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There are stones best left unturned, I feel. I don't think we want a world where parents need to spend $100K+ in genetic meddling to ensure their child can comp
by thrance 2y ago
There are stones best left unturned, I feel. I don't think we want a world where parents need to spend $100K+ in genetic meddling to ensure their child can compete in the future market.
I'm all for treating genetic diseases, but what is described in this article resembles eugenics a lot. And there are good reasons why this has been a taboo since WW2. Let's just say, there are other traits some people might want to select for than IQ. Ones you might not be confortable with.
- bondarchuk 2y agoI 100% agree, however the commonly accepted reason that eugenics is bad is that it involves killing and/or forcibly sterilizing people. I'm quite certain "peaceful" eugenics is still a very bad idea, however we should try to explicitly articulate why.
- ernestipark 2y agoYou create embryos, which are distinctly uniquely a human, then destroy the ones you don't want. It's eugenics, just at an earlier stage of human development.
- bondarchuk 2y agoI can respect that viewpoint, however it amounts to saying eugenics is about as bad as doing lots of very early abortions, or just having more miscarriages (currently 10 to 20% of natural pregnancies). Politically I don't think this line of argument would be effective at all, especially outside USA.
- jtbayly 2y agoYes, abortion also ends a human life. However, bringing up miscarriage is bizarre as a justification for feeling ok with it. It’s the difference between a man dying of old age in his sleep vs putting a gun to his head in his sleep because he is old. As to percentages, 100% of people die eventually. Just because people die every day doesn't mean it’s ok for us to kill them.
- ninkendo 2y agoIn your view, is IVF eugenics?
- numpad0 2y agoIMO people are overthinking it: murders, eugenics, racism, genocides, cannibalism are bad because we almost subconsciously know that it threatens our own survival. Butchering and devouring non-primate animals, even sentient, are totally okay and good because that's how we are built to live and it's good for our stable long term prosperity. I wouldn't be sure if it really matter whether embryos can suffer or if they deserve full human rights with right to a legal representative. To me the photos of them look like cells under microscopes, frankly. But our instincts do alert us that doing this could kill us all somehow, and for that reasons we hallucinate such moral arguments. Isn't that so?
- suddenlybananas 2y agoMaking wealth even more hereditary is an obvious answer.
- bondarchuk 2y agoI don't think the fact that it costs money is the core issue; if it got really cheap it would still be very bad and maybe worse.
- bossyTeacher 2y agoHis article reads exactly like Greg Egan's eugenics short story "Eugene". At that point, you are basically manufacturing humans
- thrance 2y agoFunny coincidence, I just started Axiomatic! Eugene is up next.
- BoingBoomTschak 2y ago> And there are good reasons why this has been a taboo since WW2. I'd like to know about these, cleanly separated from slippery slop fallacies "informed" by years of dystopian fiction. Also separated from history, which has always been written by the victors first and foremost.
- thrance 2y agoI don't feel like it's a hard subject to document oneself on. I suggest reading about the history of eugenics [1], from Wikipedia for example, and then branching out into more academic works, if you feel like going further. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics