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Recently, I've had to deal with more and more people (in person and on the internet) who have been parroting the same ignorant viewpoints about Monsanto. Hell, I've seen people putting up fliers, walking around wearing signs, shouting on street corners---stuff I definitely see people doing for more concerning issues in our area, like fracking or voter disenfranchisement. Following it back to the source via facebook friends who have been posting the same subset of links about evil Monsanto, GMOs, organic food, or similar topics. Inevitably, these always lead back to various advocacy blogs and "news" sites (that seem to exist primarily by peddling "natural cures", "paleo diets", and "herbal clenses"). There is, apparently, an insular network of people and websites dedicated to complaining about how Monsanto is literally the devil because they are selling seeds full of DEATH CHEMICALS or something (very rarely are accurate claims made). Trying to find the source of some "article" always leads one on a chase that takes one from repost to repost around this entire circlejerk ring until you get to the source, which is usually some unsourced post in a green forum or blog comment. The problem I'm running into is how to debate people in this community (or others like it), because of the sheer effort involved. Arguing against whatever claim they are making is difficult, as it is never something reported by the actual media (for instance, recently tried to pull up something to disprove the notion that Monsanto was bribing the Illinois Dept. of Agriculture to suppress/steal Roundup-resistant bees (what???), but found it impossible since every "article" about it was essentially just one guy's account over and over--no reporter had asked the Dept of Agriculture (or Monsanto, if they really wanted) for comment, and no paper had reported on it). When confronted by the fact that the initial claim is dubious at best, I'm met with a torrent of canned grievances (which mostly fall under the heading of "common myths", ie. "terminator seeds!!!" or "Monsanto destroys poor innocent country farmers!!!"). In the end, it seems impossible to change anyone's mind about the subject, since people seem to want to believe that comic book villains exist and are destroying their Pure Organic World. Anyone know how to go about arguing with those existing at the edges of internet echo chambers like this, or is it mostly wasted effort? I'm not looking to debate Monsanto here, because threads on that have historically turned to poo poo, but merely using it as an example since I'm most familiar with it.
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Jun 27, 2013 03:40
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The sad thing is that Monsanto really is evil. Just not evil in the way these people say it is. Beyond that, maybe try the conspiracy theory thread? Because a lot of these people are basically or literally conspiracy theorists and are stuck in this weird intellectual rut where all evidence supports their view, and evidence opposing their viewpoint is really just evidence of a conspiracy (thus supporting their views). Personally, I mostly give up if someone sends me more than one link to that one site Natural News after I try to convince them that it's a bullshit pageview troll site run by idiot.s OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 03:50
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Cream_Filling posted:The sad thing is that Monsanto really is evil. Just not evil in the way these people say it is. Beyond that, maybe try the conspiracy theory thread? Because a lot of these people are basically or literally conspiracy theorists and are stuck in this weird intellectual rut where all evidence supports their view, and evidence opposing their viewpoint is really just evidence of a conspiracy (thus supporting their views). This is exactly right. I'd be more than willing to engage with people citing Monsanto as a failure of capitalism, but no it's always people who don't understand what Roundup Ready crops are, or who paid for the research into "terminator seeds". (ie, the USDA and a company that wasn't even Monsanto). However, I'm not sure if I'd lump them in with traditional conspiracy theorists, if only because they don't seem to run with the same circles, or propogate the same memes. I don't here these people talking about government coverups, false flags, or murder-drones slaughtering those who know The Truth. Instead, they seem to worry more about Big Pharma, "superfoods" that they don't want you to know about, and the secret wisdom of the ancients/the noble savage/the mysterious chinaman. Maybe it does boil down to the same root, but I'm having trouble getting into their mindset and visualizing the common threads between all this nonsense. Hell, I can do that for conspiracy theorists and construct at a partial framework to support the insanity (as long as you are able to overcome a few key bits of cognitive dissonance down near the foundation, you can create increasingly bizarre frameworks of delusion). But I can't do the same with the Natural News crowd, for whatever reason. Maybe a lot of them have given up entirely on logical structure and consistent narratives? Because I can't find any.
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Jun 27, 2013 04:05
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Slanderer posted:This is exactly right. I'd be more than willing to engage with people citing Monsanto as a failure of capitalism, but no it's always people who don't understand what Roundup Ready crops are, or who paid for the research into "terminator seeds". (ie, the USDA and a company that wasn't even Monsanto). However, I'm not sure if I'd lump them in with traditional conspiracy theorists, if only because they don't seem to run with the same circles, or propogate the same memes. I don't here these people talking about government coverups, false flags, or murder-drones slaughtering those who know The Truth. Instead, they seem to worry more about Big Pharma, "superfoods" that they don't want you to know about, and the secret wisdom of the ancients/the noble savage/the mysterious chinaman. I mean the key is people aren't dumb and they can tell that Monsanto is probably not a bunch of good guys, and biotech does have some scary possibilities and risks we might not fully understand. They grasp that on a gut level. But beyond that, a lot of people just don't have the background in science or corporate misconduct to understand the risks. And then there's the telephone game that always runs where people hear a scary possibility and then by the third person it's not a possibility but a reality and then after another two people it ends up attributed to the only firm most people have even heard of: Monsanto. And it's all vaguely plausible so long as you don't know the actual facts of the case. The same goes for all the superfood crap - a single preliminary study or even just a purported expert finds that, hey, maybe almonds and fiber might be good for you because a single 20 person study showed results or a single chemical that can be extracted from it made mice live another two weeks when injected directly into their scrotums, and before long between distorted transmission and greedy people trying to cash in on the latest health craze, it's almond milk colonics and ancient Chinese secret fiber pills. It's a sell based on ignorance and appealing to peoples' (often correct) gut perceptions. People don't know anything about Chinese medicine either (hell the Chinese don't even know Chinese medicine that well - a lot of it was basically made up like 60 years ago) but there's a whole lot of mystery about it so they'll believe that it has some sort of undiscovered secrets that westerners just haven't gotten around to yet because of cultural chauvinism or something. I think the key is that scientists, like many other academics, have done a pretty poor job of engaging with the greater culture and nobody has any real understanding of what's going on anymore, leaving them to be blindsided by persuasive garbage. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 04:23
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On the May 26th protest day I found a large group of protestors rallying near where I was grocery shopping, and one of them handed me a flier with their ten points of protest against Monsato, which included such interesting facts such as "did you know GMOs are created in LABORATORIES??" and other equally vapid things. Outside some people were calling for the FDA to be banned, or that GMOs cause autism and other bullshit. Overall is was an orgy of misinformation and scaremongering without an ounce of substance to it. It's really sad because GMOs and the food supply in general are hugely important issues, but it seems that everyone is either completely apathetic or pants-on-head crazy.
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Jun 27, 2013 04:26
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It's weird how none of the organic nuts get up in arms about Dow Agro or Bayer CropScience, who are arguably doing much more interesting stuff with their products. Even then the thin margins put the biology way behind the more interesting stuff pharmaceutical manufacturing does, and no one in the anti-science crowd seems to complain about 10,000L tanks of cultured rodent cells producing humanized antibodies.
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Jun 27, 2013 04:31
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The poo poo Monsanto does to the third world is bad enough you really don't have to give a poo poo why other people are upset by them. Don't debate them on GMO's, tell them about the actual evils they do because that will upset people much more and they'll focus on it. Hell, that's what happened to me.
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Jun 27, 2013 04:44
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Monsanto conspiracy theories is an area where both the extreme left and extreme right get in bed together. Natural News is run by a guy from the far right, as you know. It's a very paranoid website that brings in a lot of pageviews on articles about 9/11 and government gun-grabbers. You might not hear your Monsanto conspiracist friends talk about false flags and murder-drones, but the people who talk about false flags and murder-drones are talking about Monsanto.Slanderer posted:Maybe it does boil down to the same root, but I'm having trouble getting into their mindset and visualizing the common threads between all this nonsense. Hell, I can do that for conspiracy theorists and construct at a partial framework to support the insanity (as long as you are able to overcome a few key bits of cognitive dissonance down near the foundation, you can create increasingly bizarre frameworks of delusion). But I can't do the same with the Natural News crowd, for whatever reason. Maybe a lot of them have given up entirely on logical structure and consistent narratives? Because I can't find any. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/the-right-wing-organic-farmers-of-germany.html BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 04:50
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Another reason conspiracy theories are popular is that they offer an easy route to enlightenment. Reality is difficult, messy, and often hard to understand. People don't like feeling stupid and left out of the conversation. Conspiracy theories let people cut through all that, and all the confusion in their minds is excised with this one simple theory. Suddenly they understand, and can talk like an authority on the subject. Their angst is relieved. Since they now believe they see things in a way no one else does, they can't be talked out of it. People trying to tell them the truth are now the ones who don't get it. Their version of the truth must be spread with missionary zeal. The emotional bond to the nuttiness is incredibly strong. Letting it go means admitting they've been duped and actually don't understand anything. Hence they go to enormous lengths to combat reality and cocoon themselves in their own little paranoid world. It would be fascinating and hilarious if it wasn't so damned annoying to deal with.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:06
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Slanderer posted:However, I'm not sure if I'd lump them in with traditional conspiracy theorists, if only because they don't seem to run with the same circles, or propogate the same memes. I don't here these people talking about government coverups, false flags, or murder-drones slaughtering those who know The Truth. Instead, they seem to worry more about Big Pharma, "superfoods" that they don't want you to know about, and the secret wisdom of the ancients/the noble savage/the mysterious chinaman. The people I know who are the most into anti-GMO advocacy are also pushing anti-fluoridation, chemtrails and 9/11 truther stuff, to the point I don't even bother talking to them when they start in on these topics. The sad thing is I watch it start to spread throughout most of the other general left leaning, environmentalist set. People in my personal life that I see exercise judgement and rationality on many other topics are starting to go with the green crowd on this which is tending anti-GMO. I tried arguing it once or twice, but inevitably the argument relaxes to "Well why don't we just label everything, and then we can decide for ourselves" which is a way to punt out of the argument and avoid discussing it with anyone so they can preserve their own opinions. I imagine long term the trend is going to be similar to irradiated food, where theres was no harm and actually health benefit in using radiation to sterilize food and produce, but due to sensationalism and outcry major grocery chains all stopped using it. I imagine eventually we'll see label initiatives passed and then it'll move to people agitating certain chains for carrying gmo products, and eventually they just won't because its too much hassle. Its the same with creationists in the sense that if someone didn't reason themselves into an opinion, they will not be reasoned out of it. The emotional pitch of anti-GMO sentiment leaves me with little confidence that it will ever be dialed back.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:20
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It also doesn't help that wrt to this particular topic, there have been a rash of dubious studies that get published, walked back, but then continue to be cited and used in issue advocacy despite the science behind them having been poked through with holes. A famous one was over a decade ago with the Pujtai study on gmo potatoes in the Lancet. The issue was a large political one in the UK in that time (and really still up to today throughout Europe) and so the Lancet published, but because there were so many holes in it they also felt it necessary to publish the criticism in the same issue, when truthfully the GMO study which had a lot of problems shouldn't have gotten any ink. Another example was just last year with the French anti GMO study, where these awful pictures of spraque dawly rats with giant tumors were leaked to the press promoting a documentary before the actual study was even released. At which point it gets roundly destroyed by the scientific community. One of the best parts was that the incidence of tumors they found in their sprague dawley rats was pretty similar to what scientists had already known about this tumor susceptive strain of rat commonly used in biology research. It was pure sensationalism. But its sort of like how the headline gets front page coverage and the correction is buried on page A29. The people not following the science end of the story and callibrating their views with what other researchers are saying, don't remember anything else but the headline and the scary picture of rats, which they then spread among their social groups.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:33
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Yeah, I hate that you can't declare yourself opposed to genetically modified food anymore without people assuming you're some kind of crazy new age hippy who believes chewing ginger can cause a broken leg. I'm opposed to genetic foods because of how it's used to sue poor farmers into oblivion and support unethical business practices. I support the EU forcing GM containing foods to be labelled as such because I try to eat ethically and most GM food is part of a problem that treats farmers and small businesses terribly. But those sort of points get lost under massive piles of "genetically modified food will make your head explode and give your dog aids" poo poo.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:49
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d3c0y2 posted:I'm opposed to genetic foods because of how it's used to sue poor farmers into oblivion This is just as much not a thing as GM foods giving you AIDS-cancer. Like most good capitalists, Monsanto prefers to gently caress over people in the Third World as much as possible, because bad press doesn't matter when you're allowed to openly bribe officials. Amarkov fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 05:52
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Cream_Filling posted:I think the key is that scientists, like many other academics, have done a pretty poor job of engaging with the greater culture and nobody has any real understanding of what's going on anymore, leaving them to be blindsided by persuasive garbage. Before I start on replying to other posts in more depth, I need to ask--how can the science community do a better job? It seems like enough people don't care about (or can't learn about) the fundamentals of science, making explaining complex issues essentially impossible (unless you're a pop-sci savant who can distill down absurdly technical issues into a mostly-true form that is palatable to the masses), so the actual results of real research is meaningless to them. Fake edit: saw this as I posted, can't resist d3c0y2 posted:I'm opposed to genetic foods because of how it's used to sue poor farmers into oblivion and support unethical business practices. I support the EU forcing GM containing foods to be labelled as such because I try to eat ethically and most GM food is part of a problem that treats farmers and small businesses terribly. You could at least try to read up on the poo poo you decide to publicize your opinions about, in a thread where I am complaining about this exact loving poo poo. Sue farmers to oblivion? No, this never happened to any "poor, innocent farmers". A few people have knowingly and deliberately infringed upon Monsanto's patents, however. And GM Food is unethical? Jesus christ, do you know who sells most of the non-GM seeds to farmers? The same guys who sell the GM seeds. But, really, thanks for your contributions.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:59
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That's a pretty vitriolic response there mate. If I come off as uneducated in this matter, then I'm sorry. I'll freely admit that my education on GMO politics and business is lacking compared to my knowledge in some areas. But some of this is because even trusted news sources such as the The Guardian link to and reference sources that I find drat suspicious. Trying to educate yourself on GMO foods are hard when even sources like the Guardian and other "trusted media" is just addled with dubious factoids. I'm not intending to drive by poo poo up the thread, and I'm painfully aware that that happens often in D&D and might be why you found my post so offensive. But i'd like to say that trying to know anything about GMO business practices is difficult, I remember that even my textbooks back in university just said that GMO food was being used to control third world farmers. And books i've read since then, such as Captive State by George Monbiot have pushed the same interpretation. If I can't even trust George Monbiot on GMO, then frankly I'm not sure what sources I can trust.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:14
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Deteriorata posted:Another reason conspiracy theories are popular is that they offer an easy route to enlightenment. Reality is difficult, messy, and often hard to understand. People don't like feeling stupid and left out of the conversation. Conspiracy theories let people cut through all that, and all the confusion in their minds is excised with this one simple theory. Suddenly they understand, and can talk like an authority on the subject. Their angst is relieved. The importance of a simple, understandable narrative cannot be overstated, in my experience. People can latch on to a simple story and build up on it. Take, for instance, the infantile Loose Change "documentary". It presented a narrative that explained 9/11 as a government conspiracy, and then expanded upon itself to try to cover all of the inconsistencies and holes until the end product is a tangled web of crazy--but if you were drawn in by that original narrative, then all of that can start to seem clear and obvious. Another example is American-style Libertarians, who've latched onto a few memes ("non aggression", the market is right, freedom is always good), and have gone on to construct a reality based not on the real world or real people, but the logical consequences of their essential axioms. I'm not sure enough of them follow the logic far enough to conclude, "well, according to our principles, selling your children into sex slavery is totally fine!", yet some of them do, and view it as totally okay since it is a consequence the narrative they believe to be implicitly good and right. I've only had limited success arguing people out of either of these beliefs---mostly, I've just had to wait for people to outgrow it and look back on it with shame and regret. But the Monsanto crap is different because it seems to have a bigger audience among the middle agers than other bullshit conspiracies. At that point I can't just chalk it down to, "Well, everyone does dumb poo poo in college".
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Jun 27, 2013 06:14
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d3c0y2 posted:But i'd like to say that trying to know anything about GMO business practices is difficult, I remember that even my textbooks back in university just said that GMO food was being used to control third world farmers. I mean, like... it's true that GMO food is used to control poor people in the third world. So is every other product produced by every other large multinational. It's just that the general public does not consume Monsanto products directly, so their PR budget is smaller.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:21
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Amarkov posted:Monsanto prefers to gently caress over people in the Third World as much as possible, because bad press doesn't matter when you're allowed to openly bribe officials.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:23
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Amarkov posted:I mean, like... it's true that GMO food is used to control poor people in the third world. So is every other product produced by every other large multinational. It's just that the general public does not consume Monsanto products directly, so their PR budget is smaller. I agree wholeheartedly that screwing over the third world and the poor isn't something I see as unique to GMOs. The issue is my education on GMO's is laughably one sided as all my knowledge on it comes from modules on the third world that I did while studying for my degree. I'm well aware that those sort of modules are going to be very biased against GMO's for obvious reasons, but trying to find trusted sources to try and get a larger, more well rounded picture is difficult.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:25
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Strudel Man posted:There's been so much disinformation on this topic that I'm dubious even of this. It's my understanding, for example, that Monsanto's interactions in India are limited, through third-party intermediaries licensed to 'manufacture' (for want of a better word) and sell Monsanto's proprietary strains. The suicide of farmers there is terrible, but blame is difficult to apportion when they're killing themselves over debts owed to party A which were used to buy seeds and farming equipment from parties B and C based on intellectual property owned by party D. Beyond that, the cost of the seed is a small part of the total cost of bringing in a crop. The farmers' problems were the result of two years of drought. It didn't matter whose seeds they bought.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:25
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Strudel Man posted:There's been so much disinformation on this topic that I'm dubious even of this. It's my understanding, for example, that Monsanto's interactions in India are limited, through third-party intermediaries licensed to 'manufacture' (for want of a better word) and sell Monsanto's proprietary strains. The suicide of farmers there is terrible, but blame is difficult to apportion when they're killing themselves over debts owed to party A which were used to buy seeds and farming equipment from parties B and C based on intellectual property owned by party D. It's also really hard to blame them for poor crop yields due to yearly weather conditions or other such "acts of god". EDIT: ^ I wasn't 100% sure that was the drought being referred to, so I kept it vague. Glad to know I wasn't imagining that poo poo.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:26
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Strudel Man posted:There's been so much disinformation on this topic that I'm dubious even of this. It's my understanding, for example, that Monsanto's interactions in India are limited, through third-party intermediaries licensed to 'manufacture' (for want of a better word) and sell Monsanto's proprietary strains. The suicide of farmers there is terrible, but blame is difficult to apportion when they're killing themselves over debts owed to party A which were used to buy seeds and farming equipment from parties B and C based on intellectual property owned by party D. Yeah, my post wasn't intended to imply something beyond the generic "capitalism ruins everything" argument.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:26
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Deteriorata posted:Beyond that, the cost of the seed is a small part of the total cost of bringing in a crop. The farmers' problems were the result of two years of drought. It didn't matter whose seeds they bought. Amarkov posted:Yeah, my post wasn't intended to imply something beyond the generic "capitalism ruins everything" argument.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:33
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I wish it was easier to educate myself on the topics of GMO's without getting mired in the new age poo poo. I have some basic gut feeling of distrust for what they do, without a doubt. I worry about the creation of mono cultures, and the patenting of genes. However I can fully recognize that the science they do is critical to feeding a growing population. Its one of those topics that you have to be very educated on multiple topics to even approach it rationally. I feel I understand the science, but not the business side, or the geopolitical angle. I guess That's why I really don't have an issue with the scientific results of their efforts, but I am extremely wary of their business practices. Living in the Bay area of California, I know many many people that are anti GMO because they have no clue what the science behind it consists of. They just don't trust those drat scientists, but they love all the fruits (no pun intended) of most other scientific endeavors. it's infuriating.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:33
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Sword of Chomsky posted:I wish it was easier to educate myself on the topics of GMO's without getting mired in the new age poo poo. The topic is distorted enough that it can be hard to find reliable sources, since the good ones can get buried. There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about monoculture crops, but the actual interesting questions and debates are often ignored for the ignorant ones---"monoculture crops taste bad and cause cancer!!!" vs. "is it reasonable to establish monoculture crops in order to produce a reliable and well-understood crop that requires less human-labor and net energy expenditure to grow in spite of the increased risk of vulnerability to an emergent pathogen (an issue with current banana monocultures, as I recall). Unfortunately, I'm not sure enough people have enough technically literacy to understand and share information on the good questions, and are instead drawn to the ones that sound simple and self-evident. As an aside, I might write up a new thread exclusively on these agricultural issues when I have time to actually do enough research to have good sources for people to look at.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:45
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One thing that really bugs me, too, is that actually introducing terminator technology would be an almost unmitigated good. Monsanto and other seed companies could greatly cut down on copyright enforcement efforts (to everyone's relief) if the GM seeds that farmers buy were nonreplicating, and it would also prevent the issue of cross-contamination and even gene transfer almost completely. GMOs are largely noncompetitive in the wild anyway, but preventing pollination would drop the spread near zero. The only downside I can really think of is that it would also seriously cut down, and perhaps destroy, the grey market in second-generation GM seeds in the third world, whose existence maybe helps some people, even if it is technically illegal. Other than that, it's obviously beneficial. But people hear about the technology and they imagine a world where farmers can never save their own seeds again. So everybody freaks out and it doesn't get implemented. And then people KEEP freaking out about it despite the fact that it WASN'T implemented. It's a very weird situation to be telling people that the thing they're terrified about isn't actually happening, but that it should be happening. Kind of like people worried about the government nationalizing healthcare, I suppose. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 06:46
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Slanderer posted:As an aside, I might write up a new thread exclusively on these agricultural issues when I have time to actually do enough research to have good sources for people to look at. I would love to participate in that thread. Limiting the topic to just the agriculture side of things should help lessen the occurrence of all the played out arguments against GMO companies.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:51
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The worst part about the GMO debate is that dumb people are scared by (misunderstanding) the science aspect, not the business component which is the TRUE boogeyman. Basically, we as humans have been genetically modifying living things for thousands of years. Ever hear of farming? Yeah, one of the primary components of that is selecting the most favorable aspects of living things and encouraging their propagation via selective breeding. Thus, the genetics are altered. Look up wild corn - it's basically inedible for humans. Corn on the cob didn't exist 10,000 years ago... we built that poo poo. The primary difference is that now we have the technology to do the same kind of things without having to wait for organisms to grow and mature and gently caress thousands of times. Where Monsanto is evil is their business practices. It really DOES harm food supply and fucks farmers over HARD. Say you want to grow Monsanto corn but not Monsanto tomatoes. Not gonna happen. Their licensing is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to NOT grow their crops once you start. Oh, it turns out there's a drought in your area, so you want to switch from Monsanto's (water intensive) crops back to something else that needs a bit less liquid? Too bad, you're under contract for X years. Oh snap! Your Monsanto corn was cross-pollinated with non-Monsanto corn from the next farm thanks to honeybees. You now owe Monsanto ridiculous amounts of money for violating their copyright. I'm all for spider-chickens with 8 drummies, banana peels that'll stop bullets, and semi-sentient grapes that'll kill and devour bugs, but gently caress Monsanto and their attempt to corner the world's food market.
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Jun 27, 2013 09:46
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Illegibly Eligible posted:The worst part about the GMO debate is that dumb people are scared by (misunderstanding) the science aspect, not the business component which is the TRUE boogeyman. No, the worst part of the GMO debate is that they are all on exactly this level. The other side is stupid and scared and you've met or read about some idiots who believed in chemtrails, plus arguments that show you haven't listened to the serious arguments on the other side. "We've been selectively breeding for thousands of years!" is about as good an argument as "the climate has always been changing!" is against global warming.
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Jun 27, 2013 09:59
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Slanderer posted:Recently, I've had to deal with more and more people (in person and on the internet) who have been parroting the same ignorant viewpoints about Monsanto. Hell, I've seen people putting up fliers, walking around wearing signs, shouting on street corners---stuff I definitely see people doing for more concerning issues in our area, like fracking or voter disenfranchisement. Following it back to the source via facebook friends who have been posting the same subset of links about evil Monsanto, GMOs, organic food, or similar topics. Inevitably, these always lead back to various advocacy blogs and "news" sites (that seem to exist primarily by peddling "natural cures", "paleo diets", and "herbal clenses"). There is, apparently, an insular network of people and websites dedicated to complaining about how Monsanto is literally the devil because they are selling seeds full of DEATH CHEMICALS or something (very rarely are accurate claims made). Trying to find the source of some "article" always leads one on a chase that takes one from repost to repost around this entire circlejerk ring until you get to the source, which is usually some unsourced post in a green forum or blog comment. No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits.
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Jun 27, 2013 13:51
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Divine Disclaimer posted:No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits. Not really, but thanks anyway.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:07
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Slanderer posted:Not really, but thanks anyway. Is there a point to your rants? It reads more or less like a Monsanto shill project at this point.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:11
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edit: nevermind 
Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 14:21
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Divine Disclaimer posted:No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits. Except in the real world, farmers basically never re-sow their own seed for the crops Monsanto has patents on. You buy your seed from a seed company and get a seed company hat. If you really care that much about doing so, then you buy the non-patented seed from the exact same companies that sell the patented stuff. Also, the "Monsanto will sue you for violating copyright" is totally wrong and is the most common misconception I see. You can't copyright seeds. You patent them. And we haven't seen a single patent infringement case where the guy wasn't actually trying to infringe on a patent - like selectively breeding his own crops to try and not pay for Monsanto licensed products. A more recent case basically affirms this, that Monsanto will not sure over inadvertent infringement of their patents, and only substantial, willful infringement will do. I mean I hate the current patent and IP system in the US too, but so far we haven't actually seen any abuse in this arena beyond the normal uses of the system (and honestly far less compared to things like software patents) and there are some pretty clear legal limitations on what you can do with them. I've yet to see a single case brought against someone whose actions didn't look really suspicious and guilty, and the eventual court rulings in those cases seem to support this intuition. I'm not saying to completely ignore the issue, because it's possible that their reluctance right now is due to the fear of bad PR, but at the same time I think the legal risks are totally overstated right now.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:24
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If you're genuinely asking how to understand the people you describe in the original post, and are not simply trying to point out how crazy and goddamn stupid they are, then here's an attempt at explanation: I believe it comes down to whether you have a basically reductionistic or holistic view of the world, life, and how things work. Of course, very few people live exclusively in one view or the other. Reductionism is the realm of science, of taking things apart, looking at them separately, and establishing theories based on evidence. If you hate new-age people, you probably fall in this camp. It's a viewpoint that is congenial to atheism, libertarianism, scientism, etc. Of course, it has incredible explanatory and even eliminative power, which is why it is so popular for young people on the internet. Holism, of course, says that you lose something very important when you take things apart, and since all things are interconnected, true understanding can only be taken from the big picture. For humans, it seems that this viewpoint has had a much longer track record. If you want to understand the people you are talking to, you might try thinking of it this way: Monsanto represents a concept. It's not even the specific company, the exact crop, or technique that is opposed, and I know that this lack of specificity and exactness just winds every reductionist's spergy undies right into a twist. I believe that the concepts these holists most oppose are the science that outpaces our wisdom to use it, and the concept of the health of the entire ecosystem. You can just hold them to some scientific standard of evidence and utterly trash them on YOUR playing field, or you can try to connect to them on their own terms and see that they have some valid points. Industrial, petrochemical-based, monoculture agriculture is as new as Norman Borlaug, basically, and the degree to which it has changed our entire system is shocking to those who think on the large scale. Holists look at lots of trends and get this intuitive feel that they are somehow connected: global warming, peak oil and water, privatization and deregulation of chemical and energy production, increased daily exposure to pollutants and toxins, genetically modified food, unsustainable population growth, devastation by the spread of non-native species, and diseases of affluence and poverty. Most of the people I know who are worried about GMOs are worried because in the long term, there have been some seriously hosed up "approved by science" products that have made it onto the market, from thalidomide to Agent Orange that we learned were harmful only in the aftermath. They point out that we've lived in an environment of engendered trust that our food will be safe to eat, but that GMOs aren't even labeled to let them make a choice, if it WERE a problem. And of course, all of the other ethical problems with Monsanto are just more grist for the mill. I am trying to represent these viewpoints in the most charitable light so you can understand, but I'm not saying I agree with them. If you want to talk to people who think like this, try to start with the parts of what they say that have some validity.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:46
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Illegibly Eligible posted:Where Monsanto is evil is their business practices. It really DOES harm food supply and fucks farmers over HARD. Say you want to grow Monsanto corn but not Monsanto tomatoes. Not gonna happen. Their licensing is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to NOT grow their crops once you start. Oh, it turns out there's a drought in your area, so you want to switch from Monsanto's (water intensive) crops back to something else that needs a bit less liquid? Too bad, you're under contract for X years. Oh snap! Your Monsanto corn was cross-pollinated with non-Monsanto corn from the next farm thanks to honeybees. You now owe Monsanto ridiculous amounts of money for violating their copyright. I would love to see a contract thats states this. Please provide that for me.
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Jun 27, 2013 15:58
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Divine Disclaimer posted:No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits. Do you even understand the concept of hybrid seed? If you take a filial 1 hybrid that has a dominant trait that you like, what percentage of plants of filial 2 will have that trait? More importantly were your growing conditions last year the same as the growing conditions this year? Of course not. So why would you use F2 seed from last years growing conditions when we lost 100-200 growing degree days this year?
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Jun 27, 2013 16:06
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Quidam Viator posted:If you're genuinely asking how to understand the people you describe in the original post, and are not simply trying to point out how crazy and goddamn stupid they are, then here's an attempt at explanation: It's pretty much impossible to argue with them while using holistic principles, either. I'd argue I'm probably closer to a Holistic person than a deductive person under your definitions, but I still find it impossible to discuss with these people. The issue isn't simply that they "see" connections everywhere, because even if you point them in the direction of theories and methodology such as Orthodox Marxism, World-System Analysis and Structuralism that go much further in adequately explaining the inter-connectivity of the world the nuances of it will still seem to go completely past them. But even holistic theories in History and Politics rely partially on either empiricism or some-other method of analysis. Marxism doesn't just attest blankly that "This is how it is" it uses pretty rigorous methodology to achieve it's results; even if you disagree with Marxism's conclusions a lot of political theorists and historians have respect for the Historical Materialism as a methodology. Viewing them as holistic people isn't enough to adequately understand their mindset, in my opinion. You also have to understand their paranoid mindset and just-world outlooks. It's why they see "big business" as some sort of unified, homogenous entity. The few who have leftist, socialist leanings tend to lean towards the vulgar interpretation and completely ignore or fail to even read authors such as Poulantzas who are arguing that there is no unified singular "big business" cabal. There has to be some "bad guy" behind the inter-connected webs, the web can't just be a structure created from the constant interaction of human entitie to them and the idea of a world with no one at the helm is scary and intimidating to the vast majority of them. You can overthrow a big evil Zionist, Illuminati lizardman, you can't "defeat" a flawed, or conflicted structure.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:21
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Divine Disclaimer posted:No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits. Nobody's forcing farmers to buy Monsanto seed, and farmers almost always buy their seed at the beginning of the season anyway. Quidam Viator posted:Most of the people I know who are worried about GMOs are worried because in the long term, there have been some seriously hosed up "approved by science" products that have made it onto the market, from thalidomide to Agent Orange that we learned were harmful only in the aftermath. This is a little nitpicky, but Agent Orange didn't cause birth defects. Problem was that one of the ingredients of AO was contaminated with dioxin, which was well known to be horribly toxic. My point is that the compounds used to acheve the goal are often less frightening than the organizations making the decisions to produce and employ them. boner confessor fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 16:27
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karthun posted:Do you even understand the concept of hybrid seed? If you take a filial 1 hybrid that has a dominant trait that you like, what percentage of plants of filial 2 will have that trait? More importantly were your growing conditions last year the same as the growing conditions this year? Of course not. So why would you use F2 seed from last years growing conditions when we lost 100-200 growing degree days this year? Pretty much this. A farmer wants crops to be both uniform in terms of harvesting time, and in yield. F2 generation seeds do not allow this since they will no longer be similar in terms of traits. There's a reason why seed companies spend a fuckload of time and effort to produce strains that exhibit hybrid vigor, and there's a reason why farmers prefer to buy those seeds instead of using F2 seeds.
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Jun 27, 2013 17:10
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