Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?

The main thing they're hated for is patenting GMO seed varieties in support of their roundup pesticide product line. Roundup works by making seed varieties that work just like normal plants but are immune to the roundup pesticides. So a farmer can place pesticide on a field, and it will only kill weeds, not their crops.

The "hate evil Monsanto for destroying nature" bandwagon ignores that:

1) 99% of anti-gmo stuff is anti-science fear mongering. There are very few good general anti-GMO arguments.

2) Farmers love roundup because it increases crop productivity per acre sustainably.

3) Using roundup greatly decreases the amount of pesticide needed per acre of crops, since it can be targeted so much more precisely. So it makes the world's water supplies and crops cleaner overall.

4) Because round-up seeds are so great, farmers sometimes try to grow it without paying licensing fees (because why would you if you can get away with it?).

5) Monsanto is very legally aggressive defending its seed patents, since why would anyone pay to license their seeds if you can just steal it? Monsanto spent a lot of money developing the science for roundup seeds.

6) Monsanto has never sued someone for accidentally having round-up seeds (cross contamination). They have an amazing win rates on their lawsuits specifically because they only target cut and dry cases.

7) But the bandwagon is against the evil Monsanto, so people are overly credulous on the farmer side.

The vast majority of things Monsanto is criticized for play out just like the above.

As a separate example, check out this Quora answer for, "Is Monsanto evil?": https://www.quora.com/Is-Monsanto-evil. And let me know which side seems more reasonable to you.

Documentaries are an awful way to disseminate accurate knowledge. It's 90% emotion driven, and almost always has a narrative to tell that they're not going to want pesky facts to get in the way of.

Please note I am saying this as a fellow "free spirit" type. It isn't intended to disrespect you per se. I appreciate your participation here. It's just an interesting thought experiment you've injected into the discussion and it's a thought experiment near and dear to my heart and these are some of my thinkings about it.

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Jesus said "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." IIRC, this was in reply to someone wanting to use his teachings as justification to not pay their taxes.

I'm kind of a hippy tree hugger type. I'm also a former military wife, so I'm a pro military, pro government hippy tree hugger.

The world needs hippy tree huggers. But they are more beneficent when they take the position "I'm not part of the government, so I'm free to live this way in part because we have functioning government." rather than acting like government needs to go.

It is not lost upon me that hippy types only ever exist in secure spaces. You don't find them wandering around in active war zones trying to give people a hug who are pointing a gun in their direction.

There is some story about "Don't remove this wall in the middle of the street unless you understand its exact purpose and are sure it is no longer needed. Do not remove it based on not seeing its use. If you don't see its use, assume that is a blind spot in you, not proof that the wall is doing nothing."

Not to say there isn't room to improve on what we currently have, but I think the "anarchist"/free spirit types are their most helpful when they recognize that freedom is bought with the blood of patriots and disrespecting that fact is inherently problematic.

Okay, this is a hard one to decide between. Probably one of the following:

1. That populism and extremism was basically inevitable, and without a major shake up, future equivalents of Trump and Brexit and what not are going to get more and more common (and extreme).

2. That the focus on identity politics over economic inequality came from the left's shift in focus away from the working class to the middle/upper one. Easier to blame a new scapegoat than look in the mirror at the source of your own lifestyle.

3. As well as that transhumanism and tech are the solution to issues like global warming, not changing lifestyles. The latter just won't happen without a planetary dictatorship of some kind, whereas the former may fix or reduce the effects enough to be manageable.

Can we get a full disclosure on point 4, are you obese? It's very possible for obese people to lose weight, it just needs to be treated like quitting smoking is treated.

To reiterate my earlier comment: 'everyone apart from the insane'