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this is: Cultured meat predictions were overly optimistic, published by Neil_Dullaghan on the effective altruism forum.
In a 2021 MotherJones article, Sinduja Rangarajan, Tom Philpott, Allison Esperanza, and Alexis Madrigal compiled and visualized 186 publicly available predictions about timelines for cultured meat (made primarily by cultured meat companies and a handful of researchers). I added 11 additional predictions ACE had collected, and 76 other predictions I found in the course of a forthcoming Rethink Priorities project.
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Of the 273 predictions collected, 84 have resolved - nine resolving correctly, and 75 resolving incorrectly. Additionally, another 40 predictions should resolve at the end of the year and look to be resolving incorrectly. Overall, the state of these predictions suggest very systematic overconfidence. Cultured meat seems to have been perpetually just a few years away since as early as 2010 and this track record plausibly should make us skeptical of future claims from producers that cultured meat is just a few years away.
Here I am presenting the results of predictions that have resolved, keeping in mind they are probably not a representative sample of publicly available predictions, nor assembled from a systematic search. Many of these are so vaguely worded that it’s difficult to resolve them positively or negatively with high confidence. Few offer confidence ratings, so we can’t measure calibration.
Below is the graphic made in the MotherJones article. It is interactive in the original article.
The first sale of a ~70% cultured meat chicken nugget occurred in a restaurant in Singapore on 2020 December 19th for S$23 (~$17 USD) for two nugget dishes at the 1880 private member's club, created by Eat Just at a loss to the company (Update 2021 Oct 15:" 1880 has now stopped offering the chicken nuggets, owing to “delays in production,” but hopes to put them back on menus by the end of the year." (Aronoff, 2021). We have independently tried to acquire the products ourselves from the restaurant and via delivery but have been unsuccessful so far).
65 predictions made on cultured meat being available on the market or in supermarkets specifically can now be resolved. 56 were resolved negatively and in the same direction - overly optimistic (update: the original post said 52). None resolved negatively for being overly pessimistic. These could resolve differently depending on your exact interpretation but I don't think there is an order of magnitude difference in interpretations. The nine that plausibly resolved positively are listed below (I also listed nine randomly chosen predictions that resolved negatively).
In 2010 "At least another five to 10 years will pass, scientists say, before anything like it will be available for public consumption". (A literal reading of this resolves correct, even though one might interpret the meaning as a product will be available soon after ten years)
Mark Post of Maastricht University & Mosa Meat in 2014 stated he “believes a commercially viable cultured meat product is achievable within seven years." (It’s debatable if the Eat Just nugget is commercially viable as it is understood to be sold at a loss for the company).
Peter Verstate of Mosa Meat in 2016 predicted that premium priced cultured products should be available in 5 years (ACE 2017)
Mark Post in 2017 "says he is happy with his product, but is at least three years from selling one" (A literal reading of this resolves correct, even though one might interpret the meaning as a product will be available soon after three years)
Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food Institute in March 2018 predicted “clean-meat products will be available at a high price within two to three years”
Unnamed scientists in December 2018 “say that you can buy it [meat in a labor...
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