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Frankly, it's embarrassing how an absolutist regime can create a sense of more on-the-ground intellectual freedom than can a supposedly free country. Socially e

Frankly, it's embarrassing how an absolutist regime can create a sense of more on-the-ground intellectual freedom than can a supposedly free country. Socially enforced censorship of painfully obvious facts in the west has gotten out of control, and unless we place limits on our newfound authoritarian impulses, we're going to be out-competed. While it's true that we've been very successful for a long time, success breeds complacency. Objections to things like genetic editing of humans on vague ethical grounds will just leave the advantage with others.

umeshunni 8y ago
> socially enforced censorship of painfully obvious facts in the west has gotten out of control Can you explain?
alabato 8y ago
Are you saying the west should allow human experiments on innocent (to-be-born) humans like in China just to keep the pace ? The right to decide what we do to your body, the right to not serve as guinea pig to experiments that aim to achieve a Nazi-like goal of creating a superior race... These are "vague" ethics? If you were currently dieing because of secondary effects due to an experiment we did on you as an embryo (and that you never needed) maybe you wouldn't find those "vague" ethics so useless.
- quotemstr 8y ago
  The west performs human experimentation all the time for the sake of validating new drugs and surgical devices. While current standards are, IMHO, too strict, the system more or less works, and few people have serious ethical problems with clinical trials, despite clinical trials being literally human experimentation.
  - alabato 8y ago
    wow that's messed up :(. We experimented on a baby that : 1) never had the need of this experiment, it was not to cure him but to test the effect of messing with a certain gene. 2) we never had its consent (obviously) I don't know about US, but in EU we don't experiment with people, without their concent and in order not to cure them, but to find how to build a stronger race. That's a whole higher level of screwed up that just happened in China. This is non-consenting human experiment in order not to cure but to find how to build a stronger race. This is not (as far as I know) in any way comparable to what is happening in the West
    - pvaldes 8y ago
      > in EU we don't experiment with people, without their concent and in order not to cure them, but to find how to build a stronger race. "Involuntary Sterilization and Castration in Sweden and the Nordic Countries" "In 1934, the first sterilisation act was enacted in Sweden followed by the first castration act in 1944. In 1972, Sweden became the first country in the world to enact legislation for the amendment of legally registered sex, however preconditioned on sterilisation. In the implementation of all these laws, voluntary and involuntary interventions have been made with legislative support... The involuntarily castrated [in the period 1972-2013] have still not received any reparations from the Swedish State [2018]" https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/node/394 https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/node/394 It seems that authists and trans people were actively targetted for a long period of time.
      - pvaldes 8y ago
        authists -> autistics
- fspeech 8y ago
  It is not allowed in China either if you are referring to the recent gene editing experiment. The researcher is widely denounced in China and will likely be in legal trouble.
westiseast 8y ago
I don’t think the ethical grounds for objecting to gene editing are vague at all. Taken to logical extremes, the ability to edit out ‘undesirable’ qualities in our descendants should ring alarm bells in anyone - who decides what is undesirable? There are plenty of practical grounds too. They don’t just turn off the cancer switch - gene editing ‘turns off’ some deep cellular function that is involved in cancer developing. But that function might regulate something else we don’t understand - we don’t yet know the consequences 40,50 or 100 years later of doing that.
- quotemstr 8y ago
  If you had the option to grant your child the ability to live to 150 in perfect health, and if, experimentally determined, the risk of negative side effects were the same as, say, postponing childbirth by five years, would you withold this advantage from your child, sentencing him or her to a shorter and more miserable life? How could a responsible parent choose to do that?
  - gus_massa 8y ago
    > and if, experimentally determined, the risk of negative side effects were the same as, say, postponing childbirth by five years, To determine that some change is safe during the expected 150 year of life, you must measure the effects during … at least 150 years (preferability more). How would be you sure that there are no tradeoff? Perhaps it reduce the chance of reproduction by a 1%. Perhaps it affect the ability to climb very tall mountains or very deep scuba diving. Perhaps it will make your grandgrandchildren more weak during a famine (sooner or later, some of your descendants will suffer a famine) or an epidemic. What are the good genes for surviving a war? How do you average the advantages and disadvantages of the normal times and the war times? And there are some adaptations that cause problems but makes you more resistant to malaria, how long you expect your descendants to live in a malaria free zone? How are you sure that the proposed changes are real advantages and not just some fads? (Consider that it's not clear how many eggs should you eat weekly, the recommendation changes every ten years.) What about exchanging 10 years of life for a 1% more chance of reproduction. Perhaps 1% is small, but it accumulates during the generations.

umeshunni 8y ago

> socially enforced censorship of painfully obvious facts in the west has gotten out of control Can you explain?

alabato 8y ago

Are you saying the west should allow human experiments on innocent (to-be-born) humans like in China just to keep the pace ? The right to decide what we do to your body, the right to not serve as guinea pig to experiments that aim to achieve a Nazi-like goal of creating a superior race... These are "vague" ethics? If you were currently dieing because of secondary effects due to an experiment we did on you as an embryo (and that you never needed) maybe you wouldn't find those "vague" ethics so useless.

quotemstr 8y ago
The west performs human experimentation all the time for the sake of validating new drugs and surgical devices. While current standards are, IMHO, too strict, the system more or less works, and few people have serious ethical problems with clinical trials, despite clinical trials being literally human experimentation.
- alabato 8y ago
  wow that's messed up :(. We experimented on a baby that : 1) never had the need of this experiment, it was not to cure him but to test the effect of messing with a certain gene. 2) we never had its consent (obviously) I don't know about US, but in EU we don't experiment with people, without their concent and in order not to cure them, but to find how to build a stronger race. That's a whole higher level of screwed up that just happened in China. This is non-consenting human experiment in order not to cure but to find how to build a stronger race. This is not (as far as I know) in any way comparable to what is happening in the West
  - pvaldes 8y ago
    > in EU we don't experiment with people, without their concent and in order not to cure them, but to find how to build a stronger race. "Involuntary Sterilization and Castration in Sweden and the Nordic Countries" "In 1934, the first sterilisation act was enacted in Sweden followed by the first castration act in 1944. In 1972, Sweden became the first country in the world to enact legislation for the amendment of legally registered sex, however preconditioned on sterilisation. In the implementation of all these laws, voluntary and involuntary interventions have been made with legislative support... The involuntarily castrated [in the period 1972-2013] have still not received any reparations from the Swedish State [2018]" https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/node/394 https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/node/394 It seems that authists and trans people were actively targetted for a long period of time.
    - pvaldes 8y ago
      authists -> autistics
fspeech 8y ago
It is not allowed in China either if you are referring to the recent gene editing experiment. The researcher is widely denounced in China and will likely be in legal trouble.

westiseast 8y ago

I don’t think the ethical grounds for objecting to gene editing are vague at all. Taken to logical extremes, the ability to edit out ‘undesirable’ qualities in our descendants should ring alarm bells in anyone - who decides what is undesirable? There are plenty of practical grounds too. They don’t just turn off the cancer switch - gene editing ‘turns off’ some deep cellular function that is involved in cancer developing. But that function might regulate something else we don’t understand - we don’t yet know the consequences 40,50 or 100 years later of doing that.

quotemstr 8y ago
If you had the option to grant your child the ability to live to 150 in perfect health, and if, experimentally determined, the risk of negative side effects were the same as, say, postponing childbirth by five years, would you withold this advantage from your child, sentencing him or her to a shorter and more miserable life? How could a responsible parent choose to do that?
- gus_massa 8y ago
  > and if, experimentally determined, the risk of negative side effects were the same as, say, postponing childbirth by five years, To determine that some change is safe during the expected 150 year of life, you must measure the effects during … at least 150 years (preferability more). How would be you sure that there are no tradeoff? Perhaps it reduce the chance of reproduction by a 1%. Perhaps it affect the ability to climb very tall mountains or very deep scuba diving. Perhaps it will make your grandgrandchildren more weak during a famine (sooner or later, some of your descendants will suffer a famine) or an epidemic. What are the good genes for surviving a war? How do you average the advantages and disadvantages of the normal times and the war times? And there are some adaptations that cause problems but makes you more resistant to malaria, how long you expect your descendants to live in a malaria free zone? How are you sure that the proposed changes are real advantages and not just some fads? (Consider that it's not clear how many eggs should you eat weekly, the recommendation changes every ten years.) What about exchanging 10 years of life for a 1% more chance of reproduction. Perhaps 1% is small, but it accumulates during the generations.