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“Factory farming might spread across the stars” makes narrower assumptions than the view that it won’t. Things like intelligence explosions and the ability to settle space imply the ability to generate way, way higher (selfish) returns to the use of matter and energy than terraforming worlds for meat-humans we’ll never meet.
The factory farming path requires a pathological obsession with maintaining traditions in the face of a vastly wider and more efficient options for how to live. The view doesn’t imagine that future in a realistic way.
I often hear in AI circles that factory farming will inevitably end, so people focused on the long-term future can ignore it. But, as Bentham's Bulldog points out, this assumes 1) cultivated meat is successfully developed and 2) everyone chooses to eat it. If they don’t, factory farming could not only endure on Earth — it could spread into space. There a…
