Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Hal,

A freestanding '10-second' solution is probably impossible: the closest approach would be a very highly trusted 3rd-party's certification (Consumer Reports?) but that still requires a significant effort to verify the credibility of the 3rd party initially. The establishment of non-profits funded by vested interests (on both sides) and the exertion of political influence on government regulatory bodies worsen the signal-to-noise ratio to the point where such a verification may be too challenging for the median consumer to bother with.

Failures of certification are particularly troubling because they are likely to lead people to rely on hearsay from acquaintances:

http://www.organicconsumers...* 40% of respondents falsely thought that tomatoes genetically modified with genes from catfish would taste "fishy";* 31% mistakenly believed that eating genetically modified fruit could modify a person's genes;* 43% falsely asserted that ordinary tomatoes don't contain genes, only those that are genetically modified have genes.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The larger issue here is, how do we help the layman who doesn't want to spend more then ten minutes (ten seconds would be even better) thinking about the problem? How did you commenters come up with your contradictory information about the risks of GM foods? Doesn't it bother you that someone else came up with a completely opposite understanding?

I see this over and over with these kinds of issues. I have little confidence that studying the available information as a lay person is any way to go about solving the problem, largely because it appears that the results of this process are either completely random, or else subject to very significant biases (so that whatever my predispositions and prejudices may be on the issue, my "study" will simply leave me more confirmed than ever that I am right.)

Expand full comment
4 more comments...

No posts