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Let me make my argument absolutely clear then.
The failure of the government to ban some subset of unhealthy foods does not prevent the government from banning other unhealthy foods. The fact that the government has failed to ban trans fats, refined sugar, etc, etc, etc is not an argument that the government should not ban lab grown meat. Making that argument is taking a government that sucks, and claiming it needs to suck more. It's claiming that because the government has done the wrong thing before, it's not allowed to do the right thing now. That's a silly argument.
Yes, I agree that failing to do something useful in the past shouldn't prevent you from doing something useful today, but by that very logic, the government can still ban any number of unhealthy foods if it wanted to.
That's why I don't buy the explanation that the ban on lab-grown meat was motivated by concern for public health, because if that were true, the government would also be banning alcohol, tobacco, sugary drinks, etc. If you want to explain the meat ban in terms of public health concerns, you have to explain why none of the other, much more effective, bans are happening.
Of course, in reality it has nothing to do with public health, but simply waging the culture war. DeSantis is trying to own the libs by banning something that they advocate for. DeSantis himself said as much:
Nowhere does it say that public health concerns were the reason for the ban. Instead, it's all about “fighting the elites” and “saving our beef”. If lab-grown meat was provably more healthy than regular meat, DeSantis would still oppose it for the above reasons.
And of course the whole reasoning is bogus. Having lab-grown meat available as an option does not force anyone to eat it, and it doesn't take away traditional options. The idea that allowing anyone to eat lab-grown meat would result in everyone being forced to eat it is a classic example of a slippery slope fallacy.
It literally does, they literally say that's the goal, I am literally looking at a half-million dollar federal grant right now that talks about using vat meat to "disrupt traditional livestock production in a just and equitable manner" https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_20196702329856_12H3/
I hate lies so much. People telling low effort, stupid lies right to your face and sneering at you for daring to point out they're lying, it makes me so angry I feel like throwing up and smashing things.
Why do you do it? It can't be strategic because the strategy is stupid and ineffective. Do you just enjoy the feeling of gaslighting people? Fucking stop it, because it's poison.
For someone who uses words like “lies” and “literally” quite liberally I'd expect you to stick closer to the truth yourself. The research grant isn't about banning real meat at all. To quote:
So the purpose is literally “to explore and explicate”. Maybe you think there is some more sinister hidden purpose, but if so, it definitely does not literally say that the goal is to remove meat-based options, and if you think that's the actual purpose you will have to make an argument for it. (How annoying! That's much harder than simply calling people liars!)
The part that you are upset about is this:
This is just standard fluff you put in research proposals to make the topic of your research sound super duper important: why should someone pay you USD 500,000 to study a phenomenon if that phenomenon isn't something earthshaking? It's no different from the hundreds of blockchain startups that claimed they were going to disrupt the financial system in order to secure VC funding (spoiler alert: they didn't).
But even taken at face value, “disrupting” traditional livestock production doesn't imply that real meat will be banned. It's easy to imagine a future with 50/50 fake/real meat; that would be pretty disruptive to the agricultural sector, but it still doesn't make real meat unavailable.
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Calm down, and stop ranting at people and accusing them of lying and making bad faith arguments when there is no evidence of this. (The quote you cite as evidence does not say what you claim, and while you can legitimately argue that that's the actual intent, you cannot legitimately claim that anyone who disagrees is gaslighting you).
I will post a thousand quotes saying exactly what they're trying to do. One a day for the next three years, nonstop, until the lying stops or you decide to side with the liars and ban me.
I fucking HATE lying leftists who do the "it's not happening and it's good that it is" trick. They are evil. They are not humans you can have a conversation with because they do nothing but lie and lie and sneer. They should be banned from every community they try to pull that shit in.
You know it too. You've watched it happen over and over again. There is no value in tolerating it.
Feel free to post quotes and argue about what you think they mean, what they say about some group's intentions.
Other people may choose to engage and express a different view. They may think those same quotes do not say what you think they do.
Discuss. Civilly.
If you just start talking about how you want to throw things because people with different reads are lying gaslighters, yes, eventually that will result in you being banned if you can't control yourself and can't cope with dissenting views.
Lies aren't a "dissenting view." They're evil tricks by people who don't believe anything except how they want to manipulate other people.
The mods should ban liars, because right now the community has to self-organize to do it, as with Guesswho. And that kind of shunning, while necessary, also has corrosive effects on discourse. It's much healthier for mods to say "we see how you're lying to manipulate people, we don't allow forcing consensus with lies, you're banned"
A good example: you would ban someone who showed up saying "nobody is trying to take your guns, you stupid paranoid hicks. And anyway there must be something wrong with you if you don't want guns to be banned. Why do you want school shootings so much?" Because the trolling he's trying to pull is fucking obvious and you've seen the same script a thousand times before.
This is exactly the same. Get rid of it, or it makes real discussions impossible, either because the troll is allowed to enforce consensus or the community's immune response shuts it down destructively.
"nobody is trying" is kinda consensus-building, but probably fine. "you stupid paranoid hicks" is an immediate ban because it's needlessly inflammatory.
If, on the other hand, someone comes in and posts "The gun control debate seems pretty absurd to me at this point. I see no evidence that anyone actually wants to confiscate all the guns or shoot all gun owners or whatever, and claims to the contrary seem totally unsupportable. This looks to me like another case where the Red Tribe bought into their own spin so much that they've lost all touch with reality."
...They are totally allowed to do that. I and Gattsuru and about a dozen other people will then bury them under an avalanche of quotes and citations, but we'll have to be civil about it as well. Even when you know the person is arguing in bad faith, even you can't remember when they've argued in good faith, you still have to keep it civil or just stay out of it. This does allow some people to get away with bad behavior long-term, but it makes them work very, very hard for it, and they evidently don't enjoy it much, so that's probably the best we can ask for.
Your way, we're stuck trying to judge who is lying, and that opens up a whole other can of worms. Are they lying if they don't believe in Climate Change? If they don't believe trans women are women? If They think the president is doing a good job?
[EDIT] - The paper you linked is a much, much more persuasive argument than an expression of your emotional state. Just link a couple paragraphs and compare and contrast to the people acting like it isn't happening. That is super-effective rhetoric right there.
I never wrote “nobody is trying” to ban real meat. I'm sure there are some PETA-style militant vegans who'd love to ban real meat, but they are a tiny minority that does not have enough power to enact such a ban, and I don't see a likely scenario where that changes in the near future.
What I did say was:
I've not heard a convincing argument against this, and can't imagine one that doesn't rely on a lot of assumptions and slippery slope type fallacies.
Meanwhile, there is real-world evidence in favor of my claim, in that restaurants already serve vegan and vegetarian options in addition to meat-based options, and this hasn't lead to meat becoming unavailable in general.
If lab-grown meat ever becomes commercially viable (which is a big if) I can see large chains like McDonald's introducing it as a separate option, just like they now offer a plant-based burger. The plant-based option isn't there to force you to eat it. It's there so that if your friend group consists of 9 meat eaters and 1 vegan, you can all go to McDonald's together.
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I did that and they ignored it completely, that's why I decided he was lying. It's like Darwin when he kept gaslighting jkf even after he linked the California law banning ice cars.
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I would ban someone for calling people "stupid paranoid hicks." I would not ban them for claiming "No one is trying to take your guns," even if I think they're wrong and even if I think they're being disingenuous. Which I do not think is the case here - but even if I agreed with you that "People who say vat grown meat isn't an attempt to ban real meat are lying," you're still going to have to argue the issues, not demand that mods ban people who make arguments that cause you emotional distress.
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