15: "Let's end humanity's war on the rest of the planet" - Better Meat CEO & Hall of Famer Paul Shapiro - Sentientist Conversations

Paul Shapiro https://twitter.com/PaulHShapiro is the author of the national bestseller "Clean Meat": https://cleanmeat.com/. He's also the CEO of The Better Meat Co. https://www.bettermeat.co/, a four-time TEDx speaker, host of the Business for Good Podcast https://www.businessforgoodpodcast.com/ & inductee in the Animal Rights Hall of Fame. 

In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is "evidence, commitment and compassion for all sentient beings." https://sentientism.info/

Our conversation is also on our YouTube channel - subscribe there too! https://youtu.be/8oupdUTrS18

We discuss:

- Being fellow "sents" (thanks AJ Jacobs!)

- Advocating Sentientism before hearing the term

- Vegetarian then vegan at 13 in 1993 (despite thinking it would lead to death...)

- Carl Lewis as an inspirational vegan

- Volunteering in animal protection as a teenager

- "Trying to end humanity's war on the rest of the planet"

- Founding Compassion over Killing at high-school & taking it national

- https://www.humanesociety.org/

- Paul's "Clean Meat" book - how food tech might do the most good

- Easier to act our way into a new way of thinking than to think our way into a new way of acting. Making unethical practices obselete

- Ending slavery as a lesson in social change

- Founding The Better Meat Co

- Jewish upbringing & identity

- "Even if you question the supernatural they don't kick you out"

- An animal conscious family. Rescue dogs as family members (now Eddie https://www.instagram.com/eddiethepittie.)

- Switching to take the perspective of non-humans + standing up to "frog baseball"

- Compassion as a moral foundation

- Being kicked out of Hebrew class for asking why god would ask for sacrifices

- The rich tradition of animal compassion/veg*nism within Judaism

- Israel as the #2 most vegan country

- Utilitarianism & Peter Singer - "anti suffering & pro happiness"

- Loving kindness meditation

- Aspiring to The Paradoxical Commandments

- Evolution isn't perfectly driven towards truth or rationality

- Groups can socially reward individual faith in fictions. Some delusions can be useful

- Humility at the heart of naturalism & science. Being OK not knowing

- The confidence that can come with ignorance

- Leaving the world a better place

- Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good

- The ethical inertia of social norms & traditions

- The Honour Code http://appiah.net/books/the-honor-code/

- Animal farming will be condemned by future generations

- Consistent US voting against poor farming practices. Need that codified into law & corporate policy

- Cost reduction pressure worsens farm conditions

- Tech can render exploitative practices obselete (like cars re: horses, kerosene re: whales, pens vs. quills)

- Fast, cheap, easy alternatives likely to reduce more suffering than ethics

- It's hard to condemn a system you're still part of

- The moral argument has already been won re: ending animal farming

- People buy food mainly because of price, taste, convenience (not ethics or env.)

- Business for Good vs. ending capitalism? Purpose and/or profit?