Chris is the Director of Bryant Research and the Head of Policy at the Alternative Proteins Association. He is a social scientist and an expert on alternative protein markets and marketing. He has published several papers on consumer acceptance, policy, nutritional value, and other social dimensions of cultivated meat, plant-based meat, and fermentation-derived animal product alternatives. He has worked with alternative protein companies and non-profits, including THIS, Formo, Ivy Farm Technologies, Aleph Farms, Wild Type,...
Chris is the Director of Bryant Research and the Head of Policy at the Alternative Proteins Association. He is a social scientist and an expert on alternative protein markets and marketing. He has published several papers on consumer acceptance, policy, nutritional value, and other social dimensions of cultivated meat, plant-based meat, and fermentation-derived animal product alternatives. He has worked with alternative protein companies and non-profits, including THIS, Formo, Ivy Farm Technologies, Aleph Farms, Wild Type, ProVeg International, Mercy For Animals, and the Good Food Institute.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Clips!
00:53 Welcome
02:55 Chris' Intro
- Social science research and analysis helping those "trying to move our food
system away from animals and towards alternatives"
- "Industrial animal farming... one of the biggest utility sinks"
06:46 What's Real?
- Growing up in a "nominally religious" household... "vaguely Christian"
- Turning to #atheism and thinking "what is the answer then... what does matter?"
- An interest in philosophy at university "realised that philosophy was the thing I had been talking about"
- Going #vegetarian
- #effectivealtruism "an incredibly powerful tool... applying empirical evidence to altruistic intentions... trying to come up with the best ways of doing good... given limited resources"
- "I had a good go at #hedonism in the interim though"
- Naturalistic #epistemology and "being willing to be wrong about
things"
- The dangers of unquestioned assumptions
- Crash testing ideas that go against the mainstream (e.g. are "processed" foods really unhealthy?)
- Choosing good sources, doing research and running experiments
- How people form and update beliefs: cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, working backwards to justify what we want to believe or do (e.g. consuming animal products)...
- Even before that: ignorance (not knowing) and neglect / avoidance (not thinking about it)
"Most people have probably never thought about that question [e.g. what % of animals are factory farmed]". "It's important to reach those people [~50%?] with just the reality and the facts"
- Strongly and weakly-held beliefs
- "For some people that's progress... at least they're having to do the mental gymnastics whereas before it had just never occurred to them"
- "The fact that so few people have thought about it should be some kind of weird hope for vegetarians and vegans"
- Push [away from animal products - ethics, environment, health] and pull [towards the alternatives - cheap, healthy, appealing, available] factors. "Really for long time we didn't have very good pull factors... appealing alternatives to offer people."
- Motivated reasoning: "If I lose this argument I'll have to go vegan and only eat beans... but if you can have burgers and nuggets and everything else... I'm not very motivated to try and defend this view any more"
- Social norms & the expectations of others "Not just what I think of veg*ism but what do others think of it"
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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