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Shrug, if we have a new generation that can't socialize but is super smart then that's the next wave of humanity and it's our job to get support them and make s

Shrug, if we have a new generation that can't socialize but is super smart then that's the next wave of humanity and it's our job to get support them and make sure they succeed. The alternative is trying to beat the genetics out of them, which won't work.

notahacker 11y ago
You might feel less positively disposed towards a new generation that's super smart but sociopathic, especially if they have a superiority complex over the genetically normal... In practice, I'd be more worried about well-intentioned mass modifications having more mundane negative consequence, like creating generations whose unusual metabolism means they're very unlikely to become overweight but highly likely to die very painfully in their early forties.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Its only the 'mass' part of that which is different from the status quo. Already maladaptive genes are laced throughout our population. Tinkering has the risk of producing large numbers of identical modifications. Its debatable whether that means more, or fewer, or the same number of folks will suffer compared to how its done now (random chance).
  - notahacker 11y ago
    > Its only the 'mass' part of that which is different from the status quo. That's pretty important though. The status quo is that maladaptive traits tend to spread very slowly, if at all, in populations. Random chance might give somebody a mutation which gives them an unusually fast metabolism and disproportionate chance of an painful early death, but its not going to spread the mutation across a generation in the way that a marketing campaign for SlimKids(TM) could. Whether more folks will suffer than before in the long term is less a matter of debate and more a case of how restrictive the use cases are. For context, we live in a world where despite serious worries about antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, the most common uses of antibiotics are as chicken feed and placebos for the common cold. Even if popular human genetic modifications are entirely benign there's reason to be concerned about the effect on genetic diversity if certain combinations become near-universal in a population.

notahacker 11y ago

You might feel less positively disposed towards a new generation that's super smart but sociopathic, especially if they have a superiority complex over the genetically normal... In practice, I'd be more worried about well-intentioned mass modifications having more mundane negative consequence, like creating generations whose unusual metabolism means they're very unlikely to become overweight but highly likely to die very painfully in their early forties.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Its only the 'mass' part of that which is different from the status quo. Already maladaptive genes are laced throughout our population. Tinkering has the risk of producing large numbers of identical modifications. Its debatable whether that means more, or fewer, or the same number of folks will suffer compared to how its done now (random chance).
- notahacker 11y ago
  > Its only the 'mass' part of that which is different from the status quo. That's pretty important though. The status quo is that maladaptive traits tend to spread very slowly, if at all, in populations. Random chance might give somebody a mutation which gives them an unusually fast metabolism and disproportionate chance of an painful early death, but its not going to spread the mutation across a generation in the way that a marketing campaign for SlimKids(TM) could. Whether more folks will suffer than before in the long term is less a matter of debate and more a case of how restrictive the use cases are. For context, we live in a world where despite serious worries about antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, the most common uses of antibiotics are as chicken feed and placebos for the common cold. Even if popular human genetic modifications are entirely benign there's reason to be concerned about the effect on genetic diversity if certain combinations become near-universal in a population.