On Solving for False Premises

An Example Through Impossible Foods

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.

- Bill Mollison.

The number one tendency that I have noticed among technologist friends of mine is the interpretation of world problems in such a way that, almost exclusively, more and better technologies are the solution. This proclivity of my peers towards technological development seems natural; on the one hand, it gives them something to do that feels vitally important — and on the other, technology certainly is to be celebrated for many of the conveniences of the modern world. In days where I more passionately pursued my personal education in software development and robotics, I certainly thought through this same lens. And still today, I deeply respect the power that technological advancements have to shape and better our world. The problem is that too often, we are solving for false premises.

Wikipedia’s definition of a false premise orients this concept well and reads: “a false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of an argument or syllogism.” While this is typically a phrase that may be associated with the fields of logic and philosophy, we can easily replace “proposition” with “modeling assumption” and “argument or syllogism” with “technological product or Silicon Valley startup” — bringing us to a phraseology that more directly connects with the discussion to come.

Such false premises may seem initially inconsequential; if a company or product is truly based on an invalid or untrue foundation, shouldn’t it fail, go bankrupt, and never be heard from again? One would hope this would be the case; however, the difficulty with false premises is that often the subsequent reasoning beyond the introduction of the false premise is logical and correct if we believe the premise. Again drawing from Wikipedia, consider the following sequence of statements:

• If the streets are wet, it has rained recently. (premise)

• The streets are wet. (premise)

• Therefore it has rained recently. (conclusion)

The false premise in this case is that, of course, streets can be wet for many reasons aside from rain — and so, observing wet streets does not necessarily mean that it has recently rained. But if we were to read this series of statements very quickly, not giving adequate attention to that first premise, we may find ourselves agreeing with this conclusion — maybe even elevating it to the realm of the obvious. In the world of corporations, clever marketing and careful presentation of data lull us into believing these false premises.

I believe this happens often in the world of technology and startups and can lead to solutions that exacerbate true problems being heralded as disruptive and revolutionary.

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An Example: Impossible Foods

Establishing the False Premise

Impossible Foods, to me, is a perfect example of a company founded upon a false premise. The tale goes that founder Pat Brown, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, set out to solve the most important problem in the world and landed on eliminating the meat industry. In an interview with Eater, Brown said of this problem, “It very quickly became clear that this is by far not only the biggest environmental threat to the world, it’s the biggest threat potentially to the future of the global ecosystems and human civilization that we’ve ever had.”

Now, Brown is correct to lament the current state of animal agriculture.. Conditions are far too often cruel beyond words and animals are held sometimes hundreds of miles away from where their food is grown. The transportation of this food contributes massively to greenhouse gases through the use of fossil fuels and the farmland on which it is grown is abused through the use of chemicals and over-tilling. While the contribution of cows themselves to greenhouse gases through the emission of methane is largely overstated, waste streams from massive animal holding facilities are often mishandled and can pollute nearby environments significantly.

Armed with this set of facts and a tasty plant-based burger, Brown and Impossible Foods want the world to believe that everyone would be better off without animal agriculture. In the same interview with Eater mentioned above, Brown even goes so far as to say that he would ideally be able to snap his fingers and eliminate the meat industry altogether. Returning to our idea of the premise here, I would sum up the premise behind Impossible Foods as something like “the meat industry as it stands is cruel to animals, bad for the environment due to the land footprint used to grow food for cattle and the fossil fuels used in the transportation of that food — and therefore the best course of action is to eliminate this industry altogether.” In the case of Impossible Foods, their approach to this elimination is direct economic competition; if they can get the average burger eater to prefer their product, they can take down the meat industry. I would agree with this premise up until the point of “and therefore the best course of action is to eliminate this industry altogether.”

The elimination of big meat in its current incarnation is certainly a worthy goal, but taking down animal agriculture for the production of meat altogether could not be more misguided. Indeed, properly managed livestock represent an incredible tool in the fight against climate change. One need not look far to see incredible success stories of the regeneration of soils and ecosystems through intensive management of livestock. Allan Savory’s methods of holistic planned management have shown enormously impressive results in re-greening deserts in various regions of the world. While some scientists dispute Savory’s management style through hypotheticals (these arguments represented in above link), many of those who have visited farms implementing regenerative grazing have recorded measured increases in soil health and carbon sequestration potential. Joel Salatin is another prominent figure in this field, whose world-renowned farm systems heavily utilize animals to regenerate grasslands and consistently improve the state of soils far more quickly that previously thought possible.

These solutions are certainly not a catch-all to the environmental problems facing our world and are not appropriate in all contexts. There is grassland that has always been grassland and there is grassland that was once forest. These distinctions are incredibly important and should impact the ways in which we interact with and guide the ecosystems in which we live. Fundamentally though, we must remember that an estimated 30 million bison once ranged over an enormous portion of North America. These bison traveled in massive closely-grouped herds that remained in constant motion as a result of the constant threat of predation. Their grazing improved native species biodiversity, encouraged vegetative growth and photosynthetic efficiency, ultimately leading to the sequestration of carbon into what became some of the richest soils in America. As notable British agriculturist Sir Albert Howard once said, “Nature never tries to farm without animals” — and for good reason.

While there are efforts underway to recover the bison population in North America, cattle can behave almost identically environmentally if managed correctly and exist in numbers comparable to the historic levels of native bison. So is the right environmental solution to the current state of the meat industry really to snap our fingers and eliminate the only comparable livestock population we have available for our management?

Motivations Behind the Premise

This is where we start to catch wind that perhaps Impossible Foods is not the savior that it appears to be. The company has called regenerative grazing the “clean coal of meat” and is consistently dismissive of real, on-the-ground farmers who have seen measurable results from regenerative practices. Meanwhile, they source mono-cultured pesticide-thirsty GMO soy beans for their burgers that some consumer watch groups have even found to contain glyphosate. Why is this company so ready to embrace GMO technology that is largely unproven and represents an incredible disruption of nature’s true cycles, while simultaneous asserting beyond doubt that nature-inspired regenerative grazing which has improved ecosystems across the world is just the folly of fools?

The over-attachment to technological solutions is one part of this equation. A Stanford biochemist is almost certainly going to be less excited about intellectually simple solutions than complex ones. Regenerative grazing can and has been implemented by people who are illiterate. Where is the glory in that for a bored academic looking for world-wide acclaim? The lab coats at Impossible Foods do not wish to believe that Mother Earth knows what is better for herself than they do.

The more pertinent motivation in this case is an economic one. Simply put, if Impossible Foods can convince the world that their burger is the solution to our problems — and only they can make it — then they will have a technocratic monopoly that only incredibly well-funded competitive scientific endeavors could hope to challenge. Then the company can continue the destruction of the world’s agricultural lands, but the money will flow into their pockets. And they seem just fine with that. They bash regenerative grazing because anyone can do it — and, thus, anyone can take money away from them.

A Better Premise

In my view, the true problem that leads to most of the issues in agriculture today is the over-consolidation of supply chains into a few large companies. Through COVID-19, the issues with companies like Tyson handling outrageous percentages of the meat processing in this country have become clear to much of the public. Products like corn, soy, bananas, berries, and avocados are similarly dominated by a few large suppliers who often are disconnected from farmers and demand yields beyond what sustainable practices can consistently deliver. This leads to farmers having to embrace more technologies — huge machinery, chemical pesticides and herbicides, GMO crops — which consistently have led to the degradation of the world’s farmlands. When the expectation is that a single farmer raises 10,000 cattle or 700 acres of corn to be sold for pennies, it is no surprise that they do so without significant regard for their land. To me, the answer to “how does one person grow 700 acres of corn sustainably” is “one person does not grow 700 acres of corn.”

Impossible Foods wants to pursue an ultra-consolidated supply chain and they have no answer to how to do so sustainably; they want only to point at the other guy and say “he’s worse!” But what happens when Burger King decides they only want to sell Impossible Burgers and now the company needs to source tens of thousands of additional acres of soybeans? Their blind-eye approach to the issues around pesticides and GMOs indicates they will not answer this question in a way that is kind to the earth and will only perpetuate the problems they purport to solve for.

A better premise to address the overall state of agriculture seems to be “no one company or producer should control the supply of food beyond the extent to which they can do so regeneratively.” The scale at which individual actors influence the food system is what drives cost-cutting maneuvers that play out as disastrous outcomes in our ecosystems and communities. More democratic and smaller scale agriculture gives farmers the ability to truly steward the land in their charge and not just sustain the degraded resources available to us now, but regenerate those resources. Livestock management in certain contexts presents an integral tool in pursuing these aims.

Impossible Foods only intends to worsen this state of affairs by creating another global giant demanding more GMO soybeans to create a fundamentally undemocratic product. Unfortunately for Pat Brown, the solutions to the largest problems in the world are not going to be something for which one man can pat himself on the back. But through a widely believed false premise, Brown and Impossible Foods are trying to convince the world otherwise.

I hope this example can be somewhat elucidating in showing how seemingly well-intentioned ideas and products can be misled by false premises into perpetuating the problems they claim to solve. This is only one example in a world rife with them and I encourage the reader to look around and see what others are close at hand.

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Another, more roundabout, false premise that I see in companies everywhere around me is an implicit one. This is the premise that “it is worth contracting the full time labor of X employees to pursue the goal of this company.” In other words, the false premise is that the mission of the company matters enough to have sometimes hundreds or thousands of humans pursuing that mission with a near majority of their waking hours. Here I will not name names, but again I implore the reader to think for themselves. Does that email integration app that saves the user 2 minutes a day really need to benefit from the full-time attention of 300 people? What else could they be doing? How could the world be better for it?

Concluding Note

I do not mean to bash anyone in particular, even though it certainly sometimes comes across that way. But I think the importance of opening ourselves up to see false premises where they guide our thinking demands some level of ardor. Sometimes a true solution requires taking a step backwards even if the technologists within us wish to constantly move forward.