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Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#131

Post by chongli »

lmz wrote: post #114
chongli wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a nuke to fight off a tide of refugees is like bringing a grenade to a fist fight. Do you think the people who are already here are going to tolerate the wholesale slaughter of their family members who are trying to rejoin them? What about all of their friends? No. If we don't find some way to rescue everybody we will be torn apart by civil war.

Sounds like a good argument to not let even one of them in.

You must must've missed the part where I mentioned that they are already here. They are us.

We aren't going to be able to pull up the ladder. People will try, though, and it will get very ugly, very fast.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#132

Post by M_Grey »

chongli wrote: post #93
M_Grey wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...And then, after slaughtering those people and years of insularity, nationalism, and populism... what's going to be left, but for those insular nations to fight over remaining resources? I can't see a nuclear nation shrugging and saying, "Well I guess we're conquered! Here are the keys..."

Using a nuke to fight off a tide of refugees is like bringing a grenade to a fist fight. Do you think the people who are already here are going to tolerate the wholesale slaughter of their family members who are trying to rejoin them? What about all of their friends? No. If we don't find some way to rescue everybody we will be torn apart by civil war.

Using a nuke to fight off a tide of refugees is like bringing a grenade to a fist fight.

Yeah, or firebombing a defeated nation. Who would do such a thing? Oh right... humanity.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#133

Post by M_Grey »

chongli wrote: post #131
lmz wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good argument to not let even one of them in.

You must must've missed the part where I mentioned that they are already here. They are us . We aren't going to be able to pull up the ladder. People will try, though, and it will get very ugly, very fast.

Exactly, and then there will be war.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#134

Post by apathy »

solatic wrote: post #130
M_Grey wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what traits we'll program for? Intelligence, maybe, but that's tough to manage and I'd guess that without a complete understanding you'd get a lot of madness. Physical traits will be easier to select for, especially gross ones like size and overall strength. Selecting out congenital illness would be another step. If you could though, if you had a clear understanding of how Trait A and cluster of genes/epigen…

> I wonder what traits we'll program for? Intelligence, maybe, but that's tough to manage and I'd guess that without a complete understanding you'd get a lot of madness. That's an understatement that belies human laziness. The real predictor of success, almost no matter how you define success, is about the effort you put in. Good genetics is usually a micro-optimization on effort expended. But if you ever told people…

> The real predictor of success, almost no matter how you define success, is about the effort you put in.

That, and how well you choose your parents. Unless you honestly believe black people just didn't try hard enough to be president for the first 230 or so years of the USA's existence.

Christ these Horatio Alger "just so" stories are ridiculous. And if we repeal GINA, it'll make it that much harder for people to escape their supposed "destiny". Genetics interacting with environment makes us who we are. I'm of the opinion that the latter is more important, and I hold a doctorate in statistical genetics so this is not purely an off-the-cuff opinion. It may or may not be right in a specific case (evidence >> eminence, credentials are at best a proxy for expertise) but it happens to agree with yours, if you think about it.

The amount of grit you develop is going to be a function in large part of your childhood (or other major environmental influences; in the field, "environment" is shorthand for "everything that isn't genetics"). So locking in an ignorance of its importance is just astoundingly stupid. If we want a sclerotic European aristocracy or a caste system in America, this is the way to get it.

And of course the rich and powerful will do anything to perpetuate their position. On average, however, the American dynasty half-life is 3-4 generations. Compare that to Europe and I think we know which better favors social mobility.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#135

Post by M_Grey »

benlambert wrote: post #94
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, my question still stands. I'm asking because I frequently see this kind of climate change alarmism on forums (it's the end of civilization, billions will die, etc) but my sense from an admittedly cursory reading of the estimates is that the dangers of climate change are likely to be an epic refugee crisis from coastal flooding, famine, and war. Hundreds of millions will die, and many more will see a sub…

The question is how accurate are the estimates? Estimating in a complex system where one problem triggers another, cascading with feedback loops, is a messy business. So the outcome could be either far more or far less dire than we think. As you put it, know one knows for sure. So it's prudent to assume the worst.

Thank you. I would personally be beyond thrilled if I ended up being, "That cranky bastard who always brought up environmental and social doom." I would feel pretty foolish however, if I bet on that outcome, and just hoped for it to materialize.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#136

Post by wyager »

mantas wrote: post #71
wyager wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not better. Cheaper. Nope, it's also better for the vast majority of medicine. Have you ever used Mexican private healthcare? I have! Customer service and convenience is through the roof compared to US healthcare. > I rest my case. Not a very good case! The reason you wouldn't want to get complicated surgery in Mexico is that they don't have as many medical specialists, or as much equipment. The US is richer and ha…

The reason is that what you pay for "cheap" service is actually the premium service over there. Super expensive private hospital in US would provide as good customer service.

That doesn't make sense. The cost of goods doesn't magically scale linearly with GDPPC, even service-heavy goods. Even if it did, that wouldn't be a valid explanation. According to the OECD, average net-adjusted household disposable income is only 3x higher in the US than Mexico, but our medical care is many times more expensive than that.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#137

Post by eru »

hocuspocus wrote: post #124
eru wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAP in Germany was getting union representation just when I was doing an internship there about 10 year ago. The move wasn't popular with employees.

Why was that? Unionized engineers in Germany (like in the automotive industry) are the highest paid and get the most benefits. Why would they be against it, given that if you don't enjoy red tape, you probably won't work at SAP to begin with?

I was only an intern. The food was good, but the work was boring.

German law says that union representatives can get an almost equal say in company matters. SAP had a vote, most people were against union representation, but by German law any nine (9!) employees in favour in the whole company is enough. So SAP got some people from IG Metal (ostensibly a metal workers union!) on their board.

Most of my coworkers saw the union representatives as busy-bodies who were interested in political power rather than real work. People had higher opinions of management than of them.

To get a bit more general:

It does help that programmers are broadly in wide demand, and can mostly get a new job at a drop off a hat. So instead of forming a cartel and `fighting' for their rights, they can just vote with their feet.

Same as what people do to make sure they get quality groceries: go shop at a different venue. If unemployment ever gets low enough, the general population would be elevated into a similar exalted position for their jobs.

> [...] given that if you don't enjoy red tape, you probably won't work at SAP to begin with?

It's a decent company. If you can put up with Java, they are OK to work for.

(That doesn't mean that I enjoy using their products. In that regard they are the opposite of the video game industry: I'd rather play a computer game, but I'd also rather work for SAP than finish a game in a death march.)

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#138

Post by wyager »

DanBC wrote: post #97
wyager wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not better. Cheaper. Nope, it's also better for the vast majority of medicine. Have you ever used Mexican private healthcare? I have! Customer service and convenience is through the roof compared to US healthcare. > I rest my case. Not a very good case! The reason you wouldn't want to get complicated surgery in Mexico is that they don't have as many medical specialists, or as much equipment. The US is richer and ha…

US healthcare is expensive and, by some measures, not that good. http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-does-uk-healthcare-spending-com... > Despite spending, by far, the largest amount on healthcare, the USA was among the 10 OECD countries with the lowest life expectancy. What you propose will make it more expensive, and doesn't seem to address anything around patient safety or efficiacy of treatment. You will end up with nic…

Yes, as I said multiple times, US healthcare is bad.

> What you propose will make it more expensive

Do you have any evidence for this, or are you just going to drop the claim and walk away?

I have some constructive evidence to the contrary, which I've already mentioned; the medical systems of Mexico and India.

> The US medical system is currently risk averse

Which is one of the many reasons that substantially deregulated medicine is a good idea.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#139

Post by wyager »

kolinko wrote: post #95
wyager wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By essentially any metric, state provided (single-payer) healthcare is the best-known solution to the healthcare problem. Except things like, you know, quality of care or satisfaction. Single-payer healthcare beats the American implementation, which is not a high bar to clear. There's a reason medical tourism to Mexico and India is so prevalent. Totally deregulated private doctors seem to kick the ass of state heal…

The problem is that you cannot have any sort of sensible health insurance on an unregulated market. On an unregulated market, insurers would begin to drop people who get chronically sick, or land in risk groups. Before you can say: "so just forbid dropping insured people" - that's what US initially did. But there was a simple loophole around that - you don't drop people per se. You just start a new insurance company,…

You don't need industry-specific regulations to prevent insurance fraud; you just need to enforce insurance contracts. If you're worried about becoming a huge medical cost in 20 years, find an insurance company that's willing to go into an n-year preset-rate contract. You might pay a premium corresponding to the increased risk on the part of the insurance company, but if insurance companies were allowed to do this and people wanted it, the correct price would be found sooner rather than later.

Re: Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

#140

Post by hocuspocus »

eru wrote: post #137
hocuspocus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was that? Unionized engineers in Germany (like in the automotive industry) are the highest paid and get the most benefits. Why would they be against it, given that if you don't enjoy red tape, you probably won't work at SAP to begin with?

I was only an intern. The food was good, but the work was boring. German law says that union representatives can get an almost equal say in company matters. SAP had a vote, most people were against union representation, but by German law any nine (9!) employees in favour in the whole company is enough. So SAP got some people from IG Metal (ostensibly a metal workers union!) on their board. Most of my coworkers saw th…

Electrical and mechanical engineers are in high demand too, and afaik they don't complain too much about their strong unions. And I know SAP is a decent company.

Anyway the comparison with the situation in the US is a bit pointless. More than unions, they need basic workers' rights.

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