I always wonder about the morality questions. This is like a lab experiment for subjective morality.
For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance.
How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown meat until killing animals for food is banned? Is this a generational thing (so older people still consider eating animals to be acceptable, while younger people do not), or is it a country-wide thing (countries move to ban eating animals one by one, driven by a general shift in moral attitude), or what? How does this change in morality propagate through society?
Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then, will that act retroactively and currently-lionised people get cancelled because they are carnivores, even though the current culture that they exist in considers it acceptable?
Will we see clever re-interpretations of religious texts dealing with the eating of animals? Will we get religious divisions between different interpretations? Will some people refuse to accept the general moral stance on eating animals because their religious text says it's acceptable? How does this interaction between objective religious morality and subjective secular morality work?
It's going to be really interesting to watch this unfold.
For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral. This is an extreme stance at the moment (hello PETA) but let's assume it will eventually be accepted as the only moral stance.
How long will it be between the introduction of lab-grown meat until killing animals for food is banned? Is this a generational thing (so older people still consider eating animals to be acceptable, while younger people do not), or is it a country-wide thing (countries move to ban eating animals one by one, driven by a general shift in moral attitude), or what? How does this change in morality propagate through society?
Will we get to the point where statues of now-famous people are pulled down because they ate animals? Assuming some variant of "cancel culture" exists then, will that act retroactively and currently-lionised people get cancelled because they are carnivores, even though the current culture that they exist in considers it acceptable?
Will we see clever re-interpretations of religious texts dealing with the eating of animals? Will we get religious divisions between different interpretations? Will some people refuse to accept the general moral stance on eating animals because their religious text says it's acceptable? How does this interaction between objective religious morality and subjective secular morality work?
It's going to be really interesting to watch this unfold.