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Ruthlessly optimizing efficiency created the factory farming problem. But in some cases, efficiency gains from tech can have a positive impact on animal welfare. Here Lewis Bollard describes how in-ovo sexing "went from 10 years ago just being a vague idea to today, it's already a third of the... show more

Dwarkesh Podcast

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13,292 views • 11 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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New episode w Lewis Bollard - a deep dive on the surprising economics of the meat industry. 0:00:00 – The astonishing efficiency of factory farming 0:07:18 – It was a mistake making this about diet 0:09:54 – Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year 0:16:16 – Brainless chickens and higher welfare breeds 0:28:21 – $1 can prevent 10 years of animal suffering 0:37:26 – The situation in China and the developing world 0:41:41 – How the meat lobby got a lock on Congress 0:53:23 – Business structure of the meat industry 0:57:42 – Corporate campaigns are underrated Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc (look up Dwarkesh Podcast).

New episode w Lewis Bollard - a deep dive on the surprising economics of the meat industry. 0:00:00 – The astonishing efficiency of factory farming 0:07:18 – It was a mistake making this about diet 0:09:54 – Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year 0:16:16 – Brainless chickens and higher welfare breeds 0:28:21 – $1 can prevent 10 years of animal suffering 0:37:26 – The situation in China and the developing world 0:41:41 – How the meat lobby got a lock on Congress 0:53:23 – Business structure of the meat industry 0:57:42 – Corporate campaigns are underrated Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc (look up Dwarkesh Podcast).

Dwarkesh Patel

240,050 views • 1 year ago

Ending factory farming isn't about making everyone vegetarian. The animal welfare movement made the same mistake as early environmentalists - turning a systems problem into a personal virtue test. No major social reform succeeded by first converting millions to change their habits. They changed the defaults - subsidies, procurement, regulations. You could have more impact on animal welfare while eating a burger than a vegan who believes they are doing their part. Full episode with Lewis Bollard out now!

Ending factory farming isn't about making everyone vegetarian. The animal welfare movement made the same mistake as early environmentalists - turning a systems problem into a personal virtue test. No major social reform succeeded by first converting millions to change their habits. They changed the defaults - subsidies, procurement, regulations. You could have more impact on animal welfare while eating a burger than a vegan who believes they are doing their part. Full episode with Lewis Bollard out now!

Dwarkesh Podcast

15,282 views • 1 year ago

Before I interviewed Lewis Bollard, I had assumed that factory farming was on its way out (especially given new tech like cultivated meat around the corner). Unfortunately this is far from inevitable: factory farms are already incredibly efficient machines for making meat (the most efficient broiler chickens convert 1.38 kg of grain into an astonishing 1 kg of flesh). I'd previously assumed that cultivated meat will soon trounce factory farming just on raw economics. Growing meat around a whole creature and mind cannot be the most efficient way to produce tasty flesh, right? Lewis thinks we may be many decades away (at least) from this outcome. Evolution has spent on the order of tens of millions of years optimizing human intelligence. And in order to try replicating this feat, AGI labs have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Evolution has spent far longer than that (basically the entire time) figuring out how to convert food into meat efficiently. Of course, tech on farms historically has favored more suffering (think gestation crates, battery cages, and overgrown broiler chickens). Improving the conditions on factory farms also requires corporate commitments and regulations against the most cruel practices. Every year we're factory farming about 2% more land animals globally. On the default trajectory, the amount of raw suffering in the world is likely to keep increasing. But there are reasons to think this can change. New technologies like in-ovo sexing have already saved hundreds of millions of male chicks from gruesome fates, with the potential to save billions more. And corporate commitments to go cage-free have already spared well north of 500 million hens from torturous battery cages (again, with the potential to help tens of billions more). Full episode with Lewis Bollard out tomorrow.

Before I interviewed Lewis Bollard, I had assumed that factory farming was on its way out (especially given new tech like cultivated meat around the corner). Unfortunately this is far from inevitable: factory farms are already incredibly efficient machines for making meat (the most efficient broiler chickens convert 1.38 kg of grain into an astonishing 1 kg of flesh). I'd previously assumed that cultivated meat will soon trounce factory farming just on raw economics. Growing meat around a whole creature and mind cannot be the most efficient way to produce tasty flesh, right? Lewis thinks we may be many decades away (at least) from this outcome. Evolution has spent on the order of tens of millions of years optimizing human intelligence. And in order to try replicating this feat, AGI labs have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Evolution has spent far longer than that (basically the entire time) figuring out how to convert food into meat efficiently. Of course, tech on farms historically has favored more suffering (think gestation crates, battery cages, and overgrown broiler chickens). Improving the conditions on factory farms also requires corporate commitments and regulations against the most cruel practices. Every year we're factory farming about 2% more land animals globally. On the default trajectory, the amount of raw suffering in the world is likely to keep increasing. But there are reasons to think this can change. New technologies like in-ovo sexing have already saved hundreds of millions of male chicks from gruesome fates, with the potential to save billions more. And corporate commitments to go cage-free have already spared well north of 500 million hens from torturous battery cages (again, with the potential to help tens of billions more). Full episode with Lewis Bollard out tomorrow.

Dwarkesh Patel

527,777 views • 1 year ago

When an industry optimizes for one metric, it often breaks everything else. In factory farming, this creates compounding suffering. Lewis Bollard explains how trying to solve pig boredom opens a spiral of unintended consequences. “At each step, there is a new solution that can’t solve the fundamental underlying parts of the problem. And sometimes just makes it worse.”

When an industry optimizes for one metric, it often breaks everything else. In factory farming, this creates compounding suffering. Lewis Bollard explains how trying to solve pig boredom opens a spiral of unintended consequences. “At each step, there is a new solution that can’t solve the fundamental underlying parts of the problem. And sometimes just makes it worse.”

Dwarkesh Podcast

16,049 views • 1 year ago

People don’t appreciate how effective corporate campaigns have been on animal welfare. As opposed to policy change (often gets gridlocked by the meat industry) or moonshot cultivated meat tech (might be decades away from being competitive). This is a pro-market story! We can improve the lives of billions of animals by convincing food companies that consumers would prefer them to use meat from farms with marginally more expensive but far lower suffering practices. Lewis Bollard: US has gone from less than 10% cage-free to 47% cage-free. This transition has already spared over 200 million hens A YEAR from these battery cages.”

People don’t appreciate how effective corporate campaigns have been on animal welfare. As opposed to policy change (often gets gridlocked by the meat industry) or moonshot cultivated meat tech (might be decades away from being competitive). This is a pro-market story! We can improve the lives of billions of animals by convincing food companies that consumers would prefer them to use meat from farms with marginally more expensive but far lower suffering practices. Lewis Bollard: US has gone from less than 10% cage-free to 47% cage-free. This transition has already spared over 200 million hens A YEAR from these battery cages.”

Dwarkesh Patel

26,862 views • 1 year ago

"We live in a society where you have to be able to spill milk, you have to be able to make mistakes, and you can apologize for it and move on." Carl Higbie shares his thoughts on a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency being forced to resign from the left.

"We live in a society where you have to be able to spill milk, you have to be able to make mistakes, and you can apologize for it and move on." Carl Higbie shares his thoughts on a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency being forced to resign from the left.

NEWSMAX

61,513 views • 1 year ago

Sharing some thoughts from a second day in Minneapolis — it's hard, but critical, to understand the scale of ICE's presence and the impact it's had on people's day-to-day lives here.

Sharing some thoughts from a second day in Minneapolis — it's hard, but critical, to understand the scale of ICE's presence and the impact it's had on people's day-to-day lives here.

Micah Lasher

13,747 views • 6 months ago

🐂BREAKING: President Trump Takes On The Meat Packer Mafia Raping American Beef / Meat Consumers! In This Key Report Alex Jones Does A Deep Dive On How Four Companies In Just 30 Years Have Created A Virtual Monopoly Over Animal Protein, And How The Cartel Is Facing Destruction, Not Just From Trump's Actions, But From Consumers

🐂BREAKING: President Trump Takes On The Meat Packer Mafia Raping American Beef / Meat Consumers! In This Key Report Alex Jones Does A Deep Dive On How Four Companies In Just 30 Years Have Created A Virtual Monopoly Over Animal Protein, And How The Cartel Is Facing Destruction, Not Just From Trump's Actions, But From Consumers

Alex Jones

68,755 views • 8 months ago

“In just 10 years, Napoleon went from being an unknown artillery officer, to emperor of the largest empire Europe had seen in a thousand years.” Aim higher bro

“In just 10 years, Napoleon went from being an unknown artillery officer, to emperor of the largest empire Europe had seen in a thousand years.” Aim higher bro

DR22 Ω 🪬🎭

111,171 views • 5 months ago

“In just 10 years, Napoleon went from being an unknown artillery officer, to emperor of the largest empire Europe had seen in a thousand years.” Aim higher bro

“In just 10 years, Napoleon went from being an unknown artillery officer, to emperor of the largest empire Europe had seen in a thousand years.” Aim higher bro

DR22 Ω 🪬🎭

154,443 views • 8 months ago

Ackman on finding alpha: "If you have time to pick stocks, invest in a company that's dominant in its industry. It's the best company in its industry. A company that doesn't use a lot of financial leverage, and a business that you believe will be a much bigger business 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now, and a business that's unlikely to be disrupted by, you know, a couple of women in a garage [who] just left Stanford University with some idea."

Ackman on finding alpha: "If you have time to pick stocks, invest in a company that's dominant in its industry. It's the best company in its industry. A company that doesn't use a lot of financial leverage, and a business that you believe will be a much bigger business 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now, and a business that's unlikely to be disrupted by, you know, a couple of women in a garage [who] just left Stanford University with some idea."

CapexAndChill

86,196 views • 16 days ago

If I’m looking for a no BS common sense economic assessment, I can ALWAYS depend on Richard Wolff to deliver. Here he is in a clip from the Robinson’s podcast. There’s a good reason Musk could not deliver cuts to deliver REAL savings and create efficiency in the operation of the federal government. It was already largely operating efficiently. I accept you can always improve efficiency at the margins, but the slash and burn approach Musk took was NEVER about efficiency, it was all about cost savings dressed up as efficiency. The truth is, cost savings simply deliver less efficient services and ultimately increase the cost of delivering them while people reliant on them suffer. 🎥 TikTok -

If I’m looking for a no BS common sense economic assessment, I can ALWAYS depend on Richard Wolff to deliver. Here he is in a clip from the Robinson’s podcast. There’s a good reason Musk could not deliver cuts to deliver REAL savings and create efficiency in the operation of the federal government. It was already largely operating efficiently. I accept you can always improve efficiency at the margins, but the slash and burn approach Musk took was NEVER about efficiency, it was all about cost savings dressed up as efficiency. The truth is, cost savings simply deliver less efficient services and ultimately increase the cost of delivering them while people reliant on them suffer. 🎥 TikTok -

𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰

69,432 views • 1 year ago

“In nine of ten cases where a drug passed… animal tests, it failed in human clinical trials. Where is it acceptable to have a 90 percent failure rate if you’re operating some sort of business model?” Animal Wellness Action President Wayne Pacelle cheers the CDC’s decision to end taxpayer-funded clinical trials on monkeys and explains how it’s not just a win for the animals, but also for the pharmaceutical drug testing industry. Subscribe to OAN Live Here:

“In nine of ten cases where a drug passed… animal tests, it failed in human clinical trials. Where is it acceptable to have a 90 percent failure rate if you’re operating some sort of business model?” Animal Wellness Action President Wayne Pacelle cheers the CDC’s decision to end taxpayer-funded clinical trials on monkeys and explains how it’s not just a win for the animals, but also for the pharmaceutical drug testing industry. Subscribe to OAN Live Here:

One America News

42,628 views • 8 months ago

I’m a conspiracy theorist, but you don’t have to be one to find this suspicious. An egg production factory just went up in flames in Iowa and it just so happens to be a leading egg producer here. He who controls the food, controls the people. Is our food supply under attack?

I’m a conspiracy theorist, but you don’t have to be one to find this suspicious. An egg production factory just went up in flames in Iowa and it just so happens to be a leading egg producer here. He who controls the food, controls the people. Is our food supply under attack?

Gubba Homestead

26,564 views • 4 months ago

It's hard to grasp the scale of factory farming. Lewis Bollard described what he saw at one farm with 200,000 hens in battery cages (each hen crammed together with 4-6 other hens in a space the size of a microwave oven for years on end, unable to even flap their wings). Consider an alternative civilization where factory farming didn't exist. If we had just discovered that there was one farm treating 200,000 animals this way, it would be a moral emergency. But there are about 8 billion caged hens alive globally at any moment. Which means this one farm is literally just 1/40,000th of the suffering. And that's just for egg production. The whole episode isn't so dire - it discusses the science and economics of the meat industry. But I wanted to highlight this point because it is so easy to flinch away, and not notice how big and important this issue really is.

It's hard to grasp the scale of factory farming. Lewis Bollard described what he saw at one farm with 200,000 hens in battery cages (each hen crammed together with 4-6 other hens in a space the size of a microwave oven for years on end, unable to even flap their wings). Consider an alternative civilization where factory farming didn't exist. If we had just discovered that there was one farm treating 200,000 animals this way, it would be a moral emergency. But there are about 8 billion caged hens alive globally at any moment. Which means this one farm is literally just 1/40,000th of the suffering. And that's just for egg production. The whole episode isn't so dire - it discusses the science and economics of the meat industry. But I wanted to highlight this point because it is so easy to flinch away, and not notice how big and important this issue really is.

Dwarkesh Patel

68,084 views • 1 year ago

.DNI Tulsi Gabbard: "It is energizing to see the progress that's already been made in just over a month of the Trump admin. Whether it's the impact that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team are making... and the actions that are being taken immediately to implement the President's policies."

.DNI Tulsi Gabbard: "It is energizing to see the progress that's already been made in just over a month of the Trump admin. Whether it's the impact that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team are making... and the actions that are being taken immediately to implement the President's policies."

Rapid Response 47

145,834 views • 1 year ago

Snippet from our new factory. It's taken 11 years of holding on to a dream. Still a work in progress, but a testament of the greatness that is to come. The Lord continues to be my strength.

Snippet from our new factory. It's taken 11 years of holding on to a dream. Still a work in progress, but a testament of the greatness that is to come. The Lord continues to be my strength.

Chairman AW

221,226 views • 2 years ago

‼️18 supporters of Animal Rising have been charged with burglary and facing up to 10 years in prison for rescuing beagle puppies from a life of torture in animal testing. This means we have the once-in-a-lifetime chance of putting animal testing on trial! 👉 To donate click here: 🐶❤️ #AnimalRescue #EndAnimalTesting #LivesNotLabs #MBRAcres

‼️18 supporters of Animal Rising have been charged with burglary and facing up to 10 years in prison for rescuing beagle puppies from a life of torture in animal testing. This means we have the once-in-a-lifetime chance of putting animal testing on trial! 👉 To donate click here: 🐶❤️ #AnimalRescue #EndAnimalTesting #LivesNotLabs #MBRAcres

Animal Rising

23,198 views • 2 years ago

Jason Cammisa on software-defined vehicles being Tesla’s idea: “The car (Model S) itself that I drove is nearly 10 years old. It drove itself the whole way. Think about that. My e-Golf is a 2019; it left the factory, and it’s static from here on out. But here is this car (Model S) that has evolved and gotten additional features, and it can f**cking drive itself. It pulled into the parking lot. What 10-year-old car in the industry gains features? None. That’s when you start to think this company is just different.” via The Carmudgeon Show:

Jason Cammisa on software-defined vehicles being Tesla’s idea: “The car (Model S) itself that I drove is nearly 10 years old. It drove itself the whole way. Think about that. My e-Golf is a 2019; it left the factory, and it’s static from here on out. But here is this car (Model S) that has evolved and gotten additional features, and it can f**cking drive itself. It pulled into the parking lot. What 10-year-old car in the industry gains features? None. That’s when you start to think this company is just different.” via The Carmudgeon Show:

Sawyer Merritt

149,783 views • 3 months ago