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Paraphrasing Slate Star Codex from memory: I don't want it because then everyone will be pressured to take the most invasive "improvements" they can get, or ris

Paraphrasing Slate Star Codex from memory: I don't want it because then everyone will be pressured to take the most invasive "improvements" they can get, or risk being outcompeted, and then after the whale fall we'll still be miserable, but also with brain bugs.

rbanffy 1y ago
For that to work, we need to evolve past competition and remove the fear of being outcompeted.
- lazide 1y ago
  which makes no sense on it’s face, as as evolution (and nature itself) is fundamentally competitive. you might as well say we should ‘compile ourselves past compilers’.
  - bananaflag 1y ago
    Laughed out loud at that, thanks.
  - n4r9 1y ago
    Artificial selection need not be competitive in the same way that natural selection is. And even if it were, competition between genes doesn't necessarily equate to competition between individuals.
    - lazide 1y ago
      And certainly there is no competitive or evolutionary advantage for one person (or geneset) to convince a naive group of individuals that is what is going on while they pull the strings in the background. Or a person or set of individuals to pretend to be going along with said program (if said program is honest) while actually abusing/manipulating the program to benefit them eh? [https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/latest-dutch-fertility-clinic-scandal-may-only-be-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-1.4793642 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/late...] among dozens (hundreds?) of others. Ignore the incentives of reality at your peril.
      - rbanffy 1y ago
        Competitive societies have more and more serious mental health issues. What program are you referring to? When I mentioned evolving past competition, I didn't say anything about gene-based evolution, but social evolution, where we consciously place a higher value on cooperation over competition.
        lazide 1y ago
        Gene based evolution is constant. There is no way to avoid it; any more than it’s possible to avoid a compiler (somewhere) for any decent sized computer program, even if you’re writing in Python. So what you’re describing is not what you think you’re describing at all. Those ‘non-competitive’ societies are actually just those where the competition has been decided through structural elements which are not currently being contested to the same extent. Because someone either ‘won’ the war already, or the ‘war’ is more subtle and manipulative rather than being out in the open. If you happen to be on the ‘winning’ side of that war, then that looks great. If you’re on the losing side, you won’t get much of a chance to notice or fight about it. And what cannot be ‘seen’, ‘doesn’t exist’. War, after all, only can occur when someone is able to actually fight - and can see a reason to want to. Because in either one, someone is making the choices (explicitly, or implicitly!) which decide whose genes actually end up spreading. Complaining about mental health issues in competitive societies is like complaining about people getting maimed in war. And if people just stopped trying to fight back, then hey, world peace! (Once whatever Emperor conquered first won, of course) Society is the increasingly abstract and confusing game we build on top of all this so we’re not all writing the equivalent of assembly - aka Ghenghis Khan’ng each other. But it’s all the same at the end of the day - the computer (aka reality) runs whatever instructions gets spit out (aka genes). And whoever decides that, ‘wins’.
        n4r9 1y ago
        Okay. But if social norms lead to almost everyone mating randomly and couples having the same number of kids on average, then what happens to genetic evolution?
imtringued 1y ago
If there was a free lunch, biology would have taken it.
- gruez 1y ago
  That's unconvincing given how the modern environment is so different than the environment that we evolved in.
fincycaden 1y ago
Interestingly this is Ted Kaczysnki's argument for what will inevitably happen with genetic engineering of humans

rbanffy 1y ago

For that to work, we need to evolve past competition and remove the fear of being outcompeted.

lazide 1y ago
which makes no sense on it’s face, as as evolution (and nature itself) is fundamentally competitive. you might as well say we should ‘compile ourselves past compilers’.
- bananaflag 1y ago
  Laughed out loud at that, thanks.
- n4r9 1y ago
  Artificial selection need not be competitive in the same way that natural selection is. And even if it were, competition between genes doesn't necessarily equate to competition between individuals.
  - lazide 1y ago
    And certainly there is no competitive or evolutionary advantage for one person (or geneset) to convince a naive group of individuals that is what is going on while they pull the strings in the background. Or a person or set of individuals to pretend to be going along with said program (if said program is honest) while actually abusing/manipulating the program to benefit them eh? [https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/latest-dutch-fertility-clinic-scandal-may-only-be-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-1.4793642 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/late...] among dozens (hundreds?) of others. Ignore the incentives of reality at your peril.
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      Competitive societies have more and more serious mental health issues. What program are you referring to? When I mentioned evolving past competition, I didn't say anything about gene-based evolution, but social evolution, where we consciously place a higher value on cooperation over competition.
      - lazide 1y ago
        Gene based evolution is constant. There is no way to avoid it; any more than it’s possible to avoid a compiler (somewhere) for any decent sized computer program, even if you’re writing in Python. So what you’re describing is not what you think you’re describing at all. Those ‘non-competitive’ societies are actually just those where the competition has been decided through structural elements which are not currently being contested to the same extent. Because someone either ‘won’ the war already, or the ‘war’ is more subtle and manipulative rather than being out in the open. If you happen to be on the ‘winning’ side of that war, then that looks great. If you’re on the losing side, you won’t get much of a chance to notice or fight about it. And what cannot be ‘seen’, ‘doesn’t exist’. War, after all, only can occur when someone is able to actually fight - and can see a reason to want to. Because in either one, someone is making the choices (explicitly, or implicitly!) which decide whose genes actually end up spreading. Complaining about mental health issues in competitive societies is like complaining about people getting maimed in war. And if people just stopped trying to fight back, then hey, world peace! (Once whatever Emperor conquered first won, of course) Society is the increasingly abstract and confusing game we build on top of all this so we’re not all writing the equivalent of assembly - aka Ghenghis Khan’ng each other. But it’s all the same at the end of the day - the computer (aka reality) runs whatever instructions gets spit out (aka genes). And whoever decides that, ‘wins’.
        n4r9 1y ago
        Okay. But if social norms lead to almost everyone mating randomly and couples having the same number of kids on average, then what happens to genetic evolution?

imtringued 1y ago

If there was a free lunch, biology would have taken it.

gruez 1y ago
That's unconvincing given how the modern environment is so different than the environment that we evolved in.

fincycaden 1y ago

Interestingly this is Ted Kaczysnki's argument for what will inevitably happen with genetic engineering of humans