Comment by yomly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yomly | Hacker News Reader

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Right, so I agree - it's all about incurred risk vs. benefits. GM crops and radio frequency exposure probably incur a risk to our health, but the imminent benefit of having radio transmission and greater crop yields in a world which still has starving people outweigh the longer term risks to society.

However, "natural" is a reasonable heuristic for "something our bodies have had time to adapt for" and the introduction of synthetics has short-circuited the evolutionary feedback loop.

Heavy metals are probably a good example of this, perhaps in another million years there will be humans and animals that have excretive pathways for mercury.

My issue is that most of us live in a world of plenty and we do not need to incur many of the risks that we do through chemical exposure, especially as their use is typically to serve a business' needs rather than our own. Additionally, the opacity of the problem is also an issue because it is hard to make informed decisions about what we consume due to us being many levels detatched from the supply chain which produces that which we eat.

> GM crops and radio frequency exposure probably incur a risk to our health, but the imminent benefit of having radio transmission and greater crop yields in a world which still has starving people outweigh the longer term risks to society.

I've heard this often when it comes to GMO crops ("we need these to feed starving people"), but I'm not sure how much evidence there is for it. There was an New York Times investigation into GMO vs. non-GMO crop yields recently where they found no discernible difference between the two[1]. I've heard some criticism of the article, but most of the criticism I've seen comes from people who have decided ahead of time that GMO's are wonderful and any criticism of them is bad.

Also, from what I've seen the problems with food scarcity don't stem from low crop yields but rather from distribution. I don't think seeing it as a crop yield problem is the right way to approach it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-fall...

A lot of of the criticism of GMOs is based on flawed science and misleading use of statistics

That article you linked was flawed on quite a few levels. It argued for example that France was able to reduce its levels of pesticides without using GMOs and used percentages to show the reduction, thereby arguing that GMOs are not necessary

But looking at absolute values, France had a far higher use of pesticides and insecticides and even after the reduction it is still higher than the US, although in the US herbicide use has gone up (primarily glyphosate, but that replaced other more toxic herbicides).

Greater crop yield means more efficient use of the land and resources. I agree we produce more than enough food but reducing yield is not the answer. Also we've barely scratched the surface in terms of using the potential of GE.

[1] http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2016/10/the-tiresome-discussion...

> Also, from what I've seen the problems with food scarcity don't stem from low crop yields but rather from distribution. I don't think seeing it as a crop yield problem is the right way to approach it.

Absolutely agree on this one. The world produces enough food (well, cereal grains) to feed everyone. However, I would still argue that increasing crop yields is incredibly important for the species as a whole. Better yields means lesser land required for cultivation. You basically reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture and I think this would be incredibly important e.g. in Africa where you either may not have a lot of Arable land OR might not want to cut down virgin forests just to feed your people.

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