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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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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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Cory Snyder posted:Is there a good source to debunk some of the less paranoid facts? My understanding is that if a neighboring farm uses patented seeds, your farm could show traces of that seed, and that's who Monsanto was coming after. I think it was in one of the documentaries like Food Inc. Is there something that specifically debunks that? It would be nice if you provided some information instead of attacking people in the thread with "Not really, but thanks anyway." Otherwise what's the point of this thread? To the best of my knowledge, that has never happened. There was a case where a neighbor farmer was deliberately collecting and saving seed that had happened to land on his property. There was a whole section of his farm that was a patented Monsanto variant, and very clearly deliberately planted. His claim in court was that it had just blown there all on its own and he had no idea, but the facts in the case showed that to be laughably impossible and he lost. ETA: Food, Inc. is very bad about taking farmers' claims at face value and ignoring the facts of the case. Some farmers really are crooks trying to steal Monsanto's valuable seeds for their own profit. Not all, of course, but every case needs to be evaluated on its merits, not just "Farmer good, Monsanto bad." Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 17:27
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Inaction Jackson posted:Yeah, I think that a rational debate over potential problems with Monsanto's business practices needs to focus on information asymmetry. If farmers want to collect and re-plant seeds, then they can buy non-patented seeds. If farmers understand the benefits of a GMO seed and want to pay for the better product, it's pretty silly for us to act as if they are being forced to do anything. Yeah, I'm disturbed by the level of paternalism shown toward 3rd world farmers in general. It seems to be assumed that they're ignorant and incompetent, completely unable to make business decisions for themselves. There's a certain level of "caveat emptor" that has to apply to this. The farmers are responsible for their own actions and purchasing decisions. There is certainly an element of city slickers selling snake oil to the country bumpkins, but that has always been a part of the spread of new technology and general public education. Salesmen will sometimes oversell their products, buyers will sometimes make poor choices. It's part of how the system works. Monsanto seems to be a stand-in for capitalism in general, often.
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Jun 27, 2013 18:20
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Preem Palver posted:People were freaking out about the corexit because all it did was disperse the oil enough to remain under the surface of the ocean, causing dead zones where plumes of dispersed oil settled underwater. It made good PR photos for BP due to the lack of oil on top of the ocean but worsened the environmental impact of the spill overall. People weren't worried about the corexit alone, it was what it would do in conjunction with the oil. You seem to think the oil would have just disappeared and been harmless if it hadn't been for the dispersant. The oil was going to cause lots of environmental damage somewhere no matter what. The only choice was in which ecosystem you designated to take the hit. The bayous and mangrove swamps of the Louisiana coast are very fragile and would have been almost impossible to clean up and restore. Leaving the oil on the surface would have been disastrous. Hence, the dispersant was used to get it off the surface and protect the wetlands. The deep Gulf was less sensitive and more resilient, so it would have less impact there. There was no "no damage" option.
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Jun 28, 2013 04:39
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Preem Palver posted:I did not state or imply that there would have been no environmental impact otherwise, and in fact said the exact opposite. Note "worsened environmental impact of the spill overall" and "in conjunction with the oil." Again you imply that leaving the oil on the surface would have led to less overall impact. That is complete bullshit. Sinking it into the Gulf was certainly going to cause huge problems, but the problems overall would have been far greater if they'd let it get into the Louisiana wetlands. Your notion that they did it just for PR purposes is completely absurd.
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Jun 28, 2013 04:54
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serewit posted:I remember reading a book once about how people with certain viewpoints had some sort of weird motivated reasoning thing going on. People who identified as conservative had stuff like climate change - basically, every piece of evidence only made them believe harder in their conclusion (that it isn't a real thing or whatever). People who identified as liberal or leftist or whatever, though, had GMO foods and anti-vax and the whole 'natural' food thing. I guess what I'm saying, OP, is that for some reason people who believe that Monsanto is literally the devil are basically impossible to convince otherwise because any evidence you find that proves them wrong will be twisted to prove that they're actually right or discarded. It's a form of confirmation bias. The pieces of information that confirm my point of view I accept uncritically as true, while those that contradict it are obviously plants from The Enemy and must be scorned.
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Jun 28, 2013 16:10
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Technogeek posted:Water is really, really, really good at blocking radiation. The affected area would be ridiculously small compared to dispersants or letting the oil wash up on shore. The problem is that it's completely unproven technology. There was a decent chance it would fracture the rocks and make the oil leak worse and unstoppable. We also have no bombs of that size and would have to custom-make one for the purpose. That would require a lot of time and testing, which we didn't have. That ignores the PR problem of deliberately detonating a nuclear bomb and getting the public to accept it. It was some technology fetish web site's wet dream and little more. It's something out of the script of a bad Nick Cage movie. Nobody in authority in their right mind was going to even suggest setting off a nuke to try to shut it down.
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Jun 28, 2013 17:55
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Slanderer posted:There were some precedents, actually. In the Soviet nuclear geoengineering program, they closed multiple natural gas wells using nuclear devices. This, of course, is still not the same as trying to do it to an oil well at the bottom of the Gulf, but it wasn't a crazy idea at all (just a disproportionately unpopular one due to ATOMS!!!!!!) It was crazy in that it had no precedent in the United States. There was no expertise for it. Sure it was theoretically possible, but nobody is going to propose some completely untested technology at the bottom of the Gulf on a whim of "hey, it's so crazy it just might work!" That's what's out of the script of a bad Nick Cage movie. If we'd had a 20-year track record of doing it, demonstrating the engineering and geological science chops to do it routinely without incident, then it certainly would have gotten a look. Given the situation as it was, using a nuke was a science fiction fantasy.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:23
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Sogol posted:I really agree with this first point you are making, but also feel that it is not just Monsanto, but the functioning system in which a Monsanto can thrive. This seems to be a general "gently caress capitalism" argument rather than anything specific to GMOs at all.
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Jul 1, 2013 00:49
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Buller posted:Why has so many people started randomly defended Monsanto on the internet, always talking about anti-science and such. I prefer to hate Monsanto for what they've actually done, not for what a bunch of sensationalistic goofballs claim they've done.
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Jul 2, 2013 22:06
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Buller posted:Alright i see, i guess in that case that Monsanto is a great company and opposition to reckless and unresearched GMO implementation and adoptation is ridiculous, thanks! The science of GMOs must indeed be in a pretty terrible state if there's been only three papers about it published in the last 15 years.
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Jul 3, 2013 00:10
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spikenigma posted:Ok, either I've had some sort of stroke or you're all trolling me at this stage Just to clarify for you: Bt plants have a gene inserted that causes them to produce a chemical that is poisonous to certain pests. They create their own insecticide, as it were. The Bt gene by itself has no effect on the plant's resistance to externally applied pesticides. You can get Bt plants that also have pesticide resistance built into them, but that is not what the Bt gene itself does.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:49
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spikenigma posted:
spikenigma posted:You genetically modify a plant (often with bacteria...more specifically 'Bt' as you mention....even more specifically: Bacillus thuringiensis) to resist pesticides so that you can spray your crop with cheaper and/or better pesticides so the plants themselves don't die. This is where you directly stated that inserting a Bt gene makes them pesticide resistant. This is what is false. Bt genes allow you to use less pesticides, but the plant's resistance to those pesticides is unchanged.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:11
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the tire does not make the bus blue"
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Cream_Filling posted:Uh that's absolutely the excuse used when procuring Agent Orange. It's not like defoliant is nerve gas or something where there's a particularly special capacity for harm that creates some distinct moral burden on the seller, either. I'm all for higher standards in regards to corporate behavior, but I think your standards are unrealistically high. I'd reserve the moral culpability for not having better quality assurance or concerns about possible contamination and the way they handled the subsequent scandals for people exposed to that stuff, as well as later bullshit showing a similar pattern of behavior where they were literally getting crooked laboratories to lie about research and lab results to avoid paying out in lawsuits for other harmful chemical shenanigans. You also have to consider that the guys running Dow and Monsanto and DuPont and the others at the time were largely veterans of WWII. Supplying what their government asked for to fight a war would be an act of patriotic duty for them. They would not even think to ask what it was going to be used for.
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Jul 4, 2013 21:39
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FRINGE posted:Since I commented on that issue right before the Merck comment, and from the opposite side: "Even when something judges in favor of proposed for-market GM products", your dismissal is irrelevant (except to highlight your partisanship). If someone tries to promote the safety of GMOs based on an article in one of those fake journals, you are on firm ground in declaring their claim as bogus. It has no bearing on anything not published in those "journals", however. .
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Jul 5, 2013 01:53
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FRINGE posted:I was very clear in the comparison. Which is meaningless guilt-by-association. When you have proof that there are bogus GMO studies being taken seriously, you'll have a point. The fake pharma journals were advertising vehicles for doctors' offices, not serious publications, anyway. The thing about fake studies is that they tend to be found out when others can't replicate the results. No one study means anything by itself. It's hard to hide fakery for very long.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:48
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FRINGE posted:You can keep re-posting this meaningless crap, and I will keep replying that looking at likelihoods and analogous practices/circumstances is a worthy pursuit when analyzing anything in a social, public, psychological, or political sphere. And my point is that I'll worry about it when it happens. It wouldn't be the first time someone has tried to get away with faking data. Science is pretty good at policing itself and outing bogus results. You're trying to impugn all GMO research because somebody made some fake journals to push pills in doctors' offices. There is no connection between the two.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:54
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Amarkov posted:The first successful recombinant DNA experiments were performed 41 years ago. Trials for the first commercial transgenic plants began 26 years ago, and approval in Western countries began 19 years ago. I don't even get why this is something to be concerned about, or why it even matters. It says to me that making a successful GMO is really hard, and getting them approved for public release is a slow and thorough process. There's nothing reckless or rushed about it at all.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:19
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FRINGE posted:It matters in the face of the pro-Monsanto/industry belief that they are super-scientists who are beyond the ken of mere mortals. Nobody here believes that. They're scientists, like everybody else in the field. Anybody willing to invest the time can figure out what they're doing. So your first statement is complete nonsense. You second statement is unsupported fear-mongering. Please back up your claims with evidence.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:34
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Solkanar512 posted:Could you go into a bit more detail about these sorts of conversations? I'm certainly not going to take the route of defending shitheads like Monsanto, but the "nuclear-GMO-vaccination paranoia" is exactly why I can't fully embrace the far left. Any time I try to have these conversations with friends, it all boils down to a complete lack of understanding about the what GMOs actually are or don't understand that Monsanto isn't the only game in town. Similarly, I have a sister (with a PhD in history) who refused to used a microwave oven for years because the idea of deliberately bombarding food with microwave radiation completely weirded her out. I think the real barrier is an emotional one. Lots of people have no need of a scientific viewpoint on the world for their every day life and never really get used to it. Then they get hit by some issue that pretty much requires being able to analyze it scientifically and they freak out. The easiest course of action is to push the offending issue away and pretend it's all bad so they don't have to think about it.
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Jul 5, 2013 16:33
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karthun posted:It does sound like we don't disagree. That being said I have talked to people that don't realize that if the DNA comes from a known allergen then that must be labeled. It doesn't help that the anti-GMO community has been less than honest about their reasoning for GMO labeling. The real reason seems to come down to vitalism. There is something magical about chemicals coming from living creatures, so "natural" and "organic" are good and "synthetic" and "artificial" are bad. GMOs cross the line from being natural to being manufactured, and are thus bad. That's all I can figure.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:44
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CommieGIR posted:
Well, it is a conspiracy. Scientists are conspiring to tell the truth.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:55
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down with slavery posted:That's fine? I really have no problem with adding labels to things, especially if there are people out there who want to base their consumer decisions on those labels (regardless of whether or not it has a scienctific justification) WARNING: This food contains Amino Acids WARNING: This food contains dihydrogen monoxide WARNING: This food contains non-human DNA WARNING: This food can cause excessive weight gain if eaten in large quantities All of those are about as meaningful as a GMO label.
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Mar 17, 2014 16:51
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down with slavery posted:And? If the people decide they want it labelled, why does it matter? Why do we need to fight against the wishes of the people? As is already the case, a proliferation of meaningless labels causes people to ignore all of them, resulting in the important ones being overlooked. You don't put warning labels on stuff just for the fun of it. There needs to be a compelling reason.
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Mar 17, 2014 16:59
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down with slavery posted:How about a vote? Where 50% of the people agree that the labels should be there? Is that not good enough? What labels are you worried about being hidden as the result of adding GMO labels? Are we currently at peak labeling? Because popular opinion is not how we assess the validity of a public health issue.
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Mar 17, 2014 17:02
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down with slavery posted:Democracy has been used to decide these sorts of issues in the past, and it will continue to be used to do so in the future. "How we manage the public health" is certainly up for debate wrt the "popular opinion", as the officials we elect are the ones choosing those policies. Yes, we elect people to deal with public health issues, but those people are then trusted to use the best expert opinions available to wield their powers and keep everyone safe. We don't vote on individual issues, like whether or not a neighborhood should be quarantined for a cholera outbreak. You are advocating that we take the authority for ensuring public health out of the hands of experts and give to idiots.
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Mar 17, 2014 17:10
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down with slavery posted:I never said it was a good idea. I said that if the people democratically decide to add GMO labels, it is not an inherent evil. Since the legislation will most likely eventually pass in one of the more left-leaning states over the next few years, what terrors should I be expecting that were worthy of a 25 page thread? Someone's going to miss the peanut allergy label? But again, the people deciding it democratically is not how our society works. We're a republic, not a direct democracy. Our Constitution is specifically set up to avoid the tyranny of the majority. Fundamentally, you are arguing for a different form of government.
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Mar 17, 2014 17:22
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down with slavery posted:It's the end result of everyone acting like he's saying that labeling GMOs is a good thing. D&D is nigh incapable of appreciating nuance and many of you will gladly start arguing for pages with someone who agrees with you while completely misunderstanding what they are saying the entire time. Let me put it this way: If a state, via referendum, votes to label foods containing GMOs, the state government should ignore the vote and refuse to label the foods, as it is a net disservice to the public well-being.
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Mar 17, 2014 22:46
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down with slavery posted:
So you think any referendum passed by the public should become law, without the ramifications of it being considered? How about if they violate state or federal constitutions? The will of the people uber alles?
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Mar 17, 2014 22:56
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yes I was hoping you'd go full monty and call for the overthrow of state referendums.
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Babby Formed posted:What part of GMO labeling violates the federal constitution? You need something better then "your rear end" to override the state constitution allowing these referendums in the first place. Don't go strawmanning about how direct democracy is terrible, what specific thing is worth overriding the will of the people as outlined by their state constitutions for GMO labeling? The sales potential on a 3% crop yield increase? Grapples? pass. You are asking for a legal argument based on a referendum that doesn't exist, as to whether or not it might violate any one of 50 different states' constitutions plus the federal one. This is a demand that is not answerable. Technical legal arguments are not really in the scope of this thread. I would applaud the efforts of a state government that fought such a referendum in the courts, however.
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Mar 17, 2014 23:29
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Babby Formed posted:What the gently caress? So you get to talk about how GMO labeling should be resisted by all members of government in a position to do so, followed up with a defense based on how direct democracy rides roughshod over federal and state consitutions, and you won't even provide me one possible example of how this measure could do so? So was the post I quoted just a complete non-sequitur? Is GMO labeling such an unclear measure that we can't talk about it at all, as it's too in the void? Then why should everyone resist it sight unseen? You're not being too rough, you're demanding an answer to an unanswerable hypothetical question. There is no rational or economic argument to be made for such labeling; there are many economic and even regulation-based arguments that might be made against it (for example, food labeling is the province of the FDA, and the label may trample on their Federal authority). I have no idea of the legal validity of such arguments, and I'm not going to go on a wild goose chase just for you. GMO labeling of food could be unconstitutional for a wide variety of possible reasons, and the only way to tell would be to have the actual text of the referendum available, and get some lawyers on the case. My greater point is that such labeling is stupid as all hell and detrimental to the public good, so I would hope any state passing such a referendum would hire a bunch of lawyers and get it overturned.
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Mar 17, 2014 23:52
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Babby Formed posted:This is literally all I wanted. I just wanted to know if you were thinking "which moral reason" like a first amendment claim or if you just meant "which technicality I can nail them on." Glad to know you think the will of the people is literally less important then an FDA jurisdictional claim. One part of the Constitution is not more "moral" than another. The FDA jurisdictional claim would boil down to the Supremacy clause, which is just as valid as the 1st Amendment.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:03
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Strudel Man posted:Nothing particularly happened from three mile island, though. I'd tend to say that the strength of the public reaction to it is more a symptom than a cause. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086312/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_59 Suddenly nuclear powerplant meltdowns and evil nuclear managers got real popular for movie plots.
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Mar 20, 2014 06:14
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Ironed Idol posted:http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=25381 Clearly the most credible peer-reviewed scientific study ever done.
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Mar 22, 2014 03:44
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Ironed Idol posted:http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/05/monsanto-roundup-effects-on-honeybees.aspx So, since there is no evidence for just why the IDoA took the bees, it must have been Monsanto's doing. Crackerjack detective work, that.
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Mar 22, 2014 03:58
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Ironed Idol posted:I should argue you about how a chemical company became a plant company, but I won't. That's not really relevant to anything. What you posted about the bees was complete bullshit. Now you're going for an appeal to emotion since you don't have any actual facts.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:03
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Ironed Idol posted:Its logged in the Illinois website. You might try doing some research for yourself. You have yet to post anything credible or sensible.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:06
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Ironed Idol posted:http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-firms/10558-the-worlds-top-ten-seed-companies-who-owns-nature This is a nonsensical point. As Install Windows pointed out, seed patents were first granted over 80 years ago. Nobody is forced to buy them. Farmers buy patented seeds because it allows them to make more money. You seem to be assuming that plant patents are inherently evil as an axiom. It is not an axiom. You need to demonstrate why this is so before your other arguments can be built on them.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:28
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Ironed Idol posted:http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/02/scotus-hears-monsanto-soybean-case Perhaps you should stop quoting random articles and do a bit of actual thinking.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:32
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