Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#211

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:17 AM UTC

sampo wrote: post #190

markdown wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1995: Be very careful with weedicides... a few drops on our crops will kill them. 2015: Just spray the whole field... weeds, crops and all. How roundup-ready crops are sold as a good thing, I really have no idea. Somehow the world has been convinced that dousing their food in weedicide isn't a bad idea.

"Glyphosate and its degradation product, AMPA, residues are considered to be much more toxicologically and environmentally benign than most of the herbicides replaced by glyphosate." (Roundup is made of glyphosate.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate

Like the above poster said, it's how they're applied.

I live next door to this. Every year my vineyard is blasted by idiots growing corn or soy (farmed by subcontracts of leases off my neighbours land, nice and hands off). Because it's Roundup Ready they don't care or think, they just blast. It's an ecological nightmare.

I'm not concerned about my health, I think glyphosate is mostly harmless to humans. I'm concerned about ecological diversity -- I have a bush lot, I can see the immediate damage this stuff causes to native plants.

Last year I took the growers pesticide training course here. It was very enlightening to see from the co-participants in my class just how derisive they were of the general public's concern about their large scale use of pesticides in areas they consider "theirs", as if there are no neighbours, human or natural.

And it's not like we're talking farmers growing 'food' next door -- it's soy or corn for animal feed. The land owner gets $150 an acre. It's barely profitable. It's stripped the life out of the top soil, so if you factored in the actual value of the land over 50 years, it's probably negative profit considering the permanent topsoil depletion.

It's a stupid way to organize human affairs, a total short term waste of precious expendable resources. Modern industrial agriculture is moronic and technocratic arm-chair libertarian justifiers of it who read a couple articles in The Economist and watch a TED talk are complicit in its ugliness.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#212

Post by beat » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:18 AM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #207

beat wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am listening - but I'm also educating. "Open and generous" covers both sides. I've been studying this issue for a long time - I first got involved with hunger issues when I was a kid, and later as a young adult during the Ethiopian famine. Years of study have convinced me that the general train of thought expressed here is wrong - and have given me a theory for a reason that so many smart people are wrong about it.…

I regret to inform you that there is a word for what you are engaging in, and it is not a member of the set ["listening", "educating"]. Your ardor suggests something else entirely. I am disquieted that someone who professes to care as deeply as you seems to have failed to grasp the positions of those with whom they disagree. You have caricatured those who disagree with you as technofetishists who believe MORE PRODUCT…

Okay, so I'm listening. You argue that I have caricatured those I disagree with as mere technofetishists (to be fair, I've also characterized most anti-GMO arguments as Luddite).

If the argument for GMO crops is not that more production will solve the hunger problem, then what is the intent? And do you believe this represents the majority of pro-GMO arguments?

Please, understand that I love being proven wrong. If I can be convinced to change my mind on something I care about, I'm smarter for it. But it requires more than telling me I'm wrong. Tell me what's right.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#213

Post by cmrdporcupine » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:20 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #168

beat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. It's not a good engineering solution to the real food problems we face. Of course, the DONT EAT THE SCIENCE OR IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CANCER political nonsense is wrong. That doesn't let GMO off the hook, though. The problem it attempts to solve, on the surface, is increasing the productivity of monocropping. But productivity i…

> The problem with GMO is that it's basically a vendor lock-in scheme for agribusiness giants. That may be a problem with the IP regime and some specific common business practices around GMOs, but its not a problem with GMOs qua GMOs -- its a social, not technical, problem.

Right, which is why the problem is genetic engineering (GE), not genetically modified organisms (GMO) themselves.

To put it more bluntly, the horrors of this stuff (I live next to it and suffer its idiocies, see post elsewhere in thread) is the fault of engineers and marketers, not "science" per se.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#214

Post by bootload » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:21 AM UTC

Mary Schweitzer extracting collagen, haemoglobin, elastin, laminin from 80 million year old Hadrosaur and verifying it. [0],[1]

[0] 2012: http://www.nature.com/news/molecular-analysis-supports-contr...

[1] 2009: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood...

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#215

Post by beat » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:22 AM UTC

dimino wrote: post #180

beat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is Monsanto pursuing GMO? What problem are they really trying to solve? It's not a problem of food supply. It's a problem of getting greater control and higher profits out of a saturated market. What's good for a single business is often not good for the general public.

Should we ban encryption because Sony uses it in their DRM software?

1. No.

2. That doesn't follow.

3. I'm not proposing that we ban GMO. I think it's important research.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#216

Post by bbcbasic » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:26 AM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #164

dragonwriter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely, the first profitable applications will not have anything to do with editing the human genome, as bad been the case for every other technique useful for genetic engineering.

If internet advertising is any guide, there is plenty of demand for baldness cures, penis enlargement, and bigger boobs. These might not be the first applications of genetic modification tech but I suspect they'll be among the commonest.

Those adverts are for the person who wants to enlarge their penis, not the parents of the unborn child who might like to.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#217

Post by alpha1234 » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:33 AM UTC

Eugene Podkletnov gravity beam generator and TT Brown experiments showing coupling between electricity and gravitation [1].

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Antigravity-Propulsion-Classif...

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#218

Post by nickbauman » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 2:36 AM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #199

nickbauman wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about Golden Rice so I can't comment on that. I think the position I'm making is that it's likely that GMOs will be inferior for all the reasons already cited. If you're trying to be more profitable, you put nutrition in the back seat. If food is just a bunch of macrobiotic chemicals disregarding a looong history of natural selection with intricacies we've only begun to understand, chances are you will…

So GMOs are likely to be inferior because naturalism. Got it.

Now, now. Don't conflate what I said with the naturalistic fallacy. I didn't argue that.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#219

Post by eru » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 3:09 AM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #153

vinceguidry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculation is ultimately driven by scarcity. There's no purpose in speculating if you can't generate an arbitrage. Greater productivity on the part of small farmers will alleviate scarcity, driving food prices down. Similarly, there are lots of markets that are unserved by the global food chain. How can one say that food subsidies in developed countries can affect these unserved markets? They can't sell to the devel…

What is your point? You can not disprove what I said with one counterexample. Look for examples that confirm what I said. I for example remember a documentary I saw a couple of months ago with starving people collecting single grains of rice, I think, from the streets at a market in India if I remember correctly. On the other side of the street behind a wall was a huge open space with hundreds, maybe thousands of ton…

In order to turn a profit, speculators have to eventually sell their buys. So no supply restriction in the longer term.

Re: Ask HN: What are the greatest discoveries in the last few years?

#220

Post by dimino » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 4:01 AM UTC

beat wrote: post #215

dimino wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we ban encryption because Sony uses it in their DRM software?

1. No. 2. That doesn't follow. 3. I'm not proposing that we ban GMO. I think it's important research.

Ah okay good, I'm mostly just responding to the folks who think GMOs are bad because of how Monsanto abuses intellectual property rights surrounding them.