Well I'm not very effective at convincing people because I'm not getting paid to do PR here (well actually I do get paid as a developer advocate to convince peo

Well I'm not very effective at convincing people because I'm not getting paid to do PR here (well actually I do get paid as a developer advocate to convince people to use AWS... but that's a totally different subject). But I agree with you, my original comment was not helpful because it got muddied by the broader topic of anti intellectualism, which I have been thinking about a lot recently. I do think there is a serious societal problem, leading to an almost religious fervor against some modern applications of science. I think that GMO's are one target of it, right alongside vaccines and masks, to the detriment of society. That might be an industry PR talking point, but I don't think that makes it any less true. I think another aspect of my original comment that upset people is that I expressed anti-religious sentiment in it. I know there are plenty of religious folks in tech, and no doubt many were offended by that. Personally I feel that there are two forces at work here: one is religious leaders de-educating people and the other is higher education failing to educate people well enough because colleges and universities are trying to milk money from folks. The end result is a society where anti-intellectualism is on the rise: people don't have access to the education to understand masks, vaccines, or GMO's but they do have access to plenty of religious indoctrination that tells them that they'll be alright as long as they do things "the old fashioned / traditional way". This manifests in so many ways, from benign things like the "Paleolithic diet" based on the idea that it is healthy to eat a diet like that of ancient humans, to harmful stuff like anti-vaxxers. I think it is all stemming from a fear of the future, which makes people want to go back to how things were done in the past. But it is too late to go back to how things were done in the past. I see us on a tipping point that could go either way: a backslide into conservatism and decline, or a leap forward into higher tech that can help us survive looming climate change. Personally I hope it's the latter.