GM foods are arguably no more dangerous than any massively engineered foods we've been eating for decades/centuries. Direct gene modification is more like using a scalpel rather than a 2x4. Still potentially dangerous, but far more precise.
In the case of genetics, we have a some understanding, but it is fairly limited. There is real potential for unexpected harm, given how much we don't know and the complexity of the code. Of course, we can do some amazing things with the parts we do understand.
Selecting breeding is like using a high level GUI that is decently functional. Like most GUIs, it significantly restricts how you can modify the underlying data. The plus side is that it is harder to put the data in a bad or dangerous state using only the controls offered by the GUI.
If the consistency checks in the natural genome don't stop you, pretty much by definition whatever you're doing could happen through an unlikely coincidence of selective breeding (especially if you involve a wild virus to take the place of the lab virus.)
This may be your opinion. While GM foods are not per see dangerous, the long tail risk is tremendous, exactly because you can not tell what a gene is going to do in another organism. Take my word for it, I have a PhD in that shit.
Taleb also advocates the precautionary principle: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf
Honestly, Taleb should stick with what he knows: finance. In other fields I trust his opinion about as much as I would any other Wall Street banker.
Genetic engineering is more like changing the byte code in your OS hoping to change its functionality. Without having the source code.
Until we know how the system works your ideas are only ideas.
In and adult your precise change might have minimal impact, but what if that sequence is checked during embryo development, and if it’s not present “exactly” as expected the embryo aborts?
How long do you think it will take to figure out that your “precise” change now prevents humans from reproducing?
No engineering required, but obviously a huge change.
I have shepherds and there's a big philosophical split between shepherd owners who want 'working line' dogs and those who want 'show dogs' that are significantly more likely to have health problems. Dog breeding is a very poorly regulated market and the outcomes are just as depressing as you would imagine.
What kind of brain injury do you have to have to go out of your way to want to breed these dogs?
And why the hell don’t / haven’t animal rights activists, and society in general, vigorously pursue regulation to ban these absurd breeds.
Cross-breeding allows nature to combine things that fit together in all of the right places. And we just don't know how that even happens, or why. We don't understand nature's algorithm for DNA. No even the tip of the iceberg.
Sure, nature isn't always correct, but does thing properly 99.999% of the time. And that's good enough.
It is utterly incomparable to GM done by humans ~ genes are inserted, but the results are not equivalent to what is done by nature, because we don't understand DNA enough to know where we should be placing the inserted DNA, so that things don't massively fuck up inexplicably somewhere down the line.
What you're seeing as "nature knowing what's best" is really just life being able to function with all kinds of random genes all over the place, because the core biochemical pathways are close enough.
We have turned seeds into the equivalent of Gillette razors. A farmer buys patented seeds and the complimentary chemical to kill everything else.
The problem is that as farming has turned into a big dumb business, centuries of best practices with respect to land management are getting tossed. Farmers near where I grow up (who are left) don’t rotate and are being ground into bankruptcy as larger and larger entities dominate.
I feel like this is putting too much faith in "natural" methodologies.
Eg, who's to say a cross breeding solution is less dangerous than a GM solution?
If the concern is that it may take 50 years to know the GM is bad, why are we assuming the non-GM is good now? You could say that people have been cross breading for many many generations, but i'm unsure why we'd know that one cross breed being safe means all crossbreeds are safe. I'm not inherently defending GM. I'm attacking the notion that man made tricks like cross breeding are inherently safe.
I think the fear around gmo is that food will be less healthy. The same way prepared food takes a few elements of food mixes with chemicals to get strong favours without the depth of flavour. They do this to save costs. GMO companies are making seeds that create plants that do not get eaten by pests. It sounds great until we realize those plants have a toxic substance inside that harms us.