What is our TL?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

In the US that's apparently not exactly true outside soybeans. It looks like almost all cultivation has switched to strains that combine the herbicide resistance with Bt-based insect resistance.

Soybeans and Corn, but they're both hugely important crops.

GMO corn is particularly problematic because corn pollen can easily cross pollinate other corn varieties at a distance. That's the reason that farmers detassle hybrid corn. Miss one corn tassel and GMO traits from patent-protected corn varieties will cross-pollinate with non-GMO corn in neighboring fields. This has caused lots of problems, including cases where farmers have been falsely accused of seed-saving patent-protected corn varieties when it's actually accidental cross-pollination.

This shouldn't be a problem, but the "less than neighborly" attitudes of the corporations selling the Bt-based seeds and associated pesticides haven't helped.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

(I'm not aware of any real justification for the idea that being transgenic makes an organism more dangerous.)

There are two hypothetical reasons why GMOs could be dangerous.

First, transgenic organisms might contain proteins which can unexpected trigger allergies. For example, there was a case where a gene from an Arctic fish was transplanted into a tomato to give it better frost resistance. That means someone who is deathly allergic to fish might have an allergic reaction if they consumed that GMO tomato. The extra cost and hassle of product testing that sort of GMO crop made it seriously not worth the cost of development.

The second reason is that theoretically genes from "frankenfoods" could hybridize with other species in the wild to cause [fill-in-the-blank ecological catastrophe]. That's more the stuff of a Michael Creighton novel than a real possibility, however.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Soybeans and Corn, but they're both hugely important crops.

Nope. The corn (and the cotton) are basically all multi-enhancement, not herbicide resistance only.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

This shouldn't be a problem, but the "less than neighborly" attitudes of the corporations selling the Bt-based seeds and associated pesticides haven't helped.

This sounds like you're confusing Bt anti-insect modification and glyophosphate resistance.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

There are two hypothetical reasons why GMOs could be dangerous.

First, transgenic organisms might contain proteins which can unexpected trigger allergies. For example, there was a case where a gene from an Arctic fish was transplanted into a tomato to give it better frost resistance. That means someone who is deathly allergic to fish might have an allergic reaction if they consumed that GMO tomato. The extra cost and hassle of product testing that sort of GMO crop made it seriously not worth the cost of development.

Nice, that's actually a legitimate point probably. Though in many cases transgenes don't come from likely allergen sources and most proteins from such a source likely aren't actual allergens...

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

The second reason is that theoretically genes from "frankenfoods" could hybridize with other species in the wild to cause [fill-in-the-blank ecological catastrophe]. That's more the stuff of a Michael Creighton novel than a real possibility, however.

You notice this one has no reference to being transgenic, though?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Nice, that's actually a legitimate point probably. Though in many cases transgenes don't come from likely allergen sources and most proteins from such a source likely aren't actual allergens...

The thing is, 'not likely' is doing a lot of work here, the companies developing these products were doing a lot of "trust us, it's fine", and large companies do not have a good record when it comes to telling the truth about public health risks when there's money to be made (c.f. Tobacco, Oil...)

[Anthony]

It's worth remembering that low-tech selective breeding is genetic modification too -- there are essentially zero crops that are anywhere close to their natural form. GMO is just a new technique for something we've been doing for thousands of years.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's worth remembering that low-tech selective breeding is genetic modification too -- there are essentially zero crops that are anywhere close to their natural form. GMO is just a new technique for something we've been doing for thousands of years.

Not just crops, animals as well. Most of the cows, chickens, pigs, horses, dogs, cats and so on that we're used to eat, use for labour, hold as pets or whatever are different from the ones we had access to a thousand years ago.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's worth remembering that low-tech selective breeding is genetic modification too -- there are essentially zero crops that are anywhere close to their natural form. GMO is just a new technique for something we've been doing for thousands of years.

Selective breeding is a wee bit different from putting fish or frog genes into wheat, though. That gets you something that no amount of cross-breeding, etc. is going to get.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Except for the areas I pointed out, we're certainly at mature TL8 for arms and armor.

The serious lack of workable battlesuits and energy weapons prevents us from being anyplace close to TL9, however.

The personal energy weapons at TL9 in UT are either superscience (like Sonic Screamers) or bad ideas that people aren't going to build like chemical lasers.

Meanwhile the game statistics of the items I mentioned are not "mature" TL8. They equal or exceed the stats for mature TL9 items.

You can't disallow a TL status based on lacks of things. Otherwise we'll never be tL9 due to a lack of microbot swarms or the free range nanites we're supposed to get at later TLs.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You can't disallow a TL status based on lacks of things. Otherwise we'll never be tL9 due to a lack of microbot swarms or the free range nanites we're supposed to get at later TLs.

An entirely sound point. Every period's science fiction has envisioned inventions that turned out to be impossible, and failed to come up with inventions that played a dramatic role in further advances.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

- Quantum computing: it exists... Did you notice any change?

You won't for a while. Quantum Computing is at about the same stage as regular computing was in the mid-1930s. Yes we have the ability to do some basic tricks regular computers can't do. Now we need to develop software from scratch and design functional means of input and output.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The thing is, 'not likely' is doing a lot of work here, the companies developing these products were doing a lot of "trust us, it's fine", and large companies do not have a good record when it comes to telling the truth about public health risks when there's money to be made (c.f. Tobacco, Oil...)

Specifically, it'd doing the work of making the statement remotely accurate.

In fact, I'm tempted to take back my statement that it's probably a legitimate concern, because the thing is...yeah, it's possible that someone is allergic to that specific fish protein.

But not particularly because it's a fish protein. There's nothing about the (hypothetical?) fish protein that makes it more of an allergy threat than a protein from another plant, or the same plant, or almost anywhere...