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Comment by strainer | Hacker News Reader

I did reply to a blanket statement based on a bare claim of professional expertise - and with examples to plentiful historical evidence of premature confidences in technological understanding. There is no evidence that this fallibility has not carried into this century.

My argument was not like saying "we should never do anything like this because of past grave accidents in comparable novel products and practices" It was to be measured and wary of bare professional and institutional assurances.

Regarding the characteristics of plants and animals that we should feed to our children and mass rear in our environment - I am of the mind that the characteristics should be as well evidenced by the long history of life as we can afford.

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> premature confidences in technological understanding

CRISPR-Cas9 (the method used here) was first successfully used seven years ago. According to the article, the meat may go to market in two years pending a safety review. So that's nine years from lab to table. How soon is too soon? What makes you think doing it now would be premature as opposed to ten years from now?

> It was to be measured and wary of bare professional and institutional assurances.

From where would you like to get assurances? Do you have to conduct the study yourself?

> Regarding the characteristics of plants and animals that we should feed to our children and mass rear in our environment - I am of the mind that the characteristics should be as well evidenced by the long history of life as we can afford.

That's all well and good till climate change reduces arable land and we have to extract as much as we can from the remainder.

> I am of the mind that [...]

Which is totally fine, but unfortunately that position is neither informed by any specific evidence, nor informed by a principled understanding of the technology in question (which is where deferral to expertise can come in handy).

You should note that there's a difference between an appeal to authority fallacy, and deferral to expertise, and while the former is fatal to any logical argument, the latter is an entirely appropriate and useful heuristic: https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/03/20/the-rules-of-logic-...

Allow me increase your principled understanding of GMO safety - anyone that thinks that any technology is safe, should be kept away from it. All technology confers capabilities and all capabilities can be misapplied accidentally or negligently in the pursuit of private advantage. Fire is not safe, you have to be safe with fire.

What determines the safety of any commercial application of technology is regulation. No technology is safe - don't lose contact with fundamental facts in the coarse of trying to maximize your argumentation and technological expertise.

Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me, this is totally new information to me and I had never considered that technology and tools could be misused. My understanding of biology has now been improved. /s

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