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The increased use of chemicals is the strongest argument against the increased use of those chemicals. If you want to regulate something, regulate that thing in

The increased use of chemicals is the strongest argument against the increased use of those chemicals. If you want to regulate something, regulate that thing instead of killing off the technology that enabled it. GMOs in particular have the potential to dramatically help humanity, and it would be a huge mistake to cripple them as an alternative to banning the pesticides directly. The internet enables the propagation of child porn. I don't think that's a compelling argument against the internet.

tormeh 12y ago
I think you're right, but just to play Devil's advocate: Isn't it sometimes more practically and politically feasible to kill off the technology that enables the thing rather than to regulate the thing?
- icambron 12y ago
  I suppose sometimes it might be, but then the question is whether it was worth it. On GMOs particularly, there are a ton of malnutrition problems we could potentially solve with this technology, and sacrificing that for political expediency does not seem reasonable. Edit: And we've only begun to scratch the surface of what GMO is capable of; even if banning it were worth it now, what future applications are we preventing? It would be like deciding the internet wasn't worth the child porn it facilitated, but in 1996 (certainly banning the internet then would be simpler and more expedient that trying to figure out how to monitor it for that kind of thing). So more generally: killing technology because of it can be misused destroys not just its current utility but all sorts of unimaginable future potential. So the bar for being worth it should be set very high.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mercurial 12y ago
    I think there is a difference between "let's experiment with it" and "let's make plenty of Roundup-resistant GMOs so that we can put even more junk in the groundwater on a large scale".
  - pizza234 12y ago
    It's not correct that we would sacrifice GMO just for political expediency. There are plenty of arguments against them; of course they can't be absolute truths, btu they still stand. In the big picture, I think GMOs would work on the symptoms and not on the cause. There are plenty of political causes for situation of underdeveloped countries to be such. I definitely don't think that dealing with the symptoms would not be useful; it would possibly save lives, but I think it diverts attention and resources from the real causes. In the smaller picture, there are plenty of corruption problems connected to GMOs and Momcorps. I reasonably expect plenty of manufactured doubt, general misinformation, and legal violence and racketing to flourish. I think that more than "killing a technology because it can be abused", it would be "killing a technology whose first use is the abuse". Regardless, killing it's a strong word; they won't be killed, banned, or significantly restricted anyway.

tormeh 12y ago

I think you're right, but just to play Devil's advocate: Isn't it sometimes more practically and politically feasible to kill off the technology that enables the thing rather than to regulate the thing?

icambron 12y ago
I suppose sometimes it might be, but then the question is whether it was worth it. On GMOs particularly, there are a ton of malnutrition problems we could potentially solve with this technology, and sacrificing that for political expediency does not seem reasonable. Edit: And we've only begun to scratch the surface of what GMO is capable of; even if banning it were worth it now, what future applications are we preventing? It would be like deciding the internet wasn't worth the child porn it facilitated, but in 1996 (certainly banning the internet then would be simpler and more expedient that trying to figure out how to monitor it for that kind of thing). So more generally: killing technology because of it can be misused destroys not just its current utility but all sorts of unimaginable future potential. So the bar for being worth it should be set very high.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mercurial 12y ago
  I think there is a difference between "let's experiment with it" and "let's make plenty of Roundup-resistant GMOs so that we can put even more junk in the groundwater on a large scale".
- pizza234 12y ago
  It's not correct that we would sacrifice GMO just for political expediency. There are plenty of arguments against them; of course they can't be absolute truths, btu they still stand. In the big picture, I think GMOs would work on the symptoms and not on the cause. There are plenty of political causes for situation of underdeveloped countries to be such. I definitely don't think that dealing with the symptoms would not be useful; it would possibly save lives, but I think it diverts attention and resources from the real causes. In the smaller picture, there are plenty of corruption problems connected to GMOs and Momcorps. I reasonably expect plenty of manufactured doubt, general misinformation, and legal violence and racketing to flourish. I think that more than "killing a technology because it can be abused", it would be "killing a technology whose first use is the abuse". Regardless, killing it's a strong word; they won't be killed, banned, or significantly restricted anyway.