61–69 of 69 posts
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> Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Resources are arguably a proxy for genetic fitness, in that those resources must have been acquired somehow, and discounting luck that would indicate success in the acquisition of resources - on its own a useful trait to pass on to your offspring. Apart from that, it's perfectly possible for women to marry t…
This is the same as capitalism vs communism: capitalism is good at individual level, not so good at society level. Communism is good at society level, not so good at individual level.
Pretty much all of us are massive hypocrites when it comes to Eugenics: it is a taboo subject when applied to populations, yet everyone apart from the insane is looking for a genetically fit partner.
Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting into much more complicated edge cases. I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems, incl…
>So it is entirely possible that after designer babies become a thing and we remove too many "bad" genes from the gene pool, someday this will come back to bite us for some reason.
Maybe, but unlikely. Those infections were a problem back then because we lived in huts and didn't have antibiotics or anything resembling modern medicine. A comment below says that this gene helps protect against cholera, for instance. Well cholera isn't a problem in places with proper sanitation, so this gene isn't really a help for people living in rich, industrialized nations. Sickle cell protecting against malaria might be useful to people living in malaria-prone areas still, but we do have immunizations against malaria these days, and in the future it's really not going to be a problem at all.
Finally, with "designer babies", presumably we'll be at the point where we'll just be able to genetically engineer ourselves to deal with any remaining environmental problems/diseases directly, instead of relying on some accidental mutation that gives us a little better resistance at a huge cost.
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This is the same as capitalism vs communism: capitalism is good at individual level, not so good at society level. Communism is good at society level, not so good at individual level.
Can you point to a single example in history of communism being good for society? Its benefits are thus far theoretical, are they not?
The problem is that no one has been able to scale it up to a modern industrialized nation-state and get it to work out well there. Every time they've tried, it's been a disaster.
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Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting into much more complicated edge cases. I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems, incl…
>Having only one of the genes doesn't give you a deadly condition and protects against an infection that rampantly killed people in Europe historically. >So it is entirely possible that after designer babies become a thing and we remove too many "bad" genes from the gene pool, someday this will come back to bite us for some reason. Maybe, but unlikely. Those infections were a problem back then because we lived in hut…
When antibiotics were discovered, the world announced the end of disease. Today, there are endless articles about the rise of antibiotic resistant infections, plus dystopian fiction about a post antibiotics world.
I'm not 100 percent convinced we are as clever as we imagine ourselves to be.
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>Having only one of the genes doesn't give you a deadly condition and protects against an infection that rampantly killed people in Europe historically. >So it is entirely possible that after designer babies become a thing and we remove too many "bad" genes from the gene pool, someday this will come back to bite us for some reason. Maybe, but unlikely. Those infections were a problem back then because we lived in hut…
we lived in huts and didn't have antibiotics or anything resembling modern medicine When antibiotics were discovered, the world announced the end of disease. Today, there are endless articles about the rise of antibiotic resistant infections, plus dystopian fiction about a post antibiotics world. I'm not 100 percent convinced we are as clever as we imagine ourselves to be.
Antibiotics aren't going away, they're just having to get better to cope with the evolution of bacteria.
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This is the same as capitalism vs communism: capitalism is good at individual level, not so good at society level. Communism is good at society level, not so good at individual level.
Can you point to a single example in history of communism being good for society? Its benefits are thus far theoretical, are they not?
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Can we get a full disclosure on point 4, are you obese? It's very possible for obese people to lose weight, it just needs to be treated like quitting smoking is treated.
I am overweight but not obese. But this is not an anecdotal issue, the literature is crystal clear on this.
You can choose a better literature. It is all over the internet.
Why is the continent with the most natural resources also the least developed?