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Back in 1970, Monsanto chemist John Franz invented a herbicide called glyphosate. In the half-century that has since passed, the substance has been heralded as a "once-in-a-century herbicide," leading to substantially higher crop yields without damaging the environment. Scrutiny over the years has revealed the herbicide to be less acutely toxic than Tylenol and to degrade quickly in the soil. In order for farmers to make full use of the herbicide, Monsanto engineered strains of various crops to be immune to glyphosate. Now, American farmers average 160 bushels of corn per acre each year, up from 109.5 in 1979.
Monsanto has also been key to the development of golden rice, a genetically modified strain which provides a significant amount of Vitamin A per serving. Vitamin A deficiency plagues many parts of the developing world, resulting in as many as one million deaths and 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness annually (PDF). If widely planted, golden rice could very well abate this tragedy. Monsanto: More Saint than Sinner | RealClearScience
At about 40 minutes in the speaker asks "What the hell is the rush?" (to put genetic modification of plants into practice).
So unlike you, apparently, he does not appear to be opposed to genetic modification. He just wants us to slow down and be more careful. He also makes some good points about why we should slow down.
Slowing down sounds okay to me...so long as we get around to putting genetic modification into practice eventually. I don't know how we're going to solve world hunger, aging, and basically turn the world into as close of a utopia as possible without genetic modification, and we need to get around to doing that at some point.
Or maybe not:
The United Nations and experts say global food production will have to double by 2050, at which point the world population is expected to have grown from 7 billion today to well beyond 9 billion. http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/29/g...em-334119.html
Also, the world is running out of ground water. How are we going to feed that many people, in 35 years without genetic engineering?
But some countries are balking. Mexico, where maize was first domesticated, must now import it to meet local demand because activists there will not allow genetically modified organism hybrids. Mexico’s maize growers get yields 38 percent lower than the world average and three times below the U.S., where 90 percent of the maize crop is an insect-resistant GMO hybrid. Mexico’s fields are beset by such crop ravishers as the corn earworm, black cutworm and fall armyworm, which cost the country up to half its crops and incite farmers to spray their land with thousands of tons of chemical insecticides.http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/29/g...em-334119.html
and also:
Genetically modifying mosquitos isn’t the stuff of a distant future, either. Oxitec, a British company that modifies mosquito genes for sterility but does not use gene drive—which means that the sterile trait is passed along to just 50 percent of mosquito offspring, instead of the pumped up, gene-drive-d 90 to 99 percent—has been pushing to release its bugs in Key Haven, Florida, for years. (The company has already conducted field tests in Brazil and the Cayman Islands.) In November, the Florida island residents will vote in a referendum on whether to release the Zika-combating bugs in the wild. https://www.outsideonline.com/211112...ve-environment
re: genetic modification: I saw the author of this book speak at a lecture/Q&A televised on C-SPAN last weekend. Want to read the book; it's strongly anti-GMO
re: genetic modification: I saw the author of this book speak at a lecture/Q&A televised on C-SPAN last weekend. Want to read the book; it's strongly anti-GMO
Regardless of what the book says, genetic modification is the way of the future. It's just a question of when we should put more of it into practice. There's no sense at all in never using that particular magic wand, and as time goes on we'll keep learning how to use that magic wand better, and if the risks aren't worth it now, eventually they'll become worth it, at least.
It bothers me when people use the phrase "anti-GMO." Why don't we just focus on what, specifically we don't like about certain GMO's, or what certain organizations do that we don't like, such as Monsanto's behaviors, rather than saying "I don't like GMO's" and advocating the complete destruction of something that has saved millions of lives and will probably end up saving billions?
As for a formula for morality it starts with people having a choice. The right to choose how THEY want to live.... when they're not hurting anyone by doing so.
Morality can't come about by turning us all into drones (as your suggested surgery would).
There'll always be that one great (not!) person who will keep HIS/HER brain as he/she was born...so he/she could rule over all the no-minds..the ones who gave up their own unique personalities so they could be turned into compliant idiots.
I asked before how we're going to feed the growing population without genetic modification of foods if the population doubles in 35 years, and it keeps increasing after that when the world is running out of groundwater. That's how it'll probably save billions, and I explained earlier how Norman Borlaug saved millions with his genetically modified wheat.
If you have a tool to easily alter the characteristics of foods, I don't know exactly what they'll be capable of doing with that, but that would seem to me to be a lot better at dealing with rapid change than just relying on traditional farming, and it certainly was a useful tool for Norman Borlaug when he used it to save millions of people in a very short amount of time.
He rants about how people who dislike GMO's are horrible here:
Asked who is going to be concerned with the bio-safety once a floodgate has been opened for genetic engineering, he described people who have been championing a GMO-free world as "utopian thinkers" who do not understand the complexities of food production. "Dosage makes the poison. But vitamins, which are vital, are taken in smaller quantities. If we could get a gene from rice - because rice does not suffer from rust - and then use it to protect other crops that suffer from rust like wheat, that would be a big revolution, and that will not be dangerous to human health in any way," he added.
He said Africa is undergoing political instability because there is not enough food to feed the people. "We need more investments in agriculture and we must stop looking at agriculture as a donkey's profession," he said. Borlaug challenged African leaders to embark on productive technology that would ensure predictable food supply to their masses. "The so called GMOs can play a very vital role in peoples' lives. However, this must be accompanied by political goodwill because technology alone cannot survive without decisive support," he said.
He, however, called for the establishment of responsible government agencies to police the GMO imports.
Borlaug is the president of Sasakawa Africa Association, a body that runs various food technology projects across Africa including Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ethiopia, Guinea, Tanzania, Mozambique Malawi and Uganda. He is the father of the famous "Green Revolution" that enabled India and Pakistan to increase cereal production from 12 million to 68 million tonnes within 35 years. He has dedicated more than five decades to fight for the end of world hunger and the acceleration of agricultural productivity in developing nations. http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-in...oomsayers.html
Apparently you think Monsanto is horrible. I have no idea whether its pros outweigh the cons. I'll probably let other people research that, as well as what problems it has that something should be done about. I've watched all your videos so far. They're not bad. My concern is they mostly only talk about the negatives. I'd prefer for a video where someone talks about why the cons outweigh the pros.
As for a formula for morality it starts with people having a choice. The right to choose how THEY want to live.... when they're not hurting anyone by doing so.
Morality can't come about by turning us all into drones (as your suggested surgery would).
There'll always be that one great (not!) person who will keep HIS/HER brain as he/she was born...so he/she could rule over all the no-minds..the ones who gave up their own unique personalities so they could be turned into compliant idiots.
*There is no such thing as complete freedom. Freedom always comes in degrees. A person under the rule of an oppressive government that gives food and water could very well end up having more freedom than a person living in an anarchy who has no choice but to bend to the complete will of their superiors. Also, there are no behaviors we engage in that don't hurt or help someone. Nearly all of our behaviors do both. It's always a matter, not of avoiding hurt, but causing as little hurt as possible and as much help as possible. Now, we say anything is okay so long as it doesn't hurt others because that's a very useful sort of moral code for humans, because it's simple enough that we can understand it and use it regularly. It's a fine moral code...for modern humans, so long as we're just regular people and not part of the government. Even the modern government should be looking at things in a much more complex way than that. Councils of philosopher kings with brains designed to work much faster than our own would be able to see more than that though, and make more detailed plans than that.
*The idea is that you genetically engineer sex cells so that people want things that would be of better benefit to society than our current wants, so that they they freely choose to do things that benefit society. That way we need as few government controls as possible. I'm thinking better impulse control and the modification of our aggression so that we want to physically attack less when we're angry would be a good step. Higher intelligence could oftentimes be of advantage too, but I think higher EQ would be more important. Higher intelligence might actually be a disadvantage for some citizens. I wouldn't want janitors constantly feeling bored because they have minds that work as quickly as those of astrophysicists.
There are five areas of emotional intelligence, or EQ: motivation, empathy, self-awareness and the ability to recognize and understand our emotions as they happen, social skills, and self-regulation which deals with impulse control/trustworthiness/etc. Those all sound like fine areas to strengthen to enhance a whole society, whereas high IQ would only be potentially useful.
*Brain surgery would be just for when you want to make changes to your body and mind as an adult, after you know more about what you want, within the boundaries of the law, or if you want to live as part of the society but lack the genetic modification the rest of the citizens have.
*The society survives through genetic engineering. Worst case scenario, in the beginning there's a leader with a normal mind. That person would have little reason not go genetically engineer future leaders to be ideal rulers on one of the councils of philosopher kings though. I'm thinking there would be three. There would be a council of three president-types responsible for dealing with immediate problems. There would be another council that's more like the House of Representatives in that they handle law creation and more long term issues. There would be a third council who acts as researchers, assistants, and judges the will of the populace. They would then tell the will of the populace to the other rulers who could then take that into account to bend their ideas, somewhat, to better avoid civil unrest. Rulers would be genetically engineered for their positions...but there'd be back-ups who would act as researchers and assistants until needed to rule so that incompetent or corrupt leaders could be replaced. I'm thinking the citizens would have power to call for the replacement of elected officials, although I'm not sure they should be allowed to choose the next elected official. Maybe that should be the job of the rest of the council members, because the council members will have brains designed for that sort of thing and the regular citizens won't, necessarily.
Thanks for another opportunity to talk about this.
Last edited by Clintone; 10-10-2017 at 11:58 AM..
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