I think this post makes a great point. For example, some friends were recently talking about some possible improvements to farming, and they mostly talked in terms of how it would solve specific problems with the current system of industrial agriculture, but had no answers for how it would address the issues already solved by industrial agriculture without risking a backslide to conditions conducive to frequent famine or that would unreasonably raise the cost of food such that people would starve as a result. It’s not that we can’t do better, but it is that doing worse than we do now would have serious consequences and likely result in death and suffering, so it’s important that the improvements we seek are broad improvements, not different trade offs along the same frontier.
I think this post makes a great point. For example, some friends were recently talking about some possible improvements to farming, and they mostly talked in terms of how it would solve specific problems with the current system of industrial agriculture, but had no answers for how it would address the issues already solved by industrial agriculture without risking a backslide to conditions conducive to frequent famine or that would unreasonably raise the cost of food such that people would starve as a result. It’s not that we can’t do better, but it is that doing worse than we do now would have serious consequences and likely result in death and suffering, so it’s important that the improvements we seek are broad improvements, not different trade offs along the same frontier.