@Gargoylezoo @brwarner I actually addressed that. People would have concerns about something grown in a lab.

An animal bred without a brain would be more natural, ironically. Anencephalic animals are occasionally born.

@Elizafox @brwarner *sigh*. That's probably true. I honestly have very little patience for the whole "natural necessarily equals good" fallacy. It's a cute, convenient heuristic, but more often than not it's wrong. Not saying artificial is necessarily good either, just that things have to be taken case by case.

@Gargoylezoo @brwarner When you deal in value-based judgements you get back illogical arguments as change.

@Elizafox @Gargoylezoo "But about protein?"

@brwarner @Gargoylezoo The biologist in me sees it as an argument about what source of nutrients and protein are we going to use.

Multicellular life is pretty much 80% similar.

You have far more in common with a cabbage than not, genetically speaking.

Ethically, feelings always come into it. I don't know how to process those but in any case we should at least reduce the harm we cause.

@Elizafox @brwarner of we want to go the natural route, then insects are really the way to do it. They can be grown in massively dense settings, have virtually no brain, and are 2-3x as efficient as cows at turning plants into meat.

@Elizafox @Gargoylezoo @brwarner Have you read Jonathan Haidt et al's work on moral disgust? There's a lot of research, but the one that I always remember is when they hypnotized half a group to feel disgust when seeing the word "often", the other half to feel disgust when seeing the word "take", and watched them come up with the most amazingly contrived moral justifications to justify their feeling of disgust.

@amrofnoc @Elizafox @brwarner
I think one of the issues around the whole "natural foods" thing is a bias in perceived motivation of scientists. A lot of people think they're just in it to get rich, but most of them are motivated for the same reasons the organic food people are. They want to see less pesticides, less land use, and healthier food. Most genetic engineering projects are nonprofits.

@amrofnoc @Elizafox @brwarner also, I would love to see that study!

Geez, I'm having to edit for 500 characters now. I'm too verbose.

@Gargoylezoo @Elizafox @brwarner A quick search suggests http://gruberpeplab.com/teaching/psych131_summer2013/documents/Lecture11_WheatleyHaidt2005_DisgustMoralJudgments.pdf though it is also referenced a lot in his writing (along with many other fascinating experiments), which can be more accessible than academic publications (I hate that I still have to rely on Google for finding not-paywalled copies)

@Gargoylezoo @Elizafox What is natural is neither constant nor relevant. I mean, in the end any argument has to appeal to some value system, but there are ones that make a lot more sense to desires of life on earth than that one.