[TeMPOraL]

> It's very different from what people will do in laboratory.

It's really the same process, with but with noise removed. Genes are genes, they do not carry metadata that say they were introduced in a lab. "Natural" vs "artificial" is a kind of magical thinking one would hope humanity would cure itself of by now. Hell, if you want to see true masters of targeted genetic modification, look no further than viruses.

> Natural process is quite slow and gives you enough time to drop adverse crop.

"Artificial" process can notice and drop "adverse" crop faster. Also, the way all organisms live and reproduce, genes not fit for the environment they're in will get dropped over time. Living things have an energy economy in them; enabling one feature usually means taking away from others.

This really deserves an Abstruse Goose reference:

https://abstrusegoose.com/215

[hjhjhjhjhj12]

>It's really the same process, with but with noise removed

If it is "the same process", then how are we able to make a distinction between domestication and biolistics or crispr?

Even disregarding the literal human action part, the most notable difference is that the latter allows for genes to be moved between organisms even if the two organisms would not have done so even if given millions of years without human interaction. (Ex: Spider genes in goats).

I feel this defense of GMO's is weak, as is the defense of "It's the same food chemically." as some other's may claim. If it were actually the same outcome, then it would be useless as a technique.

[TeMPOraL]

> Even disregarding the literal human action part, the most notable difference is that the latter allows for genes to be moved between organisms even if the two organisms would not have done so even if given millions of years without human interaction. (Ex: Spider genes in goats).

There are really no such things as "spider genes" or "goat genes" or "fish genes", there are only genes. Some sequences are found in one species and not the other, but they do not carry a tag that says where they came from. It's akin to copying functions between programs. You may say you copied over the implementation of e.g. incremental search from Vim, but that doesn't suddenly taint your program with "unnatural vimness" (license considerations notwithstanding).

> I feel this defense of GMO's is weak, as is the defense of "It's the same food chemically." as some other's may claim. If it were actually the same outcome, then it would be useless as a technique.

It's more akin this: quicksort and random sort give the exact same outcome in the end, but one of those processes is vastly more efficient at achieving the goal.

[hjhjhjhjhj12]

You're conflating general descriptions of algorithms with implementations of said algorithms. I disagree; an implementation of an algorithm CAN very much so be tied to one particular program. If you ignore function call side-effects entirely (cache states, timing delays, modified globals, etc.), then you would be able to transplant functions from one program to another freely. Essentially, to make functions that are fitting to quickly transplant into other programs (in libraries or not), it actually takes intentional design to make sure their side-effects are limited in scope and predictable.

I think this is revealing of an implicit assumption that we disagree on. I do not accept this idea that genes, in a sense, are like functional-programming functions. Considering the fact that there exist genes that express only in the presence of other genes or specific environmental factors, its very likely that genes DO have side-effects in our metaphor of genes as functions.