[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry.]
it kind of is, actually. Perhaps you could try not wearing your “pretense of neutrality” belief as attire and actually consider what you just said is acceptable. I’d rather say, “if something can reasonably be described as eugenics, that’s an automatic failure of acceptability, and you have to argue why your thing is not eugenics in order for it to be welcome anywhere.” bodily autonomy means against your parents, too.
edit: i was ratelimited for this bullshit. fuck this website
I mean, clearly there must be some way for people to argue in-favor of genetic enhancement. Like, my high-school textbook on ethics had a section on superbabies and that was totally fine and opinion in the class was pretty split about how humanity should relate to people using that kind of technology. Having discussion about genetic enhancement is obviously a thing that humanity needs to have if it wants to reasonably navigate the future.
The very most that I think you could defend in really any forum is that you don’t get to take “eugenics being good” as a given when you make a post, and you have to argue first that it’s worth talking about, but like, that’s exactly what this post is trying to do.
you don’t get to take “eugenics being good” as a given when you make a post, and you have to argue first that it’s worth talking about, but like, that’s exactly what this post is trying to do.
Yeah, that seems to be one of the most common criticisms of my FAQs pages. I actually agree that some people would be more receptive to my arguments if I tried to argue my support for it more gradually, but that’s just not my preferred writing style. It would’ve made it harder for me to write everything in this post. I have autism (it runs in my family), and my brain just doesn’t work that way, at least not for this topic.
Diana Fleischman has written a different essay that takes that approach, and some people might like it better. It’s good that there are differently written essays out there on this topic.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry.]
they’re welcome to argue in favor of genetic enhancement, as long as it happens after birth. yes, I know it’s orders of magnitude harder. But knowing anything about an abortable child should be illegal. I’m a big fan of abortion, as long as it is blind to who is being aborted, because as soon as it depends on the child’s characteristics, it’s reaching into the distribution and killing some probabilistic people—without that, it’s not killing the probabilistic person. Another way to put this is, life begins at information leakage. anything else permits information leakage that imposes the agency of the parents. That’s not acceptable. Argue for augmenting a living organism all you want! we’ll need at least mild superintelligence to pull it off, unfortunately, but it’s absolutely permitted by physics. But your attempt to suppress the societal immune response to this thing in particular is unreasonable. Since you’ve already driven away the people who would say this in so many words by not banning it sooner, it is my responsibility to point this out. Almost everyone I know who I didn’t meet from lesswrong hates this website, and they specifically cite acceptance of eugenics as why. You’re already silencing a crowd. I will not shut up.
Look, you are clearly trying to argue for a policy where it would be impossible for me to argue against anything you say, despite us of course both knowing there are real arguments to be had here, and real considerations to be figured out.
The policy you are arguing for also has approximately no buy-in. Arguments for basic genetic disease screening and gender selection have been published in basically all major newspapers and a substantial fraction of medical journals in relevant fields. Yes, LessWrong has more real discussion of serious gene-editing, and some of that is taboo in more parts of society, but the specific line you are trying to draw here is societally quite rare.
I don’t really know what’s going on with you here. In any case, you have a moderator warning. If this kind of stuff triggers you, you can filter it out from your frontpage. It’s definitely not banned from LW, and if you leave comments that as aggressively attack people, or engage in mass-downvoting of people thinking or commenting about this stuff, I will give you at least a temporary ban. You are of course welcome to make arguments and contribute evidence to whatever people are talking about, but that’s mostly not what’s been happening here.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry.]
it kind of is, actually. Perhaps you could try not wearing your “pretense of neutrality” belief as attire and actually consider what you just said is acceptable. I’d rather say, “if something can reasonably be described as eugenics, that’s an automatic failure of acceptability, and you have to argue why your thing isnoteugenics in order for it to be welcomeanywhere.”bodily autonomy means against your parents, too.edit: i was ratelimited for this bullshit. fuck this websiteI mean, clearly there must be some way for people to argue in-favor of genetic enhancement. Like, my high-school textbook on ethics had a section on superbabies and that was totally fine and opinion in the class was pretty split about how humanity should relate to people using that kind of technology. Having discussion about genetic enhancement is obviously a thing that humanity needs to have if it wants to reasonably navigate the future.
The very most that I think you could defend in really any forum is that you don’t get to take “eugenics being good” as a given when you make a post, and you have to argue first that it’s worth talking about, but like, that’s exactly what this post is trying to do.
I agree. I would support genetic engineering in some cases, but I’ve explained why I don’t believe that is an adequate solution for humanity. It won’t solve the problems of dysgenics or overpopulation.
Yeah, that seems to be one of the most common criticisms of my FAQs pages. I actually agree that some people would be more receptive to my arguments if I tried to argue my support for it more gradually, but that’s just not my preferred writing style. It would’ve made it harder for me to write everything in this post. I have autism (it runs in my family), and my brain just doesn’t work that way, at least not for this topic.
Diana Fleischman has written a different essay that takes that approach, and some people might like it better. It’s good that there are differently written essays out there on this topic.
[edit 7d later: I was too angry here. I think there’s some version of this that can be defended, but it’s not the version I wrote while angry.]
they’re welcome to argue in favor ofgenetic enhancement, as long as it happensafter birth. yes, I know it’s orders of magnitude harder. But knowinganythingabout an abortable child should be illegal. I’m a big fan of abortion,as long as it is blind to who is being aborted,because as soon as it depends on the child’s characteristics, it’s reaching into the distribution and killing some probabilistic people—without that, it’s not killing the probabilistic person. Another way to put this is, life begins at information leakage. anything else permits information leakage that imposes the agency of the parents. That’s not acceptable. Argue for augmenting a living organism all you want! we’ll need at least mild superintelligence to pull it off, unfortunately, but it’s absolutely permitted by physics. But your attempt to suppress the societal immune response to this thing in particular is unreasonable. Since you’ve already driven away the people who would say this in so many words by not banning it sooner, it is my responsibility to point this out. Almost everyone I know who I didn’t meet from lesswronghates this website,and they specifically cite acceptance of eugenics as why. You’re already silencing a crowd. I will not shut up.Look, you are clearly trying to argue for a policy where it would be impossible for me to argue against anything you say, despite us of course both knowing there are real arguments to be had here, and real considerations to be figured out.
The policy you are arguing for also has approximately no buy-in. Arguments for basic genetic disease screening and gender selection have been published in basically all major newspapers and a substantial fraction of medical journals in relevant fields. Yes, LessWrong has more real discussion of serious gene-editing, and some of that is taboo in more parts of society, but the specific line you are trying to draw here is societally quite rare.
I don’t really know what’s going on with you here. In any case, you have a moderator warning. If this kind of stuff triggers you, you can filter it out from your frontpage. It’s definitely not banned from LW, and if you leave comments that as aggressively attack people, or engage in mass-downvoting of people thinking or commenting about this stuff, I will give you at least a temporary ban. You are of course welcome to make arguments and contribute evidence to whatever people are talking about, but that’s mostly not what’s been happening here.