5 ms·

>At first it's just serious diseases. But then people will want their children to have correct color vision and other nice things. ...and they should. Nobody d

>At first it's just serious diseases. But then people will want their children to have correct color vision and other nice things. ...and they should. Nobody deserves a suboptimal quality of life due to genetics.

jychang 12y ago
But then we go full GATTACA.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  AKA Affirmative Action Is Good: The Movie. We already bar people with heart defects from participating in space programs.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I thought the whole point was that the main character got into space on merit, even though all the fancy genetic screening predicted that he wouldn't be able to. The human spirit of an individual triumphs over a short sighted and capricious society. You mention the heart defect. In the movie, the heart defect is only genetically potential, it is implied that if the character had it they would be dead before the events of the film.
    - adrianN 12y ago
      He does cheat on both the medical and the physical exams.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Sure, I guess I would refine it and say that he made it into space based on some standard of merit that I was defining, not based on the one the short sighted and capricious society defined.
- Filligree 12y ago
  You don't like that outcome? Meh. Neither does anyone else, and it won't happen by itself. If GATTACA was the cost of everyone being healthy, I might take it, but it won't be. We get the world we want, by and large.
  - philbarr 12y ago
    > We get the world we want, by and large. Hmm, not sure about that. The rich get the world they want, by and large.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    There are a lot of undesirable scenarios where 'everyone is healthy'.
- sampo 12y ago
  > But then we go full GATTACA. Gattaca is just a scifi movie, not particularly good at science realism. We should not take guidelines for Artificial Intelligence research from the Terminator movies, and we should not take genetics guidelines from Gattaca.
- afafsd 12y ago
  So? The world of GATTACA seemed pretty awesome. Everyone was smart and fit and healthy and good-looking. In fact, life was so perfect that the writers had to postulate the existence of non-genetically-engineered people in order to have any drama at all. "Wouldn't it suck if you were born into this society without any genetic enhancement?" the movie asks. And the answer is: yeah, so you should genetically engineer your children.
PostOnce 12y ago
It's implied that later it won't just be functional things like color vision, but eye color, height, hair color, cleft chin, etc.
- baddox 12y ago
  And the same goes for those as well, if changing them would for some reason improve the child's quality of life.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    And then someone isolates a gene that predicts homosexuality. I'm a strong techno-optimist, and I think we should have an extremely open mind to the possibilities offered to us by these advances, and we should fight the tendency to fortify our little local maximum out of fear - but we also need to recognize that some really dangerous things lie ahead.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      If homosexuality really is genetic, isn’t it doomed to eventual extinction? http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=118 http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=118
      - mseebach 12y ago
        Apparently there's some influence: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/genes-influence-male-sexual-orientation-study http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/genes-influen... But genes or not, I brought it up as an example of something that we're clearly NOT comfortable removing (even if we could), although there's still plenty of communities where not being gay "would for some reason improve the child's quality of life".
        afafsd 12y ago
        >But genes or not, I brought it up as an example of something that we're clearly NOT comfortable removing (even if we could) Why are "we" clearly not comfortable with that? Indeed, if "we" are all uncomfortable with that then we needn't worry about anyone doing it. You seem to be worried that some people are going to want to specify non-gay children but think they ought to have them anyway. For some reason. On the other hand I admit it might make me queasy to think of parents deliberately engineering their children to be gay. As in "Oh honey, let's make our third child gay, it'll be fun!"

jychang 12y ago

But then we go full GATTACA.

blueskin_ 12y ago
AKA Affirmative Action Is Good: The Movie. We already bar people with heart defects from participating in space programs.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I thought the whole point was that the main character got into space on merit, even though all the fancy genetic screening predicted that he wouldn't be able to. The human spirit of an individual triumphs over a short sighted and capricious society. You mention the heart defect. In the movie, the heart defect is only genetically potential, it is implied that if the character had it they would be dead before the events of the film.
  - adrianN 12y ago
    He does cheat on both the medical and the physical exams.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Sure, I guess I would refine it and say that he made it into space based on some standard of merit that I was defining, not based on the one the short sighted and capricious society defined.
Filligree 12y ago
You don't like that outcome? Meh. Neither does anyone else, and it won't happen by itself. If GATTACA was the cost of everyone being healthy, I might take it, but it won't be. We get the world we want, by and large.
- philbarr 12y ago
  > We get the world we want, by and large. Hmm, not sure about that. The rich get the world they want, by and large.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  There are a lot of undesirable scenarios where 'everyone is healthy'.
sampo 12y ago
> But then we go full GATTACA. Gattaca is just a scifi movie, not particularly good at science realism. We should not take guidelines for Artificial Intelligence research from the Terminator movies, and we should not take genetics guidelines from Gattaca.
afafsd 12y ago
So? The world of GATTACA seemed pretty awesome. Everyone was smart and fit and healthy and good-looking. In fact, life was so perfect that the writers had to postulate the existence of non-genetically-engineered people in order to have any drama at all. "Wouldn't it suck if you were born into this society without any genetic enhancement?" the movie asks. And the answer is: yeah, so you should genetically engineer your children.

PostOnce 12y ago

It's implied that later it won't just be functional things like color vision, but eye color, height, hair color, cleft chin, etc.

baddox 12y ago
And the same goes for those as well, if changing them would for some reason improve the child's quality of life.
- mseebach 12y ago
  And then someone isolates a gene that predicts homosexuality. I'm a strong techno-optimist, and I think we should have an extremely open mind to the possibilities offered to us by these advances, and we should fight the tendency to fortify our little local maximum out of fear - but we also need to recognize that some really dangerous things lie ahead.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    If homosexuality really is genetic, isn’t it doomed to eventual extinction? http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=118 http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=118
    - mseebach 12y ago
      Apparently there's some influence: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/genes-influence-male-sexual-orientation-study http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/genes-influen... But genes or not, I brought it up as an example of something that we're clearly NOT comfortable removing (even if we could), although there's still plenty of communities where not being gay "would for some reason improve the child's quality of life".
      - afafsd 12y ago
        >But genes or not, I brought it up as an example of something that we're clearly NOT comfortable removing (even if we could) Why are "we" clearly not comfortable with that? Indeed, if "we" are all uncomfortable with that then we needn't worry about anyone doing it. You seem to be worried that some people are going to want to specify non-gay children but think they ought to have them anyway. For some reason. On the other hand I admit it might make me queasy to think of parents deliberately engineering their children to be gay. As in "Oh honey, let's make our third child gay, it'll be fun!"