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This clearly shows that you cannot believe companies when they say that there pesticides/GMOs/etc... are "safe". You can only see this when enough population i

This clearly shows that you cannot believe companies when they say that there pesticides/GMOs/etc... are "safe". You can only see this when enough population is affected, by then it might be too late. To assume that this applied to human food is not poisonous is also a fallacy: you cannot say "yeah we fed humans for 3 months with this food and they are still ok". The human body is extremely resilient, so obviously nothing bad will happen in 3 months. But accumulate this shit for many years and bad things will happen, you also can't know how it affects children. Scientists and companies are arrogant, they don't understand that interactions in a complex system cannot be predicted, it is NOT POSSIBLE TO PREDICT THEM, no matter how low your p-value goes.

ChrisLomont 6y ago
Despite what Salon implies, neonicotinoids are not believed by the scientific community as the cause of colony collapse disorder. It may be a factor, but even that is still not completely known. "A large amount of speculation has surrounded the contributions of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides to CCD, but many collapsing apiaries show no trace of neonicotinoids." [1] >To assume that this applied to human food is not poisonous is also a fallacy: you cannot say "yeah we fed humans for 3 months with this food and they are still ok". GMOs and pesticides are used to enable large scale food production to feed the planet. We do know that people without food for 3 months die. The vast majority of what you're complaining about is about tradeoffs between known and absolute downsides and trying to reduce them. > , it is NOT POSSIBLE TO PREDICT THEM Not predicting all outcomes to 100% does not mean mankind cannot predict vastly widespread outcomes with very high liklihood. So it is possible to predict them, just like every science, with very good error bounds and certainty. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder
- rbecker 6y ago
  > many collapsing apiaries show no trace of neonicotinoids. And 'many' (notice the weasel word) car crashes are caused by drivers that show no trace of inebriation. More to the point: "Most academic and governmental bodies agree that neonicotinoids have had a negative influence on bee populations.": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid As for GMOs, they may well be safe (for consumption, let's ignore any invasive-species like effects, or toxicity to insects, or the potentially catastrophic combination of both...), but is our incentive structure ready for them? So far corporations are limited in how much they can tinker with food, but once they have the ability, what are we more likely to get - vitamin-enhanced rice, or vegetables that are as healthy and addictive as Twinkies? And what will the effect on food sovereignty be, when the only way to compete is with GMOs, control of which is concentrated in at most a handful of global companies? As for the common "well how is GMO different from selective breeding done since antiquity?" objection, it's different in one very important way - in the evolutionary Red Queen's race, it's much faster, and non-engineered life cannot keep up.
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    >when the only way to compete is with GMOs Already the case, and in the US many crops like corn are 92+% GMO, as selected by farmers during planting season. We can undo it, and we can also go back to a fraction of the current yield per acre and to people paying significantly more of their budget on food. We can price the poor even more out of getting enough food by making it all costlier. Food was around 25% of household spending in 1930 in the US. It's now around 7%. Corn yields were about 25 bushels/ac from as far back as we have data (1800's) till about 1940 when we started applying modern science, and is now around 160 bu/ac [1], an astounding ~7 fold difference. Most crops saw similar gains. This has massive realworld implications on food. A significant part of that is due to GMOs [2] (note the study also demonstrates reduction in toxins since we can engineer more carefully for pesticides desired). Thankfully mankind has used tech to increase yields drastically, lowering cost, and thus freeing lots of money for other things like housing, medicine, entertainment, and social programs. >are we more likely to get - vitamin-enhanced rice, or vegetables that are as healthy and addictive as Twinkies? Once we reach that level of design, why would we not engineer all sorts of beneficial items in? Even now there's published evidence that GMOs are healthier for people than alternatives since it allows us to tailor which pesticides and how much we need to reach yields sufficient to feed the planet. >on food sovereignty be This has been one of the goofiest non-arguments ever. People keep claiming somehow no one will able to grow food - there's so many non-GMO places to get any seeds you like, and even many GMOs are off patent protection and fully able to be used as anyone likes. The most you can worry about is not having the latest 20 or so years of seeds. So for free all farmers and people are getting more seed options, not fewer. >it's much faster, and non-engineered life cannot keep up. There is no law of physics that cannot mutate things slowly or quickly, so this assumption that there is some magical limiting rate of evolution is also not science based. Things can wildly mutate in one generation, it's been seen, and things mutate when there's selection pressure. It's the case, for example in viruses, that they mutate faster to keep up with things we do to them. And the point is to beat things out that destroy crops, like rusts, disease, water shortages, etc. As global warming increases, there will be significant needs for more drought resistant crops, and GMO is delivering on that in a manner that no selective breeding can do quick enough. GMOs will likely save billions of lives in the coming decades. [1] https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTrends.html https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTren... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2
- throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  What planet is left if the bees and birds die? There wont be a system to support people or the rest of nature, so stop saying things like this. Killing the eco system is not the answer. Its big-agris solution, but its not the only solution.
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  > Not predicting all outcomes to 100% does not mean mankind cannot predict vastly widespread outcomes with very high liklihood....with very good error bounds and certainty. Here you are 100% wrong, if a black swan happens we won't know until it might be too late. This is what 99% of scientists and academics fail to understand. It's quite sad really.
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    Black swan is by definition a rare event. Note what I wrote - "mankind can predict .... with very high likelihood". Scientists and academics are fully aware of such things, and have developed theory to deal with them, have statistically quantified them, and empirically measure them. This is what 99% of popular press forgets that have little understanding of practicing statistics or what error bounds or uncertainty means in precise terms.
    - curiousfool 6y ago
      How do they account for this? a 0.0000001% chance of destroying 99.99% of current species for example? How do we measure how much we don't know about the environment? It seems to me we play pretty fast and loose when it comes to such things, often just because we want to spread new things as far and wide as fast as possible. I don't really understand how anything other than very careful and very slow introduction of such things can possibly be considered in any way safe. e.g. find a place you can try your new pesticide or whatever that you think will minimise the interaction with wider ecosystem. model the whole thing. run this for at least 50-100 years, if at any point it doesn't match your model, slam on the breaks til you can explain it (including it spreading more or less than you thought it would to other species and locations). It like we have inherited an app that runs our entire way of life that has billions of lines of code with no documentation but some are happy with applying patches without UAT, parallel run or backout procedure.

ChrisLomont 6y ago

Despite what Salon implies, neonicotinoids are not believed by the scientific community as the cause of colony collapse disorder. It may be a factor, but even that is still not completely known. "A large amount of speculation has surrounded the contributions of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides to CCD, but many collapsing apiaries show no trace of neonicotinoids." [1] >To assume that this applied to human food is not poisonous is also a fallacy: you cannot say "yeah we fed humans for 3 months with this food and they are still ok". GMOs and pesticides are used to enable large scale food production to feed the planet. We do know that people without food for 3 months die. The vast majority of what you're complaining about is about tradeoffs between known and absolute downsides and trying to reduce them. > , it is NOT POSSIBLE TO PREDICT THEM Not predicting all outcomes to 100% does not mean mankind cannot predict vastly widespread outcomes with very high liklihood. So it is possible to predict them, just like every science, with very good error bounds and certainty. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

rbecker 6y ago
> many collapsing apiaries show no trace of neonicotinoids. And 'many' (notice the weasel word) car crashes are caused by drivers that show no trace of inebriation. More to the point: "Most academic and governmental bodies agree that neonicotinoids have had a negative influence on bee populations.": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid As for GMOs, they may well be safe (for consumption, let's ignore any invasive-species like effects, or toxicity to insects, or the potentially catastrophic combination of both...), but is our incentive structure ready for them? So far corporations are limited in how much they can tinker with food, but once they have the ability, what are we more likely to get - vitamin-enhanced rice, or vegetables that are as healthy and addictive as Twinkies? And what will the effect on food sovereignty be, when the only way to compete is with GMOs, control of which is concentrated in at most a handful of global companies? As for the common "well how is GMO different from selective breeding done since antiquity?" objection, it's different in one very important way - in the evolutionary Red Queen's race, it's much faster, and non-engineered life cannot keep up.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  >when the only way to compete is with GMOs Already the case, and in the US many crops like corn are 92+% GMO, as selected by farmers during planting season. We can undo it, and we can also go back to a fraction of the current yield per acre and to people paying significantly more of their budget on food. We can price the poor even more out of getting enough food by making it all costlier. Food was around 25% of household spending in 1930 in the US. It's now around 7%. Corn yields were about 25 bushels/ac from as far back as we have data (1800's) till about 1940 when we started applying modern science, and is now around 160 bu/ac [1], an astounding ~7 fold difference. Most crops saw similar gains. This has massive realworld implications on food. A significant part of that is due to GMOs [2] (note the study also demonstrates reduction in toxins since we can engineer more carefully for pesticides desired). Thankfully mankind has used tech to increase yields drastically, lowering cost, and thus freeing lots of money for other things like housing, medicine, entertainment, and social programs. >are we more likely to get - vitamin-enhanced rice, or vegetables that are as healthy and addictive as Twinkies? Once we reach that level of design, why would we not engineer all sorts of beneficial items in? Even now there's published evidence that GMOs are healthier for people than alternatives since it allows us to tailor which pesticides and how much we need to reach yields sufficient to feed the planet. >on food sovereignty be This has been one of the goofiest non-arguments ever. People keep claiming somehow no one will able to grow food - there's so many non-GMO places to get any seeds you like, and even many GMOs are off patent protection and fully able to be used as anyone likes. The most you can worry about is not having the latest 20 or so years of seeds. So for free all farmers and people are getting more seed options, not fewer. >it's much faster, and non-engineered life cannot keep up. There is no law of physics that cannot mutate things slowly or quickly, so this assumption that there is some magical limiting rate of evolution is also not science based. Things can wildly mutate in one generation, it's been seen, and things mutate when there's selection pressure. It's the case, for example in viruses, that they mutate faster to keep up with things we do to them. And the point is to beat things out that destroy crops, like rusts, disease, water shortages, etc. As global warming increases, there will be significant needs for more drought resistant crops, and GMO is delivering on that in a manner that no selective breeding can do quick enough. GMOs will likely save billions of lives in the coming decades. [1] https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTrends.html https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/YieldTren... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2
throwawaymanbot 6y ago
What planet is left if the bees and birds die? There wont be a system to support people or the rest of nature, so stop saying things like this. Killing the eco system is not the answer. Its big-agris solution, but its not the only solution.
OneGuy123 6y ago
> Not predicting all outcomes to 100% does not mean mankind cannot predict vastly widespread outcomes with very high liklihood....with very good error bounds and certainty. Here you are 100% wrong, if a black swan happens we won't know until it might be too late. This is what 99% of scientists and academics fail to understand. It's quite sad really.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  Black swan is by definition a rare event. Note what I wrote - "mankind can predict .... with very high likelihood". Scientists and academics are fully aware of such things, and have developed theory to deal with them, have statistically quantified them, and empirically measure them. This is what 99% of popular press forgets that have little understanding of practicing statistics or what error bounds or uncertainty means in precise terms.
  - curiousfool 6y ago
    How do they account for this? a 0.0000001% chance of destroying 99.99% of current species for example? How do we measure how much we don't know about the environment? It seems to me we play pretty fast and loose when it comes to such things, often just because we want to spread new things as far and wide as fast as possible. I don't really understand how anything other than very careful and very slow introduction of such things can possibly be considered in any way safe. e.g. find a place you can try your new pesticide or whatever that you think will minimise the interaction with wider ecosystem. model the whole thing. run this for at least 50-100 years, if at any point it doesn't match your model, slam on the breaks til you can explain it (including it spreading more or less than you thought it would to other species and locations). It like we have inherited an app that runs our entire way of life that has billions of lines of code with no documentation but some are happy with applying patches without UAT, parallel run or backout procedure.