Posts by ChrisW
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Tractors are not self-replicating - and nor do they pose a risk of blending with other farm implements to form new machines
Obviously tractors do blend with other farm implements to form new machines capable of new forms of damage or benefits.
GE is self-replicating? Don't think so. Its products may be. So if self-replication is a potential risk factor, then it applies to the individual product of GE, not to GE as a whole.
So consider each GMO carefully before release. Bearing in mind that the world is full of self-replicating organisms busy killing each other directly and indirectly already, and blending with unrelated organisms. 17 years may be enough time to test one thoroughly enough, not sure, but if it has the potential to reduce agricultural methane emissions by say 15% (while increasing sunlight-to-food efficiency) while not in itself being substantially damaging - well that would be a worthwhile goal in my view.
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ChrisW, I had nukes in mind. I'm quite happy for nukes to be used to blast a tumour, but not so much that it's used in war.
Further to the above, yes ionising radiation, under very tight control, can be a useful tool as in hospitals. But released into the environment at levels way beyond the natural range as by nuclear explosions - it is inherently and inevitably deadly poison long term, not a tool.
So nukes not like GE then.
Nuclear technology driven by desire to rule the world etc is one thing, GE and tractors are others, more like each other than nukes.
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tractors should not be allowed on farms except perhaps as stationary engines to power chaff-cutters in preparing the horse feed needed
If there was a reasonable and unfalsified risk that putting tractors in the field would permanently poison all the grass, then the analogy holds.
But tractors often have been used to poison the grass and more, sometimes long term with persistent poisons if not permanently. Tractors are a tool, what they deliver depends on who/what controls the tractor driver and the regulatory environment they're working in.
GE isn't a poison. To a first approximation it's a tool, what it delivers depends on who/what is driving the tool in any particular case and the regulatory environment they're working in.
If GE is driven only by greedy corporates motivated by profit-maximisation, then that's a problem, but it's not something that is inherent in GE. Tractors are made by corporates devoted to profit maximisation too.
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Nature didn't discover the "efficient optimisation algorithm" - that algorithm, aka natural selection, just is. It's an integral part of nature. Discovered to be so by Darwin.
Not really sure if you're disagreeing with me here.
Sorry Ben for mis-reference to Bart there, I really appreciate the efforts from both of you.
At one level, the nature-didn't-discover thing is a quibble I agree (that's why I didn't comment first time up) but in the present context, there's a really important aspect.
Natural selection is so simple and so fundamental to nature that no one seems to have conceived of any alternatives such that 'nature' might have tried them out and eventually settled on natural selection as the best (its products took over the world). So in that sense, nature (even if personified) didn’t discover natural selection, it’s just there as a fundamental property of nature, rather like gravity say.
On that basis, the key steps humanity has made in manipulating the genetics of the species we depend on were conscious artificial selection and cross-breeding of domesticated plant and animal species, because that was the break from natural selection. (Before that would have been unconscious selection during the domestication process – say in harvesting storing and replanting edible grass seeds – but that was humans operating fully within nature, little different from other species.)
GE involves other steps away from natural selection, but not necessarily bigger steps than what has gone before I reckon. So whether it’s a good idea or not should be considered case by case after careful investigation, as is being practised by AgResearch, under a tight regulatory regime.
My thoughts on this from JT while I’m at it -
GE in farming is just the extention of industrial farming.
GE has a place in hospitals, but not farms.That industrial farming may have adverse effects – agreed. That GE has been used in industrial farming – agreed. But so have tractors which may have adverse environmental effects too. GE has a place in hospitals but not farms (as a general principle applying to all GE) is analogous to saying tractors should not be allowed on farms except perhaps as stationary engines to power chaff-cutters in preparing the horse feed needed.
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End of the day, my conclusion here is that nature is, indeed, an amazing and awesome thing, for discovering such an efficient optimization algorithm. But humans can improve on it enormously.
I was going to comment on this one at the time (but didn't want to detract from Bart's fine efforts, so held off).
Nature didn't discover the "efficient optimisation algorithm" - that algorithm, aka natural selection, just is. It's an integral part of nature. Discovered to be so by Darwin.
But now I'll go a little further - Darwin gained much of his insight into the natural selection process from his knowledge of human-mediated selection in pigeons and other domestic animals. There's been much in a few grass = grain species and other food plants too. That is, humans have been assiduously working on improving on nature's "efficient optimisation algorithm" for 10,000 years or so, that's why 'we' humans are not still all hunter-gatherers.
Yes, I think this is close to spine-tingling stuff, but not in the chilling sense.
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We're going to have to start entertaining the possibility that New Zealand will advance to the second stage.
What form should this entertainment take for maximal effect? Something tasteful to avoid sapping the moral fibre, but nevertheless inspiring?
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Football was the winner on the night.
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Chris Carter reluctant to eat Phil Goff's shit before the massed media to gratify them and the public? I can understand that - it's clear he really has done nothing wrong - nothing more serious than taking a ball-point pen home with the paperwork and misusing it to compile a shopping list. Excessive travel!? FFS.
Shane Jones has been eating his own shit and that's fair enough, but why should Carter eat someone else's? To satisfy the random stupidity of our current system of 'accountability'? It must indeed be stressful - highly tempting to say stuff it all and resign, whereas good of the Party, by-election and all that ...
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In the end its death was its depence on the scarce ad dollar.
But surely, look after depence, ad dollars look after themselves?
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ChisW, I think you will find that Oklahoma is land-locked...
Stewth! Must be those Caucasians are imaginary then ...