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I think the fears might be underblown, not overblown. Not enough people are paying attention to the Revolutionary Phenotype hypothesis and how it relates to gen

I think the fears might be underblown, not overblown. Not enough people are paying attention to the Revolutionary Phenotype hypothesis and how it relates to gene editing. The moral fears are less scary than the existential ones. There's a fascinating video that responds to the propaganda put out by the Chinese scientist who performed the gene editing on twins here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ND3_clSPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2ND3_clSPM And you can read the first chapter of the book that will come out the next month describing the phenomenon here: http://book.jfg.world http://book.jfg.world

newuser6969 8y ago
Do you mind summarizing the hypothesis for the person who doesn't have time at the moment to read that (me).
- ericdykstra 8y ago
  It's the conclusion of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype. The Revolutionary Phenotype describes the transition of life from protein self-replicator (no known current ancestors), to protein-RNA tangos (no known current ancestors), to RNA replicators (current RNA viruses), to RNA-DNA tango (RNA-DNA reverse transcribing viruses), to DNA replicator (biological life). The next revolutionary phenotype (let's call it RT) would be one that replaces DNA, first via a DNA-RT tango (machines editing our DNA) and eventually with RT (the machines) replacing DNA completely. The video I linked above goes over the consequences of this. The book will describe it in more detail, and is slated to be released next month.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
I gave the first chapter a quick read. It didn’t really seem that well thought out. He uses an example about finding out humanity disappears in the next 100 million years and then hand waves it as overblown, but it wasn’t really clear on what timescale he was talking about. It also seemed like he was broadly describing transhumanism and then calling it a bad thing, as though humanity evolving through means beyond DNA are not humans at all.

newuser6969 8y ago

Do you mind summarizing the hypothesis for the person who doesn't have time at the moment to read that (me).

ericdykstra 8y ago
It's the conclusion of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype. The Revolutionary Phenotype describes the transition of life from protein self-replicator (no known current ancestors), to protein-RNA tangos (no known current ancestors), to RNA replicators (current RNA viruses), to RNA-DNA tango (RNA-DNA reverse transcribing viruses), to DNA replicator (biological life). The next revolutionary phenotype (let's call it RT) would be one that replaces DNA, first via a DNA-RT tango (machines editing our DNA) and eventually with RT (the machines) replacing DNA completely. The video I linked above goes over the consequences of this. The book will describe it in more detail, and is slated to be released next month.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

I gave the first chapter a quick read. It didn’t really seem that well thought out. He uses an example about finding out humanity disappears in the next 100 million years and then hand waves it as overblown, but it wasn’t really clear on what timescale he was talking about. It also seemed like he was broadly describing transhumanism and then calling it a bad thing, as though humanity evolving through means beyond DNA are not humans at all.