Thread by @vpostrel

So Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit quoted my post on the reaction to my cultivated meat story. instapundit.com/565338/
Once solidly dynamist, Glenn is now 80% culture warrior. So his reaction is:

"In an ideal world, where we could talk about this sort of thing on its own merits and in a generally good-faith manner — like the world we at least thought we lived in back in the ’90s — things would be different. But we don’t live in that world now."

The comments reinforce that conviction. But if you want to live in a world where ideas are debated on their own merits and in a good-faith manner, you have to behave that way yourself, despite the powerful cultural and economic incentives not to.

In that cause, I would strongly encourage anyone who is in the #synbio business, esp. in consumer-facing products like cultivated meat, to seriously engage with the fear of coercion. Environmentalists don't have a good track record of respecting the choices of ordinary people

who want their toilets to flush and dishwashers to rinse and don't want a compost pile on their kitchen counter. DJT didn't invent these grievances. I experience them regularly in my own home. (Not looking forward to the composting. Not everyone in CA has a backyard, people.)

Get out of your cultural bubbles, where everyone shares your assumptions about food and science and global warming and try to generate excitement about the future in places like Knoxville.
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