[haswell]

To bring this back to where it started:

> It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".

Maybe I misread this, but I took this to refer to the current food industry and how it processes/produces foods. The market is filled with products labeled "strawberry" that are not really strawberries or even close to the makeup of strawberries.

> What do you mean by "vat of chemicals called a strawberry?"

The breakfast food aisles at most (American at least) grocery stores summarize what I'm getting at. Many of the "strawberry" products are highly processed and highly artificial.

My point was that the ship of Theseus analogy seems misapplied, since we're not talking about a situation where the food choices we have are between the real thing and some molecularly perfect replica.

And secondarily, to call strawberries just a "vat of chemicals" in this specific context seems like a misnomer when considering that the reason people "avoid food with too many chemicals" is quite unrelated to the fact that everything is made up of the same stuff of the universe and more to do with questioning whether or not the human-made processed option is safe in the long run.

[trelane]

I was replying specifically to

> There’s a big difference between a real strawberry and a vat of chemicals called strawberries.

> The market is filled with products labeled "strawberry" that are not really strawberries

What is a "real" strawberry? Is a generically modified strawberry "real" to you? What about a strawberry grown in a greenhouse?

> even close to the makeup of strawberries.

If you're talking about flavored food, sure. Maybe that's what they were meaning. That would make sense. That's not what I'd consider a "vat of chemicals called a strawberry," as the a would seem (to me) to indicate that it is a replica of a strawberry.

> the ship of Theseus analogy seems misapplied, since we're not talking about a situation where the food choices we have are between the real thing and some molecularly perfect replica.

Sure, it's a hypothetical that we can't yet technologically replicate in its entirely. The GMO/hothouse question is entirely practical, though. And the point of these kinds of questions isn't that the're immediately practical, it's to figure out an interesting question by pushing things to the limits.

> fact that everything is made up of the same stuff of the universe and more to do with questioning whether or not the human-made processed option is safe in the long run.

That still isn't the point, though. Sure "chemicals" is a bogeyman for many (see also dihydrogen monoxide). But why is "dihydrogen monoxide" bad but water good?

[haswell]

> What is a "real" strawberry? Is a generically modified strawberry "real" to you? What about a strawberry grown in a greenhouse?

This seems like a shift of the goalposts. Setting that aside, I have no inherent issue with GMO foods, but that ultimately depends on the nature of the modification. There could certainly be cases where something is modified to a degree that it no longer resembles the original plants and it'd be fair to question whether the new creation carries the same benefits/harms as the original. The use of pesticides and fertilizers may also change the outcome.

To your point, at the end it's all just particles. But that doesn't remove the need to evaluate the properties of the resulting concoction.

> Sure, it's a hypothetical that we can't yet technologically replicate in its entirely.

And that was really the point.

> That still isn't the point, though. Sure "chemicals" is a bogeyman for many (see also dihydrogen monoxide). But why is "dihydrogen monoxide" bad but water good?

You're describing a scenario in which people are afraid of big words.

I'm describing a scenario in which people are concerned about the effects of specific substances added to the dihydrogen monoxide they drink.

To demonstrate the inverse, I know people who only drink sugared soda, which is clearly going to impact their bodies differently than drinking plain water. This is not speculation or hypothetical. The health conscious person who prefers pure drinking water over Mountain Dew is not afraid of big words, they're concerned about the sugar, caffeine, and other additives that make the liquid less healthy.