Publish and be damned.

Adam Ozimek tries to make a case that GMO labelling is a bad idea. His basic point is that if labels are mandated, it will convey that the government thinks GMO is at least a little bit dangerous, and the anti-GMO luddites will have won.

I am not one of them. I think genetic engineering is a vital technology whose time has come. We've been using it for over ten thousand years (basically everything you eat is genetically engineered by generations of farmers), but we've been doing it with a sledge hammer. The source variation has come from background radiation, toxins both environmental and man-made, and just plain genetic accidents. Now we have developed scalpels.

I think the people who are opposed to eating GMO foods are largely just scared, and if you offered them "original organic wild millet" at $10/pound they'd lap it up. Of course, wild versions of plants come with all sorts of "natural" chemicals of unknown effect on humans. Some of which will be toxins, because that's how real plants survive in the wild; the engineered versions we eat are short on toxins, thorns etc in exchange for our protection. Nature is not benign; it is supremely self-interested.

The real problems with GMO are large-scale corporate control of agriculture, and enormous monocultures of the "best" varieties. Neither of these is specific to genetic modification, and indeed it can actually help with the monoculture problem by allowing favourable and useful genes to be extracted into a variety of other plants at high speed instead of waiting for cross-breeding to work its magic.

But labelling can help with both. Labelling allows our luddite friends to pay for alternative production methods. Labelling preserves small organic farmers producing their own varieties. And in the highly unlikely case that GMO foods really are dangerous, labelling provides a control natural population that hasn't eaten them and isn't affected. It's not perfect, because they've probably made a lot of other unusual dietary decisions, but it's a very good start.

Labelling also allows GMO foods to show their big advantage - cheap, high nutrition foods. If there's a premium on non-GMO foods, the GMO ones will have to provide a benefit or they'll be discarded by the marketplace. And it makes frightened people less scared of what they eat; instead of wondering what's in everything, they can see that there's no difference in the taste and no ill-effects. Far from the government endorsing fearfulness, labelling removes a big weapon from the arsenal of scaremongers.

And ultimately, if a large fraction of the population expresses a clear desire not to eat a particular thing, it's a fair to require that its presence be labelled on food. It's not hard to do; if you think your customers won't care you can just stick on a label that says "may contain GMO" and move on. If you think your customers do care, then you can go to the trouble of making sure your "GMO free" label is accurate. And if that's really hard, then the market can vote with its wallets on whether it's worth it.

This is a conversation we need to have, because we are going to have to develop a more nimble agriculture to adapt to climate change (no matter where you think it comes from) while keeping yields high to support our huge population without wrecking the land; and because agricultural pests have a habit of adjusting to monocultures and eating them.

Transparency is a virtue, and transparency about what's in your food is a very good thing. You need a powerful argument against it to prevail, and Ozimek has not come close.

Success is the best revenge

Clay Shirky likens the Donald Sterling case to Brendan Eich's firing. It's a fair point, and one that I saw brought up even before we had Donald Sterling to instantiate it. So I'm going to explain why they are different. At least to me.

First though, there are similarities. I said that Brendan Eich should be able to argue his opinion without getting fired from an unrelated job. And I'll say that Donald Sterling should be able to mouth off in a private phone conversation without having it plastered all over the web and getting him fired. There are plenty of reasons to kick him out anyway, but that's not one of them.

But let's say that Sterling had instead supported a pro-segregation referendum back in the 1960's. He was in his thirties then, and could well have done for all I know. No "private conversation" cover; he would have been trying to take away the rights of fellow citizens. Then no, I don't think he should have been fired.

The key difference between Eich and Sterling is that Eich, having made his case and ultimately lost, made no attempt to impose his opinions privately. Eich did not ask people not to bring LGBT developers to his company, or ban their hiring. Sterling has a record of doing that with black people, and his taped conversation merely confirms it.

Eich could also claim to have a principled opinion that gay marriage was not a social good. (I have no idea what his views are based on, and I've not heard such an argument that didn't boil down to bigotry or religion... but religious people find them convincing). Sterling cannot. Racial equality has been around a lot longer than marriage equality. There's been time to think through the arguments and clear away the rubbish. Forty years from now I expect Eich to be seen the way Sterling is now, but this is not then and such things take time.

Success is the best revenge, and that goes double for bigots. The best punishment for them is to live in a society that has rejected their views and allows their targets to prosper openly. Not only is this a cheap punishment, but it hits hardest those who are most bigoted, and automatically and instantly rewards those who reform. We can punish the actions of those who continue to discriminate, and leave their thoughts alone.

Punishing people for opinions is not a good idea. It sets a dangerous precedent, it's hard to enforce fairly, and it chills robust discussion. We should reserve such efforts to those with genuinely dangerous opinions - the ones who walk the line of calling for violence - and be cautious even then. But it is also good for people to express disgust for bigoted opinions, and that's how these cases have ended up as they did.

Both Eich and Sterling have been victims of the fact that their organisations relied on widespread community goodwill, and for better or worse their opinions have offended those communities. I think Sterling should have been thrown out in 2009 or earlier, and Eich should not have been fired. But that's just my opinion... which I would be outraged to be fired for.