--- Erik Reuter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 08:53:02PM -0700, Gautam > Mukunda wrote: > Sounds like you are attributing malevolence to them. > Maybe they honestly > disagree with you? Perhaps they feel that they are > saving billions of > lives (the human race) sometime in the future?
I'm sure they do. The question is, is this a reasonable belief? Is it reasonable to say "There's some unspecified risk that this might possibly be dangerous to the people - no evidence that it ever will be, and no one has ever been harmed by it - but it's possible. So, just to avoid that impossible-to-determine, but very small, possibility - I think people should die through mass starvation." That's the logic chain you have to go through. I think that chain is morally unconscionable. > > By the way, this seems to be a partial answer to the > question I asked > you earlier about your tolerance for people honestly > disagreeing with > you. As long as it doesn't strike to close to home, > they can disagree. > But if it feels too personal, then they are evil. I don't think so, no. "Golden rice" doesn't strike particularly close to home. It's a question of immediacy and impact. In this case, for example, _all_ of the pain from stopping things like this is inflicted on other (poor, brown) people. That's always a key sign right there - when someone else has to pay all of the costs of whatever questionable decision you make, and those costs are extremely high. > I think many environmentalists' judgement is way off > on many things, > but your argument here is not persuasive. Your game > above is the same > game that the anti-free-trade people play. "Name one > person who has been > helped by outsourcing?". They can name plenty who > have been hurt by it. > > Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ I don't think so. First, there's a difference in seriousness. Losing your job is bad. Starving to death or dying in food riots is much worse. Second, there's a difference in cost-benefit. It is virtually certaint that, over the long run, everyone will benefit from allowing offshoring and outsourcing. When you make the argument that it's a good thing, you can be as certain as you can be about anything that it is correct - free trade is a good thing. Here, on the other hand, you had a situation where there was a possibility (a very small one). In fact now, with the advantage of hindsight, we can see that the activists were entirely wrong - the Green Revolution was an absolutely good thing, as were the American food shipments that fed much of India before it could take hold. Strikingly, Ehrlich (for example) has never even admiited that he was wrong, instead continuing to make the same arguments, just pushed ever further into the future. So for the possibility that there would be some unspecified benefit from "natural" agriculture, or stopping the growth of genetically engineered rice, you have the _certainty_ of millions of deaths from starvation or millions of cases of child blindness. That's something so vastly different as to allow a moral calculation to be made, I think. You are right as to one thing. This is not like Iraq - I don't believe that there are two morally acceptable positions. But the reason for that is the difference in situations. In Iraq the moral arguments were unclear - it was definitely good for the Iraqi people (good), but the most important moral factor in the decision-making was is it good for the _American_ people (or British, Australian, what have you). That was unclear, and still is. But in the case of golden rice (for example) it doesn't work that way. There's a certainty of an extremely large benefit, while the possibility of any harm at all is somewhere between exceptionally low and non-existent. If you think the blindness of millions of kids is worth stopping some unspecified and very small risk that genetically engineered rice might in some way harm someone, then you're into a morally insupportable position. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25� http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash
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