4 ms·

I think it's a cognitive reaction to safety. Fear is certainly there due to the unknown. People will retreat to what they feel is safe and easy to understand i.

I think it's a cognitive reaction to safety. Fear is certainly there due to the unknown. People will retreat to what they feel is safe and easy to understand i.e. "natural" food. Little do they know natural food is GMO! The crops that survived today did so by natural genetic mutations for the crops that had the best ability to survive. Humans just took advantage of that fact and sped up the process a bit to our advantage.

Vinnl 8y ago
Of course humans also took it upon themselves to define what "best ability to survive" is. Not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly a difference between GMO and regular evolved food. Edit: Well, thinking about it a bit more, of course selective breeding is humans picking what "best ability to survive" is as well...
- rafiki6 8y ago
  I don't doubt what we decide should survive isn't necessarily what "nature" will decide should survive. If we get to a point where we are in too much conflict with "nature" we will lose most likely. Earth's evolution of life is much longer and stronger than we as a species are. But why not try? It's our imperative as a species to continue doing what's best for our survival.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    I think what people are mostly afraid of is e.g. developing breeds that we cannot control and that drown out other essential species.
tomp 8y ago
This is not a very good argument. You could easily repurpose it to claim that nuclear weapons are nothing to be feared... After all, radioactive uranium and even nuclear reactors happen naturally, humans just optimise the process a bit!
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Nuclear reactors happen(ed) naturally, but weapons-grade uranium/plutonium does not, last I checked.
  - tomp 8y ago
    Obviously, that's why this argument is bad. Natural food happens naturally, GMO doesn't.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      That's not the argument, though. The argument is that we've been genetically modifying our food since the dawn of civilization via selective breeding, to the point where there's no such practical thing as non-GMO food, rendering the anti-GMO efforts fruitless (pun intended). The actual issue with this argument is that there's a pretty big difference between selective breeding (which is leveraging a natural process to artificially encourage or suppress phenotypes) and modern-day genetic modification with more precise gene editing (e.g. with CRISPR or somesuch); the kind of genetic modification being done today is very different from the kind of genetic modification we've been doing for millennia. I guess that's similar to nuclear reactors (natural or otherwise) being very different from nuclear warheads, but the argument ain't about it being natural; it's about it being normal (gene editing ain't quite normal yet) or safe (as far as I know it is, but I'm no expert on the subject). On that note, unless you're out in the wilderness foraging for nuts and berries, the food you eat is almost certainly not "natural" in a strict sense; even without selective breeding, the very concept of agriculture is quite far removed from nature (and I'd argue that selective breeding is a dependency of at least modern agriculture, and probably agriculture in general, prehistoric included).
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Humans have been breeding plants and animals to try to enhance specific traits for a really long time, well before it could be done in a lab. Watermelon was originally called that because it was used as a natural form of canteen. Hundreds of years ago, the inner fruit was not sweet and tasty. It was consumed solely for purposes of hydration. https://assets.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-are-watermelons-from https://assets.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-are-watermelo... https://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9050469/watermelon-breeding-paintings https://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9050469/watermelon-breeding-pa...

Vinnl 8y ago

Of course humans also took it upon themselves to define what "best ability to survive" is. Not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly a difference between GMO and regular evolved food. Edit: Well, thinking about it a bit more, of course selective breeding is humans picking what "best ability to survive" is as well...

rafiki6 8y ago
I don't doubt what we decide should survive isn't necessarily what "nature" will decide should survive. If we get to a point where we are in too much conflict with "nature" we will lose most likely. Earth's evolution of life is much longer and stronger than we as a species are. But why not try? It's our imperative as a species to continue doing what's best for our survival.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I think what people are mostly afraid of is e.g. developing breeds that we cannot control and that drown out other essential species.

tomp 8y ago

This is not a very good argument. You could easily repurpose it to claim that nuclear weapons are nothing to be feared... After all, radioactive uranium and even nuclear reactors happen naturally, humans just optimise the process a bit!

yellowapple 8y ago
Nuclear reactors happen(ed) naturally, but weapons-grade uranium/plutonium does not, last I checked.
- tomp 8y ago
  Obviously, that's why this argument is bad. Natural food happens naturally, GMO doesn't.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    That's not the argument, though. The argument is that we've been genetically modifying our food since the dawn of civilization via selective breeding, to the point where there's no such practical thing as non-GMO food, rendering the anti-GMO efforts fruitless (pun intended). The actual issue with this argument is that there's a pretty big difference between selective breeding (which is leveraging a natural process to artificially encourage or suppress phenotypes) and modern-day genetic modification with more precise gene editing (e.g. with CRISPR or somesuch); the kind of genetic modification being done today is very different from the kind of genetic modification we've been doing for millennia. I guess that's similar to nuclear reactors (natural or otherwise) being very different from nuclear warheads, but the argument ain't about it being natural; it's about it being normal (gene editing ain't quite normal yet) or safe (as far as I know it is, but I'm no expert on the subject). On that note, unless you're out in the wilderness foraging for nuts and berries, the food you eat is almost certainly not "natural" in a strict sense; even without selective breeding, the very concept of agriculture is quite far removed from nature (and I'd argue that selective breeding is a dependency of at least modern agriculture, and probably agriculture in general, prehistoric included).

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Humans have been breeding plants and animals to try to enhance specific traits for a really long time, well before it could be done in a lab. Watermelon was originally called that because it was used as a natural form of canteen. Hundreds of years ago, the inner fruit was not sweet and tasty. It was consumed solely for purposes of hydration. https://assets.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-are-watermelons-from https://assets.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-are-watermelo... https://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9050469/watermelon-breeding-paintings https://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9050469/watermelon-breeding-pa...