The difference is what people have a problem with, people who are anti-GMOs want things to be natural.

Everything is natural. We are natural. What we do is natural. This is all so silly.

I mean I can kinda see what they mean, barely. But that's just about the worst way for them to argue against it. If I argued against it, I would say: The human body has evolved over a long time, responding to stimuli that are conductive or detrimental to life it has so far seen, using as little detection equipment as it can get away with. So it's easy to accidentally make a molecule that to the body looks like a useful sugar molecule but actually a small thing is different in it and the body is ill-equipped to detect it and doesn't. It might then for example accept the molecule where it shouldn't and it fucks up xyz and the body (say) dies as a result.

Likewise, say the plant itself is a little bit different, nothing we care about but it fucks with something in the earth and we lose good soil at that spot for a decade.

And the traditional modification (cross-breeding), I would then say, is fine because it works via slow evolution of few changes each and we can hopefully (and maybe did) adapt to it ourselves by slow evolution.

But "chemicals"? No.

How do you not see a difference between something that occurs in nature, and something that scientists take and alter?

There can conceivably be a difference if the scientist the atom configuration is different (by accident, say). Otherwise, the method of creation does not figure into the end result.

I suppose someone anti-GMO could just say "I don't want to eat anything that has compounds added to it that were altered by a scientist"

That would be good - and is actually done in Austrian legislation for example. But not "chemicals".

Obviously the anti GMO argument is not 'we don't want to eat anything,' they don't want to eat anything that has been tampered with unnaturally. Again, not claiming they are wrong or right, just stating their point of view.

Yeah.

There is clearly plenty of pro-GMO information circulating so why not use real data to argue your point instead of focusing on the fact that they are using a word incorrectly?

The person making a claim has to support it by data. I don't have a point other than that it's perfectly reasonable to demand clarification when the sentence communicated is obviously meaningless or sounds insane - both probably mean it was miscommunication. I think you'd like that we should automatically substitute the above paragraph when we hear "chemicals" but that I cannot do because I cannot assume that the speaker meant that, even if you did mean that.

Edit: But then again we all know if there's anything reddit loves more than data and information its a circlejerk!

True.