[PassedOut]

 mikeh, on 2015-August-12, 06:51, said:

My very tentative view is that free will is an illusion, and forms part of the rationalizations that cause us to think that we are 'in charge' of our mind. In fact, I don't think it is likely possible for us to do other than subjectively feel as if we are making choices. However there have been some fascinating experiments that strongly suggest that at least some decisions have been made by our subconscious brain and then rationalized by the conscious part. Pinker wrote a very interesting book that touched upon this in part.

In terms of how we actually live our lives, I don't think it much matters, day to day, whether we have free will. The illusion of it, if illusion it be, is very powerful.

To me, making choices freely simply means that we're not making those choices under external duress or constraint. No doubt the actual choices that we do make are determined by our genes, past history, and perhaps a bit of randomness, but from our perspectives we make those choices freely. I don't see a contradiction there. Surely most of our choices are not made randomly, even though we make them freely.

In that regard, I expect that our intelligence and consciousness is similar to that of other animals, varying only in degree.

[kenberg]

 PassedOut, on 2015-August-12, 07:26, said:

To me, making choices freely simply means that we're not making those choices under external duress or constraint. No doubt the actual choices that we do make are determined by our genes, past history, and perhaps a bit of randomness, but from our perspectives we make those choices freely. I don't see a contradiction there. Surely most of our choices are not made randomly, even though we make them freely.

In that regard, I expect that our intelligence and consciousness is similar to that of other animals, varying only in degree.

And in motivation. My black labs are no longer among the living, but when any food was involved they could be downright brilliant.

[PassedOut]

 kenberg, on 2015-August-12, 08:30, said:

And in motivation. My black labs are no longer among the living, but when any food was involved they could be downright brilliant.

A few years ago Constance had two dogs, a Brittany and a terrier mix rescued from the Atlanta streets. The smaller but more street-wise terrier played all the angles. When the Brittany occupied the chair the terrier wanted, the terrier would sidle up to Constance to be petted. The Brittany would hop down for petting also, upon which the terrier would quickly jump onto the vacated chair.

[Al_U_Card]

The very essence of free will lies in the tautological nature of our capacity to separate reality from illusion. Because different courses of action are perceived, they are believed to be available. Something to do with degrees of freedom and the energetic conformance of our presence both in the physical and meta-physical realms. An example would be a river that floods a town, killing and destroying many lives. Was it free to choose its point of overflow? Clearly a question of conformance and water seeking its level. The townsfolk? Did they choose to live in a floodplain? They settled where the land was fertile and access to transportation was energetically favoured. Their arrival in that place was the result of seeking their own "level" of comfort and "freedom" (much as the river in flood).
It has all been arranged in such a way as to deliver us into the hands of a scheme of things that is clearly logical, rational and empirically sensible. We, OTOH, mystify and magnify the sense and meaning of all that surrounds us. It is, after all, pretty straight-forward. We are the complicated and complex part of the puzzle....undoubtedly for a reason.

[barmar]

 hrothgar, on 2015-August-12, 02:36, said:

You do understand that natural evolution is often deliberately selecting to produce poisons?

Of course, there are lots of dangerous things that are natural.

But a housecat can't give birth to a tiger naturally. Change in nature occurs gradually. Humans can create drastic, almost arbitrary changes.

[helene_t]

 barmar, on 2015-August-13, 09:07, said:

But a housecat can't give birth to a tiger naturally. Change in nature occurs gradually. Humans can create drastic, almost arbitrary changes.

It's a bit sci-fi still, isn't it? There is an ambitious project about reconstructing the mamooth, but who knows if it is possible.

[Al_U_Card]

 barmar, on 2015-August-13, 09:07, said:

Of course, there are lots of dangerous things that are natural.

But a housecat can't give birth to a tiger naturally. Change in nature occurs gradually. Humans can create drastic, almost arbitrary changes.

Despite some evidence for morphological "leaps" in the genome and its expression, mutations and natural re-assembly produce changes that, for the most part, get removed by the non-viability of any offspring produced. The gradual nature is simply the size of each change relative to its success in the environment. It is not slap-dash or random but is orchestrated by the constraints placed on the system under consideration. Should the environment favour slowness (energy conservation during starvation periods) then the quickness usually associated with survival will be selected out.

Not so much a question of what is happening or why, but rather, what can we do with/about it? The adaptive nature of man comes from this same matrix.

[onoway]

 mikeh, on 2015-August-11, 09:17, said:

Do you have any idea of what it would cost to attempt to have 'natural lifestyle' animals as our source of dietary meat?

Say what you like about the evils of the free market (I am far from a libertarian, btw), but one thing is clear: if anyone could come up with a way to produce the ambrosia of which you speak at a price competitive with 'industrial farming', it would have been done.

Unless and until we, as a species, are prepared to significantly reduce our population, only the middle-class and above are likely to be able to pay for the costs of 'naturally raised' livestock.

Which, btw, do not live remotely 'naturally'. Nor are they products of unmediated evolution. The Red Wattle to which you refer was the product of an intensive breeding program.

It HAS been and is being done, look up the work of Allan Savory and the success his system has allowed farmers who were going bankrupt using the industrial ag model. Greg Judy is one, easilly found on You Tube, there are many others, more all the time. Look at the work being done by Geoff Lawton and Mark Shepherd and Joel Salatin and Will Allen and so many many MANY more. Many of these people are regularly asked by official ag groups to come and help, Geoff Lawton has been approached by the US Federal Dept of Agriculture to help with the growing disasters of pollution, erosion, desertification and drought which are the inevitable eventual results of GMO monocrop cultivation.

The Red Wattle was indeed the product of breeding as well as running almost feral when the originator died, but none of them were ever genetically modified so (as an example) they could be fed strychnine and thrive. You are such a smart person, such comments as you regularly make in these threads truly astound me they are so disconnected and misleading.

The thing about GMO's is while they in and of themselves may or may not be bad for us, though there is lots of evidence that they are, but that the major specific modification done to them is to allow them to grow while ingesting ( so to speak) poisons designed to kill anything other that that particular plant. Those poisons are part of the food we eat every day, even the FDA recognizes that. These plants are developed by companies whose major business is selling chemicals of one sort or another. When one stops working they'll invent another, but they are obviously not going to be interested in developing crops with no need for their chemicals. There's abundant evidence that the reverse is true.

Perhaps you are comfortable eating foods embedded with poisons and perhaps you believe that somehow man alone has a special privilege in that he alone won't be affected by such poisons..even though the chemicals are derived from those developed ONLY to kill people. Do you think there is divine dispensation or privilege or whatever, that humans alone should be considered to be above the natural laws which apply to all other creatures of which we are aware? Are you one of those who jeer at people who profess to follow a religion and yet you think that somehow humans are impervious to poisons if given in minute doses daily, although drinking those same chemicals is frequently used as the method of choice for farmers committing suicide? That seems to me a leap of faith at least as odd as burning bushes talking to people.

Or perhaps you believe in mithridatism. After all, it was supposedly practiced by the Medici among others. Even so, there is surely an ethical question whether it should be a process imposed on people without their knowledge or consent.

In the meantime, the man who was VP of public policy for Monsanto is now - as of last year- Deputy Commissioner for Foods, in the Food and Drug Administration. There is a wonderful side by side photo which I cannot figure out how to get out of Facebook and into here. Both are photos of Michael Taylor and the first says " I poison the food supply" The second says "I'll protect you from guys like Michael Taylor".

[onoway]

It's perhaps interesting that although the price of cattle right now is very high, farmers are in a bind because drought has had a severe impact on hay supplies. Big bales normally selling for around $50 are now being advertised for $250 and even two and three year old weathered bales are going for big dollars. Even so, it won't be enough.

In the meantime, Allan Savory's methods have allowed farmers like Greg Judy to get through the winter without putting up hay even in Iowa, and to reduce the amount of hay needed for many other farmers while still having their cattle come through the winters in excellent condition. Droughts have little impact because the soil can hang on to the water it's got over previous years, so there is a much longer period of time before lack of rain has any significant impact. Permaculture systems of water harvesting and storage are being adopted widely in Australia ( and other places) because of this, but the system is totally incompatible with monocropping and the use of chemicals which destroy the soil's ability to hold water, among other things.

[mike777]

 onoway, on 2015-August-13, 19:01, said:

It's perhaps interesting that although the price of cattle right now is very high, farmers are in a bind because drought has had a severe impact on hay supplies. Big bales normally selling for around $50 are now being advertised for $250 and even two and three year old weathered bales are going for big dollars. Even so, it won't be enough.

In the meantime, Allan Savory's methods have allowed farmers like Greg Judy to get through the winter without putting up hay even in Iowa, and to reduce the amount of hay needed for many other farmers while still having their cattle come through the winters in excellent condition. Droughts have little impact because the soil can hang on to the water it's got over previous years, so there is a much longer period of time before lack of rain has any significant impact. Permaculture systems of water harvesting and storage are being adopted widely in Australia ( and other places) because of this, but the system is totally incompatible with monocropping and the use of chemicals which destroy the soil's ability to hold water, among other things.

innovation and free markets are wonderful and they destroy.....people love the good parts


hate the parts that destroy...your wonderful post shows both sides

again the problem with central govt control is it is hard, very hard to destroy and replace...they live forever

[Winstonm]

 onoway, on 2015-July-17, 13:03, said:

Such an interesting assortment of statements.. are you really truly trying to equate the ability to put limits on a technology proven to be NOT TRUE in ANY of the claims made for it are the same as laws allowing slavery?

An interesting idea to be sure, especially when the rules regarding the right to grow crops would in effect reduce farmers to the status of serfs to the chemical companies. The laws enacted already across various countries limit or disallow farmers from saving seed, which even the midieval serfs were allowed to do, so less freedom than in midieval times, such an astounding situation for a supposedly advanced and democratic society! This is only an extension of such erosion of freedom to choose, not only what a farmer will grow and how, but of the consumer to know what he or she is putting into his or her body, and more importantly perhaps, what is going into their child's body.

This doesn't even touch on the thousands of acres of land being desertified by GMO monocropping, the environmental costs, none of which are being borne by the chemical companies, nor the thousands of acres of productive farmland going out of production as a direct result of weeds, specifically amaranth, becoming quite happy to grow in RoundUp soaked land and covering former farmland with unmanageable weeds, which one USDA official said, was best pulled by hand for effective removal. Which, of course,Monsanto assured government officials could not happen when first seeking approval for such chemical agriculture.

Just how taking thousands of acres of productive farmland ( by USDA figures) OUT of production as a direct result of using chemical monocropping is supposed to help feed a growing population Monsanto has not explained. It certainly DOES explain why they want no controls on their techniques though, which only involve using more and more lethal poisons, none of which have been shown to be safe for human consumption over time. In fact many of the chemicals used are based on those used in war to kill people. Since people probably don't want to eat that, then put in a law giving them no choice, allow the chemical companies to hide what is in the food. At least tobacco is a choice. If GMOs are so great, then treat them as governments treat tobacco, label them and let people choose to eat them as they choose to smoke cigarettes. If they choose not to, why should they be forced to do so? What possible definition of freedom do you adhere to that includes the enforced ingestion of poison by the general public?

Ignorance indeed about GMOs, why won't Monsanto allow independant scientists free access to study their products? What are they afraid of? That even all their money will not be able to tarnish all the scientists and their findings sufficiently with lies and slander so as to buy their way into global control of all food supplies? (legally or otherwise, Monsanto has been proven to be quite happy to flout the law when it suits them, including bribery, and to lie as a matter of course if the truth will hurt their bottom line. )

All this law addresses is the prevention of people having a choice. What else is freedom about?

The only problem with GMO crops is that the genetic engineering allows a monopoly to form in regards to seeds and pesticides. The rest is simply scare tactics and histrionics.

[barmar]

 helene_t, on 2015-August-13, 09:25, said:

It's a bit sci-fi still, isn't it? There is an ambitious project about reconstructing the mamooth, but who knows if it is possible.

Which just supports my point. The only way that can possibly happen is by human genetic engineering, not naturally.

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2015-August-14, 10:00, said:

The only problem with GMO crops is that the genetic engineering allows a monopoly to form in regards to seeds and pesticides. The rest is simply scare tactics and histrionics.

Are you saying that most people who object to GMO foods are doing so based on economic reasons, not because they're worried about the health effects? While I'm sure there are some who do it on this ideological basis, I doubt it's the majority.

My father didn't believe in vaccinations because he thought they were a conspiracy between the government and drug companies (he was a former chiropractor, and didn't have a high opinion of the medical establishment). But as far as I know, this was not a common opinion. Most people didn't start worrying about vaccinations until Jenny McCarthy started publicizing the false alarm about their link with autism, decades later.

[onoway]

 Winstonm, on 2015-August-14, 10:00, said:

The only problem with GMO crops is that the genetic engineering allows a monopoly to form in regards to seeds and pesticides. The rest is simply scare tactics and histrionics.

Personally I've no problem with a monopoly on pesticides or even fertilizers produced from diminishing resources, it's been very well established that with healthy soil, well designed water harvesting systems, and a diverse ecology, neither are needed to any great degree if at all. Check out Dr Elaine Ingham's work.

It's ironic that if anything GMOs and chemically supported monocropping on which it relies are far more likely to cause starvation than cure it. Topsoil is the number one export from the US and it isn't being sold, it's being lost, even USDA scientists say up to an inch a year per acre.

When a field collapses and the plants will no longer produce a good crop, such as sugar cane if Florida, they simply clear more bayou and start over. When a field is taken over by a weed that's evolved to thrive on poisons, they try to develop a more virulent poison. What's it called when you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect things to turn out differently?

Whatever it is, it certainly doesn't seem like science to me. It's a pattern happening all over the world backed by government pressure. However, in some places, they are getting off the chem-ag merry go round, and finding that working within natural systems tends to have much greater reward. There are some unbelievably encouraging success stories around the world, from those who are actually growing food, not just messing about with seeds in a lab.

Seeds are a different issue.

The progress of agriculture has been historically from developing landraces, some deliberately bred from various varieties of their (or closely related, like wheat and rye) species, many accidental but saved and propagated by observant farmers. These have evolved to be particularly suited to the environment in which they live, so the various crops we use have a huge genetic diversity.

What is happening with the control of the seed left in the hands of 4 or 5 companies is that genetic diversity is being wiped out wholesale, discarded as being of no interest to the companies who now "own" the seed. Farmers are being legally restricted from saving their own seed, prevented from developing landraces suited to their conditions, perhaps even more important now than ever with weather becoming so unpredictable.

I know of one man who has been developing his own landraces for years from open pollinated heritage seeds in a very difficult and unpredictable climate. He has felt the need to hide seeds in various areas as well as distribute them to friends across the country so that they won't be lost if the government comes with a swat team one night - as happened to a man who had over years developed a breed of bee which seemed to be unusually resistant to chemical stress. (All his hives were taken, and other beekeepers in the area are now refusing to register their hives in case the same thing happens to them.)

This man's seeds are in strong demand as they not only taste wonderful and keep well for their type, but they deal with weird weather swings and stress much more effectively than any others available, all without any chemicals or artificial fertilizers. That's what GMOs were promised to do, and what they have utterly and completely failed to do.

When the GMO corn in the US failed a number of years ago the ONLY genetic material that was available to counter the problem was a landrace corn found in China. Having only the same or almost the same genetics in a crop is a disaster waiting to happen, as the Irish found when the Irish Cobbler variety of potato came down with blight and wiped out the crop. Whether or not that should have led to the consequences it did is a different discussion. The fact remains that virtually the entire potato crop failed because it was genetically identical - and susceptible to that strain of blight.

Besides that, seeds ought to be able to grow on their own, and they decidedly can, if they are given the right conditions. After all, they managed to do so for millennia without any of the chemicals people have now been brainwashed into thinking are essential. They were also much higher in food value than what we are developing now. (Golden Rice was a pr stunt, equal in arrogance and integrity to Nestle telling mothers in Africa to use their formula instead of breast milk as it was better for the babies and they could be sure their babies were getting enough, an insidious and thoroughly nasty ploy to work on women's insecurities.)

Some researchers have reported that to get the nutrition your grandfather got from two SLICES of bread, you would have to eat more than two LOAVES of bread.*This is assuming the widespread commercial bread, not artisan bread) Any thoughts on how this might be contributing to obesity?

If you don't fertilize gmo corn to a fare-thee-well it WILL fail as was demonstrated in Africa when even Monsanto admitted to at least a third of the crop failing to produce any kernels because they hadn't specified sufficient amounts of fertilizers.

A third of a crop is a very large failure and many farmers would go under without some sort of insurance to cover their losses. Your tax dollars at work, both in unseen subsidies for the chemicals in the first place, and then insurance to the farmers when the crops fail. You may think you have cheap food but you are paying a great deal more for it than you think, it's just hidden in subsidies/programs paid for by taxes.

It occurred to me that an analogy would be to punish anyone who played anything but one type of music, for example, if they played anything but polkas, they'd be legally liable to punishment. Except.. while that might lead to malnutrition of the spirit, seed restriction might well be leading to malnutrition of the body. It's most certainly leading to all sorts of problems.

To be trite, it's going back to a very old saying of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Legislation to prevent any competition from existing in terms of seed saving, development or access, even on small local scale, in the name of profit for chemical companies, is absolute stupidity of the highest order, to be generous.

[Al_U_Card]

Which is healthier in the long run, the pure bred or the mutt?
Same thing goes for societies.
Influx of variety leads to robust resilience through the elimination of recessive traits.

[mike777]

 onoway, on 2015-August-15, 04:02, said:

Personally I've no problem with a monopoly on pesticides or even fertilizers produced from diminishing resources, it's been very well established that with healthy soil, well designed water harvesting systems, and a diverse ecology, neither are needed to any great degree if at all. Check out Dr Elaine Ingham's work.

It's ironic that if anything GMOs and chemically supported monocropping on which it relies are far more likely to cause starvation than cure it. Topsoil is the number one export from the US and it isn't being sold, it's being lost, even USDA scientists say up to an inch a year per acre.

When a field collapses and the plants will no longer produce a good crop, such as sugar cane if Florida, they simply clear more bayou and start over. When a field is taken over by a weed that's evolved to thrive on poisons, they try to develop a more virulent poison. What's it called when you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect things to turn out differently?

Whatever it is, it certainly doesn't seem like science to me. It's a pattern happening all over the world backed by government pressure. However, in some places, they are getting off the chem-ag merry go round, and finding that working within natural systems tends to have much greater reward. There are some unbelievably encouraging success stories around the world, from those who are actually growing food, not just messing about with seeds in a lab.

Seeds are a different issue.

The progress of agriculture has been historically from developing landraces, some deliberately bred from various varieties of their (or closely related, like wheat and rye) species, many accidental but saved and propagated by observant farmers. These have evolved to be particularly suited to the environment in which they live, so the various crops we use have a huge genetic diversity.

What is happening with the control of the seed left in the hands of 4 or 5 companies is that genetic diversity is being wiped out wholesale, discarded as being of no interest to the companies who now "own" the seed. Farmers are being legally restricted from saving their own seed, prevented from developing landraces suited to their conditions, perhaps even more important now than ever with weather becoming so unpredictable.

I know of one man who has been developing his own landraces for years from open pollinated heritage seeds in a very difficult and unpredictable climate. He has felt the need to hide seeds in various areas as well as distribute them to friends across the country so that they won't be lost if the government comes with a swat team one night - as happened to a man who had over years developed a breed of bee which seemed to be unusually resistant to chemical stress. (All his hives were taken, and other beekeepers in the area are now refusing to register their hives in case the same thing happens to them.)

This man's seeds are in strong demand as they not only taste wonderful and keep well for their type, but they deal with weird weather swings and stress much more effectively than any others available, all without any chemicals or artificial fertilizers. That's what GMOs were promised to do, and what they have utterly and completely failed to do.

When the GMO corn in the US failed a number of years ago the ONLY genetic material that was available to counter the problem was a landrace corn found in China. Having only the same or almost the same genetics in a crop is a disaster waiting to happen, as the Irish found when the Irish Cobbler variety of potato came down with blight and wiped out the crop. Whether or not that should have led to the consequences it did is a different discussion. The fact remains that virtually the entire potato crop failed because it was genetically identical - and susceptible to that strain of blight.

Besides that, seeds ought to be able to grow on their own, and they decidedly can, if they are given the right conditions. After all, they managed to do so for millennia without any of the chemicals people have now been brainwashed into thinking are essential. They were also much higher in food value than what we are developing now. (Golden Rice was a pr stunt, equal in arrogance and integrity to Nestle telling mothers in Africa to use their formula instead of breast milk as it was better for the babies and they could be sure their babies were getting enough, an insidious and thoroughly nasty ploy to work on women's insecurities.)

Some researchers have reported that to get the nutrition your grandfather got from two SLICES of bread, you would have to eat more than two LOAVES of bread.*This is assuming the widespread commercial bread, not artisan bread) Any thoughts on how this might be contributing to obesity?

If you don't fertilize gmo corn to a fare-thee-well it WILL fail as was demonstrated in Africa when even Monsanto admitted to at least a third of the crop failing to produce any kernels because they hadn't specified sufficient amounts of fertilizers.

A third of a crop is a very large failure and many farmers would go under without some sort of insurance to cover their losses. Your tax dollars at work, both in unseen subsidies for the chemicals in the first place, and then insurance to the farmers when the crops fail. You may think you have cheap food but you are paying a great deal more for it than you think, it's just hidden in subsidies/programs paid for by taxes.

It occurred to me that an analogy would be to punish anyone who played anything but one type of music, for example, if they played anything but polkas, they'd be legally liable to punishment. Except.. while that might lead to malnutrition of the spirit, seed restriction might well be leading to malnutrition of the body. It's most certainly leading to all sorts of problems.

To be trite, it's going back to a very old saying of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Legislation to prevent any competition from existing in terms of seed saving, development or access, even on small local scale, in the name of profit for chemical companies, is absolute stupidity of the highest order, to be generous.

1) I really have no idea what you main point is
2) if rant or not do not stop
3) if you are afraid of lab generated gmo by mankind ok......

[Zelandakh]

 onoway, on 2015-July-19, 13:49, said:

People are warned to somewhat limit their daily intake of such things as spinach which naturally has oxalic acid, because although it is also highly nutritious, how much the body can cope with (especially raw) without causing health issues is unknown.

Not that is pertinent to the discussion at hand but it seems right to correct this. Aside from a few rare conditions, the primary health risk of eating a lot of oxalates is kidney stones. There is no evidence of a raw food diet high in greens causing poisoning; indeed the evidence is strong that the risk of poisoning from contamination is much higher than any other within a raw food diet.

On the other side, there is also evidence that such a diet has several advantages such as lower risk of cancer, improved detoxification of the body and (where required) weight loss.

 barmar, on 2015-August-09, 02:11, said:

The types of modifications that can occur naturally are very limited. A mouse gene can't get into an elephant naturally -- the mouse would be crushed when they try to mate.

The chances are quite considerable that there are already mouse genes within an elephant. Some of those will be active, some not, but it would not take mating with a mouse to activate them - that could happen purely through a mutation. The same is true of human DNA of course. That we share between 95% and 98.5% of DNA with chimpanzees is well known but we also share between 75% and 92% with mice and even some sponges share ~70%. The variation between humans is about 0.5%, primarily on the X chromosome. The later is interesting as our differences from chimpanzees are apparently focused on the Y chromosome.

The point is that DNA is shared across a wide variety of species and it takes only very small changes to produce large differences. The idea that DNA from a mouse must automatically be unnatural when added to the genome of an elephant is just wrong. It probably would be (else why do it?) but that is because the particular sequence has been carefully chosen. That mouse DNA may in turn be the same sequences as in a fruit fly or a rabbit. It might even be something that could, given enough time, develop naturally through mutation.

As for natural change being slow, well yes and no. Most of the time this is true in animals although it rather depends on your frame of reference. The Cambrian Explosion is an event lasting about 25 million years - practically the blink of an eye in geological time but rather longer than the frame of reference from Facebook or BBO. Also, there is a theory known as punctuated equilibrium, in which speciation occurs in short bursts with comparatively stable periods in between. And in plants, cross-pollination can clearly produce very fast changes.

Humans can produce changes more quickly using a variety of techniques. The techniques used for GMO crops are just the latest of these. Noone seems to mind the selective breeding of crops and animals that has been going on for thousands of years. Getting anything purely "natural" is almost impossible, you can generally only choose between varying degrees of human intervention.

[barmar]

 Zelandakh, on 2015-August-17, 09:56, said:

As for natural change being slow, well yes and no. Most of the time this is true in animals although it rather depends on your frame of reference. The Cambrian Explosion is an event lasting about 25 million years - practically the blink of an eye in geological time but rather longer than the frame of reference from Facebook or BBO. Also, there is a theory known as punctuated equilibrium, in which speciation occurs in short bursts with comparatively stable periods in between. And in plants, cross-pollination can clearly produce very fast changes.

"short bursts" means something like thousands of years. For example, it took 10's of thousands of years for homo sapiens to evolve from our precursor species, and millions of years from the common ancestor with chimpanzees.

Quote

Humans can produce changes more quickly using a variety of techniques. The techniques used for GMO crops are just the latest of these. Noone seems to mind the selective breeding of crops and animals that has been going on for thousands of years. Getting anything purely "natural" is almost impossible, you can generally only choose between varying degrees of human intervention.

And those "varying degrees" are significant. Our intervention results in several orders of magnitude more rapid changes than are possible naturally, and that makes a big difference. In particular, it means that the changes don't have to go through lots of intermediate steps, which all have to be viable.

[blackshoe]

What about octopuses? I read an article recently that says their dna is "truly alien". Shouldn't people be banned from eating them, lest that alien dna contaminate the human race?

[Zelandakh]

 blackshoe, on 2015-August-17, 13:06, said:

What about octopuses? I read an article recently that says their dna is "truly alien".

It is not Ed. It is actually very similar to that of limpets and many worms. It is on the other hand very interesting and rather complex and will be used as the basis for a great deal of research yet to come. Here is a short piece that discusses some of the media coverage from the announcement.