6 ms·

Of course they did. Anyone on the internet about a year - 2 years ago remembers every time you mentioned monsanto they would send shills in to defend them and

Of course they did. Anyone on the internet about a year - 2 years ago remembers every time you mentioned monsanto they would send shills in to defend them and call you a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.

kfriede 9y ago
To be fair, I think a good portion of those 'shills' were organic (no pun intended). To this day, a lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob and have a large community of people who dislike them.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob It's worth noting that having such groups is a commonly used counter intelligence tactic: create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. An effective astroturf campaign calls for both pro-x and anti-x shills.
  - nerpderp83 9y ago
    If anyone was in a place to make a Strawman, it would be Monsanto.
    - Laforet 9y ago
      Sometime it feels like Monsanto is the strawman for the entire biotech industry.
  - eip 9y ago
    > create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. See flat earth as an obvious example of this.
  - imcoconut 9y ago
    Wow, i never considered this but it makes sense and i imagine is very effective. Do you know of any well documented cases of this (though by its nature, any case of this is probably not well documented)?
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
themgt 9y ago
It's been really frustrating trying to have any nuanced stance on GMOs with proponents doing the "durr all modern crops are genetically modified by human selection" and such. Like no shit, it is still possible to acknowledge that and believe that there are legitimate concerns about intellectual property, or with modifying a crop to be resistant to a carcinogenic poison farmers are going to dump all over it. A lot of the pro-GMO people seem to argue in really bad faith if they're not paid shills.
- bllguo 9y ago
  I'd probably blame the fanatic GMO opponents first, who can typically be refuted by the simple arguments you mock. Unfortunately nuance and middle ground are hard to come by online. And it doesn't help when you dismiss all GMO proponents as paid shills.
- vbuwivbiu 9y ago
  Exactly this. Every thread on GM quickly polarizes into useless for and against sides, when we need to be selective about it. And I've never bought the characterization of breeding/selection as a form of GM. Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. With GM we can write arbitrary binary strings of code into any organism. That's simply not comparable with breeding -- the space of realizable phenotypes is orders of magnitude larger with GM.
  - Laforet 9y ago
    Modern breeding involves actively mutating known species with DNA-altering chemical mutagen and ionising radiation. Think fuzzing vs. static code analysis, which one would you do first when it comes to debugging? >Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. The truth is probably closer to the opposite of this: most GM species in the pipeline are rather unimaginative ones improving one phenotype at a time, and the vast majority of them focus on pest or herbicide resistance. There is a couple of near commercial crops aimed at improving nutritional content such as golden rice and high-lysine corn, but they are more exceptions than the rule. The kind of totally disruptive GM e.g. introduce C3 photosynthesis in C4 plants, has not left the drawing board yet for a good reason.

kfriede 9y ago

To be fair, I think a good portion of those 'shills' were organic (no pun intended). To this day, a lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob and have a large community of people who dislike them.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob It's worth noting that having such groups is a commonly used counter intelligence tactic: create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. An effective astroturf campaign calls for both pro-x and anti-x shills.
- nerpderp83 9y ago
  If anyone was in a place to make a Strawman, it would be Monsanto.
  - Laforet 9y ago
    Sometime it feels like Monsanto is the strawman for the entire biotech industry.
- eip 9y ago
  > create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. See flat earth as an obvious example of this.
- imcoconut 9y ago
  Wow, i never considered this but it makes sense and i imagine is very effective. Do you know of any well documented cases of this (though by its nature, any case of this is probably not well documented)?
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

themgt 9y ago

It's been really frustrating trying to have any nuanced stance on GMOs with proponents doing the "durr all modern crops are genetically modified by human selection" and such. Like no shit, it is still possible to acknowledge that and believe that there are legitimate concerns about intellectual property, or with modifying a crop to be resistant to a carcinogenic poison farmers are going to dump all over it. A lot of the pro-GMO people seem to argue in really bad faith if they're not paid shills.

bllguo 9y ago
I'd probably blame the fanatic GMO opponents first, who can typically be refuted by the simple arguments you mock. Unfortunately nuance and middle ground are hard to come by online. And it doesn't help when you dismiss all GMO proponents as paid shills.
vbuwivbiu 9y ago
Exactly this. Every thread on GM quickly polarizes into useless for and against sides, when we need to be selective about it. And I've never bought the characterization of breeding/selection as a form of GM. Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. With GM we can write arbitrary binary strings of code into any organism. That's simply not comparable with breeding -- the space of realizable phenotypes is orders of magnitude larger with GM.
- Laforet 9y ago
  Modern breeding involves actively mutating known species with DNA-altering chemical mutagen and ionising radiation. Think fuzzing vs. static code analysis, which one would you do first when it comes to debugging? >Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. The truth is probably closer to the opposite of this: most GM species in the pipeline are rather unimaginative ones improving one phenotype at a time, and the vast majority of them focus on pest or herbicide resistance. There is a couple of near commercial crops aimed at improving nutritional content such as golden rice and high-lysine corn, but they are more exceptions than the rule. The kind of totally disruptive GM e.g. introduce C3 photosynthesis in C4 plants, has not left the drawing board yet for a good reason.