t.
I think basically every single top level comment has zero understanding of what a short time 20 years actually is.
I also expect almost everything that is acceptable today will also still be in 20 years, including nearly every example suggested in this discussion.
The world simply does not change that fast as a general rule.
In 2003, you could still smoke indoors in many states/countries who have since made it illegal.
In 2003, cannabis and homosexuality was illegal in many more countries than it is now.
In 2003, there were many more TV shows/movies with ingrained sexism than there are now.
In 2003, having hundreds of “online friends” meant you were a social recluse who only spent time on IRC/MSN messenger.
In 2003, if you met a significant other online, you came up with an elaborate story to hide it.
In 2003, most people had a paper map of the streets folded up in their glove compartment.
In 2003, people still remembered phone numbers, phones all had removable batteries, every phone company had a different OS/charging cable, and no phone had a screen >6 inches big.
(cheating a little here, but I would be remiss not to mention this) In 2000, it wasn’t illegal to bring a full water bottle into a plane.
Thanks, but I remember things from 20 years ago and this is an exaggeration in many ways… Or perhaps I should say multiple exaggerations.
Things were far more noticeably different 40+ years ago (which I also remember).
Oh, and for what it’s worth, it’s still not illegal to bring a full water bottle on a plane. You just can’t bring one through security so you have to buy it in the airport after the checkpoints.
Thanks, but I remember things from 20 years ago and this is an exaggeration in many ways… Or perhaps I should say multiple exaggerations.
I remember things from 20 years ago too. Absolutely none of what I said was an exaggeration. Many of these are facts which you can google.
Things were far more noticeably different 40+ years ago (which I also remember).
Sure. Things were way more different 60+ years ago, way way more different 80+ years ago, and way way way more different 100+ years ago. That’s not the point though.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, it’s still not illegal to bring a full water bottle on a plane. You just can’t bring one through security so you have to buy it in the airport after the checkpoints.
Ok, you got me there. I should have said:
(cheating a little here, but I would be remiss not to mention this) In 2000, it wasn’t illegal to bring a full water bottle past airport security.
I know it’s just conventional wisdom, but among those who look back and forward and think about this stuff, it’s been common conventional wisdom for a century that 20 years is an exceedingly long time for change.
I like Bill Gates’ quote the best, “People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.”
Technological change is far different than social change in terms of what’s accepted and what isn’t.
Most of the people commenting to me have gotten caught up in that.
Most of the things people are pointing out in terms of social change in acceptance are things like gay marriage, smoking, and cannabis legalization.
What they fail to understand is that attitudes on many of those social issues can be somewhat cyclical and that the drastic changes they are seeing may be more surface level than as deep as they think.
Consider the overturn of Roe v Wade to understand how some of the shorter term “changes” in what’s socially acceptable may be subject to revert back in the future.
There are absolutely a shit ton of people whose attitudes towards and acceptance of these things have not changed at all in 20 years.
Anyways, I’m not planning on replying to any more comments on this topic at this point.
It’s been done to death.
a lot of the shit in here is just ignorant. I believe a lot will change, but not the shit people are posting. religion?? come on
What do you expect to change with regards to acceptance of religion in the next 20 years?
I don’t think much is going to change about religion. People have been religious for … all of human history and beyond? And they still are. And that comes with all the add-ons: sacrifice and care, bigotry and tribalism, manipulation and lies, false hope and real strength. People will still prostrate before Mecca in 2043 and some people will still mistrust them for it. Swindlers and conmen will still wear the face of spirituality to claim moneyfamepower.
Maybe the one thing that might change, maybe, is homophobia becoming less common in the Abrahamic religions. Maybe. I hope.
How long until the US has its first openly atheist president? There’s elections in 2024, 28, 32, 36, 40, and 44. Up to six new people, or as few as three. The first catholic president was in the 60s and it took 60 more years to elect another, and it still came up as an issue. I don’t know if that much can change about religion in only 20 years.
I think that you are the one who has zero understanding of how fast culture can change. There are a LOT of things that were considered acceptable 20 years ago but aren’t today.
I agree, but we should also remember that time is relative. In under 100 years we went from “holy shit our balsa wood plane flew 250 feet” to “one small step for man”.
Completely disagree, but if you haven’t been around for at least a couple of sets of twenty years I can see why you would think this.
Someone else gave a great set of things that were different, but really, twenty years ago was almost completely different in nearly every dimension of life I can remember.
In 2003 not only was gay marriage not legal, gay sex and relationships were illegal where I live, and was punishable by prison time.
In 2003 most of the country wasn’t online, pagers were more common than cell phones, and 3DFX VooDoo graphics cards were still a thing.
In 2003 I used to smoke inside my community college’s cafeteria, where people ate because it was the designated smoking area.
In 2003 minimum wage was $5.15 nationwide, and gas was just a little over a dollar.
In 2003 people didn’t use laptops in school and electronics were confiscated on site, sometimes teachers would ‘lose’ them and you never got it back, and somehow that was an expected outcome - I lost a laser pointer that way.
In 2003 casual homophobia was mainstream, all your friends, and probably you would be making gay jokes, and transphobia was not a concept. I thought transgender people were the same thing as intersex, I didn’t know gender transition was possible.
American society was post 9/11 and highly patriotic, even liberal people were unusually patriotic, and politics were probably the most ‘neutral’ that I’ve ever seen, it was nothing like they are now, but in general things trended towards cultural conservatism.
I remember being an outcast because I didn’t believe in God, and people would casually tell me I was going to go to Hell.
Nah, 20 years is an entirely different cultural paradigm.
Killing for pleasure.
You say that’s already not acceptable? But I was talking about non-human animals and taste pleasure.
When do you think vegetarianism started? 1990? You’re ignoring thousands of years (at least) of history, bro.
Humans are omnivores. That means we have evolved to be able to eat meat, widening our available sources of sustenance. It doesn’t mean we are evolved to depend on meat.
Is there a single country on this planet that has even brought it up? Hunting and fishing aren’t going away in the lifetime of someone born today m8 I’m sorry.
I really hope making fun of gender pronouns isn’t acceptable in 20 years. My name is Ted Cruz and my pronounce are U.S.A.
Not just super lame boomer jokes but shitting on people who feel invisible and pronouns help them feel recognized as a full person.
Now I second this. As a(n aspiring) comedian, I already feel like jokes about pronouns are only playable in rural shitty areas. Nowhere in the cities does that kind of “silly gay people” humor play. because humor is about punching up, and lgbt individuals are nowhere near being a full accepted part of the human experience. we won’t have full acceptance of lgbt people in 20 years, but hey, pronoun jokes will definitely be reserved for shitty old people.
Thank you for not doing them even if you possibly could get away with it at some shows. Larry the Cable Guy is a millionaire but you know his grandchildren are going to be ashamed of him as they go to college using money made by telling jokes about trans people in bathrooms. It’s easy but it’s wrong and we all know it.
Hopefully, marriage.
Marriage is a stupid idea. Men and women have virtually nothing in common and make terrible partners. Men’s lack of emotional sensitivity makes them incapable of providing a fulfilling relationship. Women don’t have anything like the sex drive of men. At some point women turn off the sex tap, as is their perogative but society simultaneously frowns upon extra martial affairs. Cue brooding resentment. Scientists should hurry up and invent babies in a can or sex robots and solve the pressing problems of male-female relationships. Judeo-Christian values can eat my refuse.
