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These all seem very solvable. Also, when I say “cloned” I mean also a broader set of technologies, such as artificial wombs and genetic designer babies. If desi
by ivalm 3y ago
These all seem very solvable. Also, when I say “cloned” I mean also a broader set of technologies, such as artificial wombs and genetic designer babies. If desired all couples should have the ability to create children in artificial wombs and have them be exact clones or some designed mixes. These mixes/clones can contain their own dna or that of others.
In general, I think genetic sequences should be open source and if we get a ton of Einsteins, Michael Jordans, etc then we’re better for it.
> why should we create cloned children when the state already can't do good by orphaned children
Same as why we have children at all, some people want to have children that are their own.
> unless the clone is raised by a family as their own child, we'd effectively be creating a subservient class by cloning, since while with normal children, losing their family is not necessarily known ahead of time, with a clone that isn't the case.
I absolutely agree that all children should be when possible with parents and clones/design babies need to be given the same care/rights/support as normal children.
> Is it worth the suffering of all the imperfect clones (and the surrogate mothers within whom they'd be grown) that will inevitably be produced during the development of the technology?
We develop it not on humans first. We then use it to design babies for parents with genetic abnormalities.
> How do we deal with reproductive rights of clones and their impact on genetic diversity?
We grant them all rights. I think there will naturally be enough diversity, and monoculture scare is less meaningful when we can breed new generations with proper adaptations. Essentially we can get almost all benefits of having a diverse genetic pool (and I do think we should financially incentivize diversity).
> How are we, as a society, supposed to then have a proper conversation about the ethics of creating full human intelligences? With normal children we can at least point to a biological imperative.
I don’t think there is any difference between normal children, cloned children, and designed children.
- dotnet00 3y agoI didn't expect you'd actually reply to everything! :) But yes, if by cloning you're referring to just the broad set of technologies involved like artificial wombs, rather than specifically the technology to grow an exact copy of an existing human, I agree that the ethical problems are a lot more solvable and the tech a lot more justifiable as it would be compensating for medical issues. As for developing it with animals first, of course we would do that, but at some point it has to be tested on humans, which still involves the same risks since developmentally we are fairly different from most animals, especially when it comes to the brain.
- ivalm 3y agoI do think exact cloning may be what a lot of folk would choose for. If you are single and plan to remain so then having a clone of yourself, perhaps a somewhat prettier/sportier/smarter one is what people will elect. Overall, I think society is moving towards increased atomization of family units, which may go down all the way to the individual. Ultimately, we can unbundle (1) sexual intimacy (2) friendship (3) procreation. And I think in this world procreation will likely be artificial womb with a clone of self + a few improvements. > development […] Honestly I suspect artificial womb to be the harder problem than genetic manipulation/cloning. As full genome sequencing becomes cheap you can fully sequence every candidate embryo and ensure it’s clean. We don’t need high yield of quality embryos if we can filter out all the genetically bad ones with essentially 100% accuracy.