Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Peter Scott wrote:
On 23/03/2011 18:54, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Peter Scott wrote:

You're just making this up as you go along, with no idea whether it
actually means anything. I find this kind of doomsaying absurd.

I think that you are just being narrow-minded, assuming that because
nothing bad did happen that it could not have done.

If that were a reason not to do something, we might as well paralyse
ourselves now.

Are you sure that
all of the people working on GM knew exactly where their researches
would lead? It wouldn't have been much use if they did. We have never
in the past deliberately combined genetic material from different
organisms. You must know that it is a definition of a species that it
can reproduce. Yes, there has been genetic mixing over time but most
of these mixes died out because they were non-viable or for
reasons we
can know nothing about. Yes, a complex organism is the result of
combinations of many smaller organisms over aeons of time, but many
many will have died out as a result of natural selection. I am not
doom-saying at all. Simply pointing out that science has been
conducting an experiment with no real idea if it might go badly
wrong.
We have to go on doing it for the sake of feeding the world but
should
not ignore the possible consequences.

You remind me of the story about the young prince and the lion: An old
woman cursed him because he was a snotty little brat, and sad 'you
will
die when you meet a lion'

Hid parents were so scared, they never let him out of the palace
grounds, and he grew up isolated.

One day, while exploring an old disused part of the palace, he came
across a picture of a Lion. He was furious "WHO left this picture
here?"
he screamed and banged his fists on the wall, where an old rusty nail
from another picture, cut his hand, and he died of septicaemia three
days later...

:-)

As we are now leaving rational argument behind
well that was the point I was making

You cannot predicate a course of action on the statistical probability
of an unkown unknown.

Because you don't know it. By definition.

The fact is that by definition also, there always will be unknown
unknowns: Ergo if you are not going to proceed on the grounds that
there are unknown unknowns, you are going to get precisely nowhere.

Which is what the Prince did, but as the story shows, even that didn't
ensure his safety..

Mmm. There must be a proper name for the sort of argument based on the
"well the sky could fall down" approach, which cannot be countered
because, well, the sky *could* fall down.

A polite name, I mean. I can think of plenty of rude ones :-)

Climate change?

On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:23:04 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Tim Streater
saying something like:

Mmm. There must be a proper name for the sort of argument based on the
"well the sky could fall down" approach, which cannot be countered
because, well, the sky *could* fall down.

Simple caution would cover it.
I must admit, I was a bit anti GM, but it's been around a while and
nobody's died. I don't for one second believe the researchers knew what
they were doing for every instance, that's a load of total ********, but
they were quite careful when pushing the envelope and for that I'm quite
grateful.

There were rumours that some GM crops caused the death of butterfly
caterpillars. I don't know whether it was confirmed.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

On 25/03/11 09:22, Mark wrote:


There were rumours that some GM crops caused the death of butterfly
caterpillars. I don't know whether it was confirmed.

It was definitely confirmed, but that's what it was designed to do. It
was a sweetcorn plant with implanted genes from Bacillus thuringiensis.
It was mainly intended as a defence against the corn borer beetle but
was also effective against other pests.


--
Bernard Peek

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:29:09 +0000, Another Dave wrote:

Since when have photons been neutrons?

Protons not photons ;-)

If you and Mr Streater say so but that isn't what the article said.

Dumb ass journalists, what ever happened to proof reading? Or
clarifying apparent inconsistencies in quotes.

It passed the spell checker.