Porn up, rape down.

Let's take a look, shall we...

Perhaps you too are an idiot, but growing meat in a vat represents an exponential improvement over growing it in an animal, because it's vastly more efficient.

O, idiot! What could this mean, other than that you think populations will grow exponentially? Even your sarcastic tone of voice cannot hide your basic misapprehension about future demographics. Not least because you're still going on about increases in population several posts later. Even the other idiots agree with me that in the future, populations will actually be decreasing.

Nice job comparing the earth to a spaceship by the way. As we all know, the international space station ran out of drinking water because the inhabitants were using it all up making leather shoes.

 

Thy mother!

 

Uh, no. They used it up making water-based lube for their unfortunately dry condoms. Those are some horny space travelers.
You're acting like I just looked random shit up, when actually I did that plus look at published research detailing the problem and the worst case scenario. you obviously know how likely someone is to change their habits if nothing has gone wrong the entire time they and every human in history were alive, and may only go wrong in the future. Oh wait, to make a pertinent argument I must successfully relate it to collective past experience, like not ever having a problem with water due to irrigation in the past.
You're right, eventually all of this will change and people will say "Hey, maybe we should slow down on the water thing a bit, huh?" Not until there's a good chance we're already screwed.

 

I just thought I'd acknowledge this little gem.

Your ignorance of ecology is surpassed only by your ignorance of biotechnology.

 

That technology is highly inefficient at this point. We've only just figured out how to keep those grown cells from not turning into cancer, and it's retardedly expensive right now - $1 million for 250 grams of beef. But, with technological growth, it could at least be reduced to twice the cost of butchered chicken, though that cost might be related to packaging. Perfecting this technology would negate the need to support large farms of livestock, as even things like milk and fats could be generated in a similar way. There would need to be some form of electrical stimulation to simulate exercise in the muscle to allow it to grow properly, however, and it naturally would not contain any other aspects of standard meat like bones or fats. Eventually, meat from real livestock could become more expensive, as all we'd really need was to harvest cells from just one animal to conceivably grow billions of pounds of meat. As it doesn't kill or harm the animal, Vegans would no longer be strictly vegetarians, and could also no longer flaunt their superior dietary choices on the rest of us omnivores. A much better place.
The downside is rural farms would completely lose their value. But, I guess that's a small price to pay for cheap beef. Or human, if you still don't want to eat animals. You could donate and grow your own cells so you'd end up eating yourself.

 

Mohammed wept! That's an unhygeinic prospect.

My quibble was with the use of the word 'improvement' and 'efficient' when comparing a vat of undifferentiated cow cells with a living organism.

Whichever way you slice it, Ewww!

 

Since it doesn't feel pain, it's not technically considered alive, even though it would require a flushing system similar to circulation to deliver nutrients reliably and draw out toxins. I think the big hold-up I've got on it is it'll be really, really hard to convince people that cloning organs from your own DNA would be a good idea. On dialysis because you've only got one kidney left and it's almost dead? Grow a fresh one! No immunosuppressants needed! Heart transplant required? Take some cells from your existing heart and grow one identical to it, except not fucked up by shoving ten pizzas down your throat, all with bacon, sausage, cheese, and for some asinine reason eggs, because you think worrying about cholesterol is for pussies. Honestly, though, I think the best idea if you've ogt an incurable disease or injury that you'll probably die from, is to create a body-slug. An exact copy of you, with no memories. Simply download your memories into the new brain and euthanize your old body. Effective immortality. Just like the sequence of Duncan Idahos in Dune! Except, you know, not killed on purpose due to failed assassination attempts on the god-emperor Leto II.

 

Unhygeinic, I say!

I'm perfectly comfortable with stem cells and cannabalism and I'm all for god-emporers with replacable minions too, but too many identical cells laying around, with or without an immune system, would be literally be a recipe for a plague.

The good lord invented sex for a reason: to keep us changing, as evidenced by the amazing lesbian lizards of central australia. They are all female and make themselves pregnant (but they still have lesbian action). Parasites and disease keep them contained, because of the limited genetic variation between generations. The moral of the story? Clones are unhygeinic!

 

He also invented lesbianism, obviously. I'm just wondering what effect it will have to continually kill 99.9% of the bacteria on our cooking surfaces and toilets and hands with bleach or alcohol. Doesn't that mean we're promoting the reproduction of microorganisms resistant to the only thing we know definitely kills them? Seriously, your floor could be covered with a very low estimate of 100,000,000 bacteria, and you're killing 99.9 percent. Doesn't that still mean 100,000 survive? And if allowed to reproduce, they'd be effectively immune to the same stuff we've been using to disinfect surfaces and hands? Eventually we'll end up with super-germs that are immune to everything but fire, which is ridiculous because there are already microorganisms that live in damned volcanoes.

 

Yeah, what would we do with all that spare land? It's almost as if over-population isn't a real problem.

Thy mother!

 

In vitro meat may not be cheap at the moment but hey, nothing is when created for the first time in a laboratory.

Also, I wouldn't worry about microorganisms living in volcanoes. From their point of view, our toilets and kitchens are environments far too extreme to survive in.

 

I was actually speaking of the benefit the farmers who owned the land would get from selling it. Plus, due to the need for greater industry, it would most likely be turned into factories and not housing.

 

Yes, when I say "over-population" I don't mean in the ytzk sense, I mean in the "not enough resources to go around" sense. Obviously there is enough physical room on the planet for 1000 trillion humans or something ridiculous like that. But that's not going to happen anyway, because populations naturally decline once they become prosperous enough. The challenge lies in providing a westernized lifestyle to however many there are (likely between 10 and 20 billion) when the combination of population and consumption reaches its peak.

Given that there is easily enough water and organic matter on the planet to sustain that number of people, and enough energy being beamed onto the planet's surface to do any amount of recycling work imaginable, the problems are mainly technological in nature. i.e. Can we develop solar-powered meat-vat technology in time? Early indications show that the answer is yes. Everything else is just economics. Sure, some people in San Francisco may no longer be able to afford swimming pools and leather shoes, but I doubt they will actually go to war over that. I mean, seriously - war? Over swimming pools and leather shoes? I know human beings are stupid and selfish, but I think we've reached the stage when we're not going to do that.

 

Just don't wear your leather shoes in the pool.