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A comment on The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Parent comment

Re:The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb by littletimmy on Saturday July 25, 2015 @06:16PM (#9949249)
The argument that GMOs are OK because something similar happens in nature is a poor argument. Just because there exists in nature Process X that leads to Outcome Y, does not mean that a man-made Process Z that also leads to Outcome Y is good.

Nature has a way of eliminating failures; humans have a way to offload failures off to someone else.

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Re:The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb by dvanduzer on Saturday July 25, 2015 @06:39PM (#9949317)
Humans are part of nature, and you might be confusing arguments with logic.

The effective aspect of the scientific method that separates it from scientism is falsifiability. The comparison for falsification here is "GMO farming" versus "status quo farming"; nowhere is nature involved.

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Re:The Mathiness of Nassim Nicholas Taleb by Tycho on Sunday July 26, 2015 @03:30PM (#9951956)
I think the argument is that 'status quo farming' engages in localised tinkering in a way which is similar to what occurs in nature, whereas GMOs are examples of top-down engineering which will be imposed across the whole planet.
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