The other most important part of this discussion, in my opinion, is Fear, simply because it is fueling a movement that interferes with taking the RISK necessary to make progress.
>> on some we come with totally different viewpoints
Well, very different. Almost everything you say I have a lot of agreement with, and evertything you say, I u dneraqtnd and have some sympathy for.
>> But, regardless of the field he works in, to achieve any worthwhile success he must earn the respect of others,
I used to agree with that, but I think the world has changed enough that BS is expected and rewarded in many fields. But I sure WISH I could agree that were still true, and I wouldn't say that I could prove you were wrong. In my opinion, you probably are 70-80% right, and I think you ARE 95% right in many fields (local businesses and n on -sales non-legal non-political fields).
>> And if our earliest ancestors had avoided all risk by cowering in their caves or staying up in the trees, we would not have progressed as far as we have.
>> So, the Freedom to Take Risk, even if we are not sure it is totally safe, is the most important stone in the foundation of Progress.
Maybe that is another "emotional" or philosophical difference between the two "sides" of this debate. The value of progress. When people forget to include agriculture, medicine, shelter, language, printing and so on, and only consider the progress made since their childhood, (and memories of childhood will always seem brighter than images of fear-mongers), "progress" sounds more like "Vietnam and pollution".
Or perhaps many people have had it up to here with the recent RATE of change in society. During a recent election , a 70-year old lady complained in a "town hall" meeitng that "it wasn't the same country as it was when SHE was a child." Well, yeah, there HAS been change since the 1940s, and not all for the good. If you interpet it not as "prevent all chnage becuase I'm afraid of these specific thbin gs", but instead m"Whoah, slow down, it feels like jumping off a cliff", I have some sympathy. How much chnage is tolerable for any one person's comfort, or for society to be able to absorb without fragmenting into segments that can't even communicate with each other?
>> But they should not use that freedom to stop Monsanto or anyone else from taking risks during the search and research necessary for progress.
We do differ there, because I have little faith in the profit motive protecting us from global disaster. What form it might take I have no idea, but the example I use is the recent mortgage fiasco. The way mortgages were written was the fiscal equivalent of disposing of plutonium waste by dropping it into a lake that drinking water is drawn from. Did they fail in the marketplace as they should have? No, they were bailed out so that they continue to give each other million-dollar bonuses for seriously damaging the entire world economy, and throwing many into homelessness.
>> to achieve any worthwhile success he must earn the respect of others,
I think the mortgage compqanies proved themsleves to be lying, cheating sleaze, selling people securtities thqat they themselves knew were worse than worthless, and were aloready betting on to fail ... integrity, NOT. And yet they are still riding our backs, "too b ig to fail", protected b y their lobyists from even the regulation that was intended to make it harder for them to profit hugely from doing the exact same thing again tomorrow.
Capitalism and the profit motive might work very well - if we ever changed over to USING it, instead of "Governement of the people, by the lawyers , for the rich."
OK, now I see how we DO diufer a lot in our opinions! I know that mine are only opinions, not provable! Maybe mine are more like faith than opinion. I know that when I was disillusioned from beliefs much closer top yourts, I went very stringly into DIStrust of thsoe principles actually are played out in the real world. Your milage my vary, you may be ruighter than I am, and I wish you were!
>> But they should not use that freedom to stop Monsanto or anyone else from taking risks during the search and research necessary for progress
My speculations about biodiversity and genetic drift caused by multiplied Agriobacter plasmids are more like science fiction than science, so I mostly agree with you there.
But the GE tools cvertainly have the _potential_ to cause vast damage if unregulated, or left to the marketplace. If you can imagine a failed experiment in nitrogen-fixing giving the Earth an atmosphere with 30% nitrous oxide * , I can imagine Monsanto telling the court it is "too big to fail" and getting government grants to keep it afloat while the rest of us cough our lungs inside out and die in droves. Oooopps.
* I think it was Hal Clement who worte an SF novel with that premise.... yeah, "The Nitrogen Fix", "a future where all oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere has combined with nitrogen ... and the seas are very dilute nitric acid." But apparently Hal did not speculate it was done by stimulating nitrogen-fixing bacteria as I thought.
Ahem. This thread is getting very long and lanky...which makes it hard for our friends on dial-up. The thread starter has pulled out of the conversation, so I'm going to go ahead and close this one to new posts. If there is a need to continue the discussion, someone can start a new thread.
Going forward, please keep in mind that we have relaxed the old "no political discussion whatsoever" rule, but we do insist that all conversations in the garden remain respectful and civil, whether they veer into politics or religion, or any other "hot topic" area.
