Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA
by snovv_crash on Saturday December 22, 2018 @05:47PM
(#18742933)
Any change analyzed in a vacuum is risky. The trick is to compare it to the alternative, and see if it is more risky. The alternative to GMO is applying random mutations, and then selecting a strain that has the behavior we want. This has much higher risk than changing only what we need, since many other components could be changed at the same time too, and each of them also have these many interactions.
Honestly, Taleb should stick with what he knows: finance. In other fields I trust his opinion about as much as I would any other Wall Street banker.
Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA
by mdtancsa on Saturday December 22, 2018 @06:46PM
(#18743227)
Speaking Risk, Rob Reid wrote an interesting series of articles, one of which was on global risk that this topic made me think about
https://medium.com/s/powertrip/the-50-50-murder-a3832f587bee
This may be your opinion. While GM foods are not per see dangerous, the long tail risk is tremendous, exactly because you can not tell what a gene is going to do in another organism. Take my word for it, I have a PhD in that shit.
Taleb also advocates the precautionary principle: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf