China, with its totalitarian capitalism, scares the shit out of me. I truly believe this country poses the single biggest threat to human kind today.
Watch 'advchina' on YouTube, it will calm you down and you'll see they are just human too haha
China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
111–120 of 150 posts
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Me. In general, the less intelligent people are, the less they contribute to society. I'd rather live in an engineered society with engineered people. If you are looking for bang for the buck in raising the average IQ across the whole population, then there are serious quick wins in eliminating things that drag it down. For instance, exposure to lead. And it's doable, hardly rocket science or genetic engineering. I…
why can't have both, "eliminating things that drag it down" + genetic engineering?
If we're going to act like we're a bunch of smarty-pants engineers here, it seems rational to start with the low hanging fruit: environmental toxins.
In addition to facing fewer ethical pitfalls, greatly reducing these environmental factors is well within our current means. It also universally beneficial, and not limited to those who can afford "Boutique" offspring.
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is disobedience correlated with intelligence? Especially when the superiors are not less intelligent than the one who is receiving orders?
Personally I tend to feel less respect for people who are noticeably dumber than I am. I think that's basic human nature, or at least my nature. Tyrants know this. You see it when they feel threatened and start purging their subordinates. If they don't respect you they can fear you instead.
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Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is disobedience correlated with intelligence? Especially when the superiors are not less intelligent than the one who is receiving orders?
Personally I tend to feel less respect for people who are noticeably dumber than I am. I think that's basic human nature, or at least my nature. Tyrants know this. You see it when they feel threatened and start purging their subordinates. If they don't respect you they can fear you instead.
We are talking about a population engineered to be more intelligent, so the assumption is that the rulers would also be more intelligent, so this gap would not exist
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#115>> 'I don’t think they have any imperial ambitions to spread China’s borders—they’re not going to act like Nazi Germany or America in the 20th century'
Oh, wow, that's quite a serious yet subtly thrown-in burn...
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#116I wonder how they define intelligence. I suspect the cognitive traits that will serve an economy best in 30-40 years, when these babies reach the top of their economic productivity, are not what one might expect today.
Considering that AI will likely take away most regular jobs that leaves... Entertainment. Will super smart brainiacs really have an edge in entertainment in 30 years?
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me. In general, the less intelligent people are, the less they contribute to society. I'd rather live in an engineered society with engineered people. The primary problem to solve is discrimination against non-engineered people. That problem was the only reason Gattaca was so dystopian. As long as there are controls in place that make it difficult, it should be possible to move forward with engineering humans in a pr…
The ladies who empty the trash here contribute more to society than I do. I just write throwaway apps for throwaway companies, they actually DO something.
But wait. If all they do is empty your trash, and you do nothing worthy of merit, then by extension, that tangible thing they do to support your work is equally meaningless.
If the world economy could eliminate your job without missing it, then you are no longer generating trash to clean up, and that job goes away too. The person who cleans up after someone genuinely productive therefore contributes more than someone who cleans up after someone useless.
This is, no doubt why we pretend with all the might of imagination that certain jobs are critical and vital to the economy. The idea that double-digit percentages of the whole world economy could actually just be wasted on useless navel-gazing nonsense is just too horrible to consider. It may be true, but if we believe it is true, that just means we're all wasting our lives on pointless bullshit. I'd rather lie to myself and be happy, regarding this particular point.
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ladies who empty the trash here contribute more to society than I do. I just write throwaway apps for throwaway companies, they actually DO something.
But you can empty the trash and they can't build your apps. Also, when thinking about creating value, you need to think about scale. They change your trash and are limited by their physical ability and time. Let's say they saved you 4 minutes and changed 400 trashes, saving 399 other people 4 minutes. They've created ~24 hours of value. If your app helps people save 30 seconds a day and did that for 100k people, then…
What app does save people 30 seconds? Perhaps they didn't use the app before, and now it's wasting the time of thousands?
At the very least the lady emptying the trash keeps the place hygienic, reducing the spread of diseases.
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Population genetics shows harmful mutations tend to accumulate much more than beneficial mutations, but not to a degree that reduces reproduction significantly. So the human genome is degenerating over time.
> but not to a degree that reduces reproduction significantly. Then how can it be "harmful"? Reproduction is the only thing that affects evolution, no?
Not quite. Environment and epigenetics are important too.
Re: China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013)
#120Totally 100% unrelated but on the line "China continues to buy up American debt", the United States could just as easily buy up Chinese debt. For some reason it just doesn't do this.
True. It's not considered as safe of an investment. A lot of times you can't even trust the numbers China publishes about their economy.