Thread by @robfordmancs

Good article. Tom's right that the idea of "noble suffering" is probably one reason people don't like quick fixes, but I think another is that people often enjoy feeling superior to others. Make e.g. getting thin or quitting meat easier takes one route to that away.

https://twitter.com/TomChivers/status/1440229232794238982

Status seeking is a pretty universal behaviour, but in its pure form is usually seen as negative. The attraction of difficult but virtuous causes to status seekers is thus obvious - they get the kick of feeling superior but with a useful moral justification.

This is less charitable than Tom's "noble suffering" mechanism but it also has different implications - on Tom's account, if you convince people that it is not the thing itself (burgers, flying) that is bad but its effects, their opposition disappears.

But if instead the opposition is motivated by a desire for status, then such arguments aren't likely to work - in fact status seekers will be *more* threatened the easier it is to take away the harmful effects of the behaviours they ostentatiously oppose

Tom says "Let me have my burger". But what if feeling superior to Tom, eating his burger, is someone else's virtueburger? Then letting him have his burger isn't enough. The burger has to be *bad* or they don't feel superior.

See for example this quote in @Sam_Dumitriu 's blog on same topic:

"If we simply stopped eating meat, or ate it far less often, then there would be no need for...meat grown in a lab. The cultured meat industry rests on a view of human beings as greedy and incapable of change.”

@Sam_Dumitriu That was from Jenny Kleeman, an exemplar of the "techn fixes are bad" worldview. An alternative framing would be "Opposition to cultured meat rests on a view of human beings who eat meat as less virtuous than Jenny Kleeman. They could be like Jenny Kleeman but choose not to be."

@Sam_Dumitriu Here's Sam's blog: samdumitriu.substack.com/p/technical-fi…