I am big supporter of drought resistant crops, high yielding crops sans introduction of external genes & Nuclear energy and always wanted to ask Taleb this question but Long Now foundation & Stewart Brand beat me to it - Taleb's response:
Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs: Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) To borrow from Rupert Read, there is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from a fish and putting it into a tomato. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become “natural”.
What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global. I do not wish to pay —or have my descendants pay — for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there —our non-naive version — simply because we would discover errors after considerable damage.
Nuclear: In large quantities we should worry about an unseen risk from nuclear energy. In small quantities it may be OK —how small we should determine, making sure threats never cease to be local. Keep in mind that small mistakes with the storage of the nuclear are compounded by the length of time they stay around. The same with fossil fuels. The same with other sources of pollution.
But certainly not GMOs, because their risk is not local. Invoking the risk of “famine” is a poor strategy, no different from urging people to play Russian roulette in order to get out of poverty. And calling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor —indeed warped —understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management.
Indeed, we should worry about the lobby-infested state, given the historical tendency of bureaucrats to produce macro harm (wars, disastrous farming policies, crop subsidies encouraging the spread of corn syrup, etc.) But there exists an environment that is not quite that of the “wisdom of crowds”, in which spontaneous corrections are not possible, and legal liabilities difficult to identify. I’ve discussed this in my book Antifragile where some people have an asymmetric payoff at the expense of society: keep the profits and transfer harm to others.In general, the solution is to move from regulation to penalties, by imposing skin-in-the game-style methods to penalize those who play with our collective safety —no different from our treatment of terrorist threats and dangers to our security.
I completely agree with Taleb's nuclear response. He is right about Monsanto but GMO is not always equal to Monsanto. Having saved and inspired by Norman Borlaugh, there are hundred of scientists (especially in India and other third world countries) who have produced and working on GMO crops. They really don't get "exotic" with gene manipulation, but they use baby steps - make wheat crop little drought resistant without using gene from other species to say the least. Most importantly they don't patent it like Monsanto does and plays the monopoly game.
Bottom line - Norman Borlaugh was right about feeding the world using genetically modifying crops but he was wrong about Monsanto and their "good" intentions. It's about time we start segregating GMO's into different categories for better policies and public understanding. It will be probably much easier to check on the "skin in the game" if broken down into simple categories.
Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs: Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) To borrow from Rupert Read, there is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from a fish and putting it into a tomato. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become “natural”.
What people miss is that the modification of crops impacts everyone and exports the error from the local to the global. I do not wish to pay —or have my descendants pay — for errors by executives of Monsanto. We should exert the precautionary principle there —our non-naive version — simply because we would discover errors after considerable damage.
Nuclear: In large quantities we should worry about an unseen risk from nuclear energy. In small quantities it may be OK —how small we should determine, making sure threats never cease to be local. Keep in mind that small mistakes with the storage of the nuclear are compounded by the length of time they stay around. The same with fossil fuels. The same with other sources of pollution.
But certainly not GMOs, because their risk is not local. Invoking the risk of “famine” is a poor strategy, no different from urging people to play Russian roulette in order to get out of poverty. And calling the GMO approach “scientific” betrays a very poor —indeed warped —understanding of probabilistic payoffs and risk management.
Indeed, we should worry about the lobby-infested state, given the historical tendency of bureaucrats to produce macro harm (wars, disastrous farming policies, crop subsidies encouraging the spread of corn syrup, etc.) But there exists an environment that is not quite that of the “wisdom of crowds”, in which spontaneous corrections are not possible, and legal liabilities difficult to identify. I’ve discussed this in my book Antifragile where some people have an asymmetric payoff at the expense of society: keep the profits and transfer harm to others.In general, the solution is to move from regulation to penalties, by imposing skin-in-the game-style methods to penalize those who play with our collective safety —no different from our treatment of terrorist threats and dangers to our security.
I completely agree with Taleb's nuclear response. He is right about Monsanto but GMO is not always equal to Monsanto. Having saved and inspired by Norman Borlaugh, there are hundred of scientists (especially in India and other third world countries) who have produced and working on GMO crops. They really don't get "exotic" with gene manipulation, but they use baby steps - make wheat crop little drought resistant without using gene from other species to say the least. Most importantly they don't patent it like Monsanto does and plays the monopoly game.
Bottom line - Norman Borlaugh was right about feeding the world using genetically modifying crops but he was wrong about Monsanto and their "good" intentions. It's about time we start segregating GMO's into different categories for better policies and public understanding. It will be probably much easier to check on the "skin in the game" if broken down into simple categories.
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