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Why do they call it effective accelerationism? Are they deliberately making fun of effective altruism with that name, or are they using the word "effective" unironically in some way?
George Hotz talks about it here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DdZmZJHEVUc?si=g7z3yB_V_pvqc6-q
To paraphrase: no we aren’t going to give food away, there is just going to be abundant food that’s so cheap that nobody can’t afford it. No don’t start a charity to give away 100 malaria vaccines, start a company to make the malaria vaccines cost $0.01 each and make them abundant.
This is already the case, but now everyone complains about food waste. Can't win!
Food waste you mean carbon sequestration? Do your part, don’t eat that tart!
But seriously is anyone really complaining about food waste? I personally haven’t really heard that.
People complain about it all the time where I live, and it is actually a real environmental issue. I know that I feel bad whenever I waste food, for one. That said it isn't like there are many people championing food waste, so there's not much of a debate.
How is food waste an environmental issue? It's all biodegradable organics.
Modern industrial and petroleum-based agriculture is absurdly wasteful. For every calorie of energy the modern agricultural system produces, 13 calories were spent growing it and distributing it ( https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet - this data is somewhat old but if you have better I'd love to see it ). Historical farming methods tended to have ratios like 1:5-10 as opposed to 13:1, but nobody really notices that we're technically massively less efficient at turning energy into food due to the abundance of energy provided by fossil fuels. We're currently expending those fossil fuels at breakneck speeds, and in many cases using farming methods that contribute to environmental degradation and loss of soil quality as well. It'd be dishonest to just shove those costs into the energy equation, but I think there's a real and serious issue there that a lot of people have spent a lot of time talking about.
Industrial agriculture is actually a tremendously bad deal when you look at the level of raw energy we put into the system and what we get out of it when compared to other options, and food wastage is made worse because the costs of that waste are magnified by the sheer inefficiency of the system that produced it. Sure, an apple you throw away because it had a worm in it or went off isn't that big of a deal, but when that apple was produced by the modern day industrial system of agriculture you're wasting a lot more energy than you were in the past.
Finally, a lot of food is wasted for reasons that a lot of people don't like (corporate profitability, aesthetics, etc). I believe you live in Australia - if you're interested in learning more on that particular aspect, I recommend checking out The War on Waste https://iview.abc.net.au/video/DO1624H001S00
(edited solely for spacing/readability)
According to the chart, the lion's share of this modern energy expense on food is storage, services, transportation and processing. But do we not save energy on the convenience? It makes some sense that we spend more calories on growing food because we use few people and many machines, as opposed to 90% of people plowing their own (or not exactly their own, but details) share of a field. But is the freed manpower accounted for?
Uh, no. We waste copious amounts of food making sure that you can get whatever you want no matter the season/location of origin. "Storage, services, transportation and processing" ARE the convenience!
No. Why would it be? Do you account for how many horses are no longer required to carry people long distances when working out the economics of cars?
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