Why do people work for companies like this? Have they no compassion for their fellow humans?
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Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
111–120 of 192 posts
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Have they no compassion for their fellow humans? Yes. Compassion for your fellow humans is quite unnatural for a lot of people. It's why Christianity was a thing - a non trivial percentage of the population will only pretend to be a human being out of fear.
> Compassion for your fellow humans is quite unnatural for a lot of people. Could you please quantify? I recall reading the exact opposite conclusion in behavioral and psychological science journals. It’s the reason why the military has to break people down to teach them to kill. Our natural reaction is to have compassion for each other and not to kill each other. We are a cooperative species that works well together…
> We are a cooperative species that works well together and survives as a group.
The dunbar number limits that cooperative inclination.
> It also goes a long way to explain why things like hatred, racism, and subjugation of the other require massive amounts of propaganda and disinformation to perpetuate themselves.
This exists without the propaganda and misinformation. Tribes are an evolved social form.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is what I was getting at.
Maybe say so plainly rather than faking at playing dumb? What you're assuming was meant wasn't actually said either. Make your case. Make well. Make it clearly and forcefully but please don't go in for those kind of hollywood-drama-style courtroom argument tricks, it's not helpful to any given discussion.
The intent you're claiming isn't anywhere in the person's posts. All they said was that they didn't want to get into the morality argument in this forum, which is a reasonable position to have given there are people like you chomping at the bit to "prove him wrong" or whatever. Chill out, guy.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Have they no compassion for their fellow humans? Yes. Compassion for your fellow humans is quite unnatural for a lot of people. It's why Christianity was a thing - a non trivial percentage of the population will only pretend to be a human being out of fear.
> Compassion for your fellow humans is quite unnatural for a lot of people. Could you please quantify? I recall reading the exact opposite conclusion in behavioral and psychological science journals. It’s the reason why the military has to break people down to teach them to kill. Our natural reaction is to have compassion for each other and not to kill each other. We are a cooperative species that works well together…
There are people dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases, right now.
If you are compassionate, surely your time is better spent trying to solve that problem, rather than posting on HackerNews?
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inside life is great and people are nice, and all of the evil is generated at the boundary between the inside and the outside. On top of that, information about the evil is very much suppressed within the organization, so that the people working on it are even more ignorant about it than external bystanders. For example, take the oil industry in 2006: everyone inside it was inundated by detailed climate change denial…
The real evil is always in not asking and not thinking about the meaning of the work. If you work at a company because it has a great engineering culture, but the work it happens to make it super efficient to turn babies into cowfeed, you’re still evil…for not thinking about the meaning of what you do. If you work at a company because it has an awesome engineering culture, and the work is to make it really easy and e…
You have got to make some finer distinctions for what is or isn't evil than "the cloud." All you will accomplish with overbroad strokes is convincing people that ethical distinctions do not actually exist. As for what the distinctions actually are, for a start, how about products that harm parties which have not agreed to anything?
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
What strategy do you think they should use instead to correct people spreading misinformation about their company and products. Being a popular brand to hate is not a good pr image.
So the issue here is if Monsanto's products were safe, they wouldn't have to pay people to attach their name to company-written articles claiming they are. If you have to buy your support (looking at Google Public Policy team here hard), you probably are not a good company. In short, if Roundup was safe, it's likely there would be studies proving so from scientists not paid by Monsanto to do so. The fact that they ha…
> So the issue here is if Monsanto's products were safe, they wouldn't have to pay people to attach their name to company-written articles claiming they are.
That isn't how scientific evidence has been received by the public and that's blatantly obvious of the last few years.
There are plenty of "independent" roundup-is-safe whitepapers, which unsurprisingly, either use large amounts of Monsanto data or Monsanto facilities. Sifting through the details to discount them is quite laborious.
There are a scant few "roundup-causes-cancer", which is a consequence of Monsanto monopolizing, sabotaging, or restricting traceable data.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I understanding your argument here to be that Cochrane Reviews are untrustworthy?
Never even heard of Cochrane Reviews until tonight, but am I understanding your argument here to be that there exist organizations that are somehow immune to bias and corruption and are perfect at editorial filtering?
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Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've defended Monsanto repeatedly on HN (there are some extraordinarily popular beliefs about Monsanto that turn out, from what I can tell, to be just completely false, and they used to wind up here a bunch). I'm not carrying any water for them. I'm pro-GMO just in principle, but neutral-to-skeptical about any company of Monsanto's size. I'm sure the company itself is perfectly amoral. I'm just calling actual issues…
+1 I’m a biochemist and while I’m not interested in sticking my neck out to defend any company, a lot of the criticism directed at Monsanto is unfair, uninformed and/or unintelligent. This is particularly true of criticism levied against glyphosate (one of the least-bad herbicides I know of) and GMOs (which people are usually just super confused about). Disclaimer: zero conflict of interest, I make all my money build…
Neat, I have a kid graduating with a biochem undergrad degree right now. Reassure him about his job prospects! :P
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
In response to an article about how Monsanto has undue influence on scientific studies, you posted a review paid for by Monsanto... > This work was supported by Monsanto Company, the original producer and marketer of glyphosate formulations.
Supported or not, I don’t think you understand the weight and quality of Cochrane reviews.
It's not even a Cochrane review, the newly-created, anonymous account appears to have been lying.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#120No post body was provided.