BROADCASTS.com

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/issue-two-of-asterisk

\u2026the new-ish rationalist / effective altruist magazine, is up here. It\u2019s the food issue. I\u2019m not in this one - my unsuitability to have food-related opinions is second only to @eigenrobot\u2019s - but some of my friends are. Articles include:

• The Virtue Of Wonder: Ozy (my ex, blogs at Thing of Things) reviews Martha Nussbaum\u2019s Justice For Animals.

• Beyond Staple Grains: In the ultimate \u201cwhat if good things are bad?\u201d article, economist Prabhu Pingali explains the downsides of the Green Revolution and how scientists and policymakers are trying to mitigate them.

• What I Won\u2019t Eat, by my good friend Georgia Ray (of Eukaryote Writes). I have dinner with Georgia whenever I\u2019m in DC; it\u2019s a less painful experience than this article probably suggests.

• The Health Debates Over Plant-Based Meat, by Jake Eaton (is this nominative determinism?) There\u2019s no ironclad evidence yet that plant-based meat is any better or worse for you than animals, although I take the pro-vegetarian evidence from the Adventist studies a little more seriously than Jake does (see also section 4 here). There\u2019s a prediction market about the question below the article, but it\u2019s not very well-traded yet.

• America Doesn\u2019t Know Tofu, by George Stiffman. This reads like an excerpt from a cultivation novel, except every instance of \u201cmartial arts\u201d has been CTRL-F\u2019d and replaced with \u201ctofu\u201d.

• Read This, Not That, by Stephan Guyenet. I\u2019m a big fan of Stephan\u2019s scientific work (including his book The Hungry Brain), and although I\u2019m allergic to anything framed as \u201cfight misinformation\u201d, I will grudgingly agree that perhaps we should not all eat poison and die.

• Is Cultivated Meat For Real?, by Robert Yaman. I\u2019d heard claims that cultivated (eg vat-grown, animal-cruelty-free) meat will be in stores later this year, and also claims that it\u2019s economically impossible. Which are true? This article says that we\u2019re very far away from cultivated meat that can compete with normal meat on price. But probably you can mix a little cultivated meat with Impossible or Beyond Meat and get something less expensive than the former and tastier than the latter, and applications like these might be enough to support cultivated meat companies until they can solve their technical obstacles.

Plus superforecaster Juan Cambeiro on predicting pandemics, Mike Hinge on feeding the world through nuclear/volcanic winter.