One idea that seems to worry many people is: what if geneticists discover genetic differences between ethnic groups? Couldn’t that
enable targeted bioweapons? (If not figuring out whether or not you’re at risk of getting addicted to a drug, before you use it, based on your genetics.)
But it is not obvious that the advanced genomics of today has much in common with the eugenics of the 1930s. No sane or influential people are calling for compulsory sterilization programs.[1]
Do they enable population control via preventing certain genetic groups being born?
Another reasonable response, Harden’s one perhaps, is that nobody deserves their genetic luck, so we should do some redistribution to even things out.
Why not genetic redistribution?
The analogy goes straight over to any group differences. We might discover them! But if we do, the sensible response will still be “let’s judge individuals as they are, not by their group”. This is just how we respond to environmentally caused differences between groups, which uncontroversially exist.
Uh, what? How do we deal with lead poisoning? (At a guess, it seems like learning about such differences might lead to redistribution.) I’m not sure how that’s an example of judging individuals as they are.)
Second, if we discover them, they’ll be complex
Lactose intolerance.
and interact interestingly with environments
They probably won’t eat cheese or other dairy, and depending on where they live that might be expensive.
And people interpreting intergroup differences as caused by discrimination might have to work harder to prove their case.
One response is that in the long run, it is no big deal. New gene-editing technologies like CRISPR will put power over our genome back in our hands.
The part before this, about ‘selected for’ - that part didn’t make sense. (The abstract was clear though.)
If so, we might start to create ever-improved beings, far from traditional, flawed humanity.
A darker place to go with that is, that for the sake of the future, future generations are experimented on genetically...and it doesn’t always go well. Or, for the sake of the present. (Like, making it so that more people who get cancer sooner, means more people to try to figure out how to treat cancer better, for the sake of the old people running things who don’t want to die of cancer.)
A dilemma of human progress, then, is that we might have to choose between remaking ourselves so completely that we are no longer recognizably human; or staying as ourselves, but slowly coming to be the only dysfunctional, unreliable part of a perfectly engineered machine.
Sounds like a false dichotomy because ‘preventing increasing accumulation of negative rare mutations’ doesn’t seem to mean ‘no longer recognizably human’*. (And yes, I get why people might link this position/this statement being made with eugenics.) If you mean that tech will improve, and that if we don’t reimagine ourselves (or the next generation) then we’ll ‘fall behind’, that’s something different.
*Unless you’re arguing that improvement will inevitably enable ‘success’ by mis-shaping us into something inhuman, to better suit modern life. If we made it so that all people who live will ‘be able to get through school’, will removing the fact that we didn’t like it prevent it from growing and improving and leave humanity something inhuman, as a result of removing what made it so we....didn’t like it? (It may be a mistake to equivocate between ‘unable to finish school’ and ‘a kid being bored, glancing out a window at a beautiful day that looks so much better than this classroom’ but what would we be without that? What would we be without boredom?)
Also didn’t mention that removing mutation might mean...removing the possibility of improvement. (Kill an engine that can produce improvement, and what’s left? There’s not growth if it’s not provided. (And do we want to lose any hope of genetic serendipity? Improvements we wouldn’t have guessed?))
I’m not sure I understood all of your points. But overall, yes, we might just get rid of rare mutations, but I wonder if realistically people will stop there. (That is indeed a slippery slope argument.)
enable targeted bioweapons? (If not figuring out whether or not you’re at risk of getting addicted to a drug, before you use it, based on your genetics.)
Do they enable population control via preventing certain genetic groups being born?
Why not genetic redistribution?
Uh, what? How do we deal with lead poisoning? (At a guess, it seems like learning about such differences might lead to redistribution.) I’m not sure how that’s an example of judging individuals as they are.)
Lactose intolerance.
They probably won’t eat cheese or other dairy, and depending on where they live that might be expensive.
And people interpreting intergroup differences as caused by discrimination might have to work harder to prove their case.
The issue seems to revolve around:
And people will just do that.
The part before this, about ‘selected for’ - that part didn’t make sense. (The abstract was clear though.)
A darker place to go with that is, that for the sake of the future, future generations are experimented on genetically...and it doesn’t always go well. Or, for the sake of the present. (Like, making it so that more people who get cancer sooner, means more people to try to figure out how to treat cancer better, for the sake of the old people running things who don’t want to die of cancer.)
Sounds like a false dichotomy because ‘preventing increasing accumulation of negative rare mutations’ doesn’t seem to mean ‘no longer recognizably human’*. (And yes, I get why people might link this position/this statement being made with eugenics.) If you mean that tech will improve, and that if we don’t reimagine ourselves (or the next generation) then we’ll ‘fall behind’, that’s something different.
*Unless you’re arguing that improvement will inevitably enable ‘success’ by mis-shaping us into something inhuman, to better suit modern life. If we made it so that all people who live will ‘be able to get through school’, will removing the fact that we didn’t like it prevent it from growing and improving and leave humanity something inhuman, as a result of removing what made it so we....didn’t like it? (It may be a mistake to equivocate between ‘unable to finish school’ and ‘a kid being bored, glancing out a window at a beautiful day that looks so much better than this classroom’ but what would we be without that? What would we be without boredom?)
Also didn’t mention that removing mutation might mean...removing the possibility of improvement. (Kill an engine that can produce improvement, and what’s left? There’s not growth if it’s not provided. (And do we want to lose any hope of genetic serendipity? Improvements we wouldn’t have guessed?))
I’m not sure I understood all of your points. But overall, yes, we might just get rid of rare mutations, but I wonder if realistically people will stop there. (That is indeed a slippery slope argument.)