There's always unknown unknowns and by now those have been reduced significantly for GMOs. Any reason to think the risk in this case might be higher than the benefits? Are you sure you are not overestimating the unknown unknown risk just because GMO sounds scary?
What is the epistemological framework you use to identify possible sources of unknown unknowns and bound their harms? In the absence of any framework you basically have a sort of nihilistic solipsism.
I think the most widely accepted framework here suffices. The emperical framework.
Cross breeding occurs slowly and is a long-used process. The long-used means there is ample evidence suggesting cross-breeding results in safe food.
The fact that cross breeding happens slowly gives any safety issues a long time to reveal themselves before it becomes wide-spread. Thus it makes sense that cross-breeding yields fewer unkown issues by the time its widespread. Essentially, early warning are built in, even for latent issues.
Good question. There is no way to bound the possible harm, but I'd there are solid alternatives then it becomes less desirable. A good example of this is the covid vaccine: this time, the risk of unknown vaccine complications is worth it.
As an aside, I admire the HN crowd reasoning capacity, but it always amazes me that almost no one is upfront and say we as a society love the taste of beef and are willing to risk environmental and possibly health issues for it. It would be a much more productive discussion if we were honest about it instead of discussing whether we need bigger cows.
Why are you not worried about the unknown unknowns in literally any other area? Like, using microwave ovens, having TV broadcast signals, or wearing silk?
Personally I'm reasonably confident that any significant adverse health effect would have been found by experiments by now, so Bayesian reasoning tells me any unknowns that are still unknown are probably negligible.
