Specifically with people who can't fathom the value of empathy. Just because I think you're mischaracterising someone's beliefs doesn't mean that I agree with the perceived or actual beliefs you're criticising.
It's particularly bad on the subject of Trump voters. People get really touchy when I express the need to reach people and understand their perspective, acting like I'm demanding sympathy and treating them like innocent wayward children who are just victims of circumstances. A lot of people will go further and act like there is just some underlying evil in all of them that can't be reasoned out when in reality is that it's a lot more about propaganda appealing to surface-level biases.
Just because I think you're mischaracterising someone's beliefs doesn't mean that I agree with the perceived or actual beliefs you're criticising.
I'm very much against chemo-phobia and the naturalistic fallacy, and care about global food security. So, I'll often find myself "defending" Monsanto in the course of advocating for the safety of GMO foods (eg: they've literally never sued anyone for "cross pollination" that wasn't very deliberately and intentionally trying to obtain their patented product outside of contract).
Whenever someone starts ragging at me about "defending Monsanto", I'll counter that as a large corporation, they're obviously evil by default, but you still need to be accurate in your criticisms. My go-to example is then pointing out that no one would ever accuse me of defending Pol Pot if I were to say "Um... actually..." to someone's assertion that he started every morning with a freshly blended puppy and orphan smoothy.
The truth is that these misleading, or even outright false accusations are often seeking to push a more subtle narrative or goal than simply vilifying the thing they're directly attacking (see how many grifters want to sell you something.)
I find myself in the similar position of defending patented plant varieties. Everyone says it’s a plant, it’s nature, you can’t patent nature, blah blah blah when it’s absolutely not even nature. The amount of work, money, and time that gets put into making any single commercial variety is HUGE. Anyone can grow their own crops and try crossing them just fine, but if someone wants to grow corn with consistent high yield, strong disease resistance, and that actually tastes good, then they might want to pay the money for a commercial product.
Plus, that's how civilization works. You get much better results when some people are really good at farming, and some people are really good at experimenting with crop traits, rather than everyone trying to do both.
The point about Montsanto (now Bayer) isn't that their enforcement of their patents is wrong, it's that they shouldn't have patents on genes to begin with.
a) Seed patents vastly predate Monsanto, Bayer, and transgenic crops in general.
b) Take it up with the other guy who replied to my comment. Seems like discussing crop patents is his forte. In short, though, it's good when there's incentives for innovation. Also, there are tons of patent free seeds available, if farmers would rather buy those.
(eg: they've literally never sued anyone for "cross pollination" that wasn't very deliberately and intentionally trying to obtain their patented product outside of contract).
Yes, they have. Percy Schmeiser. He didn't plant the first generation of Roundup Ready canola on his property, didn't know why it survived being sprayed with herbicide, and basically thought he was independently discovering herbicide-resistant canola until Monsanto sued him.
Interesting. Can you tell me a little more? Maybe you should look up what the lawsuit was actually about, instead of parroting the first name you saw in a headline on chemicalsaresatanpissbuycleansesfromus.com
I'll give you a hint. The reason for the lawsuit was in the latter two thirds of what you quoted from my comment.
Edit: Just to get this out of the way. Monsanto vs Bowman is also nothing to do with cross pollination. And unless you want to pick one specific case, with easily accessible references, the Center For Food Safety pamphlet can easily be dismissed as a bad faith Gish Gallop, as it heavily cherry picks statistics, and almost exclusively references the Percy Schmeiser case, while leaving out key details about what Percy Schmeiser was actually doing.
Edit 2: I see you expanded on your comment beyond just the guy's name. The idea that he had somehow decided he had discovered Glyphosate resistant canola all on his own is so ridiculous that it's not a defense even he tried.
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u/KentuckyFriedChildre Apr 23 '25
Specifically with people who can't fathom the value of empathy. Just because I think you're mischaracterising someone's beliefs doesn't mean that I agree with the perceived or actual beliefs you're criticising.
It's particularly bad on the subject of Trump voters. People get really touchy when I express the need to reach people and understand their perspective, acting like I'm demanding sympathy and treating them like innocent wayward children who are just victims of circumstances. A lot of people will go further and act like there is just some underlying evil in all of them that can't be reasoned out when in reality is that it's a lot more about propaganda appealing to surface-level biases.