[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.