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Interesting post. I'd like to think of myself as 'intelligent' - as most of us do - I'm Mensa, I'm a programmer of 30+ years blah blah. I live and breath 'logic

Interesting post. I'd like to think of myself as 'intelligent' - as most of us do - I'm Mensa, I'm a programmer of 30+ years blah blah. I live and breath 'logic'. So take this for what it's worth. 2 is the big one from my perspective. I think it's extremely naive to immediately trust anything coming from mainstream science / medicine these days. GMOs, as an example, demonstrates the inability of some scientists to understand the concept of 'playing with machines they neither understand holistically, nor practically'. Even 'slightly large' software projects, where the variables are all contained in a highly controlled and observable environment, go horribly wrong. I can't imagine the arrogance you need to mess with nature confidently. Nature is a complex machine, don't f* around with it unless you a) can create it from scratch b) are absolutely sure what you're doing is not going to affect the machine's surrounding environment. We are far, far away from those necessary understandings. I would think this was obvious, but apparently it's not. I get the impression that in America I'd be shouted down for saying this.

abstractbill 13y ago
But we've been fucking around with nature for a long time without fully understanding it. In fact a lot of that fucking around has led to us understanding nature better!
- api 13y ago
  You're both right IMHO. I actually think the GMO people would have more credibility if they admitted that there were possible risks and explained the risks vs. the benefits. Pretending there are no risks makes you sound like a shill, and today the instant people get a whiff of shill they blacklist you and anything you stand for. Re: #2 above: I asked a friend of mine who is very anti-GMO whether she would be more open to them if they were produced by open non-profit organizations working in the public interest. She said yes, she'd be more willing to consider their benefits in that case, but that she wasn't going to eat food "designed by corporations that are all run by sociopaths." The perception that corporations are "run by sociopaths" is not wholly unfounded or irrational. Obviously all of them aren't, but even Peter Thiel admits that the percentage of sociopaths in high-up corporate and government positions is far larger than in the general population. I have to ask then: do we really want organizations run by sociopaths programming the genome of the world's food supplies?
  - hitchhiker999 13y ago
    "if they admitted that there were possible risks and explained the risks vs. the benefits." I think that nicely sums up my viewpoint. Hanging around with 'intellectuals' these days can leave you tired and disillusioned, though this little thread was a refreshingly pleasant bit of discourse. All I want is a balanced perspective, it's never "this OR that"!
stopcodon 13y ago
This will come off as a strawman, but the same could be said for every drug ever prescribed. There's absolutely no way to quantify the effects an "unnatural" molecule will have on a human body, since everyone will have physiological differences, and there will be a near infinite number of environmental factors. The best we can do is use the sum of human knowledge as a framework to test that drug to the best of our ability, and try to figure out if it's safe by examining the evidence. I'm an agricultural geneticist (not in industry, I have never worked on GMOs but I do keep up to date on the literature so I can educate others), so I will be biased here, but GMOs have been very carefully examined for decades with no credible evidence to suggest they pose a threat to human health. Without going in to a lesson on population genetics, most genes, even if they found their way in to a natural population outside of a farm, would not spread in the population because of selection against them. Empirically the frequency of this kind of spread from crop to natural population has been found to be nearly non-existent, which is why it's not a huge concern. Humans have been causing artificial selection on plants for thousands of years. Breeding for completely unnatural traits, and even crossing entirely different species to create novel organisms for agriculture. GMOs are far more controlled in this sense, where you know exactly what you're doing to the genome. Combining two genomes separated by millions of years of evolution at random through forced sexual reproduction in plants happens every day in crop breeding but nobody cares because it has this arbitrary label of "natural", presumably because it doesn't involve some sinister figure in a labcoat. Unfortunately the anti-GMO activists do an excellent job of spreading misinformation and distrust of scientists to the public. The large biotech companies can do very little for the PR of GMOs, leaving academics to try and fight against the tide of hatred for what is actually an incredible tool for solving the worlds food shortages. Sadly most scientists are too busy writing grants to bother.
- hitchhiker999 13y ago
  Thanks for posting this! "most genes" - I think where our food supply is concerned it probably needs to be '100%' - but that's not to dismiss the valid perspective you raise. I just hope open-minded people are overseeing the processes, and not leaving the chicken coop to the corporations. GMO has a valid place, an important place, in our technological "bag-of-tricks." It's only the apparent short-sightedness of certain members of the scientific community that sets some of us on edge.

abstractbill 13y ago

But we've been fucking around with nature for a long time without fully understanding it. In fact a lot of that fucking around has led to us understanding nature better!

api 13y ago
You're both right IMHO. I actually think the GMO people would have more credibility if they admitted that there were possible risks and explained the risks vs. the benefits. Pretending there are no risks makes you sound like a shill, and today the instant people get a whiff of shill they blacklist you and anything you stand for. Re: #2 above: I asked a friend of mine who is very anti-GMO whether she would be more open to them if they were produced by open non-profit organizations working in the public interest. She said yes, she'd be more willing to consider their benefits in that case, but that she wasn't going to eat food "designed by corporations that are all run by sociopaths." The perception that corporations are "run by sociopaths" is not wholly unfounded or irrational. Obviously all of them aren't, but even Peter Thiel admits that the percentage of sociopaths in high-up corporate and government positions is far larger than in the general population. I have to ask then: do we really want organizations run by sociopaths programming the genome of the world's food supplies?
- hitchhiker999 13y ago
  "if they admitted that there were possible risks and explained the risks vs. the benefits." I think that nicely sums up my viewpoint. Hanging around with 'intellectuals' these days can leave you tired and disillusioned, though this little thread was a refreshingly pleasant bit of discourse. All I want is a balanced perspective, it's never "this OR that"!

stopcodon 13y ago

This will come off as a strawman, but the same could be said for every drug ever prescribed. There's absolutely no way to quantify the effects an "unnatural" molecule will have on a human body, since everyone will have physiological differences, and there will be a near infinite number of environmental factors. The best we can do is use the sum of human knowledge as a framework to test that drug to the best of our ability, and try to figure out if it's safe by examining the evidence. I'm an agricultural geneticist (not in industry, I have never worked on GMOs but I do keep up to date on the literature so I can educate others), so I will be biased here, but GMOs have been very carefully examined for decades with no credible evidence to suggest they pose a threat to human health. Without going in to a lesson on population genetics, most genes, even if they found their way in to a natural population outside of a farm, would not spread in the population because of selection against them. Empirically the frequency of this kind of spread from crop to natural population has been found to be nearly non-existent, which is why it's not a huge concern. Humans have been causing artificial selection on plants for thousands of years. Breeding for completely unnatural traits, and even crossing entirely different species to create novel organisms for agriculture. GMOs are far more controlled in this sense, where you know exactly what you're doing to the genome. Combining two genomes separated by millions of years of evolution at random through forced sexual reproduction in plants happens every day in crop breeding but nobody cares because it has this arbitrary label of "natural", presumably because it doesn't involve some sinister figure in a labcoat. Unfortunately the anti-GMO activists do an excellent job of spreading misinformation and distrust of scientists to the public. The large biotech companies can do very little for the PR of GMOs, leaving academics to try and fight against the tide of hatred for what is actually an incredible tool for solving the worlds food shortages. Sadly most scientists are too busy writing grants to bother.

hitchhiker999 13y ago
Thanks for posting this! "most genes" - I think where our food supply is concerned it probably needs to be '100%' - but that's not to dismiss the valid perspective you raise. I just hope open-minded people are overseeing the processes, and not leaving the chicken coop to the corporations. GMO has a valid place, an important place, in our technological "bag-of-tricks." It's only the apparent short-sightedness of certain members of the scientific community that sets some of us on edge.