Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#61

Post by innguest » Mon, Apr 06, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #50

bpodgursky wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a social problem. You should question your assumption. While there is without question a social element, there is growing evidence that IQ is at least 50/50 heritable. Not to mention birth defects and other genetic disorders which can only be kept under control now by people with enough money to get their kids therapy, rehab, etc. So in fact putting people on an equivalent genetic playing field is a great way…

IQ is heritable because IQ selects for the well-educated. Also, everyone is fairly similar in intelligence anyway. It is not for lack of intelligence that black people suffer in the United States.

Your first sentence is a non-sequitur. When did Nature decide that the more well-educated are the fittest?

Your second sentence is wrong. People's intelligence vary widely which is why some people can't even answer a hypothetical question and engage in thought experiments.

Black people suffer in the US because the US has a ton of laws that harm them, like minimum wage laws (first enacted to stifle competition), drug laws (first enacted on racist grounds to jail minorities), welfare laws (first enacted to segregate minorities in ghettos). But god forbid we blame the State, it must be a "social" problem...

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#62

Post by innguest » Mon, Apr 06, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #14

api wrote: post #10

There was a call around here to ban AI research too. Maybe the reason we don't do new things is that we are too afraid. I blame lazy and unimaginative sci-fi plots among other things. Genetics could improve the inequality situation too, but that would require challenging elements of our economic system which is off the table.

> Genetics could improve the inequality situation too, but that would require challenging elements of our economic system which is off the table. No it couldn't, and in any case that are infinitely more direct and efficient ways of addressing inequality if that is truly your goal.

There are more direct and efficient ways of addressing inequality than genetically changing people to be equal?

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#63

Post by innguest » Mon, Apr 06, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #27

Humans modifying themselves is scary. Very scary. One way it is scary is it creates a new form of genocide. Rather than murdering oppressed groups, we will simply disable the genes that make them part of that group, erasing diversity. A world with only white, straight, cisgender, neurotypical, conventionally attractive etc. people is not one I want to live in.

So you'd say with a straight face that if everyone in the world suddenly became white, straight and good-looking, that this would be so unbearable to you that you would kill yourself?

If you're not literally saying that, then what is the value of your hyperbole? Your post reads like pure fear-mongering to me.

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#64

Post by itsybitsycoder » Mon, Apr 06, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #44

Zikes wrote: post #3

> They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken. In many ways we are already selecting for those traits and have been for countless generations, so assuming we had a well-understood and safe method for ar…

Here's an interesting heuristic: if an action is morally bad, then its inverse is morally good. Does that seem plausible? If blinding a child is bad, then curing their blindness is good, etc. Applied to this situation: if it's morally bad to enhance the intelligence of a child beyond that of their peers, then it should be morally good to diminish the intelligence of a genius child to be more average. If it's bad to e…

No, I don't think that heuristic passes the sniff test. There are lots of situations where the doing the functional opposite of a morally wrong action is also morally wrong. It's wrong for me to take $50 from you and give it to Bob, and still wrong for me to take $50 from Bob and give it to you. It's wrong to kill babies and wrong to force women to create babies. In these cases the moral inverse isn't to do something that creates the opposite effect, but to just not do the bad thing. Changing a kid's genes so he's smarter may or may not be immoral but it's not related to whether changing a smart kid's genes so he's normal intelligence, at least not in such a formal logic kind of way.

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#65

Post by pc2g4d » Mon, Apr 06, 2015, 10:58 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #11

6d0debc071 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many ways we are already selecting for those traits and have been for countless generations, so assuming we had a well-understood and safe method for artificially selecting for them then there should be no ethical quandaries beyond "but, that's cheating!" Or creating a permanent underclass from those who were unfortunate to have parents who couldn't or wouldn't give them the enhancements - and for that to carry…

I agree. "Survival of the fittest" does not bode well for that underclass. At best they will naturally go extinct. At worst they will be exterminated or enslaved.

Thus we see the moral trainwreck that is Social Darwinism.

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#66

Post by hyperbovine » Mon, Apr 06, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

innguest wrote: post #62

hyperbovine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genetics could improve the inequality situation too, but that would require challenging elements of our economic system which is off the table. No it couldn't, and in any case that are infinitely more direct and efficient ways of addressing inequality if that is truly your goal.

There are more direct and efficient ways of addressing inequality than genetically changing people to be equal?

I mean, really? Poverty correlates far more strongly with negative health outcomes, lower educational attainment, increased risk of incarceration, unhappiness, decreased life expectancy--you name it--than any known genetic risk factor.

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#67

Post by diminoten » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 12:03 AM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #60

diminoten wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to forget that being attractive and having more kids are in no way correlated. Ugly people have kids too. If you're not saying we're selecting for intelligence or beauty, then what are you saying? You claim "the concept holds true", but I'm not sure what the greater concept you're trying to explain is. That humans are still evolving?

> You seem to forget that being attractive and having more kids are in no way correlated. Attractiveness plays absolutely no role in reproduction? I honestly don't know how to respond to that, I hope you've just phrased it poorly. I'm not saying we're not selecting for intelligence or beauty, I'm saying we're not selecting for the same intelligence and beauty every generation. A few thousand years ago intelligence wa…

> Attractiveness plays absolutely no role in reproduction? I honestly don't know how to respond to that, I hope you've just phrased it poorly.

I have not worded it incorrectly. Attractive people may have kids, but so do ugly people, and ugly people have kids with attractive people, too. There is currently no known link between attractiveness and offspring. Your "common knowledge" is failing you here.

But wait, so you're trying to tell me that this sentence:

> In many ways we are already selecting for those traits and have been for countless generations

Is supposed to have meant this:

> I'm saying we're not selecting for the same intelligence and beauty every generation.

?

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#68

Post by diminoten » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 12:04 AM UTC

evanpw wrote: post #44

Zikes wrote: post #3

> They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken. In many ways we are already selecting for those traits and have been for countless generations, so assuming we had a well-understood and safe method for ar…

Here's an interesting heuristic: if an action is morally bad, then its inverse is morally good. Does that seem plausible? If blinding a child is bad, then curing their blindness is good, etc. Applied to this situation: if it's morally bad to enhance the intelligence of a child beyond that of their peers, then it should be morally good to diminish the intelligence of a genius child to be more average. If it's bad to e…

There does exist a moral neutral. Not everything is "good" or "bad".

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#69

Post by Zikes » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 4:51 AM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #67

Zikes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to forget that being attractive and having more kids are in no way correlated. Attractiveness plays absolutely no role in reproduction? I honestly don't know how to respond to that, I hope you've just phrased it poorly. I'm not saying we're not selecting for intelligence or beauty, I'm saying we're not selecting for the same intelligence and beauty every generation. A few thousand years ago intelligence wa…

> Attractiveness plays absolutely no role in reproduction? I honestly don't know how to respond to that, I hope you've just phrased it poorly. I have not worded it incorrectly. Attractive people may have kids, but so do ugly people, and ugly people have kids with attractive people, too. There is currently no known link between attractiveness and offspring. Your "common knowledge" is failing you here. But wait, so you…

> There is currently no known link between attractiveness and offspring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peafowl#Plumage_colours_as_attr...

And yes, my two sentences are one and the same. A trait is a category, such as hair color. We can select for that trait without always selecting specifically red hair, for example. In fact, at one point we selected against red hair in some cultures [1]. Similarly, as I described earlier, intelligence today is often defined as IQ or literacy while intelligence in the past might have been toolmaking, memory (for verbal history/storytelling), or navigational skills.

That's why I don't see any ethical quandaries about genetic modifications for beauty, because it's highly unlikely to lead to homogeneity and even if it did, if everyone is beautiful then nobody is, which means people would immediately find new definitions for beauty and pursue those instead.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Prejudice_and_discrim...

Re: Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

#70

Post by hyperbovine » Tue, Apr 07, 2015, 10:09 AM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #66

innguest wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more direct and efficient ways of addressing inequality than genetically changing people to be equal?

I mean, really? Poverty correlates far more strongly with negative health outcomes, lower educational attainment, increased risk of incarceration, unhappiness, decreased life expectancy--you name it--than any known genetic risk factor.

Forgot an "almost". There are some terrible hereditary diseases. But the point remains.