Comment by linkregister | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linkregister | Hacker News Reader

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I think you have been downvoted because your statement is pretty much anathema to the HN ethos (if there is one). If nobody will ever change their mind based off of discourse, what's the point? Why even have comment sections?

Are you saying you've never changed your mind after ruminating over time about information you've received?

When I first heard of GMOs, especially since my information/propaganda channels inexorably linked GMOs with Monsanto's controversial business practices, I was lead to distrust GMOs. A few years later, I read a few articles about GMOs in popular magazines. It turned out that I had some basic misconceptions that are extremely common. The most important being that traditional breeding is far more fraught with uncertainty. The second misconception is that GMO practitioners are just tinkering around; where in reality genetic modification is narrowly targeted and predictable. The outcome is to increase food safety; fewer pesticides are used, causing less damage to waterways and ecosystems. Less food is wasted, meaning more is available for consumption.

What didn't work was overt ridicule of my ignorant position. Several opportunities to digest non-confrontational information were required.

I think this subject is one where most people make deeply emotional decisions. In general, people cannot be reasoned out of positions they did not reason themselves into, and food is definitely not an exception. Food is too intimate and sensitive to most people.

What I've found is that when you use reason and evidence to assuage the particular concerns (certainty, safety, pesticide use), they are generally replaced by others. Distrust of Monsanto, agricultural monoculture, IP law, and so on. What do you think happens when you address them all? Show safety studies, bring up golden rice, and so on?

What you don't get is large masses of people changing their minds. What you do get is people suddenly deeply uncomfortable with the entire conversation, because their fig leaves are gone but their emotions haven't changed. Then someone says that you sound just like those people who work for Monsanto - which has happened to me today on HN.

Yes, I'm a cynical bastard.

You literally do get large masses of people changing their minds, but it takes time to cause this change. Look at the last century in the United States: women's rights, civil rights, LGTB equality. These movements have made tremendous progress. Though there are still many people against these movements, the majority of the country supports them.

Minds change (slowly), yours included.

You're right! Politics do change.

Politics changes when new ideas become old ones. Not when someone politely opines that it's maybe possible that GMOs aren't literally evil. It's possible that my attempts on the subject have all been ill luck and/or poor execution to run into uniformly hostile responses, but I clearly have some doubts.

I've tried listening to people, taking them seriously, addressing their concerns calmly and rationally. I've found it a reliable way of making people very angry.

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