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'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist mulls 'taboo against cannibalism' ending as lab-grown meat improves
What if human meat is grown? Could we overcome our taboo against cannibalism?"
- @RichardDawkins - 6:15 AM - 3 Mar 2018
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/969939225180364805
https://archive.fo/kSmgi
"Lab-grown 'clean' meat could be on sale by end of 2018, says producer"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/clean-meat-lab-grown-available-restaurants-2018-global-warming-greenhouse-emissions-a8236676.html
"'Soylent' Dawkins? Atheist mulls 'taboo against cannibalism' ending as lab-grown meat improves"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/6/richard-dawkins-mulls-taboo-against-cannibalism-en/
and:
https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/corner/richard-dawkins-eating-human-meat-cannibalism-taboo/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 10 2018, @06:15AM (4 children)
If you read the article you linked to, you'll learn that at least for this cannibal, the killing part was an integral part of his fantasy, so lab-grown human meat would certainly not have satisfied him.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 10 2018, @07:24AM (3 children)
Key words being "this cannibal" and "fantasy". They could play pretend, but with human meat. I linked that case to show that cannibalism is still happening these days, making headlines, despite an abundance of calories, and because in that case, the cannibal apparently only killed the "victim" because it was consensual. For every one extreme "ethical" cannibal that wants to end someone else's life, there are probably a larger number of others who would settle for eating a non-criminal amount of someone else's flesh, and even more who would readily jump at the opportunity to try lab-grown human flesh. And of course, some plain folks would try lab-grown human meat just so they could say they did.
We could say there are opportunistic, homicidal, situational, etc. cannibals. Is lab-grown human flesh a gateway to cannibalistic murder? Or a way to control the urge the kill? Why can't cannibals just eat some raw pork instead of lab-grown human meat to get their jollies off? Maybe because even though they would know the experience is synthetic and without a victim, just knowing the flesh has an authentic taste and is genetically human can fulfill the desire for the "forbidden fruit".
And you can apply everything above to "vampires" as well. I can see it now: an entrepreneurial biohacker creates a synthetic "True Blood" that can be safely imbibed by sanguinarians [wikipedia.org] without giving them AIDS or something, and sells it for a tidy profit. I'm thinking $250 a pint. Beats peddling kombucha or cold-brewed coffee, as long as you can reach enough customers on etsy or patreon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @06:25PM (2 children)
It still happens, but why would this be any different from rape? Anybody who would make use of the pretend version already is. Humans probably taste like pork or chicken, but there's not very many folks out there willing to say and few are willing to try.
There are folks that do enjoy role playing rape, it's a very different situation. Same goes for people that are willing to pretend to be eating people, there's no reason to use meat that's got human DNA as you're probably not going to be able to tell the difference without a DNA test.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 10 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)
Like a placebo effect, except that knowing it's real could make it more effective in satisfying the fetish.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10 2018, @09:25PM
No. Some people just need to be locked up.