Another ‘Too Big to Fail’ System in G.M.O.s(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Another ‘Too Big to Fail’ System in G.M.O.s
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/business/dealbook/another-too-big-to-fail-system-in-gmos.html?_r=0
5 comments
Last sentence of NY Times piece by Taleb and Spitznagel: "The G.M.O. experiment, carried out in real time and with our entire food and ecological system as its laboratory, is perhaps the greatest case of human hubris ever. It creates yet another systemic, “too big too fail” enterprise — but one for which no bailouts will be possible when it fails." If this is not scary enough for reading the article, I don't know what is.
I was going through this point-by-point, but I don't really want to leave a huge wall of text. In short, many of the arguments they present are attacking strawmen, others are intellectually dishonest for other reasons, and they really don't offer any support for their opinions.
And here I thought that the liberation of gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere was the greatest case of our hubris. I guess we just keep outdoing ourselves... Somehow it worries me a bit more that GM tomatoes...
TL;DR;
Anti-science article that knows it is, but preemptively calls that it will be called that. Scientists don't start out by saying I will be called anti-science. They prove points through facts.
Nothing they state in the 5 points has the facts to back it up.
> Ireland’s population was decimated by the effect of monoculture during the potato famine. Just consider that the same can happen at a planetary scale.
We have famine at a planetary scale, just the writers are not in that famine.
"Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. " https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
[edit] "The Black Swan" is just plan wrong, I really don't get why people buy into that book. It's a cute idea. But wrong.
Nothing they state in the 5 points has the facts to back it up.
> Ireland’s population was decimated by the effect of monoculture during the potato famine. Just consider that the same can happen at a planetary scale.
We have famine at a planetary scale, just the writers are not in that famine.
"Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. " https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
[edit] "The Black Swan" is just plan wrong, I really don't get why people buy into that book. It's a cute idea. But wrong.
sigh More anti-science, liberal, woo crap. (This coming from someone who identifies as liberal). These scare mongering tactics are turning people off to great advantages in the agricultural industry.
I think the biggest irony of your comment is calling the article "anti-science"; a criticism they address directly in the article not just once, but multiple times.
They acknowledge that anti-GMO people are often considered anti-science. They don't really address it in any meaningful way other than to make a few snide swipes about snake oil peddlers.
Haha, he's a libertarian republican, my bad.