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Squark comments on "All natural food" as an constrained optimisation problem - Less Wrong Discussion
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It is not obvious that the expected negative utility of e.g. GM-food due to unexpected bad effects on health is higher than the expected positivity utility from e.g. lower cost. Note that GM-food is not a random "product in the universe" but a slight modification of something known to be ok + non-vanishing ability to predict the consequences of this modification. Moreover, it might be possible to use the theory we already have to optimize towards improved long-term health and it might be such modification will more than cancel out the expected negative utility from unpredicted effects.
Who's "we"? As Stuart describes, the incentives for the industry to do this aren't really there. They have much more incentives to manipulate crops to produce their own pesticides.
Maybe, I was just pointing out the problem is not inherent in GM-food. A similar issue exists for "all natural" food: the industry might still optimize towards unhealthy cheap food. The real source of the problem is on the side of demand. In a perfect world, there would be a reliable source of information about health and people would pay attention to it.
As Stuart argues, they have less means to optimize in that way.
Right. Not enough customers are running scientific studies to test how mortality rates change when the digest different food.
We don't live in a perfect world and have to make choices based on the world in which we are living.
This is a good point.
Not sure I understand what you're saying. Are you being ironic?
Of course. But we weren't discussing a specific choice, as far as I can tell.
Yes.
I do think we are discussing the choice to buy "natural food" and prefer it over genetically modified food.
In this case, an in-depth discussion would require analyzing the potential health hazards given what we know about the genetic modifications involved and the regulations in place, versus the cost difference and some way to compare the two.
And we should probably start by defining "genetically modified".
Under some definitions almost all commercial crops and farm animals are genetically modified. There are no wild cows and Golden Delicious apples don't grow on trees in forests.
EU laws have well defined definitions.
I came across two definitions:
"Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are organisms, such as plants and animals, whose genetic characteristics are being modified artificially in order to give them a new property."
That's extremely broad and vague (and incorrectly uses present progressive rather than past tense)
"organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination".
A bit more precise, but still not well-defined. Is artificial insemination GM? What about irradiation to increase mutation rate? And technically, the DNA of the organism isn't altered; it has the same genes it was born with.
I practice we often don't know much about the genetic modifications involved. If you buy some foot item in the US as a customer that contains some genetic manipulations there no way for you to know exactly what they modified.
Even if you would know which genes they exchanged, we are at a point where we don't even know what all the genes in the human body do.
Ps: and even if true, there's an un priced externality there...
I don't understand why it's an externality given that nothing is stopping the supplier from providing information about the food.
You're right, "externalities" is incorrect. It's more about information and ignorance. The point being that there are hidden factors meaning we can't just compare demand, supply and prices without adjusting for it.
Then why do the suppliers are intent on lobbying that they have to provide the least amount of information that's possible?
It's a bad thing, but still not an externality.
Agreed. But I was surprised that "all natural" would have any health benefits at all.