What I've found is that if you seriously listen and engage with people's concerns surrounding GMOs, the result is only more concerns. It validates that the worries are real, that there's real reason to fear. Look at how that expert treated them!

Listening, engaging, and taking these fears seriously does not result in reasoned debate. It results in pushing people ever-further into fear as every attempt to engage becomes further proof of evil.

Not addressing them also pushes people away, because articles like this will be ignored at best, can be called propaganda at worst.

Moreover somewhat thinking/reasonable people, who are cautiously not against GMO, and then hear such arguments from the anti side, will wonder why the pro side ignores them and maybe switch.

"engage with people's concerns surrounding GMOs, the result is only more concerns"

So propaganda it is then?

Life is tradeoffs. Please show us the tradeoffs, weigh in the counters, those are a signs of healthy opinions grounded in reason.

Anything else shows me it is an opinion based on feelings, perhaps I can gain some knowledge from it, but overall it is best to ignore it.

The options I see thus far are thus:

* Engage with people's fears, expending time and money and energy. Validate that there's something to be afraid of, because nobody would investigate it otherwise. People come up with different fig leaves for their fears, the goalposts move, and people stay roughly as afraid as before.

* Don't engage. People stay as afraid as before for the same reasons and scarce resource are invested in gainful efforts and research.

In theory there's a hypothetical third option where engaging respectfully with people's fears and doing appropriate research soothes fears and everyone is happy. I don't think that's actually available. Every time I've seen an attempt to do this, it's actually functioned as the first option above. You get nice articles like this one that convince few: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

You're very right, life is tradeoffs. I think expending effort to try to reason people away from unreasoning fear is not a wise tradeoff. Do you ever wonder why most scientists don't engage with astrologers, creationists, or flat-earthers? Do you think it's maybe because the astrologers, creationists, or flat-earthers are right?

I completely agree. And this is the interesting part of the discussion. (Also your other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12895406 .)

My first part on trying to answer that is, you acknowledge the human/emotional side of it, and discuss it.

"What you don't get is large masses of people changing their minds." (from your other comment)

No but what does? Propaganda? Silence? Unfortunately both easily used by the "other" side. I think only honesty works and let people figure it out. If ultimately that means we will not proceed on GMO, a shame in my opinion, but so be it.

"I don't think that's actually available"

You might be right, ...

However, I do think there is a second thing we can use. Show people the difference between knowledge and belief. Between opinions based on feelings and opinions based on knowledge. A strong proxy for belief/feelings not knowing or discussing tradeoffs.

"sound just like those people who work for Monsanto - which has happened to me today on HN." (also other comment)

lol, don't we ;) . Luckily the "other" side usually grossly exaggerate their points.

But you are right, ultimately people still have their fears and just grab other fig leaves.

The thing that changes people's minds is that they get accustomed to the new normal. Potatoes and tomatoes were once strange, new plants to Europe. Now they're core parts of the diet in many places.

Relying on the distinction between knowledge and belief is unfortunately much more difficult than it sounds. To a person approaching a subject in total ignorance, there is no good way to determine truth from well-written falsehoods. People tend to use their emotions as a proxy in the absence of any reliable knowledge.

There are small groups like rationalists who attempt otherwise, but they tend to be found taking modafinil and reading the Sequences instead of trying to convince a worried organic-foodie.

I completely agree, but am slightly more optimistic.

We have many areas in this life where this applies: god/politics/health/climate change/vaccinations/gmo and more. And almost everybody is searching.

Instead of rebutting people, ask them where knowledge comes from, explain them the difference between belief/correctness/reasons. And the difference between opinions based on feelings or based on reasons, and how to spot the differences, e.g. do you know tradeoffs. Ask them how they feel about people with different opinions on the subject.

But people do think. And it might surprise you who will ask you for more information. Worst case you lost a few minutes. Even if they don't change their mind, they do become slightly more "liberal".

Anecdotal, but I have been surprised quite a bit lately ;) the whole trump thing has stirred things up, even here in Europe.

We don't have to make people rationalists or skeptics. But just 10% in that direction would be nice. Perhaps most surprising is how little, or how badly, people have thought about knowledge vs belief.

Why do you care if a worried organic foodie eats non-GMO food?

I don't. They can eat whatever the hell they want. I do care that they seek to coerce the whole world to do the same.

I think we should all be free to eat whatever the hell we want. I think we should all have food that is maximally labeled with information about all strains of all plants and animals that go into them.

I don't want to force the worried organic foodies to eat GMOs. I want them to return the favor, but they seem hellbent on forcing me to live like them for reasons of fear. That same fear, plus some personal experience, leads me to think they're not really people who can be reasoned with.

> they seek to coerce the whole world to do the same.

That's pretty much the definition of politics. I don't see any future in trying to stop people from doing that.

I see one in which we all get choices. That'd be nice.

Yes, you're right. This is pure politics, with a veneer of concern for science. Much like AGW or anti-vaxxers.

I think you have been downvoted because your statement is pretty much anathema to the HN ethos (if there is one). If nobody will ever change their mind based off of discourse, what's the point? Why even have comment sections?

Are you saying you've never changed your mind after ruminating over time about information you've received?

When I first heard of GMOs, especially since my information/propaganda channels inexorably linked GMOs with Monsanto's controversial business practices, I was lead to distrust GMOs. A few years later, I read a few articles about GMOs in popular magazines. It turned out that I had some basic misconceptions that are extremely common. The most important being that traditional breeding is far more fraught with uncertainty. The second misconception is that GMO practitioners are just tinkering around; where in reality genetic modification is narrowly targeted and predictable. The outcome is to increase food safety; fewer pesticides are used, causing less damage to waterways and ecosystems. Less food is wasted, meaning more is available for consumption.

What didn't work was overt ridicule of my ignorant position. Several opportunities to digest non-confrontational information were required.

I think this subject is one where most people make deeply emotional decisions. In general, people cannot be reasoned out of positions they did not reason themselves into, and food is definitely not an exception. Food is too intimate and sensitive to most people.

What I've found is that when you use reason and evidence to assuage the particular concerns (certainty, safety, pesticide use), they are generally replaced by others. Distrust of Monsanto, agricultural monoculture, IP law, and so on. What do you think happens when you address them all? Show safety studies, bring up golden rice, and so on?

What you don't get is large masses of people changing their minds. What you do get is people suddenly deeply uncomfortable with the entire conversation, because their fig leaves are gone but their emotions haven't changed. Then someone says that you sound just like those people who work for Monsanto - which has happened to me today on HN.

Yes, I'm a cynical bastard.

You literally do get large masses of people changing their minds, but it takes time to cause this change. Look at the last century in the United States: women's rights, civil rights, LGTB equality. These movements have made tremendous progress. Though there are still many people against these movements, the majority of the country supports them.

Minds change (slowly), yours included.

You're right! Politics do change.

Politics changes when new ideas become old ones. Not when someone politely opines that it's maybe possible that GMOs aren't literally evil. It's possible that my attempts on the subject have all been ill luck and/or poor execution to run into uniformly hostile responses, but I clearly have some doubts.

I've tried listening to people, taking them seriously, addressing their concerns calmly and rationally. I've found it a reliable way of making people very angry.