Hacker News Reader

Comment by crowbahr | Hacker News Reader

Brussels have chemically changed significantly over the past 20 years of genetic engineering - they're more nutritious than ever and are nowhere near as bitter!

View on HN

They are not genetically engineered, it’s mostly just selective breeding.

Is selective breeding not a form of genetic engineering?

Isn’t nature genetic engineering then? Amazing genetic engineering nature?

Only to the extent that the growers who apply deliberate selection criteria are themselves part of "nature". But we generally use that term to distinguish outcomes for which human intentions weren't a causal determinant, so I don't think it makes sense in this case.

But natural evolution is also selective. Animals choose their partners based on looks or features, they eat the fruits that look the best, spreading those seeds, and bees go to the most colorful flowers. Same thing we do

Right, but we typically use the term "natural" in contrast to "artificial", where the latter implies that the selection pressures are intentionally applied by humans in pursuit of specific outcomes, and the former implies that the selection pressures are not being created or curated by humans.

We make semantic distinctions like this in many areas: e.g. if a house burns down by accident, it's just a fire, but if someone deliberately set the house on fire, we call it arson.

I'd argue evolution is a mechanism that nature uses to engineer genetics, sure

No. If so, you'd had to put a GMO label on all cultivated food.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com