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Azathoth123 comments on Rationality Quotes September 2014 - Less Wrong
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The phrase "no reason to think" should raise alarm bells. It can mean we've looked and haven't found any, or that we haven't looked.
There's no reason to think that there's a teapot-shaped asteroid resembling Russell's teapot either.
And I'm pretty sure we haven't looked for one, either. Yet it would be ludicrous to treat it as if it had a substantial probability of existing.
A prior eating most things is a bad idea. Thus the burden is on the GMO advocates to show their products are safe.
Note that probably all crops are "genetically modified" by less technologically advanced methods. I'm not sure if that disproves the criticism or shows that we should be cautious about eating anything.
We should be cautious about eating anything that doesn't have a track record of being safe.
You changed your demand. If GM crops have less mutations than conventional crops, which are genetically modified by irradiation + selection (and have a track record of being safe), this establishes that GM crops are safe, if you accept the claim that, say, the antifreeze we already eat in fish is safe. Requiring GM crops themselves to have a track record is a bigger requirement.'
No, I'm saying we need some track record for each new crop including the GMO ones, roughly proportionate to how different they are from existing crops.
Yes, this is different from merely "showing that GMO products are safe". Because we also have the inside view.
I agree with this.
But then we look, and this turns into "we haven't looked enough". Which can be true, so maybe we go "can anyone think of something concrete that can go wrong with this?", and ideally we will look into that, and try to calculate the expected utility.
But then it becomes "we can't look enough - no matter how hard we try, it will always be possible that there's something we missed".
Which is also true. But if, just in case, we decide to act as if unknown unknowns are both certain and significant enough to override the known variables, then we start vetoing the development of things like antibiotics or the internet, and we stay Christians because "it can't be proven wrong".