61–70 of 178 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes it is. We're not born blank slates! What we call human nature is largely determined by the physical architecture of our minds. Guess where that comes from.
Choices, the answer is people choose to behave as they do, when they do and how they do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realize Gattaca was a dystopia right? That Ethan Hawke's entire character arc was proving that an unmodified human is just as capable as a modified one? That best case is still a horrible future.
Actually it was proving that being clever you can cheat the system. He showed, several time, why he wasn't as capable and probably put everyone on the mission in jeopardy because of it (Do they have contact lens replacements in space when no one else needs them? Probably not.) That is one of the reasons why I love that movie, Ethan is the bad guy. Though that's probably not what the director was going for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how the ethics of "fixing" that defect is any different from the therapy discussed in the article.
Okay, I was just saying that it usually arises for no predictable reason during pregnancies involving parents that do not have trisomy. Most of the time it isn't a trait as such (even though it can be passed from parent to child and is a trait in those circumstances). I suppose one difference with the article is that pregnancies are actively being terminated based on the presence of Down's Syndrome in the fetus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is fair that caution is needed - otherwise we're just a bunch of Qyburns, right?
GRRM framed Qyburn negatively. You could view him from a positive angle instead: he's a brilliant scientist who left the scientific community so he could pursue groundbreaking research without being slowed by obsolete and conventional ideas. That's a heroic narrative, not a sinister one. ASOIF is fiction. We live in reality. The problem is far more often that we're held by obsolete and suffocating rules than that we'…
>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…
I'm not seeing the consistency in your arms race argument. I don't have a lot of hope that the more intelligent children will decide that war sucks - odds are at least 1 country in this hypothetical arms race would spend significant resources on more aggressive, order-following soldiers to do the bidding of people who still want war. It's nothing to do with religious reasons for me - I just categorically reject the i…
>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…
> If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. So what? They win more Olympic medals? Or what, they invade like in Red Dawn? Or they take all the places in our elite colleges? While its not an argument against, fear-mongering a ludicrous, purely hypothetical b…
As someone more circumspect, can you illuminate me?
>and is sure to renew ethical concerns that some might try to design babies with certain traits, like greater intelligence or athleticism. If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. I want genetic engineering because it's logical that as humans learn to exer…
> If America doesn't do it, China will, and in a generation will be swollen with a population so much more fit as to make the question of the US standing toe-to-toe laughable. If China doesn't, Russia will. So what? They win more Olympic medals? Or what, they invade like in Red Dawn? Or they take all the places in our elite colleges? While its not an argument against, fear-mongering a ludicrous, purely hypothetical b…
Technological and military power also fundamentally depend on the quality of people.
Full-scale war is not likely in the near future, but will people accept being an underdog after a century of dominance?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see why that has to be best case. My best case scenario is that humankind has overcome tribal instincts, united around common causes, overcome arbitrary prejudices, and... well basically Star Trek.
In Star Trek the genetically enhanced humans started a massive world war that almost wiped out humanity. That's what Khan was. In the Star Trek universe, genetic enhancement is illegal because of it (caused some problems for one of the characters in DS9).
We don't really have evidence for what happens when a generation of much-stronger, much-smarter than average humans are born, and subsequently give birth to another generation of even stronger even smarter kids. I'm hoping it's not a bunch of sociopathic Khans and that if we can figure out how to make smarter babies, we can also avoid making sociopathic murderous ones.
EDIT: On the other hand, I'm seeing the fear now - we create 100 of these superkids, and it turns out sociopathy is simply more fit than non sociopathy. They use their superior intelligence to out-perform "normal" humans, breed more of themselves, take over the world, and "normal" humans are gone.
Bad for normal humans, good for... whatever humans are after?
I guess it comes down to whether you're willing to accept that the continuance of some version of the human race is better than the potential extinction of all of the human race (which I believe is inevitable if we don't start making changes like this).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, I was just saying that it usually arises for no predictable reason during pregnancies involving parents that do not have trisomy. Most of the time it isn't a trait as such (even though it can be passed from parent to child and is a trait in those circumstances). I suppose one difference with the article is that pregnancies are actively being terminated based on the presence of Down's Syndrome in the fetus.
This is all about the ethics of future applications of technology. I'm talking about "fixing" an embryo with trisomy so that it doesn't have trisomy. We don't have to get into the particulars of current technology or little differences in various genomic anomalies. Or we can pick pretty much any other disability, and one that is a mutation in a DNA sequence. My question stands. What is the objective, non-religious th…