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Best approach: Use no poison. An alien may say: This humans seem to be bit insane - they put a lot of poison on their fields where they grow their food in order

Best approach: Use no poison. An alien may say: This humans seem to be bit insane - they put a lot of poison on their fields where they grow their food in order to protect their weak breeded plants against pets while they do everything that this pests have a easy run. Maybe we should search for another planet where the creatures seem to be more sane.

j_m_b 9y ago
> while they do everything that this pests have a easy run Which is exactly why we can produce so much food / acre. Land use would need to go up significantly, and thus the price of food, in order to be able to use "natural" methods of pest control. This would affect developing countries the most.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tankenmate 9y ago
  The article addresses this issue, it says that for soya bean there is no difference between treated seeds and non treated seeds. For corn there is a 2% difference but this was within statistical error for this study. The biggest way to boost crop yield is good quality fertiliser (organic or mineral).
backtoyoujim 9y ago
or sell them more poison.
ferongr 9y ago
An "alien" watching us would understand the nuance of the situation instead of thinking like a children's book caricature.
- abraae 9y ago
  Well perhaps an alien child would assess us like that.
criddell 9y ago
Assuming aliens treat newly discovered populations the same way humans have over the past 200,000 years, that may be a good thing.
schoen 9y ago
The aliens might be equally surprised that many of our medicines are also poisonous to us. Yet (as someone put it to me when describing anti-worm medicine that his dog was taking) they're more poisonous to our pathogens or parasites than they are to us. For example, ivermectin, which that dog was probably taking, is poisonous to mammals but much more poisonous to their parasites, while terbinafine is poisonous to humans but much more poisonous to fungi that infect us. For all of our medicines, we or our doctors have to make a judgment about whether the side effects are worth it for the therapeutic value that we get. If we said that we would never deliberately use any poisonous substances, we might have to throw away most of our pharmacopoeia. You can try to make an argument against pesticides on the basis that their side effects aren't worth it (and I prefer organics myself), but I think the fact that pesticides are "poison" doesn't get you there by itself.

j_m_b 9y ago

> while they do everything that this pests have a easy run Which is exactly why we can produce so much food / acre. Land use would need to go up significantly, and thus the price of food, in order to be able to use "natural" methods of pest control. This would affect developing countries the most.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tankenmate 9y ago
The article addresses this issue, it says that for soya bean there is no difference between treated seeds and non treated seeds. For corn there is a 2% difference but this was within statistical error for this study. The biggest way to boost crop yield is good quality fertiliser (organic or mineral).

backtoyoujim 9y ago

or sell them more poison.

ferongr 9y ago

An "alien" watching us would understand the nuance of the situation instead of thinking like a children's book caricature.

abraae 9y ago
Well perhaps an alien child would assess us like that.

criddell 9y ago

Assuming aliens treat newly discovered populations the same way humans have over the past 200,000 years, that may be a good thing.

schoen 9y ago

The aliens might be equally surprised that many of our medicines are also poisonous to us. Yet (as someone put it to me when describing anti-worm medicine that his dog was taking) they're more poisonous to our pathogens or parasites than they are to us. For example, ivermectin, which that dog was probably taking, is poisonous to mammals but much more poisonous to their parasites, while terbinafine is poisonous to humans but much more poisonous to fungi that infect us. For all of our medicines, we or our doctors have to make a judgment about whether the side effects are worth it for the therapeutic value that we get. If we said that we would never deliberately use any poisonous substances, we might have to throw away most of our pharmacopoeia. You can try to make an argument against pesticides on the basis that their side effects aren't worth it (and I prefer organics myself), but I think the fact that pesticides are "poison" doesn't get you there by itself.