[ben_w]

We can. In multiple different senses.

Synthetic biology covers literal reproduction of organisms: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

“Outdo” has multiple meanings, but pure engineering has made us go faster, fly higher, and survive worse cold, than anything purely evolved.

And if you mean purely organic items, not engineered, then you still need to explain the sense of “outdo”, because GM foods outdo non-GM foods in many ways we care about (e.g. bacterial rennet replacing cow stomach in cheese making, outdoing it by cost-efficiency and coincidentally making more cheeses suitable for vegetarians).

[yters]

All our genetic engineering tweaks existing organisms. We cannot make life in the lab.

[ben_w]

Except for the lab-built bacterial chromosomes (1), the lab-built entire viral units (2), and the lab-built xenobases (3).

(1) http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/minimal-cell/overv...

(2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_virology

(3) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeno_nucleic_acid

Edit: just to add, I wouldn’t accept “we have not done it from scratch yet” as a valid argument that we cannot do better than natural selection, any more than I would accept ”$person has not yet fabricated a CPU” as an argument that $person can’t code better than at least one professional CPU designer.

[yters]

CPUs weren't evolved.

[ben_w]

Irrelevant. I thought that would’ve been clear from me using the comparison as an example of a bad argument.

Also, not even correct, assuming I have been correctly informed that simulated evolution is used for some optimisations of e.g. precise physical transistor placement.

[paulie_a]

I accidentally bought some Vegetarian cheese last week and it is not suitable for anyone

[ben_w]

Are you sure you mean vegetarian and not vegan? Vegetarian cheese is pretty much the default in UK supermarkets these days, and almost nobody even knows that things like Parmesan are non-vegetarian.

Vegan cheese, on the other hand… oh dear.

I try it sometimes; vegan cheddar-alike tastes like vanilla ice cream that refuses to melt, but vegan feta-alike sort-of works.

[zimpenfish]

> vegan cheddar-alike tastes like vanilla ice cream that refuses to melt

That sounds really nice. I might have to try some.