Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA
by rjf72 on Saturday December 22, 2018 @03:38PM
(#18742344)
Why do you think changes would be as likely to cause good as to cause harm? In complex, yet structured, systems - I think changes without fully understanding what you're doing are vastly more likely to cause harm than good. Software is the obvious example. Change a line of bytecode/assembly to something else. I think the chances of that change being good are extremely close to 0.
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Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA
by Nasrudith on Sunday December 23, 2018 @12:53AM
(#18744677)
But in nature most mutations are neutral, period. It is likely to be more don't cares although actual improvements are unlikely. Good outcomes from random chances are rare but that doesn't mean that bad outcomes must be the dominant component.
Just look at Atomic gardening [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening] - a practice which should be /way/ worse if mutations really did produce bad effects most of the time. Instead the effects were either dud seeds or a few useful byproducts as opposed to 'this grapefruit is now rich in cyanide'.