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Comment by logfromblammo | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I'd have a problem with GMO that inserted genes from one Musa cultivar into another. You could find a natural strain with resistance, isolate the resistance genes, and insert them into the production monoculture strain in a manner that is impossible for traditional techniques to accomplish, because the production cultivars are seedless and triploid.

I am much less accomodating for inserting genes from a completely different kingdom, like the Bt gene and associated promoters. Also, since the triploid bananas are sterile, there is a smaller likelihood that the alterations will escape into the wild and ruin fertile diploid bananas.

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> You could find a natural strain...

The way "natural" is commonly defined is misleading. Humans are apes, mammals, animals. We're part of nature, and so is everything we create and produce.

Artificial is a subset of natural.

I know which meaning of natural you are talking about and it would indeed include everything artificial, but I disagree that that is the common meaning of natural! I hear natural more often used to mean "not caused or created by humans". Isn't that the definition people usually have in mind?

> I hear natural more often used to mean "not caused or created by humans". Isn't that the definition people usually have in mind?

I find the common definition misleading, because it implies that humanity is not part of nature. It is technically false, and causes confusion in the mind of most people.

The "natural good, artificial bad" meme needs to die.

We're currently facing ecological problems of immense scale, and not having a proper basic mental model of the situation is detrimental.

This is a really silly argument. There is a wide variety of definitions of “nature”, which has gone through dramatic changes in its meaning though the centuries. Criticizing definitions you don’t like because the generally positive connotation of “nature” lets those definitions serve a rhetorical position that you disagree with is tilting at windmills.

In particular, the sense of “natural” having to do with something’s unaltered/innate condition – as compared to some result of human interference – dates back at least to Plato [well, there the word was the Greek phusis, whereas natura is the Latin word used to translate it, but you get the idea]. Or if you want examples in English, at least to Chaucer.

Note, if you want a much fuller idea of what “nature”/“natural” means and meant in the past, I highly recommend the CS Lewis book Studies in Words which devotes a 50 page chapter to comprehensively exploring the subject.

Plato's world view is completely backwards. A good example of the pitfalls of speculative onanism. His influence on occidental culture is still very pervasive, though, but anthropocentrism is as idiotic as geocentrism.

> ... the generally positive connotation of “nature”.

"Nature" is inherently hostile (see Thermodynamics, 2nd law). What's currently marketed as "natural" is a carefully vetted subset, the result of thousands of years of humanity influence on its environment.

As you mention, the definition of the word has been evolving. I think the current meaning is misleading. It causes people to reject man-made things arbitrarily, and, more generally, it perpetuates an anthropocentric view of the world.

Wishing it had (and advocating for) a saner definition is not silly.

Your post seems to recognize that the definition of the word "nature" has changed over the years, as words often do.

Why do you think it is "tilting at windmills" for me to want the definition to change to something that pleases me?

Fine. You could find a fertile strain, either in the wild or as a result of traditional breeding practices. It's longer than "natural", but less ambiguous.

To my knowledge, some varieties of plantain are already resistant. So identify that gene complex, pop it into the infertile triploid Gros Michel, and let the cloning commence.

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