The big problem is that there are so many unknowns. If the world situation regarding animal welfare were much better, I feel like a light at the end of the tunnel could be in sight, but at the moment it's too unclear what the most likely or promising future for animals looks like, even in the medium term. Beyond the short-term, the future becomes increasingly difficult to predict, to the point of impossibility. For as much as I've read, I don't think I have any earthly idea whether or not cultured meat can be a viable replacement for meat, or what the time tables would look like if it could. Nor am I certain to what extent a massive change in public opinion regarding veg*anism is possible. Big changes in moral public opinion have happened in the past, but not usually at great personal cost. In addition, animals cannot fight for their own rights the way lower classes or minority human populations were able to, so the mechanism for moral progress might not apply to animal rights. Moral progress itself might be a whig history illusion caused by a brief period of rapid human development that will end at some point. I also have no idea what effect climate change might have on farmed animals in the long term (not to mention wild animals, for which the most promising theories of change are currently total science fiction). That's not even getting into an AI takeover or a communist revolution or a second coming.
That said, if I had to put money on it, my victory condition is cultured meat becoming viable enough to render the personal cost of veganism/invitrotarianism low enough to cause a shift in moral values, the way new technology often alters ideology. I'm very skeptical of the time tables of cultured meat, but simply by Churchill's logic my gut tells me it's gotta win out eventually, unless very bioconservative values permanently win out against both brutal efficiency and animal welfare values.
The big problem is that there are so many unknowns. If the world situation regarding animal welfare were much better, I feel like a light at the end of the tunnel could be in sight, but at the moment it's too unclear what the most likely or promising future for animals looks like, even in the medium term. Beyond the short-term, the future becomes increasingly difficult to predict, to the point of impossibility. For as much as I've read, I don't think I have any earthly idea whether or not cultured meat can be a viable replacement for meat, or what the time tables would look like if it could. Nor am I certain to what extent a massive change in public opinion regarding veg*anism is possible. Big changes in moral public opinion have happened in the past, but not usually at great personal cost. In addition, animals cannot fight for their own rights the way lower classes or minority human populations were able to, so the mechanism for moral progress might not apply to animal rights. Moral progress itself might be a whig history illusion caused by a brief period of rapid human development that will end at some point. I also have no idea what effect climate change might have on farmed animals in the long term (not to mention wild animals, for which the most promising theories of change are currently total science fiction). That's not even getting into an AI takeover or a communist revolution or a second coming.
That said, if I had to put money on it, my victory condition is cultured meat becoming viable enough to render the personal cost of veganism/invitrotarianism low enough to cause a shift in moral values, the way new technology often alters ideology. I'm very skeptical of the time tables of cultured meat, but simply by Churchill's logic my gut tells me it's gotta win out eventually, unless very bioconservative values permanently win out against both brutal efficiency and animal welfare values.